Clearing the house debt

Do you ever feel like you want to do something simple. But everything gets in the way of doing that and then you get overwhelmed?

I have long since believed that the state of my body is simple a refection of my lifestyle but well beyond just diet and exercise. I have a lot of backlog of clutter in my house that affects my food motivation. So I thought what if I directly correlate the state of the house with my body? 

I am 43 kilos overweight and there are a thousand grams in a kilogram. So for fun, what if I endeavoured to put away 43000 items in the house. As I cleared the backlog in the house would that also affect my weight? 

The reason I think it will is that I already have a lot of knowledge about eating well, and I deeply desire to be slim, so what if it was the house getting in the way?

I am not a slob, but there is a backlog that most of us have and perhaps I have had a little bit more. I have held on to the kids babystuff as I always wanted a third and that means more clutter. 

So when I say items I mean anything that is put away or improved. Every fork that is washed, every pencil that is sharpened, every piece of lego, every weed that is pulled. So as you can see if you look at it that way having a goal of clearing 43000 items of debt is probably doable in a moderately cluttered home.

All debt has interest. My kids create some daily chaos, there is always a dishwasher to be packed and unpacked, plus whatever the day has brought. So I figured there is about 250 items of interest a day to pay.

I gave myself a goal of clearing 1000 items debt a week. I hoped it would be symbolic of losing a kilo.

Here is how I have gone:

The first day I put in a big effort of 745 items and I felt like I was getting somewhere. But I didn't consider how big the interest was, and I wasn't consistent enough. So that week was actually an eye opener as the back log didn't change much. 

The second week I started to realise how big the actual debt was. 250 items x 7= 1750. Plus 1000 to pay off the debt, means that to meet my quota I need to clean up about 2750 items a week or 400 items every day. 

This week I did much better. Its a bit early to tell if it is immediately effecting the scales but I know that eventually it will.

What has happened is that the kids lego is completely tidy,  I am less embarassed by surprise drop ins, the washing is up to date, (although I still have to do everyone's sheets). We are cooking more, Jason and Jules are riding their bikes more and the general mood in the home is happier. 

Our lego is totally organised. Its the perfect blend of order and chaos so the kids can play with it, and find the parts they need. I think lego is the hardest thing I have organised so I am particularly proud of it.

I am hoping that clearing the clutter will pave the way for having the strength to clear the body clutter.

I have just gone for a 7km ride with Jules. I am getting fitter as well :)

Out of routine!

The last two days have shaken me as I have been out of routine. Mum came down and I spent a few hours helping her shop for her business and we went out for lunch. We were good we had a salad. I let her know my theory about body clutter versus house clutter and she got it! Which was awesome.

That night I trialled a karate class for the kids. It wasn't the right one for us as the instructor didn't do any kicking of the pads which I feel is important. As the class was on from 6pm-7:30 I fed them early. They seemed to forget that as they wanted oven chips when they got home. That was fine except I had them too.

Yesterday I went to sports day with Jules and I spent some time filling in at the shops as it was a lunch time thing. I went to the shops starving and it was a disaster, I made some really bad choices. Then I was caught off guard for dinner. I thought I will have soup and the kids can have some oven pizza. I really must stop thinking that the kids and I can have separate dinners as I just end up having what they have and it completely sabotages me.

The last two days haven't been great items wise. I did 376 two days ago, and only 40 yesterday! When I woke up there was a nasty gain on the scale and it was hard not to let it get to me.

So today I have planned dinner early and afternoon snacks in the fridge so that we can make much better food decisions today!

Cleaning up is going well today. Trying to stay on the wagon after a bump in the road lol.

Spotto!

Red Witch Says Hi.

Today I found out for sure that again I am not pregnant. Its not too bad a let down this time as I had been testing for the last few days and coming up negative. My period came a few days early which is better than when its late. Hopes have time to get up higher when it is late and then you have further to fall.

Its been a rocky week so far as I crashed my car on Monday. I was on the way to observe Jules at school. So I was leaving an hour earlier than usual. I was pushed for time and I ended up eating lunch in the car. I think this distracted me, so I wont do it again. I was turning right to go on the highway and I see a flash of a blue car, and I barely have time to think I must speed up when BANG!  My back tyre is hit and the car suddenly spins around like it is in an amusement park ride.

I jump out immediately to see if everybody is alright and thank god everyone is. The cars are pretty banged up, but I have insurance and it was my fault so thats fine. A witness appeared on the scene immediatley and gave lots of empathy to the schocked victims of the crash and a tow truck was there in unbelievable speed. As far as accidents go, everyone couldn't have been nicer.

I called Jason and arranged for my mother in law to collect the kids. She means well and does her best but gets quite muddled. I am very grateful for her though, as I don't really have anyone else nearby enough to do it in an emergency.

The kids and I play the spotto game. When you see a yellow car you say "Spotto". Geordie elaborated on this and now we also have "Blinko" for a pink or purple car. "Linko" for a light blue car. "Loco" for an orange car, and "Sneezo" for a light green car.

So you can imagine the kids delight when our hire car turned out to be a Spotto!

Camping...in the drizzle

So months ago I had planned to go camping with Karen S as she wanted someone to help her go camping for the first time with her baby. 

I had packed and sorted food before I found out that it was meant to rain that weekend. Plus I had paid the whole thing (should of just paid the deposit) so we decided to chance it. Besides it doesn't tend to rain continuously. So at 6 am I get a call that baby Natalie has a fever and so she can't go. Which is true, you would be absolutely stupid to take a sick baby camping.

So we were lucky enough to set up in the almost dry. Then it drizzled continuously for 1.5 days. We still managed to get a fire going (the wood was dry) and got a great roast. The kids also settled really well. They chilled out fantastically. They spent quite a bit of time on their ipads and just were so content. I had heaps of time to read my book.  Despite the wet you can see how we still managed a serene camping trip :)

After starting to fear that we might get flooded in, the weather cleared up and we got to pack down the tent in the dry. Yay! I went for two little rides, but as a whole it was a weight loss disaster as camping = lots of snacking for me. It gets worse as we had Indian takeaway when we got home.

Time to start picking up the pieces tomorrow.

I am also in the two week weight. I spotted a little bleed a few days 5 days after ovulation which I think might be an implantation bleed. It will be interesting to see if I was right, and if little dot makes it past the period.

Social Eating

Friday we celebrated Jason's 10 year anniversary of being an insurance underwriter at the same company. Margi, my sister-in-law and her fiancé came up for the night. We get along really well. We went out for Thai food to celebrate. In order to minimise the damage I ate frugally the day before and the meals beforehand. I had a chicken satay stick for entrée and some prawn thai fried rice, chicken pad thai and beef pad see eew. So yummy, but I wish I had of ordered the thai beef salad. I didn't because I didn't realise we could share it. How silly was that? It could have been shared like any other dish. And it would have saved me feeling sick as my body wasn't used to as much fat at that point. We spend the night afterwars watching reruns of the bachelor and getting really giggly and girly. We ate a lovely fruit platter with brown rice crackers and low fat dips for supper.

They left early the next morning. I took the kids to circus and then we had some of Jasons friends over with their computers to celebrate guy style. My god they are a bit of work food wise. I served baked potato that night with lots of roast chicken I had bought and chopped up. They also got oven chicken tenders as a night snack. Popcorn and chocolate chip cookies to snack on as well as lots of hot beverages. Luckily for me they made a move early and I got to go for a bike ride with Jules. My fitness is improving which is great. I have so much work to put in before the epic though.

Look at all those hills...




Jason has been very inspired in the lead up to the Epic. We got him a very fancy secondhand bike. So he is feeling good and empowered right now.

We have been putting in lots of effort teaching Geordie to ride his bike without training wheels. Jason spent 90 mins teaching Geordie to ride his bike. It is very slow progress, but once he gets his confidence up he will be right.

Jason went for another training session in the bush. I tell you its just great to have him off the computer!



While the social events were fun, I am very glad they were short. They have definitely sabotaged my efforts, however thats life. Its not the food of a single day but the overall lifestyle that counts. I have eaten well today but my potions have been too big as a consequence. I have another awkward week coming up, as I have three days of kids being at home (and they don't like the healthy meals I make so there is compromise there). After that I have two nights of camping with an avid junk food eater. The next weekend is a family bbq in Balina which is a 3 hour drive each way. We will be staying overnight. Luckily for me Jason's family is sensible when it comes to food.

Epic

Hi There!

Phew back from another little bike ride. Its astonishing how much that can suck and rock at the same time! I have to talk myself into it but I get there. I have been riding every second day for the last week. I have already doubled my distance and I am recovering faster. I started at about 1.5km (embarrassing I know) and today I did 3.7km. I am already noticing I get up from the floor easier and I have more fertile mucous (I know, too much information lol). This.is.in.a.week! It is incredible how quickly the body adapts to exercise, its like we were born to do it or something lol. And how much do we fight it considering how awesome it is for us, and how good we feel afterwards?

Beings are designed to avoid pain and seek pleasure, so it has to be really convenient to exercise or the couch will win. Having a brand new bike (Jules') a bike path around the corner and the incentive to train for a 4.2km mountain bike ride next month is what it takes to haul my ass on a bike :) We are going to go to The Epic which is near Gatton, QLD.  We go there every year as we have when Jason and I first dated. Here is a picture of us in 2008, the event was a lot smaller then.

 Here is a video of the Epic from last year if you go to the time 3:21, is of us camping at last years epic!
Actually looking back at those older photos was really nice. This was taken 6 years ago when Jason and I first started dating. I had recently lost about 12 kilos as I had just separated from my exhusband. At that point I was a single mum so I had no money, but I had clothes I liked that I had held onto for when I was slim again and the beauty was that I was actually thin again. I got to my lowest a few months later and I was only 9 kilos off goal!

Incredible to believe how close I was. I had really hoped to be there about now, but its hard to juggle life and everything else. This week alone I have turned down 3 invitations and accepted 3. I have spent the majority of my free time withdrawing to get rid of my massive backlog. And you know what? I  am actually getting through it. The kitchen is sparkling despite how many meals I am preparing in it!



I am starting to menu plan, the kids are read to every night, their piano done, things are off the floor and the garden is improving. This has cleared the physical and mental space I need to get my head around food and food systems.

Food has to be measured, planned and ready to go at a moments notice. So I have been working out things to eat in my calorie range. This has been surprisingly slow to do. And I am only about a 20th of how far I want to go. But that's okay. I have been keeping up my main responsibilities now (webwork, parenting, cleaning, chauffeuring, maintaining friendships) and I have enough time to start to deal with the head game which is weight loss. And it is a massive head game. One thing I am realising is that I can survive thinking about food in the am, but not in the pm. In the pm, my body gets cravey and can't handle the temptation. So plan in the am, distract in the pm, luckliy for me I  have heaps of work to do to keep me busy lol.

Termites

Five days ago when I was gardening I noticed that we had termite tracks!!!!

You can see the brown line, thats the mud track they make so that they can "stay underground" and get around the concrete slab into your house!

The Termite Guy came around yesterday and he noted that the tracks were old. He had an infrared camera and we couldn't see any activity, and no obvious damage. This house has steel frames which is amazing.

So that's great news! All clear! They must have poisoned them in the past. I can't believe I missed that for 2 years. See look how much backlog I have been carrying around!



Today has been one of my first slow days in the history of the year so I have managed to make a little meal plan and start to regain my focus. I went for another bike ride today which still kicked my butt, but was a little better than last time.

Shift in thinking

For a long time I have thought of the excess fat on our body like a debt. Similar to a credit card debt that racks up when you spend money you don't have, excess body fat is the bill that comes from eating calories you can't afford. What I am realising now though is that it is more than that. The extra fat is actually representative of all debt, not just calorie debt. At least it is for me.

I have a beautiful house. It could be absolutely gorgeous, but it is has sooo many unfinished jobs. To list a few, the exterior needs painting, the gardens need weeding, plants need rearranging, we need new plants. Inside I need to set up Jules' new bed, find homes for many things that "float" around the house because they don't have a home etc. As well as educate my children, do the extra curricular stuff and have fun and maintain friendships. There isn't a lot of time and there is so much to do that it is often overwhelming. My body fat represents the times when it was too hard.

This is why losing weight is so much harder than calories in vs calories out. To lose weight you need to meal plan, shop ahead, keep the kitchen clean, the fridge organised, exercise and limit the eating side of socialising. To do all of that successfully you need to keep your life in order.

With so much pressing on your time you can see why that is so hard to do. But a couple of things have changed to help me start to progress.

* Scheduling some at home days. There is so much to do and most of it needs to be done at home.
* Scheduling and limiting how often I go to the mall. Its a bit of a time waste as you spend time getting there, and back and then putting everything away. Not to mention its hard on the wallet.
* Actively increasing how often I go to the hardware store, including doing workshops to increase my fix-it skills. I am also making friends in there including Marian a 93 year old wonder gardener who gave me lots of cuttings for free!


My curbside garden (above) is starting to have some colour after she helped me understand cuttings!

I am starting to get things done, slowly, slowly. Gardening is exercise, I don't snack while I am doing it and it gets things off the overwhelming-can't-believe-I-haven't-got-to-that-yet-list!

I now have two pretty pots with flowers outside my house.











And Geordie is getting into the herbs after doing the supermarket Jamie Oliver garden books. He is making his own labels, isn't that the cutest thing!

We are starting to do more exercise and have started training for a little mountain bike event in 7 weeks time. Here is Jules with his new flash mountain bike. It has hydraulic disk breaks, fancy gears and a lock out, which is a suspension fork which can be locked and rigid, or loose and springy. Jules is getting a little tummy and it is already getting in the way of his trampolining and circus. I don't want him to suffer like I have so we are getting out more with him.

 This is the fabulous five. They are my friends children that I have know since babydom. They are really good for my children's development. We have them for sleep overs about once a month.  Jason looks after them at night and all the parents, Karen J, Michelle, Nikki and I go and have some girl time.

Kai is the boy at the back on the left. Asha is the girl. They are brother and sister,  children to Karen J (not Karen S). We are going to take Kai to the mountain bike event as well.

One day we girls want to go on a cruise together (quad share) for a few days. It will work out to be about $400 each. I had definitely better lose a bit of weight before that happens!

I went for a ride on Jules bike today. It has amazing brakes!   And a really hard seat so you can't sit down on it. I am glad I have more time to start training for my mountain bike ride. lol.

Parties, Parties, Parties!

I think I finally have my head around why it is so hard to lose weight.

The first step is to recognise that what you do or don't do effects your weight.

This is pretty much the hardest step because we already feel so defeated. 

Its about finding the right strategy. 

Whether for you its, high protein, calorie counting, vegan eating etc. You have to find something fairly easy to get results with, and then stick with it long enough to see the results. How I see it is that you need to find a pattern of eating that fills you up, within your boundaries and doesn't take too much effort or time to do.

When we put the effort in we see results... and then we get cocky

Its human nature to try and do things with less effort. We get excited by the results and then we slip, often times we get away with the slip, then it catches up with us and we start to gain. When we stop putting in the same amount of energy we don't get the results.

Parties completely undo about a weeks worth of effort.

My scales are awesome, right now they pretty much reflect how I ate the previous day accurately. And I can tell you when I go out to dinner its about 800g increase, when I go to a party its about a 1.5kg increase. I notice these things pretty consistently as I weigh myself daily. 

Parties are amazing and seriously the stuff memories are made of. But we have to space them out so that we have time to lose the weight back off and make it a bit further before the next one hits.

When we do lose weight Fat thinking makes it easier to rebound.

You are probably heavier than you ever thought you would be, and losing 5 kilos you are still probably heavier than you ever thought you would be. The problem is like our skin, our mind has stretched. Its a bit more comfortable with the wieght than it should be and its easier for the weight to creep back on.

Keeping the weight off takes diligence

You need to be real about whether or not you are gaining or maintaing and kick into gear over the little stuff, otherwise you will be like the majority of people that gain it all back within four years.

You probably knew all of that anyway, but I am getting a real kick out of watching my body respond to whatever I feed it. I never knew I had so much power and that parties were that evil.

My evil time of the day is afternoon tea time. In the past it wouldn't matter  how many calories I consumed I would still want more. I have made a few little tweaks that really help things. I eat more oats at breakfast it seems to curb my cravings a bit in the afternoon. I bake a potato and eat it with the smallest amount of light butter. You heard me. And I loooooovve it. Potatoes are yum! The thing is they are so much more filling than bread with a third of the calories so why not. I get serious contentment for not many calories so it works for me. The other thing I am doing is having cup of soups. They are yummy and effortless so I am pretty happy with that. they are a bit loaded with salt though :(

Do Over!

My weight skyrocketed to 105kgs after camping and Easter from too much chocolate and chips. I felt really unattractive and I also felt like I had entered a danger zone. Which I had as my blood pressure was high.

So on Easter Sunday I decided to go back to my old faithful Calorie King. What I have been eating and am planning to eat is up there, my calorie king name is Reu, pleased to meet you :) . Its not perfect, I do have a bit of a life, but it has been good enough to give me a loss of 2.3 kilos in four days!

I'LL TAKE IT!

My sister-in-law had gastric bypass surgery and she has been advised by her dietician to have around 1000 calories a day. So I am trying for 1000 calories a day too, I figure it worked well for her. I haven't managed to actually pull that off. It seems that I always go over so I do better aiming for lower and accidentally going over has been good damage control.

I have thought about the weight "debt" that I have and how it is very similar to credit card debt. Like a credit card you can't just stop spending (eating) there are bills to pay (meals to eat) but its about trimming back the excess until you are out of debt.

I have often made this analogy, but I started to realise that I was in house debt as well (so much back log of clutter and disorganisation). I have put in a lot of work over the last month starting to find things a specific home, labelling the box, and labelling the shelf where the box goes). The advantage of this is that ANYBODY who comes into my home can find things and put them away. Which means that I can get help. Up until now it has been my sole responsibility to cook, clean, organise, and sort the kids. Seriously no wonder I accumulated a lot of "debt".

After I organised things a bit, I felt more in a position to tackle my weight. I think there is an analogy between house clutter and body clutter. And after that I came up with a cooking schedule. Basically on Wednesdays, the kids take it in turn to pick and make a dinner. It has to be healthy and budget conscious. I came up with a big list of healthy meals for them. Sundays, Jason (or James while he is living with us) are taking it in turns to cook a dinner. This isn't as hard as it sounds, as basically I organise the food for them, and with the kids they more help me, but they are picking up skills along the way.

So this food plan is a great help, because it allows me to know what I am eating in advance which helps me save calories, save money and time. Its a winner!

I also formalised the chore routine. Essentially at this point its a list on the wall, with morning, afternoon and evening routines. Biweekly, weekly, monthly chores. I am hoping to progress to some automation of the housework and hopefully some more help from the fat cats I live with.

So I am resetting my wieght loss table, full of new hope and off I go!