Amy's weight loss diary

HAVE FUN! :) We'll all miss you!

And you're a smart cookie for not worrying about it until you get back to Australia - flying that distance screws up everything in your body anyhow, so just go with the flow and take is easy. Hope everything goes smoothly!
x
 
i feel like i could see you at the airport with all your little goodies in your bag,texting us here at the forum....its kind of strange to say as we are stangers but i miss u already
Hope u have a lovely flight and get some rest before arriving home
Kisses!!!
 
Thanks for the messages guys, I really appreciate it. I'm in Sydney now, and am feeling... not so great. Incredibly tired. Have struggled during the day.

Calorie/ kilojoule counting doesn't look like it's going to work so well here. It's a lot more freeform and mum looked at me like I'd lost my mind when I suggested weighing ingredients (to be fair, she asked how much of something to use in a recipe, and I said "the recipe says 100g. Why don't you weigh it?" which I don't think is unreasonable, particularly as she asked me to buy her scales like mine, and I did). She keeps handing me things to try that I can't get/ afford in the UK- which is good for lots of reasons, but nutritionally not so ideal.

So... let's see. Today (after I landed, so after 6am AEST- which is 9 hours ahead of British summer time. I'm starting at that point because I was more in control of my food at that point and also because from there on my time zone is/ will be stable) I've had half a cup of tea with low fat milk (it was vile, don't know why), a teaspoonful of the porridge mum made (she has a new technique and wanted to show me, I ate breakfast on the plane), half a piece of cake and some hokey-pokey ice cream ("you have to try this... oh, we have this ice cream that you can't get in England and I just happen to know you adore, we're all having it with the cake"), a sandwich with lamb and a minty sort of jam for lamb, a tiny portion of chicken mum wanted me to try, a smallish portion of a salad mum wanted me to try (spinach, feta, pumpkin, can't remember what if anything else), some water, and mum's take on this recipe (I didn't have a chance to take notes and I'm not sure mum would've been too keen on the idea):

Exercise wise, I've played with Dita (the family dog) who definitely remembers me :) Took her for a walk (this area is hilly), have run around the house with her a lot, etc. No idea on distances, but this house is big and I've probably done at least 5, maybe even more than 10 laps of it.

Exercise will hopefully help alleviate my lack of control diet wise, and hopefully it'll settle down and become more/ mostly healthy.

Currently drinking lemon and ginger tea as a night cap (need to go shopping with mum for things like night tea) and am about to toddle off to bed.
 
It'll take you a few days to get your body clock back into sync. Have you brought your sleeping tablets with you to help a bit?

:) Awww, bless her giving you loads of different bits of food to try! Don't have too many treats!

Has your mum got a pool? Would be lovely to go for a swim every morning.
 
It's been great so far. Diet not so good- I have very little control and my family are terrible trying to give me things. (And succeeding... I'm very bad when egged on by other people) Mum's also decided that we should eat out once a week, not including me eating out with my friends (which I'd already in part arranged because mum promised me this great diet)! I think I'm just going to have to go with the flow, do more exercise, and get back with the program when I get back to the UK.

And I bought Mum a set of scales just like mine (I got them for a tenner from Tesco Direct- they cost $80 in Australia, so are worth importing). She caught me weighing my milk this morning and thinks I'm crazy. Sigh.
 
amy1985 said:
...She caught me weighing my milk this morning and thinks I'm crazy. Sigh.
Click to expand...

I assumed I added 1 fl oz of milk to coffee till I weighed it. I was adding 1/4 cup without realising it. Add 1 spoon of sugar and I was drinking 70 calories 6x a day!
So weighing is vital. Tell your mum I said so!!
 
She's seeing success with weight loss for the first time in a very long time through a program she's using (a bunch of things, but they include going almost entirely gluten free) and wants me to do the same thing, and doesn't understand why I won't (going gluten free is expensive and inconvenient, and there's a shit tonne of stuff you can't have). She seems to be blocking my every opportunity to calorie count, and I don't understand it.

Today she went out with the express aim of buying some things on special and came back with about 10 packs of TimTams (one of my siblings had requested 5 packs on her own) and a heck of a lot of ice cream. Among other things you cannot buy in the UK and she knows I love. I had a few things (trying to participate/ enjoy the things that are a luxury to me) but my siblings were sitting there munching away saying it was my fault junk food was being brought into the house and they didn't eat junk food normally (accusatory tone). I'm not the one who bought these things, and they don't have to eat any of it! (And while I'd like to have some of these things while I'm at home... way overkill!!!)

My sister is having friends over tonight. The menu (for everyone) is pizza, cake, and ice cream. :banghead:

I may have to start the weight loss all over again when I get back to the UK :(
 
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If I go to someone's house and they smoke, I don't have to smoke. Same with food. If they are eating crap, I don't have to. I buy my own food. Just go out and buy low calorie stuff. When they see how determined you are, they'll stop! My family did. :)

"Plaudite, amici, comedia finita est."
 
A lot of people can not even begin to relate to what we're going through. We're dedicated to a goal and have a specific route that we've decided to take in order to get there. And it's working. But they see us and feel bad and think that they are helping us by doing what they are doing (feeding us high calorie foods and offering us sweets). In truth it's only hindering our success.

Amy, imaninjadangit is right. If it's possible for you to buy food yourself please do. You do not have to eat the food that your family is bringing around. Or perhaps you could at least tweak it a bit. Think about everything that you've learned in your journey so far. Haven't you trained your body and mind when to resist and when to allow? Do you know that it's ok to tell even people that we love "no"? Use it here. You should not have to start over even half of what success you've had in the UK. That's unacceptable.

Will you have to lose weight when you go to the UK after every Australian visit? Not if you put your foot down.

They love you. You love them. Talk to them sincerely and explain that the help they are trying to lend to you is actually the opposite. Or the mindset they have toward their eating is affecting your goals in a negative way. If they want to support you then they'll stop and if they don't....well... that's a shame but if you want to keep your progress you'll have to remain strong.
 
Great to hear from you Amy!I hope u are having a great time back with your family!
I agree with imaninjadangit imaninjadangit .Can you go get some better food and eat that\?seeing that you mean buisness maybe your mum will get the picture.If it is not possible just stick with small portions of all the junk food.And a you said , burn calories!!!
You dont have to put all the weight back on.I think its normal to come back with a few pounds on,like when we go on vacation!WIsh you have a great day!
 
Thanks guys, I appreciate the moral support.

I must have misheard about tonight- no friends have come over, and we had salmon, roast potato (not ideal, but better than pizza), and mixed vegetables, with strawberries and ice cream for dessert (I told my mum to stop serving mine as soon as she told me to tell her when, which is as much discretion as I feel I have). We bought ingredients for pizza today so I assume that's happening at some stage. (My plan is to have half a pizza or less- as it'll be very large if what we used to do is any indication- spread the calorific ingredients thinly, and the lower calorie ingredients more generously)

First of all- buying food. I would if I could, but my parents moved (recently) to a place with no public transport, and I don't have a license. It's about an hour's hilly walk to the nearest bus stop, and apparently the bus is pretty unreliable at the best of times. There aren't (that I know of/ that I've been told) any shops within walking distance here. (And my mum's been going on for months about sharing all her organic free range gourmet food with me- I'm sure she'd be incredibly upset if I ditched it for the cheap crap I can afford)

In terms of cooking for myself, I'll see how things go. For breakfast I'm having oat groats, milk (0.1% fat), and a piece of fruit (berries are too expensive here- both mornings I've had breakfast I've had an apple), so it's similar to what I've been having n the UK (although I have no idea on nutrition of groats or what a serve's meant to be). Lunch and dinner are problems, as there's very much a sense of sitting down and eating together for dinner (my dad insists) and lunch there isn't a lot available (today I asked what I could have and was given the option of sandwiches, which I don't find filling and bread isn't good calorie wise). They're also keen to take me out to eat, as I said above, and I'm not sure I can get out of that (especially as it's being done for my benefit, from what I can gather). Weighing is out of the question (at least while any of my family are looking- they think I'm insane) which puts me quite a bit at sea.

I do want to eat some junk while I'm here, probably a lot more than I do in the UK, because there are a lot of things I've missed a lot. (Part of me wonders if my family know this and are trying to sabotage me?) But what it looks like my family are doing is way beyond what I anticipated, particularly as my friends want to take me out as well.

I'm just really frustrated by it all at the moment. Got to work out nutrition/ family dynamic/ practicalities.
 
I really feel for you. I think food is just your mums way of showing you love, she sounds like an italian in that respect. I know it might seem like she might be trying to sabotage you, but I'm sure she's not consciously doing that. Maybe you could ask her to get healthy snacks in, so that if you get served things like roast potatoes, you could just eat a few of them and if you are hungry later you can have a small healthy snack.

I know you are going to relax on the diet while your in Australia, but PLEASE don't relax too much. You have put in a lot of hard work to get a body you are happy with, don't let 6 weeks of not-as-healthy food ruin it. x
 
hey Amy, I came along with the express idea of reading through your diary, having seen that you joined just about when I signed off in april....but jeepers creepers...its 76 pages long! So that will have to wait until I take a couple of days off of work. Just like a book project that is late in at school, I did read the start and the end and this has made it abundantly clear that you have achieved a lot and come a long way in such a short time - WELL DONE HON!

So, the long and the short of it is, by doing that I just saw the bigger picture - the 10kg mark you have nearly hit and the long term benefits of all your hard work...dont let 6 weeks (and a well-meaning mum who obviously doesn't get to spoil you very much) set you back. What about when unhealthy stuff is served up, just eating half or a third of whats on the plate? That's what I do when I am in restaurants, at someone's house or at a function and I haven't really got a choice about what I choose. You might not be able to control the main course, but you can control what goes from teh plate to your mouth. They aren't doing it on purpose and you can work around it. So you love Tamtams. Eat one, go for a walk! (I have no clue what these are but I'm imagining something marshmallowly or alive, possibly even a miniture poodle-like animal?)
 
hello Amy,

Nice hearing from you again. I dread about going to my mums house also...She'll say the same thing as yours..that I'm over exaggerating. but she's 2700 km away so visits are restricted to once a year. but every time I go I come back with at least 5kg plus.
 
I know exactly how you feel, sometimes the people who love you don't support you the way you hoped. It is frustrating I know. Make sure you let them know your side of the story. It's so much easier to lose weight when you don't have people giving you junk food but also when they're encouraging you to eat healthy! So try your best to make them understand. I found a good way was just to say how much you enjoy, eating healthy, exercising, getting slimmer. This really opened some of the eyes of my family members. I wish you all the best, keep your chin up! :)
 
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