Camy's diary

AWOL - Away Without Leave :)

Aww, sounds like a nasty allergy :( hope it subsides soon!

Wow, awesome, congratulations on buckling down on that dissertation! :hurray:
 
Thanks Anke, it has cleared up now, I am just sniffling but nothing major.

I was very productive today, but I don't feel like exercising at all... I have everything to exercise in my bag and just no will... I may just go and have starbucks and read my book. I am maintaining nicely even though I eat disastrously (once a ton, once nothing at all...) but I think my relationship with food has definitely changed. I know what I am eating and when to stop, sort of. Hopefully I can get myself together for next week and finally start to lose some weight again!

Camy
 
OK, so now starts day 1, day 1 of being a postgraduate graduate (I have an oral exam on the 10th but it is very minor so it doesn't count). I am printing my thesis today and handing it in tomorrow!
And I am going to lose 15 pounds! I am very motivated. I maintained nicely during these weeks, and I was not exercising or eating restrictively which makes me very happy but as said before I am pretty sure that 140 ish pounds is my "genetic weight".

In 35 days I am going home and I hope to be 6-8 pounds lighter by then. I havea lot of free time when I am not working and I will use this time to exercise hopefully. Back to swimming 3 times a week and blading or running or gymming 3 days a week.
Wohoo!
Foodwise I will try to stay as done before, no milk products, no wheat products and as little refined sugar as possible.
Camy
 
Congrats on a great holiday!! I'm glad everyone got a chance to notice and compliment your hard work, and it sounds like it paid off! GOOD FOR YOU!

Your diet sounds fierce. Good luck with that, you sure have a drive that I envy. I'm jealous. Congrats on being a post-doc (which is what we all call it over here). Good luck on your final oral!!!!!!!!!!
 
hey Bucks,
now that i have more time I will come and visit everyone's diary more often again.

Today I handed in... obviously after handing in I immediately spotted like 50 mistakes, but well, I hope nothing too major to fail me or anything (didn't seem too major to me!). The tutor said that something pretty bad had to happen for one of us to fail, so i guess technically I probably passed.

Phew! I am so happy... but somehow still kind of nervous on the inside, I think after next wednesday when i have the oral exam and I know if i passed I will feel much better. I feel that I can talk about the subject really well, so I do not think the oral part will be too terribly bad. Also I have always been a better talked than a writer!

Today food was a bit off as I had to get this done and then hand it in and then stay for 12 presentations which were really tedious, so food of the day:
Breakfast: 1/2 a soy latte (no sugar) and 3/4 of a gf biscuit (the fourth quarter fell into the coffee... :( )
lunch: small light caramel frap
Dinner: chinese food (probably seafood and veggies with rice)

no exercise other than running around... I just got the BCG vaccine (which is against tuberculosis) and a small ulcer is forming, so I didn't want to go swimming today. I may go on Thursday and Friday as i start work only at 3 and 4 respectively. wow no more essays, no more exams, no more thesis... wow!
Camy
 
Woah girl you were just DRINKING those calories UP today! Sometimes days like that for me can be really filling and others they just leave me deprived. I don't know what it is, maybe it is my mood. But congrats on passing round one! Orals are always rough for me, I have so much going on in my head that it is often hard for me to get it all out of my mouth in a single concise sentence.

I always have the mindset that less is more, but it is always so hard for me to get down to that less being more statement! I'm going to a retreat this week for microbial pathogenesis and hopefully can work on my delivery as I present my poster on my project I have been working on this summer.

But good luck for you! I'm just rambling as usual but good luck and I know you will be fine, you are dedicated and driven, and that is 90% of the battle! GOOD LUCK!
 
I am very motivated but I also have some kind of bug that makes my voice all sexy and my nose all runny.
This week I am going to eat only fruit and veg, soup and salad and a lot of tea until thursday because I am going to attemot to deflate my somewhat swollen tummy. I am also going to lay low on the sodium. On thursday is my party and I am going to go dressed as Ariel the little mermaid, and want to look stunning. I still have to make myself my costume for this... Ahh!

I weighed in at 62.5 yesterday morning, which is 137 (,8 but I do not look at that...), which was good, it means 1 pound down from last week.
I also want to weigh 59 kg in exactly 4 weeks, when I go back home and back to my gynaecologist who last time he saw me told me I was overweight and lazy! Which he is right about! So that means that ideally I would lose 3.5 kg in the next 4 weeks. I will try my best!

Today's food:
Breakfast: big mug of tea, 1 banana, 1 kiwi
Lunch: 200 cals worth of vegetable soup, 400 cals worth of edamame beans (yeah went a tad overboard!)
Snack: 55 cals worth of fruit
Dinner: big salad

I will walk as my exercise. I would go swimming but since I have to be healthy enough to drag myself to my own oral examination on Wednesday I do not want to risk turning this virus into something worse.

Camy
 
The cold is not improving, I feel like I have my head full of cotton wool.

Food of the day:
Breakfast: melon and grapes
Lunch: 1/2 vegetable soup (around 100 cals), soy yoghurt (115 cals)
Snack: ?? Maybe teddy bears?
Dinner: I fancy carrot and cucumber with hummous... I know not exactly a full meal, but if the man doesn't come over that is my food of choice I think. If he comes over... maybe some salad on the side of that

Camy
 
Wow, it has been a long time... 6 weeks or more since I last posted...

We are now living in Africa, in accra, we haven't moved into our own house yet, but will hopefully by next week. Africa is interesting, but different from what I expected, I am still waiting for clearance for my post, so I am just playing housewife at the moment and I got very homesick in the last few days. In fact so homesick (I had never been really homesick ever!) that I went ahead and booked myself a ticket home, to Argentina, for December. In exactly 59 days I am flying home for a month. I haven't been "home home" for almost 3 years now and I can't wait.
And this is what prompted me to come back here, I look alright now, but in 59 days I want to look amazing for my family to see. Tanning will be no problem ;) as it is really really sunny and hot here, but I need to lose some pounds again.
I have maintained more or less, I am going to guess that I am about 140 now (no scales, I will weigh myself at the gym) and ideally I would be 10 pounds lighter when I go home. Since I do not know my weight, this is just guessing, really. But I just want to see myself thinner, in all areas. I don't care of I lose 8 or 15 poounds as long as I look better.

To achieve this I am going to go about as I always do, controlling my food and exercising. My diet here is pretty easy, for breakfast it is always a glass of juice and fruit (either a cut up pineapple or a cut up papaya, as it is papaya season). For lunch I have been eating some rice pasta and veggies or a salad, for dinner we go out, so it either salad (when the man is eats pizza) or ghanaian food (very fatty!) or hummous or chinese (so far...).
Ideally once we move in and do not have to eat out so much controlling my diet will be easier (and once I start working and have a better rythm to my days).
I will try to continue having fruit for breakfast, something light for lunch and not too much very heavy food for dinner.
As exercise I will go swimming every day (it is almost impossible to run in the heat, so swimming is a great sport, plus it will contribute to the tanning ;)) as we are getting our membership to the hotel gym on monday (the only gym around here is the hotel gym). I will also walk as much as possible, I need about 30 minutes to walk to work from home, once we move in, and although it will be tempting to have the man drive me I will make an effort to walk it either there or back or both every day.
I am highly motivated, as it will be the first time my family sees me in such a long time and I really want to impress them!

Love, Camy
 
I have been eating alright yesterday and today... my only little vices are 1.) soft drinks. I never had this problem at home, but here they are just really refreshing and with it being so hot, you just feel like a coke more than anything else. I have decided to cut back, but allow one tonic water when we go out (tonic water also helps protect from malaria!), hopefully just maybe once or twice a week. 2.) cashew nuts, our host here has them and I cannot stop eating them. But I try hard not to eat too terribly many!

Yesterday food:
Breakfast: half a pineapple, some juice
Lunch: hummous with lamb meat (not a lot of meat) with veggies and pickles, 1 tonic water
Snack: 1 baby banana (they are like half bananas)
Dinner: 3 bean salad with tomato and aubergine

Today food:
Breakfast: half a pineapple
Lunch: hummous with veggies
Snack: 1 small banana
Dinner: we have a dinner party, and I am making filled garden eggs (they are like baby aubergines) and we'll see what else is there to eat.

Exercise: I have been walking 2 or more hours each day, and sweating like crazy! Swimming starts monday (I am on my period right now, so I'd rather go once I am done with it).

Camy
 
I am going to buy a scale next week, I can't live like this any longer, not knowing!!!! The man is skinny as hell, we went to the doc today because he had a little tummy bug (but complained like he was dying and actually convinced himself he had malaria) and they weighed him. He weighs 150 pounds! And he is a 6 foot tall man! Yuck... ;)

Anyhow, eating is alright, I am still trying to drink less soda and I went for a walk today, walked for about an hour, and tomorrow we are starting to swim, woohoo! I can't wait! I will also, while I am not yet working, try to get 2 hours of walking in a day, one in the morning (from 8 to 9 am, before the heat hits hard) and again from 5 to 6 when it has cooled down a bit but before it gets dark (at 6 it is dark).

Food for yesterday:
Breakfast: 1 pineapple, 1/2 a papaya
Lunch: a soda, half a plate of rice noodles
Dinner: 1 soda, 1 handful of cashew nuts

Food for today:
Breakfast: 2 spoonfulls of rice
Lunch: 1 bowlful of rice (I know, woohoo really interesting food today)
Dinner: oven baked chicken and stir fried veggies, 1 soda

I feel chunky too, maybe it is because everyone here is skinny (yeah I know they do not exactly have food en masse), but I feel like a big fat tourist. I want to feel like a skinny tourist ;)!

Camy
 
The man was properly sick today and needed gentle loving care so neither swimming nor walking happened. But in exchange I didn't eat much either!

Food of the day:
Breakfast: tonic water, then later couple of squares of chocolate
Lunch: 1 tin of green beans and half a can of sweetcorn
Dinner: 1/2 a medium potato, cucumber salad (2 small cucumbers)

I found something amazing, I love soda water with lime in it. I like it much better than tonic water actually and I think this will be my drink of choice when I feel like a soda, it has like no calories, quenches hunger and thirst for a while and tastes delicious!

Camy
 
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why did you move to africa? everyone i know is moving away out of there lol.

Still good on you for not gaining during the move - unlike me when i moved! lol

I still never got around to loosing it, i just re-adjusted my goals :p
 
wishes, my man got a job here working at the ministry of education (it is an international development thing, we get paid from the UK government for being here, quite a large sum actually, plus we get housing money etc...).
I can do my elective here, and I will (hopefully once everything is cleared I have my meeting with the foreign elective manager today) do it in obstetric medicine. Hopefully I start next week!

Have a ton of errands to run and all I want to do is lie on my bed and watch Dawson's Creek!! Oh well!
 
Congratulations on the move to Africa, I'm so proud of you for following what you wanted!!! As for the losing weight issue, honestly, with that heat and the amount of work you will be doing, I'm sure the weight is going to MELT off!!! Even though I'm sure right now you feel like you are melting! hahaha

I lived in Southern Italy for a summer, and every day it was 105+ (Fahrenheit) and I lost 20 lbs that summer, and that was at a time when I wasn't as large as I am now. I would just walk to my classes and walk anywhere else I needed. I didn't eat particularly well nor did I exercise, but the walking and hydrating was so conducive to losing weight!

Good luck with hotel living, and I can't wait to hear more from you!!!!!
 
Thank you Bucks, I missed you guys!

Well my meeting did not happen (as it does in Africa all the time...). I have one tomorrow possibly a second one on friday (there are 3 major hospitals, I wanted to be in the biggest one, but it is far far away from our flat, so maybe the second biggest would be a better choice!).
I already look skinnier but my eating has been really erratic so I am not sure if I really lost weight or if I am just less bloated and to be honest by sight it is hard to estimate if you put on or off weight unless it is really a lot! So maybe this is just the way I always looked and I just see myself smaller because I want to.

Food of the day:
Breakfast: 1 tonic water, 1 small banana, 2 squares of dark choc
Lunch: 1 1/2 bowls of boiled rice with some cheese on it
Snack: 1 coke
Dinner: medium sized plate of vegetable curry with plain rice

Tomorrow we are definitely moving into our place (we already moved half of our stuff) and then I can shop properly and then I can organize the food I eat much better!
Camy
 
OK, so today at least I managed to get the exercise right, I walked for a good 2 hours, sweat like a freaking pig (honestly I thought I was going to dehydrate, I just gulped down 1.5 l in about 5 minutes once I found somewhere to buy it!) and feel great for having moved around a bit.

I still have to pack a lot of stuff and then we can move, we are having dinner with a visitor tonight at this place, but the man is still tummy bugged and yesterday night I had to do my best not to throw up my dinner, I had really bad nausea, so I will eat very light tonight, do not want to give the poor bathroom a "virgin night" like that!!

Food so far:
Breakfast: Lime water and 2 chocolate squares
Lunch: 1 piece of chargrilled chicken and some jollof rice
Dinner: 1/2 a fillet steak, veggies

Camy
 
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Welcome back dahling!!!

Wow, the whole situation you guys are in sounds SO WONDERFUL!!! Enjoy every moment.

huh? You're Argentinian? Ok!

Shame about the tummy bug... I assume he's not drinking the water anymore?? My bf gets tummy bugs the moment he drinks water his body doesn't recognise... funny thing.

Anyway, hope you're all moved in and cosy!!! My bf and I moved in together about 2 / 3 months ago and it's SO fun to play house, haha!

Have a great weekend! :seeya:
 
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