DiaryShmiary

JoeyShmoey

JoeyShmoey

New member
Ahh, I love starting diaries. As a kid I started them every time I got one, and then did not really write anything after day 2... so here is to hoping that online I will be better than that.

So, I am Joey (female, which is not intuitive when establishing it online), 28 (and a half), 73 kg (that is around 160 pounds) which gives me a BMI of 26.8. I live in London, which I love, work in a job that I really like (only started recently, so this could change but I hope it does not) and am currently single (I am waiting for a Hugh Jackman lookalike to come my way... so far not much luck on that front. Yet!).

I said it in my opening post, but the main kick in the bottom to start this weight loss thing has been my GP. He thinks that if I lose some weight I will also lose the annoying reflux I currently have, which makes me cough and gives me a sore throat. And of course I would like to look better... so I am aiming loosely at 59 kg (130 pounds, a BMI of a little under 22). I have done this all before and it was OK, I managed, and at 59 I looked good and felt good. But I did not maintain afterwards. So I am going back to eating the way I know my body likes me to eat to lose weight (3 healthy meals, less carbs, no ridiculous chocolatey snacks but fruit and veg instead, etc...)

I used to be really active, but have been lazy for a little over 6 months (because of the cough). I am tired of being lazy now though, so I have come up with many fun ways to exercise.
I have signed up for a little 5 k run in a month, so I will have to go running in preparation to that, which does not sound appealing (I am not a runner), but a necessary evil to get me off my bum. I have also signed up for Roller Derby boot camp, which I will start in 2 weeks. It is a 12 week- once a week for 3 hours thing, and I have been interested in it for a while so this seemed the best time (it is on Saturdays and I worked Saturdays until yesterday). In addition to that I have decided to take one dance class a week and go to my old gymnastics class once or twice a week.

I absolutely hate going to "the gym" and doing machines and so on, so for me the best exercise is something fun that gets me out of the house and active without me realizing that I am "doing exercise". I am also a very all or nothing person, so for a while I used to dance 5 days a week every week for about 18 months and then went back to nothing. Then a year later did gymnastics 4 days a week for a year and loved it but then moved further away and stopped, and so on (I am a tryer and quitter, which I am ok with).

My weekly schedule looks like this:
Monday - 90 minutes Jazz
Wednesday- 2 hours gymnastics
Saturdays- 3 hours roller derby boot camp
Sundays- 2 hours gymnastics

plus 2 days of running 5 k in preparation for the run. Those days are flexible, if I manage to do the run early in the morning it could Tues and Thurs, but occasionally it might be Thursday and Friday after work for example.
Since roller derby does not start until in 2 weeks, this last Saturday I did, and next Saturday I am doing, my friend's "park boot camp". The work out yesterday was good but I am so sore I can barely type- I had not realized how ridiculously unfit I have become in only 6 months. Ouch.

So yeah, that is my life plan in a nutshell. I am not going anywhere this summer (already had my holidays, so I am working through the summer), so I can dedicate the next 3 months to getting fitter. I know I can do it if I just stay strong and don't give myself endless concessions (which I am prone to do, hence the whole diary thing... keep myself accountable).

So yey... let the fun begin!
 
Welcome! :D Hope you stick with your diary--it's such a great way to stay on track! Let us know how you get on, the roller derby sounds great fun xx
 
Thank you sunflower, I am a little terrified that I will break a limb or four in Roller derby, but i have a friend who does it and she absolutely loves it. I have always done "individual sports", gymnastics and dance are not really team sports, and last year I joined a recreational netball league and loved the team element (but I was incredibly bad at the actual netball, so when my team dissolved, because we were a bunch of total zeroes (we came last in our league), it wasn't like I could go and get myself into another team...). Roller Derby is a hugely team oriented sport acording to my friend, so those two things together (and the fact that you get to chose your own cool Roller Derby name!) made me sign up for it. I am excited to see what it is actually like.

I think that being prepared is half the battle, so I have got myself food for 3 breakfasts and 3 lunches (those are the ones I struggle with most, as I tend to forget to get food in advance and then buy stuff, which is more expensive and often processed). Breakfast is fruit (banana and an apple) and an oat bar (I have diverse allergies), lunch is 2 chicken thighs (no skin) and salad. That kind of repetitive menu is what worked last time and I hope it will work this time. I will mix it up, but it is so much easier to cook in bulk, so I cooked 6 chicken thighs (I am not a huge fan of the breast) in one swift go. We just got a new fridge which is twice the size of our old one, so from Tuesday I will be able to buy larger quantities of food and plan better.

Today my eating was a bit weird, and I did not go to gymnastics because I can barely move. I am not kidding, I haven't had muscle pain this bad in years. But the good thing is that generally you only get it really bad once and then the muscle adapts.

Brunch: 2 poached eggs, 1 banana
Snack: 1 banana, 1 glass of elderflower cordial, 3 chocolate squares
Dinner: big green salad with 150g of prawns (balsamic dressing, so a little more in terms of calories).

I made rice milk custard and might have one of them (it should be around 150 cals per portion), but not sure yet, I might save it for tomorrow.
 
Ah and I did it again, write for a couple of days and never come back. Alas, it is 2 weeks later, my weight has not changed greatly (a little less, and I am TOMing so this week might not show great change on the scales), but I also did not do half the stuff I told myself I would over the past two weeks.

I started roller derby yesterday and I am in love with it. Such fun. And skating comes quite natural to me, I feel so comfy on them, gliding abouts... so glad to have taken that step, it was hard because I wondered if I was in any way fit enough and if I would like it, but I am glad I did not let my nerves get the best of me. I have a week break and then I start a 12-15 week training "fresh meat" cycle, then I can sign up for rec league (if I pass... which I bloody better do!). Rec league trains twice a week. So I could maybe try to aim to become as healthy as possible for the beginning of rec league which should be October. That is a nice time frame. I don't have to reach my weight goal by then, but the closer I can get to it, the better.

In the next few months I am also going to work on some anxiety issues I have been having which weigh me down and make me move less and be a bit more depressed. I am lucky that I made the top of the waiting list finally and will get some CBT from this week onwards for a couple of months. I really hope to get some coping mechanisms that work for me and that will mean a less anxious me, a happier me and that will definitely lead to a healthier me.

Food today was quite good, had 3 slices of toast for breakfast (was starving!), but then had salad for both lunch and dinner and snacked on blueberries and a banana. I am a little sore from roller skating, but not terribly so (that bootcamp workout that left me incapacitated 2 weeks ago prepared me well for the strain on these muscles, so I only feel kind of worn out sore and not "want to die" sore). I walked a bit though, not really loads of exercise but I did not lay in bed all day either.

So here we go, onwards and upwards!
 
You made the top of the list--that's great! My other half has been waiting for CBT for months. I hope you are successful!
 
Hello you two, that is nice to have some visitors!

Guideon, that is the plan, though my parents will be visiting me for the first time in over a year the weekend of the run, so maybe I will have to move it back. Though the one I signed up for looked like so much fun. But it is in the middle of the day on one of the 3 days they are here... ah hard choice!

Sunflower, I waited about 6 or 7 months on the list (so nt too long, but long enough!), some of my issues have since got better but others have appeared. This is the third time I have felt this way and every time the same thing happened, I get anxious and a bit down (i wouldn't say fully depressed, just not quite as happy), feel like not doing anything, stop doing sports and the lack of exercise makes me a) gain weight and b) become even more focused on my little inner turmoils, sadder and more anxious, which leads to even less exercise etc... like a little cycle. Both the times prior to this one I managed to dig myself out eventually, but the fact that it has happened three times in 8 years (and this one was the worst in a way) makes me think that I really just need better coping mechanisms.
I am not terribly depressed or non-functional, I still go to work, my friends have not really noticed a big difference (i don't really talk about it with them), etc... so I felt a bit reticent with getting help, but the thing is, even if nobody else notices, it is making my life more difficult. And maybe I will have to fight these demons for the rest of my life, and I am sure I will be fine, but if there is a way that can make it all easier, there is no reason not to grab that opportunity by the horns.

My biggest issue is that when I get down and anxious I get really badly hypochondriac. I know it is silly, but I cannot stop thinking that I am deadly ill, and although I am smart and know that at my age (and with no real symptoms, though of course I find aches and pains and dizziness and stuff, I probably develop it because of the anxiety) deadly illness is unlikely, I still cannot quite fight it. And most of the time, I'd say 22 hours of the day I am fine, but 2 hours a day I might be thinking of this terrible disease I have (it is almost always cancer, I think I have) and how terrible it will be to die. I know everyone fears death, but I seem to be unable to push it back to where it doesn't affect me. And I have had a couple of panic attacks over the past few months, because of this. Again, this is like just deep down inside, and I never tell anyone, because I am the fun goofball among my friends, and the smart, rational one in my family... I don't want them to think I am mad as a hatter, so I just keep it to myself. Since asking for therapy, I have been sharing a little more, and two of my best friends know a little, though there is so much more. I know therapy is not going to make it all go away 100%, but I think if I work with it and try my hardest maybe I can get back where I was a year ago: happy, positive and active.

I think starting derby has already started to help, I am excited about it, I am looking forward to something properly... which feels great and I have started tidying up my room. I know it sounds silly, but my room is a mess, and I think maybe I need some neatness outside to sort my thoughts inside, it will be a week long project (at least!), but it feels like a babystep forwards.

Food today was ok: breakfast was a bit random, in that it consisted of miso soup (ran out of real options and then had no money for fruit, and they wouldn't take card, so I ate what I had lying around, which happened to be miso soup), lunch was a lot of sushi, dinner was a 2 egg-2 eggwhite scramble with mushrooms and shrimp. I snacked on cucumber with some zaziki yoghurt and a quarter of a mango. I had a lot of water to try to get the bloating down a bit, I also think I go through life being a little dehydrated, so this weeks goal will be to try to reach 3 l a day consistently.

I was only going to post a couple of sentences today and then clearly got mental verborrhoea... well, at least I have "written it out loud". And I feel good about it, it needed to be done. Phew!
 
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