Out of the habit

Wow, once you get out of the habit of blogging, it's a bit hard to get back into it. I've half started a blog about 5 times since I last posted, and given up before I got through with it. Time to turn over a new metaphorical leaf (in more areas than one...)

So, what's been going on? Work is all still up in the air, and it's driving me INSANE. Even if the outcome was bad, I could handle it if I actually knew what was going to happen. I could start making plans for the future. Unfortunately, it's all pretty much out of our hands at this stage, so we're just guessing at what will come next, when it will happen, and what we will do about it. We're expending loads of time and energy on making contingency plans for a variety of outcomes which may or may not come to fruition.

On to other news. HM training is going roughly according to plan, which is good. I've had to switch a few days around from time to time as life gets in the way, but that's fine. I've completed week 3 of the 12 week program, and it's starting to feel a little tough. I'm worried that I won't be able to do it, but I'm just going to keep pushing myself as far as I can and see what I can achieve. If worst comes to worst I'll do a 10k at the Greenbelt on May 1st, and try for a HM later in the year. But at this stage I'm still aiming for HM at Greenbelt.

The main reason I'm doubting myself at the moment is that my long run on Saturday was really hard. It was only 8km, and I struggled big time. Of course it would have helped if I had dragged my butt out of bed and got started early as planned, before it got too freaking hot. But I didn't, and I suffered the consequences accordingly. It was 27 degrees and humid when I took off (I hate humid. Adelaide never used to do humid, but it's happening a lot these days. Bah.) It was 31 degrees and still humid when I rocked home 52 minutes later.

I have 4 thoughts in mind for improving my long run issues at this stage:

• I need to lose some weight. Seriously, I'm doing plenty of training, but I'm eating like a conveyer belt. STOP IT IDIOT.
• I need to get up early and get the best of the cool weather. As Jess pointed out to me once before, I can always go back to bed when I get home :)
• I need to find a way of getting some hydration somewhere along the way, especially if it's hot. I was gasping for water by half way on Saturday, and that's going to get worse as the distances increase. What do other people do, run along carrying a drink bottle? I hate doing that, but I might have to give it a go. Otherwise I might just die of dehydration, seeing as I sweat like a warthog at the best of times. (Alright, I might not die, but you get my drift).
• I need to find a way of pacing myself. I'm giving serious consideration to buying a Garmin (although it's hard to know if it's just because I *want one* or if I think I actually *need one*). But I do have trouble with pacing - my mid week short runs never feel any easier, but when I look at my Polar data, it's probably because I'm doing them progressively faster. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but one run per week is supposed to be at EZ pace, and I struggle with that. I'm also concerned that in a race situation, I'll pace with other people around me and go out too hard. 21km is a long way, I need to learn how to run that at my own, sustainable pace so I don't run out of stamina half way through. Hmm, still need to ponder that one.

Right, I have been procrastinating at work rather badly of late, and it's time to get some work done. With all the future planning crap going on, my day to day stuff has been suffering somewhat. I've finished Mahjong Trails on Facebook, so that should help the productivity somewhat :-) Here's to a productive day...

I am still alive... just

Howdy peeps, long time no blog.

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Anyway, I've been wandering in the wilderness with all this crap going on, and eating my way through the metaphorical jungle. I have got to cut that out, and today seems as good a day as any to get back on track. Today is also the first official day of half marathon training - it starts out nice and easy the first couple of weeks, but ramps up pretty significantly from there. I think my biggest challenge is going to be "long run Saturday" - I've gotten pretty accustomed to sleeping late and being generally sloth-like on Saturday mornings, but given it's still summer and often quite hot, I'm going to have to suck it up, get up early, and get the run done. At least the first couple of weeks the "long runs" aren't really that long (4.8km this week, increasing by 1.6km per week until we get to 19.2km, eek), so it will give me a chance to get back into a good routine.

I do feel slightly better for getting all this crap off my chest in blog form, even if it hasn't actually helped to make any progress. I should come here more often :p

Just before signing off - I have still been reading other blogs, if not commenting on them to let you know I'm there. I'll try to get back to doing that too. Thanks to those who checked up on me in my absence too, kind words much appreciated xx

Work work work

Oh man, what a day it was yesterday. I got a deadline from the bank and the lawyers late on Tuesday afternoon (which the boss stupidly said we could do, and then promptly buggered off to Darwin, grr). I got to work at 7am and got stuck in - it was a massive project. I took about 15 minutes for lunch, but otherwise pretty much worked solidly until 6pm. I got changed and went to my outdoor fitness session, and then returned to the office. I made a quick omelette for dinner, and got back into the work. I eventually called it a night, or more specifically a morning, at 1am. I slept in a bit this morning and got to work at 8.45. I worked solidly til I finished, getting the reports out about 3pm - 3 hours after deadline, but pretty good under the circumstances I think. Here's hoping for a more peaceful day tomorrow. The boss is flying back from Darwin, so if I can avoid his calls in the morning, I'm home free until next week :)

So onto better topics, the group fitness classes - I really like them! I had sessions last night and tonight, and they're each completely different, other than the warm up jog and stretches. On Wednesday we did some relay runs with 4 people on each team. The losing team had to do a penalty, like 2o push ups or sit ups. Trainer Chris split us into teams, but probably didn't choose that well, he put the 3 fastest (me, the guy of the group and another chick) in one team, with one really slow girl. We blitzed the other team, so he started introducing a handicap, making our runs longer until the other team had enough of an advantage to win. It was good fun actually. The second part of the session sucked - ab work. I hate ab work. I know it's good for me, but I seriously hate it. Hovers and side hovers and leg raises. Blegh. Stage 3 was good though - run up and down two small flights of stairs, do 20 boxing cross jabs to Chris at the end, then run a circle around and back to the start. This was HARD, but really really good.

Tonight's session was a bit easier, but still fun. We started with relays again, but running up the stairs to the top of the grandstand and back instead of across the oval. Our team was way too strong again, but by the time Chris changed the rules and had 2 of our team doing an extra lap, it got pretty close and competitive (but we just won :0) Next up was the card game from hell - Chris had a page of exercises (like push ups, sit ups, leg raises, shuttle runs, burpies), with one exercise corresponding to each card. One person had to choose a card at random, and this dictated what exercise we would do. The next person had to choose 3 cards, and added together, this gave us the number of repetitions. Everyone seemed to pull out ten cards and aces (which are worth 11 apparently), so there were lots and lots of reps. We got push ups, walking lunges, then two lots of leg raises in a row, so my abs are really really feeling it now. The last game for tonight was rock paper scissors - loser has to run to the cone and back. A bit of a laugh, but the time passes so quickly, it's great. Trainer Chris is the first person I've ever met in fitness that has made me remotely tempted to have some personal training sessions. The way he sets stuff up and the exercises he gets us doing are innovative, and get my heart rate up really high, which I generally struggle to do (I maxed out at 181 yesterday, 176 today. I normally don't get above 170). My only complaint about the sessions at the moment is that there's too much recovery time, I'd like to push it a bit harder. Of course in a PT session we'd be able to do that, because he wouldn't have to cater for other people's fitness levels. I'm still not sure I can justify the cost though.

Foodwise, I've been pretty good the last couple of days. I ended up slightly over my calories yesterday, but given I was awake for 20 freaking hours, it wasn't too bad. Today I'm well under, and I don't have anything worth eating in the house! I wish I could bottle this kind of motivation for food and exercise, it comes in such short waves.

Gardening Day 2

One more post to completely bore you with my gardening pursuits, then I'll get back to normal programming.

The irrigation system went in yesterday. I am so freaking excited I can't begin to tell you. I quite like gardening, pottering around, doing the weeding, planting stuff, trimming stuff. But I hate watering, with a passion. Nothing bores me more than standing still with a stupid hose. Those days are now gone, the whole garden can now be watered by setting the sprinklers. Rock on. I will have to setup one final area of irrigation system once I get the last garden bed up and running, but the rest of it is all done. I got so excited that I even went and bought some Alyssum at Bunnings right before they closed last night, and planted it this morning before work. Granted, I need a life (and granted, I should have been going for a run rather than planting seedlings), but it's made my day.

Back to work today (well, actually I was here 3 days last week too, but it feels more like work now because a few more staff members have also returned. We're still just under half staffed though, nice and quiet). I've brought lots of nice healthy food, and I'm planning on going for a run from work tonight, seeing as I didn't go this morning. Tomorrow I'm planning on riding. I know if I can just get my groove back, I can get my exercise, diet and weight loss plans well underway.

On the diet and new year resolution front - I had planned to just give up chocolate this year, but I think that ban is going to need to be widened. Anything remotely chocolate/cocoa flavoured seems to set me off on a binge, so I think it all needs to go. I made brownie slice late yesterday at mums (because my food processor isn't good enough to do it). It's a "healthy version" brownie slice, made only of dates, macadamia nuts and cocoa. It tastes awesome, and comes in at 130 calories a piece, which is pretty good if you can actually eat only one slice. Let me just say that I will not be making it again in a hurry, because I am very very full of brownie slice right now...

Doing the Friday Dance

It's Friday, huzzah! My last Friday at work before holidays - I always love doing that countdown of the last Friday, Monday, Tuesday... before going away. I haven't organised a single thing for going away, nor is my work up to the stage it needs to be before I go, but I couldn't give two hoots right now. I'm going and I just don't care!

So it's been a kind of emotionally draining week at the grindstone, but things are looking up. We seem to have come to an uncomfortable truce in the work war zone, and I'll settle for that, given where things were at early in the week. Bastard isn't usually in on Fridays or Mondays, so all being well I'll only have to see him three more days before I go away, and then for a week or two when I get back. This seems a bit more manageable than it did from the chaos at the start of the week. Now if I can actually get some work done, all will be relatively well on the work front.

On the exercise front, it's been a big week. I'm feeling slightly dazed and dopey now, so I think this is the maximum effort for the time being. Or maybe I should try getting into bed earlier and stop fiddling with my iPhone once I'm there - that might help. Anyway, the Polar is showing a calorie burn of 3739 for the week so far. This is from 3 bootcamps, 1 boxing class, a cycle commute (including an extra loop on the way home), and a 6km run.

My run last night was hard, hard, hard. I shouldn't be surprised though - I was tired, my legs were a bit sore, and it was hot. Not middle-of-summer-in-Adelaide hot, but 29 and humid, which we haven't had much of yet. I'm extremely grateful that the weather forecast is for cool conditions on Sunday for my 10k. If it was hot and humid I really don't think I'd last the distance (I'm concerned about it even in the cool), I was completely spent at the end of 6k last night.

It was still 27 degrees when I got up at 5 for bootcamp this morning, but it looks like the cool change will be coming through shortly. There were so many damn flies this morning, it was disgusting. The stupid things kept trying to get in my ears and mouth while I was doing all manner of torturous activities in the bootcamp circuits (squats, lunges, push ups, sit ups, sprints, burpees, bear crawls, mountain climbers... few others I've managed to block from my memory).

I've only got 2 more bootcamps left now. I'll have to give some thought while I'm on holiday to what my training plan will look like when I get back into it in December. Back to more gym classes I guess. I downloaded a HM training program the other day, and I am giving serious consideration to attempting one next year. The Greenbelt HM is on 1st May, so I could start a 12 week HM training program in February and see if I can do it. There are other HMs in August and October as well, so if I find the training too hard going in the heat, I can always defer and try one of the later ones. I can't believe I'm talking about a HM in the same post as saying I don't think I can make my 10k on the weekend. What a contradiction. It's nice to have goals though :)

As far as weekend plans go, tomorrow is most definitely an exercise free day. I've got lots of "stuff" I need to do - bake a birthday cake for my Pa, cleaning washing and packing ready for holidays, and... crap, I had a long list of stuff I wanted to do and I've already forgotten it. I really need to write this stuff down. Saturday night we're going out for Pa's birthday (I'll be carb loading on pasta! Any excuse.) Sunday morning is the big run, then more housey stuff, then dinner at the parents. I probably won't see the puppies again before we go away, so I'll have to give them extra love and cuddles and walkies on Sunday.

Have a fabulous weekend everyone :0)

Looking for ideas on how to murder someone and not get caught

Howdy peeps, it's been a while. Where to start, where to start? Best start with the title of the blog I suppose.

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Onto happier thoughts - I haven't been on the scales, but I'm actually tempted to get on (for the first time in a looooong time). I feel like I've lost quite a bit the last couple of weeks, my clothes are feeling looser and I'm just feeling better about myself. Still a long way to go, but feeling good nonetheless. The pants I'm wearing today were uncomfortably tight in the waist and legs before, but they are now a little too loose. I might have to start going through my packaged up smaller clothes soon, that will be awesome :)

On the exercise front, I did very little on the weekend. I took the dogs for a couple of small walks (one of which resulted in the pug collapsing under a tree 3/4 of the way home and me having to carry him, so I guess there was some incidental weight training there too!) I also spent a few hours in the garden, planting my hedge, fertilising the vegies and roses, doing some weeding. I was busy most of the weekend, just not with dedicated exercise. I'm OK with that, as I did have a big week of it and I was ready for the rest time.

This week so far has seen one boot camp (which has really ramped up now and is challenging), one boxing class, and a ride to work today. Obviously I'll be riding home tonight (beats walking), then there's boot camp on Wednesday and Friday. I'm thinking of a run on Thursday. Saturday might be a rest day, then I've got my 10k fun run on Sunday morning. I hope I can make the distance, I'm starting to feel nervous about it now. Still, if worst comes to worst and I have to walk part of the race, this is not the end of the world. It will give me something to work on for the next race.

I wish I had more boxing classes this week, I have a lot more frustration I need to unload...

Renovations and punctures

Here we are at Thursday morning, procrastinating about getting into the work on my desk. It's like groundhog day - I do this every day! I really just need to clear out this old crap that I hate working on, get it done, then I can move onto something a little more palatable.

It's all systems go on the home renovation front this week. The roller shutters went up on Tuesday, and they look great. I've got them all pretty much down at the moment, just cos I like to look at them, but they do make the place rather dark. So I think on the weekend I'll open them up and light up the house while I still can - before it gets stinking hot and I have them closed all the time to keep the cool air in. I'm really looking forward to seeing how much difference it makes to the upstairs temperature come summer time. Last summer I could get about 3/4 of the way upstairs and feel a heat wave hit me. As my bedroom is upstairs, this was a most unsatisfactory state of affairs. Here's hoping ($4500 later) that I have gone a good way to resolving that issue.

The paving man came around and gave me a quote on Tuesday too - also more than I wanted to spend, but I liked him and he seemed to know what he was talking about. He rung me yesterday and said they could start my job today if I had decided whether I wanted to proceed. So on a whim I signed up for another $4000 of expenditure on this damn house. It will be excellent to have the dead lawn area paved and useable for the warmer months though.

And lastly on the renovation front, my verandah man called to say that he had got the approval from my soon-to-be neighbours for the verandah I want to put up (it's going along the fence boundary at one side, so the council required signed approval from the neighbours... wouldn't have been such a headache if their house was actually finished and they were living in it. We had to track them down at their current address to get the approval. Fortunately they couldn't care less about the verandah and were happy to sign on the dotted line). So that has gone back to council, and we should have formal approval by next week, then construction can be done in December. With the exception of a side garden bed which I'm going to do myself, the whole yard (front and back) will be all done by the beginning of December. How exciting. OK, it will have taken me a whole 12 months since I moved in, but I am nevertheless still very excited by this outcome.

Onto all things diet and exercise related. I'm pretty tired, but the exercise has been going well this week. Since my last blog, I've done an 8km run (50 minutes and felt pretty good, apart from one mofo hill), Wednesday bootcamp (starting to enjoy these now, getting harder), and a cycle to work this morning. All good, except for the flat tyre I got this morning, grr. I'll have to borrow a car and take it to the bike shop at lunch and get it fixed, so I can ride it home. Getting to work took me about 1 hour and 5 this morning, instead of 40-45 minutes, seeing as I had to walk, pushing a bike, for a few km. Such is life. Anyway, with a cycle home tonight and bootcamp tomorrow morning, my calorie burn for the week should be over 3500. If I feel the need to do anything on the weekend I will, but if I feel like just resting up (and taking my dad out, and shopping, and basketball... all the weekendy type stuff), then I'll do that too with no guilt whatsoever.

My bootcamp people have given us all sorts of vouchers for referrals to allied health people that they have teamed up with. I've decided against the podiatrist (who used to be a client at my accounting firm... could be awkward). I'm giving some thought to the chiropractor (www.drbretthill.com) as I do need a new one - his website looks kind of interesting, he's into a lot more than just chiropractic. Maybe I could see him for a "wellness" consultation too. I just hate seeing new medical people, I find it so uncomfortable. Time to suck it up I suspect. The other voucher I have is for a fitness assessment, nutrition consult and 1/2 hour PT session for $30. I don't know whether to do this or not - I'm concerned that it will just be a big sales pitch, and there's no way that I would be signing up for regular PT sessions there (it's on the wrong side of town for me, and I just can't justify the cost at this stage). I don't know, I'm so indecisive.

Anyways, time to get into this revolting project on my desk. Hope everyone else's day is starting better than mine!

I am SOOO tired

It's 7.20pm and I'm hanging out for bed. I've got a few things I need to do (make my lunch, pack my clothes, unload the dishwasher, that type of crap), and I'm having trouble getting up to do it. So I'm gonna blog, then I'm gonna do chores, then I'm gonna go to bed for some hard core zzzz.

And why am I so tired I hear you ask? Well an urgent project came up at 5pm on Friday, and my weekend was already full, so I couldn't get a start on it over the weekend. I also had my first boot-ee camp scheduled for this morning, so the only way to get a good start on the project was to have a frightfully early morning. I got up at 3.50 this morning, on the road to work at 4am, got working at 4.30. This gave me a good 80 minutes start time before I jogged down the road to the bootcamp session. Then I jogged back, and got back into work. 13 hours of work later, we got it done, but I would really rather not repeat this day any time soon.

So, bootcamp. Yeah, didn't need to be scared of that really. They kept saying that it will get harder as it goes along, but it was pretty easy going today. Quite a few push ups and squats, and a bit of running, but that was about it. My pushups are crap, but I already knew that. My upper body strength is suspect, plus I'm 20+kg overweight, so it's hard to push that excess lard up and down. I wasn't too bad on the push ups when I was thin, so hopefully I can work back towards that. My squats were really good, got through 70 in the 2 minute test period, which was better than most. We did a 600m time trial too, and I finished that in 3 min 14 seconds, which was in the top 10 or so. Not bad, but room for improvement.

It's a big group at the boot camp, probably 50 odd people. I wasn't the heaviest (which I was worried about) and I certainly wasn't the unfittest. I never realised how many chicks are scared of running. Like seriously freaking out scared of it. When Duncan said we had to run to the flag in the distance and then back, I thought some of them were actually going to cry. You'd think we'd been asked to run a marathon. The other thing I found weird was the attitude on some of them - just flat out refusing to even try to run, walking the whole way, and not even power walking at that. It's not like anyone is forcing us to be there, we've paid money to be there. Why not give it a go for goodness sakes. Ok, rant over. The next session is on Wednesday morning, so it will be interesting to see what we progress to next.

Trending backwards now, the weekend roundup. Friday night I did nothing much, just couldn't really be buggered with anything. Watched the basketball on One HD - I am loving the free to air coverage this year. I love basketball season. On Saturday morning, I was guilted into getting up for a run (Jess, if you're reading - I hated you for 45 minutes on Saturday morning, but after I got over that, I thought you were awesome for getting me out there :-) So I ran about 7.65km in 47 minutes, including some hills. My pace is increasing and I'm getting some reasonable distances in. I should be ok for the 10k Glenelg Classic next month, even if I'm not running that far around my usual tracks yet, it will be on the flat and much easier.

The rest of Saturday was spent at home shows (which were really pretty crap actually), a bit of shopping, and a quick walk with the pug. Oh, and the pug only lost 200g this fortnight, I guess he needs more walks. Saturday night I caught up with Lou for dinner and some board games (what a high flying life I lead).

Sunday - early trip to the markets as usual. I'm eating more fruit than I ever have these days, which I'm putting down to the fact that I'm not getting my sugar fix from chocolate and other crap. The pineapples are just devine at the moment, yum. After the markets I took my dad on the Active Aging walk around the botanic gardens and river Torrens. It was only $5 to enter, so I wasn't expecting much, but it was done really well. There would have been a few hundred people there, and loads of volunteers keeping everyone on the right track. There were little goodie bags at the end with some sample products, and free fruit, plus coffee and hamburgers for sale. I must say I was impressed. Dad seemed to enjoy himself too, but it completely exhausted him. I dropped him home then went back to my place to do some cooking and gardening at my place. I went back to mum and dad's for dinner later, and dad was really wiped out. The exercise will do him good though.

So for the week ahead... I'm having a bit of trouble planning my exercise around the boot camp stuff. Wednesday and Friday mornings will be boot camp. I took my stuff with me for boxing tonight, but I seriously overestimated my ability to get through a day as long and stressful as this one. I just need to collapse in a heap and start afresh tomorrow. I think I'll ride to and from work tomorrow. Thursday I'll be working from home while my roller shutters are installed (hooray), so I'll have to ponder what exercise I fit in with that.

Righty then, chores then bed. Ciao all.

Grumpy

I haven't posted much of late, because honestly there hasn't been a lot to say. Eating and exercise is still going pretty well. I've been eating on or under my calories every day this week which is good. The downside is that I've gotten back into that head space of thinking about food all day long, and when the next meal or snack is coming along. Sigh, counting calories has this effect on me, but it's also the only way I lose weight. So I think I'm going to have to suck it up for a while.

On the exercise front, I've done a couple of runs on Monday and Thursday, a circuit and body bar on Tuesday, and boxing on Monday. Today was scheduled to be a run, but Harvey Norman are having a VIP sale, and it's raining, so I'm going shopping instead. I've been through the guilt phase with missing my planned exercise, and I'm now at the acceptance stage. When I started getting healthy again, I knew that I didn't want to get so obsessed that any small deviation in plans put me into a spin. I'm getting close to that stage already, and it's time to step back. My life is not as free and easy as it was last time I was on a health bender, and I need to accept that "stuff" will come up and interrupt my plans. I might be able to sneak a run in on Sunday to make up for missing today. If not, too bad, this is a journey not a race to the finish.

On to the title of the blog - I'm grumpy. For no single reason, just grumpy in general. Lots of little things are niggling at me and giving me the cranks. One I have just dealt with, I just changed my home and contents insurance from RAA to Allianz. I got my policy renewal in the post this week, and it went up like $10 a month. I called them about it and they said my internet policy honeymoon rate had run out and there's nothing they can do about it. So I very politely told them there's something I can do about it, and cancelled the policy. The woman was quite shocked, but seriously, why would I pay $850 with RAA when I can pay $650 with Allianz for the same cover? Sheesh.

What's on for the weekend? Tonight I'm shopping at Harvey Norman (for stuff I don't need), then watching the NBL season opener on One HD. Huzzah for the basketball season, I love it. Saturday is reserved for the gym and housey stuff (cooking, cleaning, gardening - assuming it doesn't pour all day). Sunday is for the markets, a bit of me time, hopefully a run, then the first 36ers home game at 4.30. I haven't quite thought what we're going to do about dinner after the game - maybe I'll put something into the slow cooker to have when we come home. Hmm, ponderances.

Have a good weekend one and all xxx

Things I have learnt today

1. Never bring home a barbecued chicken when you're famished. It smells and tastes way too good.
2. A step class from 2 days ago can have a real lasting impact on your calf muscles.
3. Deep heat is a friend to my calf muscles.
4. Shoes with heels are not a friend to my calf muscles.
5. The calf muscles ease up when they get warm, or when your attention is distracted by other pain. You know, like when you can't breathe running up a hill. Suck it up and work through it.

As you may have gathered, I've eaten too much tonight. However, I went for a run this morning (and increased the pace and distance - 4.5km at an average 9.2km/h, so that was great. I also went to a cardio box class tonight. It was the first time it was offered on the program, so there was a lot of technique and introductory stuff, but it was still a big workout. I wouldn't say that I loved it, the instructor is a bit of a bitch, but I'll give it another go before I write it off.

I had a really crap day at work, not that anything went wrong, just that I didn't really do anything. I have seriously got to find my work mojo, stuff is piling up around my ears. Here's to getting in to that damn big project tomorrow.

Not much happening

Sometimes I think my life must look like groundhog day to the general observer. Today would have appeared to be such a duplicate of the day before that it would be indistinguishable from an outside perspective.

Up early, get in some exercise, go to work for 10 or 11 hours, head to the gym, go home and reheat some food - exact same meal as the previous evening. Then get on the internet, watch TV and eat food all at the same time (I have issues with not being uber-entertained). When you put it like that, it even sounds repetitive to me.

But I like to focus on the small differences. For example, my exercise was different - a run and an orbit class on Monday, a circuit class and a pump class on Tuesday. While I sit at the same desk in my same old office every day, the stuff I do each day is very rarely the same. Yes, it is predominantly accountant-geek work, but it differs a lot in the detail. There are days when I hate my job because of its competing priorities and the need to keep 10 balls in the air at once (while answering 50 questions for staff who could probably figure it out for themselves), but these are also the very reasons that I mostly love my job.

I probably haven't spoken much about my job on here yet. About 70% of my time is dedicated to a financial controller position for a group of hotels in Darwin. Heaps of variety comes through this channel alone - the hotels in the group include some bars, a nightclub and a motel, so they all have their own idiosyncracies and special requirements. Dealing with folk from Darwin has also been a big learning curve, business is just done differently above the Tropic of Capricorn, and we have to learn to accept it. Nothing gets done with much urgency, and all important decisions are made over a beer in the bar. The other 30% of my work is in tax and business services for a small business and individual client base. This was what I used to do full time, and I was completely over it, but I now really enjoy having a small amount of this type of work still in my life.

Hmm, I've been a bit grumpy with my work life lately, but writing it out like that makes me realise that I do still love it. Time to stop getting bogged down in the detail and look at the bigger picture I think.

Right, time to finish off with a goal review for the week to date:

• Exercise - on schedule, got my circuit and pump classes in this morning and this evening respectively. I took it fairly easy on the weights in pump, while I figure out where my strength and endurance is currently at. As a result, the bicep, tricep and squat tracks were easier than they should have been, and I know I'll need to increase next time. The shoulders and chest tracks hurt (a lot), and my legs were already sore from previous sessions, so I think I'm going to be mildly crippled tomorrow. I'm looking forward to that rest day.
• Diet - exactly the same as yesterday (well, I did have a different flavoured yoghurt lol). I'm eating at mum's tomorrow, so the calories will be higher for dinner, I think she's doing turkey casserole.
• Focus at work - much better today, and actually got a few things finished.
• Sleep - 7 hours again last night
• Internet usage - still disturbingly high. I don't think blogging is helping with that lol.

Until tomorrow...

Blogging at work again

This week at work has been a stinker. Everything going wrong and nothing going right. Sigh. This job has weeks like that, and we just look forward to better times next week. That being said, if I don't get organised and get the crappy stuff finished and off my desk today, I'll still be facing it next week, and that's not tempting. Better keep the blog short today then!

While I'm on to negativity... guess how much exercise I've done this week? None. Nada. Zero. The call of the warm comfy bed has alas been too great every morning this week. BUT! I bit the bullet and rejoined a gym last night, so all this is about to change. It's a much less fancy gym than my last one, but then it's not full of posers and beautiful people either, and it's also less than half the price. I have paid $375 upfront for my 12 month membership, so it's time to get some good use out of it.

The thing I like about this gym is that it has some later group fitness classes, which I will be able to get to, even with my stupidly long working hours. There are classes at 7.10pm 3 days a week, and one at 7.30pm on Thursdays. They also have "Xpress" classes (30 minute circuit classes, a bit like Curves and Contours I gather) at 6.15am 2 days a week. I think I'd like to try that, and couple it with 20 minutes or so of my own cardio. There are separate cardio and pin loaded weights areas where you can do your own thing as well - I plan to use these in conjunction with the classes, but at the moment I think I need the motivation of a class to get me back into the swing of things.

I'd really like to get back into running and cycling properly as well. I have done a few runs in the last couple of weeks, and my shins are complaining a bit (I have had stress fractures from shin splints in the my very distant gymnastics past, so I know not to push through that too much). My theory is that if I combine some running with some other gym work, my fitness and muscle tone will build up again, and my weight will drop, and this will make things much easier on my shins anyway. I can then increase the running side of things at a point down the track.

My plans are all pretty flimsy at the moment, but I'm tossing around some running goals in my head - maybe a 10km fun run in December, but not so sure about that one. I'd like to do the 12km city to bay again in September 2011, and somewhere down the track I'd like to be in a position to do a half marathon. All pie in the sky with my current physical conditioning, but you have to have dreams right? I am also giving some thought to preparing a more general "101 in 1001" list (101 goals to complete in 1001 days), as I have seen on Kylie's and some other blogs this year. My running and fitness goals could form part of that.

On a final note - dietary. Yay for me! I've been awesome with my eating this week, including a dinner out at a buffet (always a troublesome thing for me, given portion control and binge eating are my main vices in life). I possibly ate too much volume at the buffet, but made all fantastic choices - loads of steamed and stir fried vegetables, plus some roast meat and vegetables, and the smallest of small (like a tablespoonful!) of noodles. No sweets!

I am approaching the eating side of things so differently this time around, and I'm sure I'm much healthier for it. The last couple of days I've barely made it to 1200 calories, and not because of a conscious effort to stay under that limit, I actually think it's too low. I just haven't been hungry for more, which is something I could NEVER have said last time I was "on the wagon" - I was entirely fixated on food every hour I was awake in those days.

I honestly think the biggest difference has been giving up artificial sweeteners and processed crap "diet food". Don't get me wrong, I still use light options of some things (low fat milk and yoghurt etc), but for the most part, I'm using unprocessed, fresh food in appropriate portion sizes. I don't own a microwave, so the temptation for pre prepared, processed-to-within-an-inch-of-their-life weight watchers/lean cuisine type meals is gone. All that Diet Coke in all it's chemical laden glory is gone. A much healthier way of life.

I still think that to some degree, I will suffer from disordered eating for the rest of my life. I'm too much of an "all in or all out" person to ever think I'm going to be any different. But I am actively working on strategies to manage it better, and who knows, maybe some day I'll be cured :o)

OK, time for some work... boo!

I ate mud cake :(

There's lots going on in my head today, but I'll try to keep it simple. I need to make sure I've still got something to say when my life is going along in a very boring fashion, as it has a happen to do a lot of the time.

I ate a piece of cake at work today. I was initially wracked with the guilts (which is interesting, given 2 or 3 weeks ago I was eating everything in sight and not really too worried about it). It's amazing what a difference a little bit of motivation makes. Anyway, I ate it. About 300 calories worth I think. In reflecting on it, I have both positive and negative reactions to it. On the positive - I ate the cake, then I threw the box with all the little bits and crumbs in the bin, so I couldn't go back for it. I also didn't go off on a crazy binge and eat all the lollies and chocolates which are annoyingly kept in our offices at work. Not so long ago, I would have been 1,000 calories down without stopping for breath. And probably calling at the supermarket for more crap on the way home. On the negative side - I still ate the cake in secret. I waited until everyone at work was well away from the kitchen, and then shovelled it in. I need to get away from that secret food mentality - if I'm prepared to eat it, I should be prepared to eat it in front of others and not be ashamed.

In other news, I went for my second run in two days this morning. It was freezing outside at 5.55am when I set off (well not quite freezing, but only 3 or 4 degrees) - but I still got out there and did it. My distances and pace are both pretty woeful at this stage, but I'm confident I'll be able to build it up again. I just wish there was one direction I could take from my house which didn't result in nasty hills. I ran up Briens Road and actually made it to the top of the biggest hill, which I was really happy with. At that point my lungs nearly exploded and I had to walk for a couple of hundred metres, but an achievement nonetheless. I also had to walk a bit on the return journey, coming up over the large rise at the end. I think I would have run about 3.5km out of the 4km circuit, so it's a start and something to build on.

I think the weather is turning ugly again in the next couple of days, but with any luck I'll manage another run or two this week. I do feel like I have more energy already, so it's definitely a worthwhile pursuit (and will make losing this weight a whole lot faster and easier no doubt).

There's lots of changes going on at work at the moment, and I've got a meeting with the boss tomorrow to catch up on the last couple of weeks of happenings. I usually chase him for meetings to keep us both up to date with everything, but I've been letting it slide recently. He's giving me the irrits (for no particular reason really - he has a lot of annoying aspects to his personality, but that hasn't changed in recent times, but it's suddenly driving me crazy). I can be pretty well assured that he's not going to change, and I went into this job knowing full well what he is like, so I need to find a way to suck it up and get on with it.

It's an interesting thing that I'm suddenly feeling disengaged from my work. This happened the last time I got really dedicated to exercise and weight loss, and ultimately resulted in me changing jobs. I wonder why I can be satisfied with both areas of my life at the same time? This is a rhetorical question for now, but it is something I need to ponder and reconcile for myself.

I'm in the mood to snack, so I'm going to have an early night and get away from temptation!