I don’t want to say I told you so, but …
Fad diets don’t work.
There. I said it.
I’m only 29 years old and yet I’ve known this since I was a little girl skipping down the driveway (and back up again since I wasn’t allowed to leave the house alone). How is it possible that I’m in possession of this AMAZING information that so many people never seem to learn?
I watched my mother then and I watch her now. And while she never seems to learn, I am taught this lesson over and over again.
A few weeks ago, when I flew into Melbourne from Toronto, my mother enthusiastically told me all about this new diet that was going to help her shed all her excess weight. All 6lbs of excess weight. What was this AMAZING eating plan? It was a 7 day extreme detox/weight loss plan devised for obese heart patients who needed to lose weight before surgery. It involved eating vegetable soup all day and then different foods every day for 7 days. No protein until Day 5 when you were allowed 3 pieces of chicken over the whole day. Day 4 involved soup and 6 bananas. Day 3 involved packets of tomatoes. Day 6 involved tons of steak. And always the soup.
As soon as she told me about this GREAT plan, I rolled my eyes. She quickly told me about all her friends who had lost TONS of weight. It helped that they had tons to lose. She wasn’t stupid – she wasn’t going to do this for more than a week … at a time. I got so frustrated – could she not see how ridiculous this was? How nutritionally devoid of anything healthy this was? How does a woman reach her 60s without realising that your body needs nutrients and depriving it is not going to achieve results?
I told her what I thought and then I spent the week biting my tongue as she told me that she’d lost a pound. Then, on the last day, she came home from playing bridge and her face was white. She’d almost fainted and had to eat something OFF DIET while she was there. She was genuinely surprised (it seemed) that this diet had not been good for her body. And the next day, when she weighed in and discovered that she’d lost absolutely nothing in the week, she again seemed really surprised.
I held back on the famous foud words I was dying to say … I.Told.You.So.
I’ve watched her try every single diet out there (even the ones she’s forgotten about): SlimFast, cabbage soup, green soup, detox, WW, Jenny Craig, SureSlim, you name it. Every diet was designed to help her shed those lost pesky 10lbs and every diet was abandoned when it didn’t work overnight.
I know that I have 6lbs to lose to get back to my best weight – my healthiest, happiest weight. I know that those last few pounds will take me time to lose. I’ve done it before and I know what to do but I also know that it’s a tough process, without immediate gratification which makes it so demoralising sometimes. But I know it’s doable.
I just wish my mother would learn that too.
Life on the road
I take it back. All those times I professed to wanting a job that included travel. I take it all back.
I’m on the road with the Boy while he trains staff and works around NZ and I’m setting up shop in hotel rooms, airport lounges and coffee shops. I finally have a mobile internet stick so I can actually do all that (got a good-ish deal through one of the 2 phone companies in the country – balanced price with reliability so paid a little more) but the lack of routine and “home” is getting to me.
Life on the road is tough on eating and exercising. Yes, technically the hotels do have gyms but silly me didn’t pack workout clothes. Tuesday I spent the day working in the morning and then walking around Queenstown, which is absolutely lovely and very hilly. Not exactly a heart-racing day but definitely calories out. There was this hill by our hotel and the only way to the town was downhill, which was fine. Fine until I decided to get back to the hotel that is. It was a great little workout. I did it about 3 or 4 times in the day.
Later in the afternoon, the Boy had finished work and we went for a nice long walk along the water armed with our cameras. It was truly lovely. I’ll upload some photos later today so you can all drool. Again, there were hills involved and my calves got a real workout.
Today the weather is crap, although clearing up a bit. It’s cold and this morning was dreary, windy and rainy. This is hardly exercising weather in my book. But I have to exercise. So I copied the Boy and did some crunches this morning. Later I threw in some jumping jacks and I’m planning on changing into some track pants and doing a few sets of lunges and squats as well. Next time we travel (in a week or so) I’m packing my exercise band for some other exercises.
I’m also trying to eat a little better. We were feeling very bloated and tired the other day and eventually we realised that we’d been carbo-loading without thinking! Every meal seemed to involve bread (sandwiches are the easiest things to eat on the road) so the other night we got Thai takeout and I had a lovely Thai Chilli Beef Salad (which I’m intending to copy and make many many times at home since it was lovely). I’m trying to get us back on track and realising that we should NOT be feeling stuffed at the end of a meal. We should be feeling pleasantly satiated.
My body is so out of whack with when to be eating and feeling hungry. It’s almost as though flying to the Southern Hemisphere made my body forget all my Northern Hemisphere habits and revert to the Old Gemfit. The Old Gemfit was lazy and out of shape. The Old Gemfit believed that she could justify anything and she deserved treats because she was unhappy in other facets of her life. The New Gemfit knows that all this is bull and she doesn’t need that extra piece of fudge that will inevitably taste yummy but make her feel crap later. I need to channel this New Gemfit so that the Old Gemfit doesn’t take over again.
Oh, and I didn’t end up going to the meetup group and I’m kinda glad. The emails that have flowed between group members since then shows that they probably weren’t my type of people (the organiser has quit, another member called anyone who doesn’t write for the express purpose of being published “stupid”). This weekend is the the NZ Engagement party so I’m taking a deep breath and hoping I get through it.
Oh, and I have a whole long post about the move and other stuff brewing. Stay tuned!
Survival of the fittest
Engagement party #1 is done and dusted. The Boy and I flew into Melbourne last week – him with the fun of meeting the rest of the family and friends and me with the cold from hell – and we faced the music. Or rather, I faced up to the fact that I had a cold, not allergies, not a bit of dust in my eye, not a dry throat. A Cold From Hell. A Cold that would see me with the strength of a 90 year old (and not Jack LaLane) and the voice of a prepubescent frog with a smoking problem.
This is a very attractive way to greet people at your own engagement party. Although by Sunday I felt a lot better but sounded like death so my greeting went by “no, I feel a lot better, I only sound like I’m dying!” – which made mothers around the world want to tell me to put on a sweater and get into bed with a cup of tea. Or soup. Depends on the mother really. Mine was convinced it was Swime Flu despite the fact that I’ve been vaccinated against it over 2 weeks ago. Then she was convinced it was My Asthma and a Chest Infection and I should go onto medication. Which I eventually did, after coughing up some lovely green stuff (sorry, was that too much information?) but I refused to let her say I Told You So. So she fell back on the old staple of Why Don’t You Trust Your Mother?
But the engagement party itself went off without a hitch. Despite my mother’s concerns, the room was neither too full nor too empty – in fact, we had people remark that it was nice to be able to move around easily. The food was apparently delicious – I barely got to eat anything as I was chatting away to all the lovely guests. Everyone seemed to mingle well and half an hour after we were supposed to be done, there were still people chatting away – we ended up taking the party back to my parents’ place to avoid extra charges!
Opening all the gifts was fun – we got some lovely things. 3 metal water jugs – all the same style but different sizes – and 3 different sandwich presses among other things. It got funnier and funnier as we were opening everything. Obviously we’ll have a registry for the wedding but it’s not really done for engagement parties here and when my brother got engaged, they had nothing doubling up at all. So I figure we now have a sandwich press and jug for breakfast, lunch and dinner! We left quite a bit at my folks’ place as we couldn’t take everything on the plane, but I did take one jug (the handle broke off in the bag sadly) and one sandwich press. Since we’re on the road for the Boy’s work for the next while, things are still in boxes but I’m looking forward to using everything.
We get back into Auckland on Friday night and I have a meetup group meeting on Saturday morning – a writing group. I need to make an effort to meet people and this is step 1. The only thing is that I’m absolutely shattered this week with cold recovery, travelling and work stuff and we really need to go out and buy a few things (like a dresser for my clothes …) so we’ll see how keen I end up being this weekend for meeting people. Push me people!
All grown up
I arrived in Auckland on Friday night. I flew in and was met at the airport by my Boy. His mom wanted to meet me at the airport as well but I’m really glad that she didn’t, just so I could have a little bit of time to adjust and see my Boy quietly. He drove me through our lovely neighbourhood to our apartment.
Which is as small as I thought it was. And it’s very clear that a boy has been living here – it really needs a woman’s touch. And to see myself type that shocks me – I never thought that I would think a place needed a woman’s touch. It sounds so sexist but it’s true! Only a woman notices that the ridiculously small amount of storage space is being used badly. Or that there is a ridiculously small amount of storage space to start with – seriously, there’s a bit of space in the kitchen and one closet in the whole apartment! I have no idea where all my stuff is going to go and I really haven’t brought all that much with me. But the Boy is a packrat so I’ll have to work on the decluttering and organising. Luckily, there are stores for storage and once I get my bearings, I’ll get to work.
We had a busy weekend – met the in-laws on Saturday for brunch and I survived the grand meeting. They’re all very warm and inviting, so it made things a ton easier. It also helps that I went to summer camp with the Boy’s step-sister 15 years ago – it felt very odd to “re-meet” her. She has some vivid memories of conversations we had in the locker room – my memory obviously isn’t as good!
Yesterday was such a lovely day – bright blue skies, lovely sunshine. We went for a 10km or so walk around the neighbourhood and I realised two things – how lovely the area is and how hilly it is. My fledgling running will be a definite effort with the number of steep hills around here. Here’s to building those muscles!
Onward and upward. Oh, and back to Melbourne on Wednesday for 5 days for the engagement party. Life is hard 
Through the looking glass
I had an epiphany the other day, sitting with my two closest Melbourne girlfriends over brunch. We were nattering away and apropos of nothing, it hit me. I realised why I had been overweight when I lived here. Not because of the food and coffee – although it is super yummy – but because of my friends.
They didn’t forcefeed me. They didn’t surround me with reasons not to exercise or to eat crap. No, instead they saw me from their own perspective and, because I was the smallest of the three of us, I was tiny and had no weight to lose. I was their ideal and it didn’t matter that I was overweight for my own frame. To them, I looked great because they were comparing themselves. Not to sound arrogant at all – looking back at the photos of myself back then, I can’t believe I didn’t see how terrible I looked but they were a lot heavier too. Me fitting into the equivalent of a US size 12-14 was tiny to them but considering that I am a short-arse with smaller features, it was not healthy for me at all.
But somehow, everytime I mentioned that I was unhappy with how I looked, I was made to feel ridiculous about it. I was the small friend. I had a tiny waist. I had no right to be complaining. In fact, if I was on a diet, they were worried that I was becoming anorexic.
I went away. I changed my habits. I started exercising and found it to be quite nice actually. I changed my eating habits by actually making proper meals instead of relying on frozen dinners. I lost weight but more importantly, I changed my body, I changed myself.
I come back and I fall into the old patterns – I try to mention that I’ve gained a few pounds over the past few months (I have – I slacked on the eating and exercising in favour of packing my life, you understand) and immediately I’m shut down because I’m tiny. What weight do I have to lose? Don’t be ridiculous. Because when they look at me, they compare and they can’t see that everyone has their issues. To them, because they would love my waist, I’m being ridiculous by even mentioning my weight.
It’s too easy to see myself through their eyes too and slack off on being healthy because it’s really not that much weight. But then I think again and I know it’s for me and not for them. I need to think about what I want and how good I feel when I’m eating well and exercising. But it’s a challenge.
Who’s perspective do you see yourself through?
A whole new (old) world part 1
Apologies for the radio silence – my last few weeks in Toronto were slightly crazy busy and while I had great intentions about posting during lay-overs, I ended up using my internet time (which was super expensive … airports, you suck) to talk to the Boy instead. I’m sure you understand that.
So, an update to my “About me” is probably in order since I no longer live in Canada. I had a whirlwind last week – a surprise farewell tea at work, another farewell lunch with work people the next day and then an awesome farewell drinks on the Friday night. I was really surprised by how many people turned up and stayed the whole night – I knew that I had gotten along with a lot of people but you know how it is, you never want to assume that everyone else feels the same. It was awesome (and a little teary).
I made it through the rest of the week – packing up my apartment, moving out to the hotel nearby, running around and doing last minute errands and realising that my bags were indeed way too heavy. I decided at the last minute to send an extra extra box back to New Zealand and thank goodness I did – when I got to the airport my 2 bags hit the combined weight allowance of 100 lbs on the dot. Well, actually one bag was 45 lbs and the other was 55 lbs and they ridiculously made me move 5 lbs of stuff from one to the other. When the woman behind the desk told me that if I didn’t shift 5lbs over, I would be charged for overweight luggage, I thought she was joking. But I did it since really, you don’t argue with people at the airport.
Which is again why I didn’t protest either when the security people decided that I was OBVIOUSLY dangerous and needed to have my hand luggage searched and checked for explosives and be patted down. I must be a TERRIBLE danger because, save one or two trips over the past 2 year, I get checked every time. The full body pat down was new but everything is beginning to be standard procedure. I had no idea that I was obviously DANGEROUS to the world. Wait, not to the world, only to the US. I don’t get stopped much elsewhere. Americans, you are so lucky Canada protected you from me and my terribly packed hand luggage.
The flights were okay – long and not filled with a great deal of sleep. 5 hours from Toronto to LA. 12 hours (plus one on the tarmac because someone had a panic attack and had to be assessed by paramedics before we could fly) to Auckland. 4 hours from Auckland to Melbourne. So that’s 21 hours of flying with about 8 hours in lay-overs. 29 hours in total door-to-door. So yes, I am a little jet-lagged and tired.
So here I am, in Melbourne, sleeping in my old bed, in my old room at my parents’ house. Using my old phone number, having brunch with old friends at the old cafe. Falling into old patterns and feeling quite surreal. Luckily I’m only here until Friday and then I’m off to Auckland for 5 days to dump some stuff with the Boy, meet his family and friends and then fly back here for the Melbourne engagement party. Fun times.
I’m off to get some breakfast and then try go for a walk/jog when it warms up. Part 2 will follow shortly!
I'm a twenty-something Aussie who was living in Canada and has now moved to New Zealand and trying to be somewhat strong and healthy while I navigate the perils of living with my Boy, freelancing and planning a long-distance wedding without losing my mind. Welcome!
