Over the Easter long weekend, my friends and I went to Werribee Zoo. It was great fun and loved how close we got to the animals in the zoo.

I’ve settled back into work in the new office and getting acquainted with “new” colleagues (in quotation marks because we talk a lot on the phone and seldom see one another in person). I’m loving the city and exploring new places. My family and friends have been taking me to all sorts of cool nifty cafes and spots I’m absolutely loving it. The weather has been pretty erratic but I can safely say I prefer it to the Queensland heat.

I can’t believe how quickly this year has gone. 12WBT Round 3 is over and I am sad to say I couldn’t finish it off with a bang. Primarily because I had 2 weeks of moving. I now have a gym and tried out a class the other night and loved it. I want to go back for more! I’ve booked into a consultation so it will be interesting what they can come up with. Plenty of things to get up to in the new year and I look forward to resetting goals and getting back into training. I seriously have been missing it.

Hope to be back blogging again soon…

I’m doing quite well at the moment resetting and getting back onto getting sugar-free. Step 1 is going as planned and next week I hope to eliminate fruit as the next step. It will be interesting how I go. I am quite worried but I guess that it is the pressure I am putting on myself to achieve this. I guess I just need to get over it and then I can go back into re-introducing fruit and ‘good’ sweeteners into my life.

I have been finding it incredibly frustrating with the amount of products on the shelves of the supermarket that contain added sugar/sweeteners when the products claim they don’t claim to have added any. It is so misleading and annoying. Even milk that I thought would not have it added, have it in there but it is not listed as ingredients that are less than 5% of the total ingredients are not required to be listed. How ridiculous is that? It does make buying ‘packaged’ products very difficult. Although I am trying to reduce the amount of packaged products in my life, there are some things that can’t be bought without it being made in a factory. Bread, wraps, crispbread. Does anyone have anything else to substitute? I need my carbohydrates as I notice that I am not able to function very well if I don’t have them and am quite hungry when not eating it with my protein.

The goal for this weekend is to complete the mini-milestone set out in the program and to be very conscious of the food that I eat has to be clean. I will keep myself busy with my packing and during the games I will have some healthy snacks to munch on, some popcorn and some vege sticks with homemade hummus. Next week’s meal plan looks very good and will be having meat again. This week was very light on meat so it will be nice to have that to get over the no fruit phase of my plan. I see nut consumption going up a little to get over that hump.

Weight-wise back on track after a few weeks of mishaps. I’ve been keeping my calories between 1400 – 1700 calories a day and been trying to get about 500 calories burnt during workouts. I did add in a little extra cardio this week to keep the progress going and to burn some of the extra calories that I had eaten during the day. The problem with grazing I think. I’m going to research over the weekend some other good snacks to include other than the usual that I have. Time to mix it up I think.

So thats it for today and my weekend battle plan.

Today is the start of trying to sort myself out, again. Went over my expected calories for the day but I did workout very hard at the gym. I had dinner when I got back but found myself not very satisfied with it. I then decided to have some chickpeas and a slice of bread. That so far has got myself across the line. I think the quote above is quite relevant to how I may go about my food issues. I’m also going to ensure not to eat after 9pm if I can. It will depend on training days but that will be the golden rule for now. Mainly because if I eat any later than that, I won’t be able to sleep well. I think I did quite well today with my food and dealing with cravings and my “hunger”. I was reading an article about what type of eating personality a person could be and found that I may be a combination of 2 types. I do relate to 2 of the personality types of being compulsive and impulsive. The basic overview of what a person of my type is someone that can’t stop thinking of food and one that can’t stop eating food and that exercise would be the key to preventing getting overweight. Well, I guess that explains why early in my fitness life, I never lost weight. I am not sure why this round has been so difficult in controlling calories. The food choices have been very smart when I have eaten healthily. I don’t understand the persistant hunger. Perhaps this is also in due part to cutting out sugar. I should really investigate more and read through the “I quit sugar” plan again.

Anyway, a pat on the back today for not gorging all my food at one go. I tend to do that to on most days and be really hungry the rest of the day. I did find today’s breakfast less filling than normal and was a little grumpy about that. Sometimes the whole talk about drinking more water, tea, etc just makes me mad because seriously I do it, I still feel hungry and then almost proceed to pass out. So really, what is the magic bullet that will prevent me from being hungry? HUNGRY!

These four weeks on the program have been depressing. I don’t have a happy place and I am not really sure how to deal with all the emotions. I am glad with my progress in the weights, lifting more and heavier. The other side of things has been crap. I am trusting the program as much as I can but dealing with food has been a bad experience and makes me wonder if I’m getting too obsessed with it all. I feel it’s all too much at the moment.