Week 1

Ahhh, the post Christmas blob.

After all the eating I did over Christmas, I was pleasantly surprised by the scales. While I didn’t stuff myself as usual, I didn’t hold back too much either, so there was a slight gain, but nothing major.

Saturday 29 December, 2007

Week 1 weight – 97.7 kg

Initial weight – 96.2 kg

I did all those measurements too, but given there was no change, I can’t be bothered typing them all out. Not that I’d expect a change – I did bugger all over the week gone.

Note to self: weight loss doesn’t just happen by not doing anything.

I wish it weren’t so stinky hot here at the moment. The heat really removes any incentive I’ve got to exercise. And not just exercise, I don’t really feel like doing anything at all. I just want to sleep and laze about and forget that I’ve got to go back to work in less than a week.

The beginning – day 0

On Saturday morning I gathered all my materials into the bathroom, namely the scales, measuring tape, pen and notepad. Then I set about measuring myself and writing it all down. Having not measured anything for so long, I’m not sure if I even measured the right bits of me, but I figure that as long I consistently measure the same bits, it’ll all be good. Even if I am consistently measuring the wrong parts.

And so, without any further ado, here is the whole fatty boombalada mess as of day 0, Saturday 22 December, 2007.

Weight – 96.2 kg

Bust – 117 cm
Waist – 113 cm at navel
Hips – 128 cm
L thigh – 74 cm
R thigh – 77 cm
L calf – 41 cm
R calf – 42 cm
L arm – 37 cm
R arm – 36 cm

I promptly decided to make myself some ANZAC biscuits. Bad Pia!

That said, I am trying to get rid of stuff in the pantry, and we’ve got golden syrup aplenty to use up!

But back on topic. With a starting weight of 96.2 kg, that puts my BMI at a hefty 36.4, and easily over in the obese part. A loss of exactly 30 kg puts me at 25, the top end of the normal or acceptable range.

Eventually, I’d like to be in that range. However, I’ve got a fair bit of work ahead of me, and massive goals tend to scare me, until I wallow in misery and give up. This time, I’m not going to give up, I’m going to do it, damn it, and I’m going to do it right.

So I’m going to start small. My first goal is to get from the obese category into the overweight category. For me, this will mean getting down to 80 kg. I initially wrote that it’s not a big step, but then I read back across those figures and realised I have to lose 16 kg. That’s one sixth of me. And then after that I have to lose another 16 kg to even be at the top of the normal range – bang, another one sixth.

One third of me… I don’t know how I’m going to get rid of that… I think I’ll have to ponder that some more. It’s going to be a long ride.

Final goal weight – 50 – 66 kg

Initial goal weight – 80 kg

The Shopping

So much for waiting for the January sales. Mikey and I went off to the mall after work yesterday to get fish for dinner and I said that maybe we should check Kmart for scales. The darling boy didn’t turn up his nose and scoff at me, bless him. Instead he gallantly trooped off with me, braving the “last Friday before Christmas” crowds, the incompetent staff and general ickiness that is shopping in Belconnen mall.

I managed to rein in my obsessive tendencies a little and not get some over the top set of scales, although I was amazed by the one that had a remote control to go with it. I decided that if I was going to get a cheap scale, then I’d need something cheerful. There was a cute frog one, complete with googly eyes for only $20. Mikey vetoed it though, saying that I might as well get a decent one, and froggy was not digital.

*sigh* Froggy was therefore out, even though he was soft and squishy on the feet.

Instead, I went with an elegant but still simple affair from Kmart’s Royal Club line. It does not have magical fat sensing abilities, but it is grown up looking, and didn’t cost as much as I’d feared, only $50.

At this point, I have all I need to get cracking on this weight loss. Now I’ve just gotta do something about it.

Dosh and nosh

I’m been humming and hawing about this whole weight loss thing. Do I really want to pay someone a huge amount of money to weigh me, measure me and tell me what I essentially know already? I’ve read so much about Sureslim, with so many people saying that their specialised diets are identical for each person, give or take the sweet potato. I don’t want to spend $800 plus for someone to tell me to eat healthily and exercise more. That said, I do want the positive feedback and constant pressure. I want numbers and figures to show me that the excess is melting away. I want regular encouragement and accountability. I want…I dunno what I want.

At lunchtime today, I wandered about Civic, thinking about scales. I haven’t owned a set of scales in ages. Last night I suggested to the boy that I could buy some, and he told me I didn’t need them, because in the end, what does it matter what the numbers say?

I agree with him, sorta. It shouldn’t matter what the numbers are, but I think that it could be a good motivational tool for me. I’d really like to get out of the obese BMI and into overweight, and then back into my healthy weight range. With scales I could track my progress on those goals. There are other goals as well that I’d like to attain – size and shape wise, rather than weight wise, plus fitness goals and general health goals. A set of scales, no matter how fancy, won’t help with those. A set of scales and a measuring tape might work though… with their powers combined, I will be Captain Weight Loss!

Or not.

With shoddy finances and the impending move, I shouldn’t be buying anything more. I can’t even rationalise the cost of Sureslim or WW, especially if I’m locked into a program that I’ll have to cancel when I leave Canberra. I can however probably afford a set of scales. Maybe even a fancy schmancy electronic gismo with magic fat sensing properties. Who knows what I might be able to find in the January sales!

Ahh, the acronyms

I’ve been lurking on the Essential Baby forums – that haven for mothers and wannabe mothers. There’s a massive amount of information on there, for those who have the time to trawl through it all. Having absolutely no work to do at the moment, and no supervisor or co-workers to be checking up on me, I’ve been doing a fair bit of trawling.

I have a long standing dislike of typing shortcuts and acronyms. Most people who knows me understand this. My mother, who has started to use shortcuts in text messages, noted a few weeks ago that she makes sure to type everything out in full for me when she sends an sms, because she knows it bugs me. Essential Baby forums are full of shortcuts and acronyms. There’s a sticky post at the top of a bunch of forums I read, with a list of all the acronyms in case you forget what they mean. Many of them make me shudder – DH/DD/DS, AF and BD in particular. There’s something icky to me about swapping out perfectly good words like husband (or other relative), period and sex. None of them are truly bad words, not even close to four letter words. Anyhow, I made my first de-lurking post today to ask a couple of questions, and decided (much against my better judgement) to use some acronyms, so I could be like on of the ‘in’ crowd.

My post went something like this:

“My husband and I have been TTC since the start of April 2007. It’s been sort of on-and-off though, because he was in NZ for 10 weeks between August and October. Prior to us starting, I’d been on the pill for about 11 years, so I wasn’t really expecting to fall pregnant quickly. I also promised him that I wasn’t going to go all wacky with charting and CM and all that, as I’ve known people to do that and it gets really tiring for everyone else around them when all they can focus on is TTC.

That said, I’ve now reached the point where I’m frustrated with just playing it by ear because I have a horrible feeling that I’m not ovulating at all. So I bought a cute little BBT thermometer on eBay so that I can start charting when my new cycle starts. Since coming off the pill I’m usually on a 6 week cycle, although I’m 5 days overdue now, but POAS gives me a BFN.”

I couldn’t bring myself to say DH, O or BCP.

Back to the issue at hand however, and that is the nutcase that I’ve become since starting this whole baby making gig.

A few years back, I had a friend who desperately wanted a baby. She and her husband finally decided to start trying, and it took her quite a while to get pregnant – about a year, I think. Sadly, they had to terminate early on due to a very serious case of neural tube defect. After a while, they started trying again and from my reading of the EB forums (where she is a frequent poster), they managed to fall pregnant and have a baby boy. A happy ending/beginning for everyone.

Our friendship however didn’t stand the test of time, and in my view there was one major reason for that. Once she decided she wanted to have a baby, she went completely loopy. Everything was about trying to conceive, pregnancy and babies. We couldn’t have a conversation without the topic coming up, and as a person who definitely did not want babies (my, how things have changed), her single-mindedness drove me up the wall. She complained about the length of her cycles, she bitched about seeing other women who were pregnant or had babies, moaning about how it was so unfair that they could get pregnant and she couldn’t. It was as though the getting pregnant thing had taken over her life completely. She charted her temperature, gave me constant updates on her mucus and the regularity of their sex life and in general made the whole thing seem like one big scientific experiment.

When the husband and I decided that we wanted to make a family, I was determined not to be like that. No way was I going to become an annoying, complaining bint who couldn’t think of anything other than her own hormonal drives. I was not going to chart, check my mucus, worry about having sex at the right time of the month or anything like that. I was just going to enjoy the ride and take things as they came. I also decided to tell as few people as possible, because the last thing I wanted was people knowing that I was trying in case it didn’t happen immediately, and then they’d have to be all sympathetic about it and that would just shit me no end.

That was eight months ago.

Initially, we told just our parents, my sister, and a couple of very close friends. Maybe eight people in total. Since then, I’ve blurted it out to a bunch of people because, in short, I am becoming that awful thing I never wanted to be – the single-minded broody nutcase. That said, I haven’t shared much of the story to any of these people, just the occasional update to various members of the original eight that I’m still not pregnant. They generally reply that it’ll happen when it happens – or sometimes I pre-empt them by saying it first. I know that it will happen if it is meant to and my body will take it’s own sweet time to do the right thing. We also know that it’s not a problem on the part of my husband’s wigglers. They got tested out in October and were found to be very active and numerous. So either it’s a problem with timing or a problem with me.

Either problem is equally likely. Until very recently, I’ve not bothered to work out when my fertile time was, so we would just bonk whenever. Secondly, I’m sure that being on the pill for 11 years means your body needs a fair whack of time to get sorted out with the ovulating thing. So in my logical brain, I know there are good reasons for me not falling pregnant yet, but try telling my angst ridden hormonal self that!

Without consulting the husband, I ordered a thermometer, one of those special ovulation thingy ones with two decimal places, as well as a ten pack of ovulation predictor kits. The former arrived yesterday, and I expect the tests will be in the letter box either today or tomorrow. No big deal on that, cos I don’t want to use them until I know whether I’m even ovulating, and given that I’m 5 days overdue for a period (but not pregnant according to the pee test) and have a 6 week cycle, it’ll be at least a month until my next theoretical ovulation.

I figured I’d start the temperature charting, in the hopes that I’d be able to get a grip on my patterns and see whether I am ovulating or not. One of the women on EB suggested I go to the doctor and get a blood test to save me the hassle of worrying and trying to analyse charts. That makes sense to me, and I’ll probably go and do that next month. Until then though, I have absolutely nothing to comfort me, to reassure me that I’m not an infertile freak, to stop my complete transformation into a fanatical maniac, hell-bent on getting herself up the duff.

Except for the Christmas drinks that is.

I just don’t know what to do with myself

I’m sitting here at work, in the post-work christmas lunch lull, with the White Stripes in my head. I’ve been doing some research on various weight loss before pregnancy things and I’ve come to the point where I don’t know what to do with myself. If my life were a movie, this is where the music would cut in and we’d go through a magical weight loss montage and I’d emerge at the other end, slender and gorgeous with gleaming white teeth. Instead, my teeth and tongue have a tinge of purple from the two glasses of red wine I had with lunch, and that inner thin person is still surrounded by the rolls of fat she came in with.Since my decision to finally do something about my weight, I’ve fluctuated between not wanting to think about it, and wanting to start something right this minute. As in RIGHT NOW. I started my research with the tried and true Weight Watchers website. I’ve had friends that have used it and it seemed to work quite well for them. Then I saw the part about hw they aren’t a medical organisation and you aren’t allowed to continue being a member once you’re pregnant.

I understand that dieting while pregnant is a bad idea. I know that you need to give your body and the baby all the nutrients needed to make for healthy bones and organs and the like. But I want something continuous. I don’t want to start a weight loss program and then have to stop once I’m pregnant, and then start again after a healthy period of time after birth. The other thing is that I don’t want to investigate all of this and then discover in two weeks time or whatever that I’m pregnant and not be able to do anything about the weight other than gentle exercise.

In my slightly tipsy state, I’ve just noticed that I call it “the weight”, not “my weight”. Like it’s not really my problem. How’s that for not taking ownership of an issue.

Language analysis aside, I don’t think WW is for me. I emailed them to find out whether they have a pregnancy program and was told they didn’t, so I’d just be left in limbo. Plus, it’s $17 per week, or slightly less if you go with the bulk rate Unlimited package. Initially I thought that was pretty expensive, and then I found SureSlim.

I emailed the same questions about pregnancy programs to SureSlim and received a call a day later. The woman went through their various programs, the normal weight loss one, the pregnancy one, the breastfeeding one, the maintenance one. She said I could move form one to another as needed. I’ve seen the adverts on tv – SureSlim, Sure works, or something like that. I know they take blood tests and then work their magic with your metabolism and suddenly the flab just falls off your frame.

I’m lazy – I can’t motivate myself to do exercise regularly and I have now been through three different gyms here in Canberra, and probably attended 3 times in the last 3 years. The idea of having my metabolism “fixed” sounded good to me, so I went ahead and made the appointment for my initial wellness test for January 3rd. I also asked the consultant to email me the programs and prices. Just as well I was sitting down, because those prices are enough to frighten anyone. The Quick Loss Program is $946 per program, with a line below reading “includes a personalised Lifestyle Program $880 full payment”. Does a program last one year? That makes it just over $18 per week, slightly more than WW. Are there additional payments to be made? Is the $880 if you pay up-front, while the $946 for if you pay on a plan?

It’s all so complicated. It seems like a lot of money, and I don’t really understand what it’s for, so I did some research. It seems that what happens is you go along and get some blood tests. The diet people then make up a diet for you, which is supposed to be personalised, but in reality is much the same as all the other diets they write, and you then follow that. You go back for weigh-ins and measurements and somewhere along the way, you get thin.

There are mixed reviews (from what I saw on the Essential Baby forums anyway). Some people say it’s worthwhile, others say it’s expensive. Everyone says it’s strict. I’m caught in the bind of wanting to believe. I want to believe that I can get some sort of plan that will magic away the fat and make me fitter, all without sweat or having to go hungry. In my sensible brain, I know that you don’t get thin and fit from doing nothing, even from just eating right. You have to get yourself moving. I used to enjoy the gym, well the body balance and stretch classes. What happened to my motivation? What happened to me?

I don’t know what to do. I guess I’ll go along to this appointment in January and try to remember to keep my sensible brain turned on. I don’t want to be sold some rubbish fad, I just want to lose this bloody fat.