Impressions vs the Truth

Ok, so I thought this morning, it's been a while since I wrote down anything about my journey - according to my last post it has been 4 months! Probably a good indication of where my head and life has been.

I haven't been doing a lot with my weight loss - another 3 kg over 4 months! Lots of excuses why that has been and some conscious decisions but makes me realise where I could have been if I kept my eye on the end game. I have been pretty conscientious on the exercise front, doing the advance lean and fit program and also running 4 km three times a week - this has certainly had some results -  however lost more cms, a total of 44.5 cm which means I have lost over 100 cm and my total loss is 25 kg.

I have been puzzled about why the scales haven't been shifting, I was following the meal plan, exercising well but it would go down one week, up the next and then stay the same. I have plateaued before so I knew something needed to change, last time I needed to eat more, so I thought that might be it but needed to track to determine that for sure. I was annoyed but hadn't quite got my headspace there to work through it and as I said last time I posted I had also hit the "bask in the glory" phase which has tripped me up in the past, I was getting compliments all the time, able to buy nice clothes in a normal shop, do the airplane seatbelt up nice and tight with length left over. Ignoring the voice in my head that said, yes you have done well but that isn't the goal is it? To be average weight? To be almost not fat? A little overweight?

I have been sick for a few weeks and unable to exercise, this has taken its toll on me, but as I wasn't exercise I thought I had better go back to tracking, because I wasn't losing weight I thought I had better go back to tracking EVERY SINGLE BITE... It was pretty telling - on a normal day I was probably over about 100 calories for the day, on a day with a slip up that would be more, ok if you are burning 500 calories a day and weigh 100 kg but I don't. I am fitter so I burn under 500 calories most days, about 350 on a toning day. I was running instead of doing gym cardio and burning less because of that. I don't weigh 100 kgs anymore so I would be burning calories. Well you don't need a PhD to figure out that do you? Certainly my brilliant scientific mind was burying its head in the skim milk flat white!

Ok, so four days into really tracking and voila, the scales have shifted - down 2.3 kg in the four days, this might bounce back a little as I tend to find my weight fluctuates over a week. Thankfully I am finally on the mend so I headed off to the gym for the first time in 2.5 weeks and I made sure I burned 500 plus calories. I think I need to shake the exercise up, there is a PT who does private group classes, be good to bring my awesomeness down a peg or two and turn all that ego in to sweat!

And I made a new goal - a nice conceited one with a date on it. I have been selected to do a leadership course with my work, as part of this there is lots of networking and meeting of executives etc. It is 8 weeks ago and I will be 8 kilos lighter by then! That would get me to 84 kg, I will buy nice corporate winter wear in a smaller size and with any luck the impression that I leave will not be anything to do with my weight - i.e. "she's a bigger girl" etc. Then I will set a new goal and run the city to surf in August! I have lots of red flag weeks and trips away over winter but there is really no excuse, I have seen the results of 4 months of "being good" rather than just tracking it good or bad and they aren't going to get me there before the end of this year. I have 25 kg to go and enough weeks left in 2013 to get there!

I have been reflecting on perceptions of yourself and others after seeing the dove commercial on a friend's blog, where women are asked to describe themselves to a sketch artist and then people they met briefly in the waiting room are asked to describe the same women. It is pretty amazing to see how negatively the women view themselves compared to other people and the best part is the other people get much closer to how they look. I think the tag line is "you are more beautiful than you think" Dove's says this about their ad "Women are their own worst beauty critics. Only 4% of women around the world consider themselves beautiful. At Dove, we are committed to creating a world where beauty is a source of confidence, not anxiety. So, we decided to conduct a compelling social experiment that explores how women view their own beauty in contrast to what others see."

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/04/17/watch-viral-dove-ad-uses-sketch-artist-to-illustrate-womens-true-beauty/#ixzz2R4IHoGuX

I think this is definitely true - you are more beautiful than you think. But I also think that can work when you are overweight but in the reverse sense - for a long time I was in denial and thought I was skinnier than I was, at some point I started to realise that I was probably more overweight than I thought as I saw photos of myself that were surprising. I knew deep down they weren't all taken at a bad angle and would quiz my hubby when I saw a reasonably overweight person of similar height to me as to whether I was bigger or smaller than them, over time the answer was invariably bigger (he is honest which is fine as he loves me big or small). At some point I realised that I was really big and there weren't that many people left that were bigger! I would scan the room at work/social occasions and realise I was almost always the biggest person in the world, the best identifiable way to describe me to someone who couldn't remember who I was, was probably "You know, she is quite big, with brown hair". So I began to think of myself in those terms, I couldn't buy clothes from the normal section, maternity clothes were bought online as I couldn't get them in stores in my size. This lasted quite a while, over three years until the day I decided to do something about it.

Now, I am trying my best not to compare myself to anyone, this is about me, not about whether someone is bigger/smaller, faster/stronger, prettier/uglier than me. Just me. As a bonus, I am now smaller than I think I am and it is delightful as the people that turn out to be bigger than me (I had to order some shirts for some work colleagues), I don't consider to be "fat". Maybe I am not fat, maybe I am skinnier than I think I am, but that is no reason to keep on getting skinnier!

So now, a skim milk flatwhite is a once a week treat, not a twice a day essential... I'll work on coffee, for the moment I am proud to have a long black with a dash of milk!