Warning: This blog post talks about…..habits.
building abs the hard way
My stomach muscles are aching! I can’t get out of my chair without using my arms to push my body up. I can’t twist or bend easily and I every time I cough I literally have to place my hands around my stomach while I do the slow cough. You know the one, instead of coughing and making it sound like a machine gun, you slow cough and it sounds like the air being let out of a blow-up mattress.
But don’t worry, this post isn’t a humble brag.
Humble brag – an ostensibly modest or self-deprecating statement whose actual purpose is to draw attention to something of which one is proud. eg “Uggggh just ate about fifteen pieces of chocolate, gotta learn to control myself when flying first class or they’ll cancel my modelling contract LOL”.
I’m not going to say:
“So #embarrassed this morning! After my #grind with my #pt, I was drinking my #organic, #greenjuice and I slipped on an activated almond while I was getting into my #bmw and pulled my stomach muscles #sadface #myabswerealreadysoreenough”
My stomach muscles are sore because I’ve actually fucked up. I started a new ‘healthy eating plan’ yesterday and in the week leading up to it I’ve been, you know, eating whatever I want. Because what you eat before you start a ‘healthy eating plan’ doesn’t count, right? It’s like the last hoorah as I’m crying into my peanut butter sandwich “I’ll never get to eat you again”. I’ve said it before, I’m all or nothing.
peanut butter on white bread = low fibre
What this means is that I’ve been eating a very low fibre diet. Peanut butter bagel for lunch every single day. And a lot of pizza for dinner. There were some aberrations to this though, including a piece of fresh salmon on a bed of rocket. I’m not a complete animal.
And so dear reader, the real reason that my stomach muscles are screaming in pain is because for the past three days I’ve had to walk around the office pulling my stomach in for dear life. I am severely and utterly constipated. Normally, if I let it all hang out, you could be mistaken in thinking that I am growing a baby. But I can usually suck my stomach in whenever I get up from my desk. This doesn’t transform me into Miranda Kerr, obviously, but I like to think that it makes a difference.
So for the last three days I’ve been self-confined to my desk because I don’t want to walk to the toilet carrying a folder or a my handbag (strategically placed in front of my bump). The only time I get up is to use the bathroom. And by that I mean sit on the toilet and wish to have a baby poo.
When I do get up from my desk, and it’s a struggle, I have to walk very slowly and carefully – mostly because I’m in agony with the bloating, the distended bowel and the sore muscles. I then have to use all remaining strength to suck my stomach in so that I can go from 7 months pregnant to 4 or 5 months. It hasn’t been working. Bloating is a bitch. I also have my period. It’s like my body decided to tell me, once and for all, that it was done.
My body is punishing me.
It’s rising up against me.
It’s made me think that I have all the diseases.
dr google is always right, right?
Last night Doctor Google told me that, most definitely, my bloating and sore abdomen could only mean one thing – a bowel obstruction. A serious medical emergency. I had my shoes on, ready to race to the ER when I texted my friend who told me that I just needed to do drink some movicol and do a poo. Aahhh, you know you have a real friend when you can talk poo to them. Of course, I couldn’t find the movicol (housework, not my strong point) so instead I opened a can of prunes and slammed down nine of the suckers and then a gulp of prune juice. Kerpow!
Nothing has happened yet. I think my body is waiting to give me the ultimate payback. To put me in a situation where I’ll be the number one story in Reddit’s “Today I Fucked Up” and get reported on in the Daily Mail.
The whole bowel obstruction ‘scare’ has been a little bit of a wakeup call. I keep saying those words to myself every three months – having a hernia operation, a wake up call. Falling over and dislocating my shoulder, a wake up call. Getting a cold and being sick for three weeks, a wake up call. Is it really? Are you really awake in there and conscious to what you are doing to yourself?
Now when something like this happens (hernia, shoulder, cold), I usually get a little scared and make some big assertions about how I’m going to change my life. I do up a big spreadsheet of my weight with a schedule of how many kilograms I’m going to lose each week. It makes me feel so in control. And that’s where it ends. I usually track for a week or so – but I don’t actually do any planning about what I need to do every single day to get to that miracle goal.
And that’s not even the hard part. The hard part is actually having some discipline and committing to doing something, anything.
commitment —> routine —> habits
This is what I plan to do every single day for the rest of my life:
Dun dun.
Please, I can’t commit to wash my bowl after I eat my breakfast (housework, remember), how can I commit something for the rest of my life that I haven’t even tried yet! Yes, I am aware that we do this with marriage. And look how that works out for more than 50% of the population.
So, rather than committing myself to the end of time, I’m going to commit for one week. This has dropped again. I had talked myself into a month. But come on, based on my track record I should just commit for a few minutes ahead. But, a week it is!
Now I haven’t committed myself to a laundry list of items. That’s what I’d normally do. And I’d feel stressed out before I even start. Nope, I’m committing to three things only.
- Walk for 30 minutes every day
- Eat only what I planned to eat
- Do strength exercises – like sit ups, push ups and squats. (yes, squats)
creating habits
This is about creating habits. Daily habits. Habits is a bit of an issue for me because it requires a routine to get them going. Once you get through the pain of a new routine, it’s amazing how quickly it becomes a habit.
So I originally said that I would walk for an hour a day because I read this news article about a mum who lost a stack of weight just by walking for an hour every day. But really, I rarely get to 5000 steps per day, so I think that I need to start with something that is achievable.
Eat only what I planned to eat – that means that I actually have to plan my meals and stick to them. And pizza four nights a week is not usually planned. So bye, bye pizza (sob, I will miss you).
Strength exercises. After my 30 minute walk, I’ll do one type of exercise – sit ups, push ups or squats. That’s it, keeping it really simple.
What about you? Have you got a plan to lose weight? Or have you lost weight and have some tips for me. If you want to talk about poo, well that’s okay too 🙂
