Curves..

So I joined Curves this morning.
I am at the point where something has to happen to get myself to a healthy BMI. I am aching to be lighter on the ground - more agile in my movements & back to my previous prowess on my surfboard.

It was somewhat mindless, the way I let myself be led through their sales process & into signing myself in at almost R300 a month for the next year. Why: Because I really really have to do something about myself! If I think about it too much, it just won't happen & I really need to fit into my former clothes.

I did a walk-through with one of the ladies and it seems reasonably straight forward.
They took all my measurements & I have 52cm to lose over all. I have 15kg that I want to lose. They are confident that they will harass me to the point where I am meeting my goals. I have to go 3x a week for it to make a difference & quite frankly, it wouldn't be worth the money if I didn't go at least that much.

SO it's done.

Watch this space for less of me!

7-month mommy ready to get back into herself!

I had a beautiful pregnancy & gave birth to my little girl on the 9th of September 2011. Geoff and I have been doing many beach walks, but other than that, the only exercise that I have been getting is baby-related: picking her up, putting her down..bouncing her etc. My arms feel pretty strong but the rest of me has been constantly achy and sore

SO I come to the reason why I have returned to this blog:

A week and a half ago I went surfing. The waves were beautiful! I was pathetic. I just couldn't get my body to do what it knows it should be able to.

We went to see Sting this past Tuesday night. I tried on about 8 different outfits - all of which had something uncomfortable feeling about them - & eventually I went with something I wear all the time. Boring. I really wanted to dress up but am too out of shape to wear the cloths that I really love. PLUS: Sting is in such good shape at age 61 that seeing him was the final straw:

Yesterday (Wednesday), I did 5 rounds of sun salutations & swam 40 lengths (1km) at the gym. Today I did 8 rounds of sun salutations. I plan on getting up to between 15 and 20 rounds every morning.

I have also stopped cold turkey on eating between meals (unless I'm really starving I will have a fruit)... I am easing back into the Natural Way.

Geoff and I bought a water filter for our tap so we have been drinking tons of water without having to lug heavy bottles behind!

So I am resetting my progress report...
My last mission saw me lose 8kg.
My new goal is to healthily lose 8 to 10kg - 3kg of which are still baby-kilograms.

Coming back so soon!

The Natural Way has made such a profound impact on my health (and Geoff's for that matter). I can't believe its been a whole year and a bit since I last posted on this blog... but the great news is that my disciplined eating actually did pay off in the absolute best way possible! My body became ripe and ready for carrying a child! Geoff and I are currently about 4 weeks from meeting our little girl!

I have continued with reasonable eating throughout the pregnancy - and even continued to eat lots of fruit, although, the temptation to eat comfort Winter food has been really big, we plough through our fruit bowl at a rapid rate & we've got into the habit of keeping the nuts out in jars in order to snack healthily.

..and the great news is that at 34 weeks I had only put on 11kg! :)

I am sure that I will be posting some more about this as soon as she's born & I kick into a weight-loss mission in order to lose any excess pregnancy weight that may be lurking around my body... I hope that breastfeeding will assist me in my on-going mission & that together with The Natural Way, I can achieve perfect weight and perfect health....

.....now where did I put those jellybeans.......

In Continuation...

...of efforts to continue on with The Natural Way, I have been sticking to my high water consumption & trying my best to not combine proteins & starches (not easy)....acid with sweet fruits (easy).

The fruit shop down the road from us was selling huge punnets of fresh figs for R10. I had some seriously yummy smoothies with apple, banana and fig!

It has been quite tricky with the rather brutal onset of Winter as it is very hard to keep my starch portions down with all the soup being made & eaten. I even made a batch of 'health' rusks (oats, cereal, nuts and seeds - probably not the best combined, but I MISS my rusks!!) ....so I thought I'd share the recipe:

Breakfast rusks

• 230 g margarine (I used butter)
• 400 g sugar (I used half molasses & half brown sugar)
• 3 extra-large eggs 
• 50 ml peanut butter (I used cashew butter)
• 5 ml vanilla essence 
• 10 ml bicarbonate of soda 
• 250 ml milk (I used buttermilk)
• 240 g cake flour (I used half rice flour)
• 10 ml baking powder 
• pinch of salt 
• 160 g coconut 
• 160 g oats 
• 120 g breakfast cereal flakes (I used much more - muesli, AllBran & CornFlakes)
• 50 g peanuts, finely chopped (I used pecan nuts, almonds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, linseeds, sesame seeds, and I also added dried cranberries)
• (and just about anything else you can find in your pantry - raisins - seeds -- nuts -- carob/chocolate -- GO WILD!!)

 * Preheat the oven to 180 ºC (350 ºF). Grease one 37 x 13 x 10 cm loaf tin with margarine.

 * Cream the margarine and sugar together. Add the eggs one by one, beating well after each addition.

 * Add the peanut butter and vanilla essence and mix well.

 * Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in the milk and add

 * Sift the cake flour, baking powder and salt together.

 * Add the remaining ingredients, mix and add to the margarine mixture.

 * Blend. (Add a little more milk if the dough is too dry.)

 * Turn the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for about one hour or until a testing skewer comes out clean when inserted into the centre of the rusk mixture.

 * Cool, slice into fingers and dry at 100 ºC (200 ºF).

 * Makes about 40 rusks.

I have not lost any more weight.....but I have bought a couple of new pairs of jeans (smaller) and not put on any weight! :)

Day 91

Have I mentioned how much I LOVE pineapple? If I could be a fruit, I'd be a pineapple. Not only are they exotic and quite frankly, rather "fancy", therefore a seriously beautiful addition to any fruit bowl; they are also totally deliciously out of this world!! (The best thing about living in the Eastern Cape was the ready & cheap supply!).

Geoff and I had croissants from Olympia for breakfast, so I decided to have my fruit for lunch > a pineapple, apple & almonds blended smooth with my Braun stick blender. Shame: the poor thing has started making a nasty noise when in use. I have had it for 5 years, so ts had a pretty good run with all the cake mixing, soup blending, smoothie making & food chopping its had to do!! (I probably need a more industrial one!) 

Day 89

We went through to George over the weekend & I weighed in at 2kg's less on 2 different scales! YAY! (as my scale has been broken I'm not sure when they were shed) I only have 6kg's to go so I'm more than half way to my goal. Winter has arrived in FULL force so it is very hard not to delve into the cupboard containing the hot chocolate / Horlicks / etc to drink them with piping hot, steamed milk made with my coffee machine.

I went to gym yesterday & plan on going again tomorrow if it isn't as miserable to drive there as it would most certainly be if I attempted it in this weather. I checked my weight *(clothed) yesterday and the gym scale was not quite as kind as my mom and my gran's, but I'm sticking to their scales. Its 2 against 1.

Day 83

My scale is broken. Geoff stood on it funny when he got out the bath and it is officially at its end. Its probably better because it didn't work very well anyway!

We've been so incredibly busy busy busy so I've not had much time to blog...hence the catch-up on blog updates today (not that I really had time today, but I was missing my blog time...I even spent some time on Facebook & Twitter!!)

So its day 83 and I'm doing reasonably well. I don't know if I've lost any weight because I've been surfing instead of gyming so have been out of contact with measuring devices (+ aforementioned broken scale issue). The great thing though is that I'm fitting into clothes that were previously almost written off for lack of hope of fitting into them again.

I quite like what I'm seeing in the mirror too ;)
(plus I feel lighter on my surfboard which is always good!)

I'm still having issues with too much chocolate. I've had a tiny bit of flu & being unwell & the onset of winter mean that I have been craving comfort food. I've been quite good on the combining side of things. Its so hard not to have lovely fresh bread with a thick chunk of cheese...but I've not had any & the most difficult thing is to synchronise with Geoff & not have more than 1 carb / protein meal in a day...

I've probably been drinking a bit too much coffee. Its been decaf, but the issue is the milk (luckily I don't have sugar in tea or coffee.) My sister & mom have also introduced me to decaf Five Roses so Geoff and I have switched to that - it tastes like the caffinated stuff > Perhaps its just a marketing hoax?

I've been buying pineapples at the market shop near us (Rodgers)  -  3 for R10 !
Avos have also come down in price which is great....and I just ordered a serious amount of nuts and seeds from Ambassador foods today! You can even order online from them: https://www.ambassadorfoods.co.za/