16 June 2019 – Magical day

I woke up at 4 a.m. after 12 hours of sleeping. I woke up rather energized and decided to change something in my life. I started out with a very short meditation and then got out of bed. I spent 10 minutes with my partner and dogs and then he went to bed. I decided to start again in my journey of bettering myself and focused on my ignored physical form. I weighed myself this morning and I have 92 kg (202.8 lbs) and I took all my measurements. I bought a lot of groceries yesterday and filled my pantry with healthy options. I served some fruits and decided to romanticize with food.

I took a 30 min walk with Tisa and ran a little with her in the morning, before the heat settled in. I got home, drank some water and did my stretching routine (haven’t done that in a while) – which is also code for play time with the dogs and stretching for them as well. I cooked another meal afterwards and I devoured it! I forgot just how amazing my food is! I watched some food tutorials and then proceeded to work a bit on that character design for the new site. I then watched a movie with my partner and did some introspection.

I am grateful for all the work I did today, for all the good intent I had and for the joyfulness of the dogs. Things really start to come together nicely.

I appreciate all of you and I thank you dearly for reading this. Have a wonderful day!

Cycle 6 – Day 1 [Tired, Ambicious, Disappointed]

I haven’t slept well at all – I had 3 nightmares in one night that really startled me. I woke up screaming after the first one and luckily my partner was near to support me.. We slept with the lights open – which doesn’t happen – ever. It was a really bad nightmare..

I spent the day in town, initially with my sister – we had breakfast together and then she left for the bus to go back to my parents’ house. I remained in town with the spa owner – to discuss future plans. I was really excited to help her out with the plans and so I did.. until we went out to see some new locations for the spa. We traveled to 3 places that didn’t even compare to what she had at her spot.. I felt powerless and disappointed afterwards – somehow I felt that my firm’s location depended on this person.. and I also felt that I failed as a manager somehow..

Later in the day, we took her kid from the kindergarten and spent some time together. She was very kind and drove me and my partner home. We showed her two of our dogs – Bruno is scared of little kids and we didn’t risk taking him out as well. After the departure, I spent some time with my partner and I worked on some ads for the spa. I still had some time afterwards and I wasn’t that sleepy so I tried out again to create my website’s logo..

I weighed myself this morning – I had 91.4 kg(201.5 lbs). This is just an entry for my weight log..

I hope you had a good day.

Cycle 5 – Day 23-25 [Avoidance, Ordering, Progress, Failure]

I’ve avoided writing on the blog in the last few days. I have been feeling a bit under the weather; I just accepted this mood and took a break as I felt that I needed it. I ate only junk food, a lot of sweets and I even had soda, which I rarely do. I’ve been avoiding exercise for a while and I just haven’t been feeling like myself. I’ve been very needy – in terms of interactions with other people and getting opinions about my work. I didn’t realize it until today; this changed a lot of things.

I’ve started to question myself and find the cause of this problem and I noticed some things: I look very fat on Skype when I speak to my sister, I didn’t get out of the house for a while, I got fearful with the dog’s well being one week ago, I lost track of my days. All these things have impacted me a lot; these are those unspoken issues that you avoid by creating or talking about other issues.

1. I look fat on Skype – my sister is very pretty. She is skinny and I don’t envy her. I always notice how much we look alike when I slim down a bit – having my default weight – around 86kg. It drives me insane to see my face being all round and weird looking – like somebody popped air into it. It makes me feel unconfident and ugly, especially when I see my pretty sister near my baloon face. I don’t usually talk about these things with anybody and it makes me insane – I start eating everything around me and allow myself to feel sick. I noticed that I eat the most when I talk to her, after seeing myself. Last time I weighed myself was about 2 weeks ago – I had 89 kg and I was ashamed of this and decided to not share it on the blog. One week of shame eating later, I have 91.2 kg. I find it somehow ironic that I am creating a site and writing about weight loss, but I seem to have lost some of the pointers myself. Somehow i think this is a good thing though, because I experience the process myself and apply the techniques on myself. My confidence was at a very low point. The more I see myself on Skype, the more I realize I don’t want to be seen by anyone except my partner and pets – this is a wonderful opportunity for my new website as this is one of the subjects I want to talk about. So lets say that somehow I am glad this is happening; somehow there is a reason for experiencing this again. But this is the last time I will go through something like this; this time I will learn my lesson thoroughly.

2. I am very upset because I haven’t got out of the house lately – I had a lot of orders to take and had to take care and train the new puppy, which got me stuck in the house. It’s frustrating to know you can’t be somewhere else and realize you hate your surroundings – the fact that the house was messy really got to me and I felt helpless; it was exactly as all my thoughts – unorganized, distructive, dusty.. I really hated being in my shoes, so I started cleaning and managed to get half of the house done – the areas I visit most often. This gave me a lot of courage and made me feel refreshed.

3. I got fearful with the dog – I am happy with my family; very happy. I am not ready to face the possibility of having them gone. I love these dogs and they spark joy within me – even Bruno who is a big pain in my .. shoe. I get very worried and I want all the best for them – they are basically my kids.. This event made me consider health problem of any kind with anyone in my family and having financial issues to pay for the medical services. On top of this, I slipped in the kitchen and did a forced side splits which totally pressured my body – i am not able to do half of the preparation for this position let alone the full stretch. This resulted in muscular issues, back pains and bed rest. Along the high weight, my back is certainly going through a rough patch right now..

4. I lost count of the days – this is not necessarily a bad thing – I just let things happen and I actually was happy most of the time – I did only what felt right regarding activity – this included: cleaning, repairing furniture, building a hanger, writing articles for my new website. The bad thing was the unmonitoring of my food and not listening to my body to get the cues to stop. I really want to restart monitoring things about my life. It will definitely help me understand what is going on.

---

Writing everything down is very therapeutic for me. I understand what is going on in my life and I figure out what I get to change. I am very grateful for this blog – the fact that I can share these entries with you and especially my partner, makes it so amazing. I can give the entry to him and he will be up to date with my life in no time. Maybe this avoids me speaking about my problems with him sometimes, but we get the time to focus on the important things instead. We still talk about other things – it seems like problems and external conflicts is not something that we are lacking.

I hope you had a good time these past few days. I am not very festive – I only enjoy singing carols in this time of the year because I can let my voice loose. I wish you happy holidays and I hope to write again soon!

Happy holidays! Merry Christmas!

Cycle 5 – Day 1 [Empowerment, Redefinition, Positiveness]

It’s been a while since I wrote about my day.. It is nice to know and see that I got things back together and that I take care of myself again.

I spent the day reflecting on the last 2 weeks and understanding the impact of the events that happened in my life lately. It made me feel empowered to know that I have control over how I react in some stressful situations and that I don’t feel like a victim anymore. I had a lot of realizations lately that clearly changed my way of viewing life generally. I felt the need of changing my attire, to better fit my attitude towards life and to make me feel more confident towards the changes I allow into my life.

I am feeling positive towards the changes I am making. I want to ease back into healthy eating, by alternating meals, to avoid shocking my body. I weighed myself yesterday and I had 88.8 kg (195.7 lbs) – this is not the heaviest I’ve been since I had this break, which also increases my positiveness considering I already started changing.

I decided to change the format of the posts – write more about how I felt in a day rather than what I did. This would probably give me a better vision over my general mental health.

I hope you had a good day.

Cycle 4 – Day 14

Today I haven’t done much. It was family day again – spent most of my time with my partner and with the dogs and cat. I listened to songs I used to like a long time ago and I sang along with a lot of passion for more than 3 hours while I played a game.

I weighed myself this morning, to find out I now have 86 kg (189.6 lbs). It’s a difference of -1.6 kg since last week. I haven’t done anything special, but I guess that my system finally got cleaned and the bloated I’ve been having feeling passed away as well.

Considering the massive weight reduction from the past months, my body shapes are changing rapidly. This asks of me to extend my daily stretching and include some additional exercises that would help in shaping the body. I also started taking a vegan protein supplement daily – this was mostly to make sure my daily protein intake is met. I found out the normal value would be 0.8 g per kg. So I would need 69 g of protein per day, which I could get only from the food, but there’s a limit to how many beans, lentils and chickpeas I can eat per day.

I cooked today a red lentil stew which I served with rice and avocado as brunch.

For dinner we craved taste bombs, so we decided to go to get some junk food. Fortunately and unfortunately, my body doesn’t really process meat and fatty food so I kind of ended up throwing up an hour later..

I hope you had a peaceful day!

Cycle 3 – Day 25-26

Yesterday I have slept a lot, to make up for the lack of sleep from a day earlier. After waking up, we went grocery and tools shopping. I got very upset with the staff while buying tools and had a breakdown. I got very angry after leaving and that influenced my day in a very bad direction. I bought fish and a lot of sweets, but at least I had a healthy brunch. We spent a lot of time in the car speaking about things and then we got home.

I spent some time with the new dog – we just hanged around together and I scratched her belly, which she totally loved and was asking for more. After some time, I decided to write a bit in the book and I managed to write about 2 pages of content. I am slowly going there. I wonder how many pages this book will have considering the plans I got for it.

I got bored and decided to watch some youtube videos about starting a youtube channel, food and websites. I wrote a bit more in my book and then realized it was already morning. I quickly went and made a coffee and a cup of tea and drank them while watching the sunrise. I got some ideas for my sites and just had to write them down. I went put on the terrace to brainstorm. I eventually ended up calling my father, to ask him a technical question, but somehow we got into talking and catching up for an hour.

I started working on my shelves a little and somehow ended up working intensly as I got very into it. I managed to build one shelf and then I didn’t stop until I built the rest. It was nice to finally see my idea come to life after 3 months. It was exactly how I pictured it. I waited for my partner to wake up and asked himbto help me take the measurements – which we took a bit wrong unfortunately. The shelves turned out amazing and they already serve their purpose brilliantly. I absolutely love the outcome!

AMAZING!!!

I am feeling very proud and I am glad I staeted this project. I think this is my most successful building project yet!

Today I also weigh myself and saw that I have 86.5 kg (190.7 lbs) now. Reduced by 0.5 kg (1.1 lbs) last week!

Overall today was a successful day, due to my willpower to not let an unfortunate event destroy my whole day.

Have a nice day!

Cycle 3 – Day 19

Today I mostly took the day off to rest. I went grocery shopping, played with the dogs, hanged around with the cat, cooked some sandwiches and watched some TV series. I also had some chocolate and bananas.

I weighed myself this morning and found out I now have 87 kg (191.8 lbs). I reduced by 0.8 kg (1.76 lbs) this week! It’s nice to see I am making progress overall. I hope this will be even better next week.

I hope you are having a great day!

Cycle 3 – Day 11

Today I had some extra sleep and woke up in terrible shape. My back was all messed up – I probably slept in a weird position.. I weigh myself – the new weight is 87.8 kg (193.5 lbs); this means I reduced by 0.6 kg (1.3 lbs) in the last week.

I had breakfast, did my stretching routine and decided to go to the gym with my partner to have leg day. I thought that I could try to use the machines to focus on the legs without putting any strain on the back. After the workout, my back was OK; I am waiting to see the impact in the next days.

I then received a call from my mother – this never happens – she was wondering how I was doing, I guess.. I went grocery shopping afterwards and I am very proud because I didn’t buy any sweets or processed foods.

I received an interview from a freelancing job yesterday and had to answer to a practical test. I gave the test, but I think I didn’t do that well with the timing, as I got stuck on some issues.. I hope I will pass to the next stage though.

For lunch today I had rice with tomatoes, onion and bell pepper. For dinner I had fried rice with carrot and greens. I also ate some bananas and grapes and had a cup of tea.

I hope you had a good day.

Why I have trouble losing weight

Once you decide that you want to change something in your life you have to identify the things that were unsuccessful in the past. You have to study your past mistakes in order to really see what you are doing wrong.

I analysed my eating and realized that I overly indulged in sweets and that I enjoyed processed meat and fatty foods a bit too much on a span of multiple days in a row, accompanied by lack of exercise. Everything seems right up till now – I have successfully identified the cause of me getting fat. The only thing left to do now is remove these from my diet, right?

I’ve been trying to remove these over and over again, but somehow I ended up in the same place.. I somehow get trapped back in the pleasure you get for the first 3 minutes of eating these taste bombs. No matter what I do or how determined I am, I still end up there..

After quitting my job and having time to do some soul searching, I finally found the reasons for getting fat. I wasn’t looking at the full picture; I had to look at the trigger of this behavior.

I always eat something sweet or processed when I feel sad or when I am really unsatisfied. The processed food triggers a little bit of artificial joy within us, in the first minutes of eating it. After that, we feel guilty we had it and the bad feeling returns – we start hating ourselves for having it. So the solution is to address the sadness and the things that bring us down. We also have to find healthier substitutes for the times when these moments arrive.

I also managed to do that, by creating this blog and monitoring what I eat. I still indulge in sweets every now and then, but I cook my own healthier alternatives or I aim for the less processed ones and I don’t feel bad about having it, because I monitor how often I serve it.

But, despite all this, at the end of every cycle, after I see clear progress in losing weight, I overly indulge again, for those 5-7 unmonitored days, undoing half of my progress..

I decided to look at my goals, at the reasons behind wanting to lose weight:

• To be healthier overall, as I am currently Obese
• To take some pressure off my back, literally
• To feel better in my skin and be able to look in the mirror for more than 10 seconds
• To be able to move freely and not get tired as fast.

All these are benefits anyone would want, but why am I self-sabbotaging so often then?

I’ve been told that I should start having kids around age 25 and that in order to be able to carry a child I have to lose signifficant weight – to get to around 75 kg. I have some medical issues that require this, as my fertility is a big question and my back wouldn’t be able to sustain my fat and a child without repercussions.

I am 25 and I am finally losing weight at a steady pace. But I am not ready to have kids. Every time I see I lost weight, I get a spark of joy because I make progress towards my goals, but then I panic a bit because I make progress towards my fear as well. I live constantly with these emotions: when I groccery shop, when I cook, when I manage the money for food, when I weigh myself, when I look in the mirror, when I get dressed and see my clothes are a bit loose.. I am self sabbotaging out of fear..

I always feel insecure about how I look, especially when I have to meet with other people. The cause of this is seeing all the females from my family always being ashamed of their bodies, no matter how fat or skinny they are.. I always thought the way you look shouldn’t matter, but everywhere around me people are obsessed with their image. They are never pleased with the progress they made..

I think it’s time to change the way we think. It’s time we face our fears and realize we own the choices we make. It’s time to accept our bodies as they are and celebrate the progress we make towards our goals. It’s time to choose mindfullness and know that we are the ones who can make a change for ourselves.

We are the ones who choose the direction in our lives. Let the fears behind, let the sadness behind; choose to enjoy the moment and celebrate the little achievements every day.

Cycle 3 – Day 4

Today I mostly did things around the house, socialized and cooked. I focused on personal projects – I changed the soil for some plants that really needed it. I weighed myself this morning and now I have 88.4 kg (195 lbs) – reduced by 0.5 kg since this Monday.

I did my stretching routine, I played with the dogs, went groccery shopping and cooked amazing food. I made some pasta with tomatoes for lunch – condiments are everything with this dish; and for dinner I made some mushrooms with sauce with mashed potatos and a lettuce and tomato salad and it turned out wonderful!

We had an incident today with our washing machine – it poured water everywhere and it flooded the bathroom. We had to evacuate all the water and remove a shower tub that we had in there, in order to take all the water out. It took us more than an hour to get all that out..

I browsed some freelancing jobs and I made the setup on the laptop for the management app that I plan to work on next. I hope tomorrow I’ll actually work on it.

I hope you had a nice day!