Spring

Spring has been thawing my bones for a while now. It is simultaneously filling me full of enthusiasm whilst sapping away equal amounts of enthusiasm for sitting behind a computer and doing the study.

I allowed the garden to distract me long enough to document some of my spring garden. Mine because I live amidst it, not because I have any hand in it.



The very productive lemon tree.



Sweet little broad bean blossoms. Last season we had masses of beans but no recipes for them and alas they went to waste. I am intent to find ways to eat them this time around.



I think these guys are bluebells. more beans in the background.

It's so very hard to drag myself out of the perfect sunbeams and back to my masses of dark looming deadlines. I am thinking happy thoughts of warm nights, sangria and lashings of free time being little more than a month away.

Almost there

Two exams down and two more to go...


Snacks

I find that I snack more during exams. Does that happen for everyone, or just me? Some of my snacks have been healthy options, mandarins are a great snack fruit, they come in their own wrapper and are already in bite sized portions AND they happen to be in season at the moment and so cheap and delicious to boot.
But I have been having lots of low nutritional value high salt, sugar, fat etc snacks as well. This exam period the snack of choice has been honey joys.


Reminiscent of childhood parties, these babies take about as long to cook a batch as it takes to eat (a batch).


Gym

Luckily I have been finding time to drag myself to the gym. Whilst there is no chance it balances out my compulsive snacking I'm sure it's better than nothing.... right? RIGHT??

Last weekend I tried the boxing class at my gym. OMG! It's now Tuesday and most of the pain has gone away. I might have to try and make it a regular dealio, except on weeks where I may need to be able to lift my arms on the following few day...

The class really brought home how rubbish my lungs are. I was tomato faced and panting by halfway through the class.
It also brought my diminishing flexibility to my attention. It seems someone hasn't been stretching as much as she should... Any suggestions of a yoga routine to start the day with?


Letters

Have I ever mentioned how much I love receiving mail? I used to have a pen pal, but when he got released from prison *cough* he stopped writing. I guess he had some competing priorities what with having a life and all... le sigh.
Today I got my first letter from a new pen pal who is the cousin of one of my friends. I am so very excited. I can't wait for my last two exams to be over so I can write my response on my awesome letter writing paper and send it off.

study blues

It's about this time of the year (days before my first exam) that it really hits home how slack I am and how much time I waste throughout the year.
Even in the last few weeks while I have been in 'exam lockdown' I have watched two seasons of house (which whilst a fantastic show is not very helpful for my exams), read the archives of a number of webcomics and managed to do a few social activities a week. I still have not completed my notes for my first exam which is in three days. Eek.

I would like to say that soon it will be a start of a new semester and with it comes a new opportunity to apply myself and manage my time wisely... but will I actually make use of it or will I be in this exact same position at the end of next semester?

It makes me wonder if I am just so incredibly lazy that I can't pick up a text book for most of the year or if I am getting some kind of psychological 'advantage' by putting myself in a position where I will stress and be in fear (or come very close) to failure.

Exam Lockdown

The time has come the walrus said to talk of many things...well actually the time has come to regurgitate all of the knowledge I have managed to retain from this semester of 'study'. So at the moment there is little time to do much other than cram.

I have ambitious plans for what little break I have between semesters, plans which I am trying not to distract myself with at the moment. See you then.

The tea is a-brewing in it's pot, the biscuits are fresh from the oven, sounds like it's time to catch up...

Well hello there. How are you? Sorry for my absence. It seems lots of things have been happening but not much forward motion in the goals department, I haven't even stepped on the scales since we last spoke... but I have been doing other things, crafty things! So lets talk about them shall we?
...And I stepped onto the scales for you my dear, so we can talk about that later too I guess...

Jam
I have a feijoa/pineapple guava tree in my front yard. It's been there about as long as we have lived here which is around 23 years, but we generally forget it exists. But this year for some reason it was making it's presence known and we have been collecting and eating its weird delicious fruit the whole time it has been producing it.

Now every year about Easter time the season finishes and it drops its green oval shaped fruit (which is great for hiding green oval shaped Easter eggs) This year we decided to do something with them. So Nani and I made them into Jam. Neither of us had ever made jam before so it was a bit of an adventure, but it turned out perfectly. It is delicious and jelled/set/whatever you call that thing that Jam does (jammed?) perfectly. We are both pretty proud of ourselves.



Walkies
After the eater gluttony my brother, Nani and enjoyed the perfect weather and I went for a walk around Kakarook Park, a big arsed water filtering wildlife filled park. Even though it's 10 minutes drive from my house I had never been there before.
We walked, talked rubbish and took some photos. Here are some friendly little fungi we met:




Health stuff
When I decided to write this post this morning I also decided to brave the scales. It came as a great, and pleasant surprise to see that they haven't moved. I haven't put on or lost any weight in my time off.

I am working my way back into the gym habit. To help me out Nani and I have made a pact that we can choose to either eat sweets and go to the gym or to do neither on any day. And let me just tell you, Nani is doing great. I on the other hand have been doing nothing. To be completely brutally honest, and I am amongst friends so why not, I bought 10 chocolate elegant rabbits. I will eat well all day and then not go to the gym, then the sun will go down, the heater and the pajamas will go on and then THE RABBIT WILL COME OUT!!! They are irresistible!

But I am getting myself to the gym on occasion (on three occasions so far this week) and other than the legion of chocolate bunnies I am starting to eat better again.

So I have a few more little crafty projects I have been up to to fill you in on, but I will save that for next time.

Life gets in the way

For the last few weeks some things in my life have been derailing my efforts at change and leaving me a doona coated blob on the couch. So I thought today to ease back into it and because I have hit the exciting milestone of having filled out my entire program card, I might have a look at my progress so far.

Weight

I love graphs. Here is my weight so far...this graph I love a little less than usual. It’s reassuring to see that even though it fluctuates I am actually getting lighter, or was until life happened. Now to get over this slump that is undoing all my hard work, get back into the gym and off the chocolate biscuits.



Cardio

I haven’t made much mention of my poor old deflated lungs since my initial posts. One reason was that I couldn’t think of any way to actually measure any improvement if indeed any was there to be measured.

Whilst I toyed with adding a peak flow meter to my collection of medical paraphernalia (I did get a suture kit today though. Score!) I decided for now to look at my times/distances on the paltry amount of cardio I do.

I was going to make some more pretty graphs, but my confidence in my cardio performance turned out to be premature. So I have some unpretty figures instead.

Rower: My limited amount of cardio involves two, two minute sets on the rower. On my first session I could only get 363 meters in the two minutes, my best result is currently 440meters.

X-trainer : I also do two sets on the cross trainer, this time for 500meters. My initial time, well the first one I recorded was 3.57mins, my best time2.55mins.


So the progress so far is scant. Time to up my weights, down the junk food... that is put down, not down my throat... and get this caboose into action.

Get into the groove

Time

As I write it is midway through the second week of uni. Have I been sticking to my study timetable? Of course not.
Have I at least been going to all my classes? What am I a first year? No!

Okay, so far I have missed two lectures, one of which I have since listened to online, the other I will listen to once it's been uploaded.

I have been putting in nowhere near enough hours of study. I am slightly behind in my readings, but have more or less been prepared for any classes that involve interaction and have studied sufficiently for the two tests I've already had.

Most of my subjects have an open book exam at the end of the year which requires concise and ordered notes. I have so far in my university career failed to keep up to date with this during the semester and end up putting these notes together when I should be revising. Together with not doing enough work this has really reflected in my grades. I passed one subject last semester by 3 marks. Yes 3! I have a suspicion they were pity marks.

I really want to transfer into a combined degree as soon as possible so it is really important for me to get into the groove of studying every day to get my grades up. I seem to have difficulty studying in my huge breaks at uni, so I'm going to try focusing on these times and getting my routine tighter there.

I have however been finding the time to go to the gym, which brings me to:


Health

Last week I once again managed to get my lazy derriere to the gym 3 times! Four if you count the time I walked down to renew my membership but didn't actually go in passed the reception desk.

I still haven't moved from 75Kg (although my weigh in day is tomorrow, cross your fingers for me) BUT, I did notice a dress I used to have to squeeze myself into was a little roomy. My family have also made some really supportive comments about seeing some difference. So whether the numbers change when I get on those scales tomorrow or not this week I'm feeling pretty happy.

And finally tomorrow the lovely lady whose blog was the inspiration for me to start is doing a training session with me at uni tomorrow. She tells me she is going to work me hard. If I can get results like she is getting I'm sure it will be well worth it and then some.

Stuff stuff!

Stuff

So far my goal to sort out my stuff and junk has gone nowhere. my stuff is in more chaos then when I started. So rather than putting off blogging until I have something to write about my newly found organisation of my junk, I am going to blog about it if and when it actually takes place.

Instead, lets talk some more about health goals


Health

Last week I not only met my three times a week gym goal,I beat it! I went to the gym 5 times last week. That's right 5 times mother lickers!! Lets see if I can at least make the 3 again this week.

On one of those times was an aqua aerobics class, which was fun and made me feel like I looked really silly, which in all probability I did. Luckily the only other person in the pool (not counting my lovely friend K and the instructor) was an older woman walking laps.
One of the other times was a boxing class. Girl did I feel that the next day.

The scales still haven't moved significantly (74.9Kg, 75Kg) and neither have my measurements. Think it could be because of diet? The other day I had pizza for breakfast (it was only one slice, but still...), a latte (my second that week) with my carbie lunch, and then after dinner demolished half a share bag of choc coated honeycomb.

I don't have a huge guilt response when I do this kind of thing. I also find that I can justify being slack in my health goals because I am not terribly unhealthy, I eat lots of fruit and veggies, I'm not hugely overweight... But I am more overweight than I let myself think about. And my cardio vascular system is very poor. I see seniors hitting the treadmills faster than me and taking it in their stride while I am panting and red faced. I told you last entry that I was off to donate blood, my veins are so tiny and lazy that after unsuccessfully trying to tap one, we had to have the discussion as to weather it was worth me coming back another time or if it would be a waste of their time. I guess that's not so much about what I'm putting in my mouth, but it does come back to maintaining motivation and remembering why I'm trying to get healthy.

So I need to find some other motivation to get my diet (and health goals in general) under control. What works for you when the cheesecake, burger, chocolate or whatever else is your undoing is beckoning to you? How do you beat craving? What about the couch, x-box, next season of nurse Jackie when you could use the time in the gym?

See you holidays, it's been swell but the swelling's gone down.

After what has felt like a very non productive eternity I am going back to uni as of next Monday. This means that instead of dragging myself out of bed to face a day filled with nothing (much like this http://nedroid.com/2011/02/morning-motivation/)I will now be running out the door in order to get to morning classes. And then frantically trying to squish study into as many moments a day as I can, getting burned out and watching tv instead... Well hopefully that last bit doesn't happen so much this semester.

The bare bones of my timetable looks a little something like this (sorry for the rubbish table, I don't know html):

	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat	Sun
7
8
9		Class	Class	Class
10	Class
11
12		Class
1	Class
2				Class
3
4		Class	Class
5
6
7

I read somewhere that you should do about 2 hours study for each contact hour, but a) that would make for a 66 hour week b) last year I ended up needing significantly less study than this for the science units. So for the time being I'm blocking in 2 hours per contact hour for law subjects and 2 hours per subject per week for science - a neat 24 hours study time. Putting those in as well as travel time makes my timetable look like this:

	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat	Sun
7
8		Travel	Travel	Travel
9	Travel	Class	Class	Class	Study	Study
10	Class	Study
11			Study	Study
12		Class
1	Class
2			Study	Class	Study
3							Study
4		Class	Class
5	Travel
6	Study	Travel	Travel	Travel
7
8

Honestly, this looks pretty intense to a slacker like me. It does have room for the gym, socialising and cooking which will hopefully preserve my health (especially mental health - gosh) but I'm not going to block them in yet because I want to see how this works and what times for the gym are going to be best for other people so I can have gym buddies sometimes.

I'm going to try and keep to my sleeping schedule. I haven't kept to it strictly yet (which will sure make next week a shock to the system) but my hours are much more regular than before.

Lastly in other time news, I have finally found time to tick something off my eternal to do list. I have never donated blood. After two false starts where I was too sick on the date to donate, I am all booked in for this Sunday. I am feeling fighting fit and looking forward to it. Still on my list is to donate bone marrow. That is a much scarier prospect - ouch - and not as quick set up so it will take a while. But I think it's really important.

Have any of you donated blood, marrow or anything else? What were your experiences like?

What's that that just went out the window? Don't worry, it's just my health resolutions

I have been super slack about my fitness goals. Lets have a little tour of those goals and how I have been ignoring each one shall we?

Weight: So far I have not managed to budge a single kilo. I have been weighing myself once a week on a Thursday morning, my results: 75.8, 76, 75.1, 75.2.

I did read somewhere that it is more accurate to look at body measurements as they're less likely to be as drastically changed by hydration levels. Now some days I drink an entire teapot worth of green tea (even if I didn't I think I would like to think that I can explain my weight away in water). I love a good teapot.

My starting measurements as of today are:
Bust: 104cm
Waist: 89 cm - waist measurements higher than 88cm for women place you in a higher risk of becoming diabetic. I think the measuring guide the dpt of health and aging give would make my score significantly higher and riskier...
Hips: 103cm

I took the advice on how to measure from here but only did three measurements because taking 8 measurements once a week sounds time consuming.

Diet

I had three goals in relation to diet. To limit take away meals to three times a week, to cut down on unhealthy snacking and to start controlling my portion sizes.

To say straight out that I have failed on every front would be both simplistic and negative. Well, I did eat out a whole lot more than three times a week. I have been a bit of a social butterfly, lets not even discuss that for now.
But portion sizes on the occasions I cooked my own meals were much better. And my snacking has been better on most days.

Here's a photo of one of the meals I did make at home. A salad with egg.




Exercise

My single goal here was to get to the gym or other physical activity three times a week. I have been averaging twice a week. Better than nothing, but room for improvement.

The highlight of the passed few weeks was indoor rock climbing. It was really enjoyable and gosh I felt it afterward.

Stuff

I have made very little inroads into organising my things. However, whilst trying to avoid going to a party the other night I did organise my hair bits and pieces. (And I ended up making myself go to the party. The party was good and it was good to get out of the house.)

My hair bits and pieces live in every nook and crannie of my house. Open a handbag - there is a bobby pin. Look in a drawer - there is a hair tie... and every time that I try to clean a room a start a new place for them, fully intending to amalgamate them with my existing stashes. It never happens. The stashes then get joined by a variety of other sundry items.

The time was now to make a master box. One that would house and sort different bits. A box that could be moved easily to a different room. Here's what I did:

First I obtained a sectioned box. It looks like a fishing tackle box.



Then I assembled my main hair stuff hidey holes.



Lastly I filled the box with the hair related stuff.



The sundry things that had accumulated with the hair bits have been roughly sorted and put in my bedroom for later sorting. I now know where safety pins have been when I have been looking for them any time in the past few years...

The organisey box still looks like a tackle box. Any ideas on how to pretty it up?

But....

Given that I have already posted about health and time it would have been logical to post about stuff today (indeed that was my oh so obvious plan) but... some things have come up.

Firstly, last week I got a cold accompanied by mammoth and unrelenting amounts of coughing. Secondly, yesterday as I was being oh so good and walking down to the gym I tripped on some rubble and twisted my ankle. My ankles are weak as poorly made tea. Sometimes the get injured by a strong breeze.

I know this isn't at all interesting and I'm not going to waste your time whinging about it, but what was interesting (to me at least) was the way I used these things as an excuse to do nothing. Sure the coughing made it hard for me to do cardio, but I could have easily blasted through organising my stuff. My ankle isn't so bad. I know my useless little ankle well enough to know I need to stay off it and let it heal so I don't make it worse, but I could have worked my torso and arms at the gym, or even at home. I could have been sorting stuff while firmly planted on my derriere...

But I didn't. I used it to justify taking a holiday from my goals. A holiday which was in reality pretty boring.

So, now that I am reflecting on this I am going to try to be more aware of when I am just making excuses to get out of doing things.
What kind of excuses do you allow yourself to make to stop yourself from getting out there and achieving your goals and what techniques do you use to overcome them and get back on track?

Time

For someone who has spent the last six years in the nine to five, having no commitments work or school wise for periods of longer than four weeks is very strange. Over my Summer holidays I have already worked for about three months and traveled for one. I have been back in the country for about two weeks now, in that time I have done very little.

Strangely having very little to do seems to be a challenge when it comes to trying to organise a routine. When stepping off the plane I had visions (possibly a side effect of the blood rushing back into my body after being squeezed in my seat for so long) of getting right back into my circadian rhythms and having productive days filled with checking things off my to do lists.

The reality has been more to the tune of struggling to get out of bed because I have nothing pressing to do. Once I do get out I have little motivation to do anything, I may have a very leisurely breakfast... sometimes photographing it. Maybe go to the gym if it takes my fancy, which it usually doesn't. Perhaps do some house chores... this is a sign of how little I have to do, usually house work is the last thing I would think to do, ever.

If I decided to think very positively I would tell you that my sudden input into the cleaning of the house is a good use of my time and I should keep it up. I might go with that... it sounds pretty good.


Goal

At this stage I am going to aim just to get my sleeping under control.

The mighty inter-webs tells me I should get 7-8 hours per night. I'm thinking I should get up at 7am, generally the time my partner gets up when we are in the same place, he can be my unknowing encouragement, which means I need to go to bed around 11pm.

I'm going to see if I can stick to this for a week. If I can then I will add some more structure to the rest of my days.

Health

The plan

I have about a month until classes start back at uni. Until then I am footloose and fancy free and able to spend as much time as I please getting into some good healthy habits. I want to make changes that I will be able to sustain once I go back, so they are still going to be on the small side.

As most plans for improving general health do, my plan focuses on diet and exercise.


Diet

As per my last post my main issues with diet is take-away food and sweets. I am also a bit of a comfort eater so if anything is a bit stressful or I'm not feeling great, I quick as a flash reach for a pack o' something.

So here my goals are:

1. To cook more healthy meals at home. I am aiming to allow myself three meals out per week.
2. To cut down on snack and packaged foods.
3. To reduce the portion size of my meals and ensure I eat the regularly.

Last week I hadn't put this plan into effect but was trying to watch what I ate. I had mixed results. When my mid was on the task I had some small healthy meals.

Here is one day in photos. There is no dinner because I went down for a nap at about 6pm and didn't wake up until the next morning. I'm guessing I was catching up on sleep I missed when I was flying home from holidays.

Breakfast: Muesli - about 40g, Yoghurt - a lot, pineapple, apricot, lychees, diluted orange juice, 'bojenmi' herbal tea. This was actually far too much for me to eat, gonna have to scale it down moving forward.


Snack: Corn thin, humus, cucumber, tomato, grated carrot. The corn thins and humus were both out of a packet but I might as well use up what I already have in the fridge right? Luckily my fridge doesn't contain ice-cream, chocolate or anything else likely to derail me too heavily.



Lunch: Bagel, tofu burger, tomato, lettuce.



Exercise

My plan for exercise could be boiled down to 'do some'. I currently do very little physical anything.

I have a gym, of which I am a member, 15 minutes walk from my house. Before last week I had gone maybe three times in the two months I have been a member. My goal; minimum three times a week. I'm going to give myself the added flexibility here that a very physical activity like rock climbing or kayaking can be substituted. Hey, it could happen...

Last week I met the goal. Tuesday morning I walked to the gym then did a Yoga class, then came to the realsation that I am very average at yoga.
Thursday I walked to the gym and did the 'fatburner' class ... which it turns out is a step class. I was red faced and panting by the end of it.
Saturday I walked to the gym (again) and did a personal training session. We wrote up a program and ran through about a third of it, one rep of each exercise rather than the three I should do. It was still a lot for me to do. Red face made another appearance.

Renovators dream

I lead a charmed life. I am incredibly lucky to have amazing friends and family, amazing individuals who are there for me. I was also lucky enough to be born in a wealthy country and have all of my needs met and then some.

The areas of my life that need a little tarting up are all areas where I have let the team down. Mainly due to my lack of motivation and inability to see anything through to completion some things have gotten out of hand. There are other things where I never developed the skills I needed and I am feeling it now.

So rather than do the sane thing and work on one thing to completion and move on to the next I am going to attempt to make incremental change to a variety of issues.

Health

My doctor informs me that at 28 I have the lungs of a 40 year old.
I am a vegetarian with high cholesterol.
I am made predominantly made of a marshmallow like substance commonly known as fat. It has collected in an oh so flattering belt around my mid section. I have a hunch that this is because I do no exercise and live on take out and sweets... I could be wrong...

Using the Body Mass Index (as a guide only, flawed as it is) I am on the cusp of normal and overweight. At around 173cm I currently weigh 76kg. I would like to get down to around 70kg which places me closer to the middle of normal.



Time

I can never find the time to do all the important things in my life because I'm too busy wasting it. I can't find the time to study (I'm a student) but somehow manage a disgusting amount of television and other various things that avoid actually doing anything.

I don't really have a routine.

I have piles of dreams and lists of things I need or want to do, but I lose them as quickly as I lose the motivation to start the first item on them.


Stuff

My belongings are a mess. Half in overflowing boxes, the other half bulging out of storage spaces that lack any semblance of order.

I have a lot of things, probably a lot of wonderful things, but I don't use them because I don't know what I have or where it is.