Hurdle, trip, fall...

Wowzers, it’s been a while for my update! Apologies to anyone holding on for this to be posted (yes this means you, Josh), a few internet mishaps have prevented me from posting this earlier.

The past week was certainly filled with highs and lows. Highs being that I reached my first checkpoint of losing 5kg! Woohoo! I was ecstatic when I hit this milestone, however it was short lived when I remembered that I still have another 25 of the bastards to shake. They seem to hang around like a drug deal gone bad. But 5kg was still 5kg less that I had on me, and that had me feeling preeeetty bloody good.

What I also encountered during this week was my first real hurdles – a gift of chocolate cake, Friday after work drinks and a friend’s birthday dinner at a dumpling house. Oh God.

So I rocked up to work on the Friday, feeling like death warmed up. My only solace on this morning was my glorious coffee which was only scraping the surface of the shit that I didn’t give. A wonderfully evil colleague of mine – WELL aware of my current journey – had purchased me a treat that I stumbled upon whilst cursing the day ahead. There it was in all its glory – a piece of chocolate cake with chocolate ganache icing. It may as well have been a proposal, because there’s a slight chance I may have whispered “I love you” to the cake. No one was here to witness this though, so my reputation of not being a crazy cat lady remained intact. At a moment of weakness, I gave in to the cake and had my way with it. I know how inappropriate it is to talk like this about food, but you have NO idea of how much I love cake. It’s almost single-handedly the reason why people may second guess if I am “with child” when I am in fact “with fat”.  Thinking I was alone, I delved into that cake like I hadn’t eaten in months. To my horror – mid treat with icing all over my hands and face – I looked to my left to see another colleague of mine staring at me through the front door. I swear by the look on his face you’d think he saw me murder someone. Anyway, cake was devoured. Lard arse food – 1; Jemma – 0.

As Friday came and went, I was super excited for Friday afternoon drinks. Although a little put off by my boss informing me that a glass of wine was 5 weight watchers points (you’re allowed 26 a day), I was ready to have a quiet drink with friends and head on home…

Fail. This health-conscious approach was quickly abolished when I arrived and went straight to the wine list and looked at the bottle prices. Please note: I am not an alcoholic as this was shared with my best friend. Both bottles, that is. The vodka, lemon, lime & bitters however I drank on my own, because I’m a disgusting mess with no self control. Needless to say the night wrapped up at midnight and included a maccas run. In my drunken state I convinced myself that ordering a seared chicken deluxe burger and six chicken nuggets was SO much healthier than ordering chips and a coke and even proceeded to make a public comment along these lines. I had certainly now established myself as a horizontally challenged idiot who needs to learn when to put the bottle down.  

My next hurdle was my good friend’s birthday dinner at the Brunswick Social. Preparing myself all day to be good with my food at dinner (whilst gorging on cheese-laden tapas and a JUG of sangria) was pretty much a waste of my clearly well conserved energy. Dinner consisted of two rounds of dumplings and BBQ pork/chicken buns, which are little tasty landmines. On at least one occasion I found myself mindlessly gnawing on my third BBQ pork bun without any thought process at all. Well done on tackling your food issues, Jem. I did notice a glance at my bun intake from across the table that I reacted to by looking like a deer in headlights, with half a BBQ bun hanging out of my mouth. I have no idea why men aren’t chasing me. Fortunately my uncontrollable habit of inhaling shared food items was overshadowed by a bartender spilling 10 champagne cocktails all over a group of “Real Housewives” lookalike women. Thank you, bartender, for allowing me to gulp another two dumplings unnoticed during this event.

At the end of dinner, I planned to take a taxi to a friend’s house in New Farm. However as my punishment for eating 430 dumplings, I forced myself to walk to my next venue. Initially I felt good about this plan, however half way in I realised the walk was muuuch longer than I remembered.. and I was in 3 inch heels. Serious regret. My inner bigger bogan was fighting to take my shoes off and walk barefoot while my chubby classy self was begging me to suffer through the walk. As it was only 9pm and I had already reached my “drunken slob” quota for the week on Friday night, the shoes stayed on. Oh how I hated life. I can now comfortably say that a 2km walk in heels is NOT A WORTHWHILE EXPERIENCE. Your will learn NOTHING from this other than walking 2km in heels at 96kg will only wear your heels down to the steel screw. So now I’m a blistered blimp and down $30 from having my shoes re-heeled. Fatty isn’t having fun anymore!

Next week’s big test is Melbourne… Bring on the St Kilda pastries!* Enjoy your week everyone J

*Expect a lot of whinging in next week’s post. 

14 Days Down...

Listen up guys - I am 3.8kg lighter. Yes that's right, I weigh LESS! Now when I walk in a skirt, it stays in place. It no longer rides up, revealing my cottage white thighs that sing "HERE COMES JEMMA!" as I cruise on through. Trust me, that really happens.

This salad was genuinely served without pizza.

So I now weigh 97.8kg. For those of you who just screwed up your nose and turned your head sideways - congratulations, you can add. What I failed to tell you all is that over the Christmas holidays, I added another layer of icing to this already obese cake. At my peak, I topped the scales at a whopping 101.6kg. That's right - I qualified for the Biggest Loser and had three whole digits staring back at me on the scales. It may as well have said "you're killing me, fudgyboomba".

The past two weeks have been surprisingly easier than I expected. I even managed to eat a chicken salad, which wasn't the worst experience of my life.

What I have learnt over the past two weeks is that there are certain things I am completely grateful for and things that I will struggle with while ever my third chin exists:

How I feel I look.

Lorna Jane - I may have had to sign over my first born to be able to afford the bloody tights, but they hold that shit in like it's nobody's business. From someone who always thought all tights were the same, when I put LJ on I feel like a silicone enhanced, bouncy number who's arse doesn't expand simply at the sight of food.

How I actually look.. pastry and all.

Portion control - what the fuck is the point of eating only healthy food AND being limited to the amount I'm allowed to eat?! Thank Christ I get bored of the bloody chaff I'm eating so I keep in line with my portion sizes. Bullshit I say. Buuut, for the sake of widening the smile on my face rather than widening the elastic on my pants, I'll go along with this nonsense.

Heat - part of me loves the heat from the amount of sweat it produces. Basically I've convinced myself that sweltering in the heat is the equivalent of a 45 minute spin class. I'm wrong - but I will NOT be told otherwise. What I was not aware of though was the sweat marks I get under my boobs. It's horrendous. When did I realise these existed? When I was in Rockhampton (38 degrees) and three of my boyfriend's neighbours were weirdly staring at me while I put the rubbish in the bin. I don't know what was weirder - them drinking beer or my boob sweat marks... at 7am.

Capsicum - I can't believe the amount of food and health articles I've read lately that are trying to convince me to eat this devil vegetable. Is it even a vegetable?! All I know is it tastes like shit raw, cooked, grilled, roasted, diced and every other way it's served. Why does it have to be crunchy or sloppy like wet snot?! I hate it. But given the benefits it's allegedly linked to (faster metabolism and sexy drive - yes please!), I'm trying to stick it out. I'm giving yellow capsicum a whirl this week and it better bring its A game..

So there we have it - week two is done AND I've managed to spare the ground from squealing every time I take a step... well squealing a little less at least ;)

Adios amigos!

Week 1

The fact that I'm even posting this is a small miracle. It means that I have survived my first week - woohoo! The best part is that no one within arm's length of me suffered any injuries.. with the exception of my very strict but very patient boyfriend, Vik. You my love, are a legend.

Now since my Moreton adventure, I have only succumbed to one sweet treat. This involved a notorious bucket of malteasers my parents bought me for Christmas. For those who perhaps don't know me that well, this COMPLETELY made my Christmas. SCORE! In light of my goal however, I took the mature approach and left the bucket of goodness in my parents' pantry. What followed after this was anything but mature...

As I summoned up the courage to say goodbye to the wonderful malt treats, I performed a ninja move faster than the speed of light which resulted in four malteasers being consumed. Now if only I could use that agility in my exercise...

Anywho, I ate four malteasers. So sue me. Thinking I had gotten away with it, I triumphantly waddled to my car with my Christmas presents. That's when disaster struck. On my way to the car, I was stung by wasps. Not one, but FOUR. I believe I threw everything I was holding into the air and screamed like I was being murdered, twice, while running and slapping myself all over. A neighbour's child was running past at the time and proceeded to turn around upon viewing my outburst. If that wasn't embarrassing enough, I stomped into the backyard (leaving all of my gifts on the front lawn) demanding ice like I was Lady Gaga. Fortunately Dad promptly gave me ice bricks - such a wonderful (and confused) man - which I then used on my arm, leg and arse. Please note that no one was harmed with the awful sight of me without pants other than my dear Mum. Kudos to her for not dry reaching.

Four malteasers, four wasp stings. Coincidence? I think not. Especially when their target areas were my bulkiest body parts. Either way, the idea of chocolate was absolutely terrifying. Excellent :)

However this week wasn't all bad news. After my last post, I took the bold (and potentially stupid) step of sending this link to all of my Facebook friends. With photos attached :-/ So with one deep breath, the link was up for the world to see. Gulp. What followed was absolutely unbelievable - the outpouring of support and love I received was beyond my wildest dreams. It came from everywhere and everyone, including people that I haven't spoken to in five years! With each Facebook notification there were tears. I was overwhelmed by the response and quickly realised that I had a whole world of support that I didn't even know was there. Props to everyone who responded to my blog - you have no idea of the strength and determination it has given me to see this goal through.

Stay tuned - next week's update is going to be a ripper!

Kick Off..

Apologies for not posting since the kick off - I have just returned from a holiday at Moreton Island. Best way to avoid take away? Stick me on a bloody island where I can't get it!

So here's a catch up from mid December to today... 

Before even starting, I spoke to my doctor about prescription medication for me to drop weight. Awesome work, Jemma. Needless to say he basically laughed at me and said there was no chance he was giving me a script for it (and yes, I'm going to take this as a compliment). Back at square one of "hard work". Boo!

Now in the lead up to January 1, I should have been getting things underway, ready for the shock of removing all forms of sugar and fat from my chubby clutches. No. Not my approach at all. Anything that even resembled junk food was consumed. Yet again, awesome work by me. This was not helped by a grocery order being delivered that included pop tarts and oreos. In my defence though I did not demolish all of these - there are some still in the kitchen! I'll bin those later... :( 

So we arrived at New Years Eve and the countdown began... 

I certainly celebrated my last day of freedom, but not with junk food - with a bottle of vodka. Oh God. This resulted in me having a "nap" on the beach at 11pm only to be woken up at the stroke of midnight to watch fireworks. All I wanted was a bloody cheeseburger, but noooooo.. 

So here it was, January 1, or "D-Day" as I like to call it. Naturally, I was not keen for a bevvy however I did have bacon and eggs for breakfast. I justify this by the fact that I did not eat dinner the night before... just my weight in alcohol (and as we all know, that's a LOT). Things travelled on from there in a very sluggish pace, but at least I can say the only junk food consumed between January 1 and January 4 were 8 squares of chocolate, about 10 m&m's and a time out. Drinks-wise there were two ciders and a few cans of soft drink. Ok so not great... but better than before! Exercise was incidental by way of walking FOREVER to the resort and back twice. I was conned into believing it was only a 15 min walk. THIS WAS A LIE. It was about 1,000 degrees and all of the sand was soft... oh, and the walk was about 30 minutes each way. So yes, I am classifying that as a workout! Oh, and why did I do it twice? Second time I had absolutely no choice I promise you! 

So the trip ended with a bunch of flabby 20-something aged guys making reference to me getting bogged in the sand. I'll admit, the comment was somewhat funny but totally pointless when their boobs were on par with mine... ha. Morons. I should have reminded them that it's normal for my chest to cast a shadow on my stomach, not theirs. Ewwww. But, this certainly reinforced why I'm doing this for me. Healthy and happy is the goal, oh and the chance to serve a big, fat piece of humble pie to the haters ;) 

Ciao for now! 

PS: please feel free to pass this blog onto anyone who you think might be interested - if my journey gives at least one person some security and faith that it's possible, I've achieved my goal!