Getting back on track: writing, blogging and the Fab Fatties Challenge #2
I have been back at work for nearly a year now (I started back at the beginning of July).
In that time I have written almost nothing, submitted absolutely nothing (despite having several pieces either ready and waiting or just about ready to submit), have blogged very little, have gained about five kilos, have had one miscarriage and have not (since then) gotten pregnant.
One of the reasons I haven't been blogging much is that people at work might read it (being in a web team is quite different that way, as it turns out, to being in a communications team). Not that I mind if they do, exactly, it's just that there are things one usually doesn't talk about at work - trying to get pregnant, for instance - that one might blog about ad infinitum.
Feel free to read. Feel free to comment. Don't talk to me (or preferably anyone else) about it at work. At least, not if it's something you think I wouldn't talk about at work. Like trying to get pregnant - not always something that's good for one's career, though it's not politically correct to say so. But I learned that the hard way last time.
Also - some notes for anyone new to the blog, eg, someone from work:
- it took me 17 cycles and one miscarriage to conceive Mikaela.
- I only have one ovary.
- my mum started going through menopause before she hit 40.
- my sister took four years to produce her beautiful son
- I am 37, Chris is nearly 41...
So just because I'm trying to get pregnant, doesn't mean I'm going on maternity leave any time in the next year. Or ever. Just so we're clear.
Now, back to the point of this post, which is not that it's seven months since my miscarriage and I'm not pregnant, despite being convinced that May was the month it would happen. Nor about the lack of blogging lately.
No, it is about the fact that I've put on about five kilos since I started back at work.
There are a few reasons for this - too much junk food at work and not enough exercise being high on the list - but the main one is that I lost my focus.
I got back down to my goal weight of 63kg early last year.** I had a health check within a month of starting work that determined that my healthiest weight range is something like 62-66kg. All good. And then I started trying to get pregnant again. And then I got pregnant again. And then I had a miscarriage. And somewhere in there I told myself I could eat whatever I liked (ie lots and lots of chocolate) because obviously I deserved it.
Yes, I have issues around food and deserving and comfort and anger and self image and shame and probably all sorts of other things. As I'm sure have blogged before,*** I took a long time to acknowledge any of this, let alone to acknowledge that I was overweight, still less that I cared. I was a feminist. And we feminists don't care what we look like, do we? Right...
Actually it was two things that snapped me out of it. It was realising (shortly after Liam was born), that I was unhealthily overweight (and I was, trust me on this, I'm not talking putting on five kilos here), and also that that was not okay now that I was a mother, and realising that however much I pretended not to notice or care, other people just had to look at me to know I was unhealthily overweight. I was fooling no-one.
Despite all this, now that I am back to an ordinary sort of weight I have largely gone back to pretending that none of that happened. That I don't have any food/weight issues. That I am, in short, too cool to care.
Well, I'm not. And that is why I am now taking back my focus and my control. It may take me another year to get pregnant (although we've given ourselves a deadline of this December, so lets hope not), or it may never happen. So to say even half consciously to myself (as I have, if I'm honest, been doing) that I can wait till after the next baby's been born to get back on track is ridiculous. It is self-delusion.
Food tracking, I've discovered, is my best defence against over-eating. So food tracking is what I will do. And to jump start myself, I am signing up for the Fab Fatties Challenge #2 - there are about five hours left to sign up, but if you do, make sure you tell them I sent you so I get me some 25 points in the challenge!****
The challenge goes for two weeks from today (May 29) and involves the following - all of which I am going to try to do every day (except the one about not drinking 'soda pop' since I don't do that anyway).
- Eat 5 servings of fruits and vegetables daily- 5 points
- Drink 8 glasses of water a day- 8 points
- Exercise- 1 point per minute
- Do a random good deed- 5 points
- Stop drinking soda pop for a day- 1 point
- Actually read someone else’s blog post and leave a comment- 1 point
- Answer [their] Fab Fatties random bonus questions about [them]- 5 points
-Bonus questions will be posted daily on [their] blog. - Recommend 2 fabulous friends from twitter and tell us why we should follow them- 2 points
- Eat a healthy breakfast-1 point
- Lose weight- 1 point per pound
- Keep a food journal for the day- 5 points per day
- Take a walk during you lunch break- 5 points
- Have a friend join this challenge- 25 points per friend
-make sure your friend tells us you recruited them!
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*I've probably said this before, I'm just a little paranoid and still haven't come to terms with this weird collision of offline-personal, work, and online lives that facebook has created.
**Back down not from all the weight I gained during pregnancy - though there was some of that - but from all the weight I gained while trying and failing to become pregnant beforehand.
***But it was a loong time ago, before categories, let alone tagging, when I still did each entry by hand in dreamweaver, and I can't find it.
****And thanks to Food Food Body Body which is where I discovered the challenge.


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