My big walk up The Mount today

It's been about 4 years or more since I last walked up Mount Maunganui, and a friend mentioned some time back that it had been 15 years since she last walked up. We decided that we needed to fix that, so set a date to head on up.

After a few false starts, what with very little walking being done lately, tummy bugs in both families and a neck injury on my part, we finally got to do our walk today!

It was with great dread that we drove to The Mount, both joking about dying, leaving our funeral instructions with someone etc. We were also very excited about the Copenhagen Cone's we were going to treat ourselves to when we got back to the bottom.

It went so much better than either of us expected, neither of us died and we even felt energetic enough to skip/jump occasionally on the way back down.

Here is our journey in pictures:

Weigh in Day - Success!

Looking back towards town from under the bridge

Happy Friday Everyone!!

Well I weighed in today and was very pleased with the result.

Down to 89.7kg! So a loss of 300g but also lighter than I have been in way over a year (including pregnant time, but still)

View from under the Harbour Bridge where we ended up
on our walk.

So since the first day I weighed in, I have now lost 6.3kg, with a couple of weeks of going back up again. I have also been having recurring "tummy" issues since having Amber, which is not helping with the weight loss. This appears to be coming right finally so that should help speed things up. Sorry if you didn't need to know that, but I'm all about the sharing!

Mr Grumpy Pants eating his morning tea
and not impressed at being in the pram!

Pram tyres are all pumped up now, so got in a nice big proper walk earlier this week with a friend, and am planning on going for another this afternoon if both my kids cheer up a bit!

Emotional Eating

Since I have had nothing much to post about recently, I haven't been on here a whole lot. Have had a grizzly, teething baby with a cold and now an upset tummy to contend with, along with a cold myself and hideous weather, so not much walking has been done by me lately.
I did manage a 13km walk early in the week so at least that's something!

The weigh ins' were getting me down. I cut out chocolate, I'm walking further than ever, downsized my portion sizes and yet the weight is still either staying the same, or in some cases, going up again. So I decided not to weigh myself for a few weeks. One can get pretty obsessed with      the scales, as I have found in the past

It has been 2 weeks today since I have had any chocolate, which I must say, makes me damn proud of myself. However it does bring me to discuss one thing. Emotional Eating. This is something that I have struggled with ever since I was 11. I remember the exact moment my "eating issues" started. I was at a demonstration for "Clogging" (Mock away, I don't care) and my Nana, who was my teacher, lifted up my skirt in front of everybody, to pull my top down so it was tidy, told me I have gained too much weight and needed to lose it again.

Now this is something that no one wants to hear, but especially not an 11 year old already impressionable girl. And even more so, not from your own Nana!!! It wasn't the first, or last, time she said something to this accord, but it was the time that affected me the most.

From then I was always convinced that I was fat. Even though at a lot of the time when I was younger, I was nothing of the sort. But there you go. So for the following 17 years to now, if I am sad, I eat. If I am angry, I eat. You get the idea. There is the obvious suggestions, don't have the bad food in the house, do something to distract yourself. But I have had days where (pre-baby) I decide I want a burger and chips, and it doesn't matter what anyone says, I will have my burger and chips. I even recall having fights with my hubby, who while would never tell me I need to lose weight or anything, will very nicely tell me that "WE" shouldn't really have takeaways for a 3rd time that week, but it didn't matter, I would have my takeaways, enjoy it for all of 5 minutes then spend the rest of the day feeling like crap and very disappointed in myself.

Having a baby changes a lot of this though. It's not so easy to just drop everything and drive to get some fatty goodness. And I have to say I have found that it hasn't been too hard to just not have naughty food in the house. So now I think the main time I am going to have to watch myself is buying naughty food when I am out, eg at lunchtime while in town. And if I am being totally honest with myself, this is not an "emotional" kind of eating rather than a habit. Something I am going to have to break if I am going to lose weight.

Cutting out chocolate has to be a good start. From here I am going to aim to start cutting down my sugar intake in general, but chocolate was definitely the biggest problem for me at the moment.

So that is enough of my rambling for one day. The sun has just come out and so I might make the most of it and get out for a walk while my baby is still sleeping. Any feedback/pointers regarding emotional eating are most welcome :)

Happy SUNday :)
Nikki

First 5 days with no chocolate down and did my biggest walk yet yesterday!

Well haven't had any chocolate since Sunday night and its now Friday night, go me!
Yesterday I attempted my first big walk in 2 weeks and my first walk of any kind in a week after being sick. I did my biggest walk so far! Managed 11.5 km and felt like I could have carried on but had my baby with me who had been sitting in his pram for 3 hours and was starting to get fairly over it. Who can blame him really? Anyway felt pretty good afterwards, and today felt fine too.

Am planning to get out for a big walk again on Sunday, if the weather gods play nice that is! This time I will go by myself and not have a grizzly, teething baby riding in a pram with flat tyres. Can only be good resistance training though I suppose!

Another challenge to add to the walking...

So as of Monday I am going to attempt to not eat chocolate for 12 weeks.... A HUGE challenge on my part as I really do love chocolate! It was meant to be just until the half marathon in 8 weeks, but what's another month, which will bring me to 12 weeks and the 1st of September. A good date I think.

So I have half a block of Whittakers Bittersweet dark chocolate sitting in the fridge right now and I am tossing up wheather to scoff the lot before Monday, or be strong and put it away somewhere, or just give it to my husband to eat for me. Really I shouldn't eat it at all.

I have had a friend who has decided to join me on this crusade against chocolate. Although she lives no where near me I'm sure we can keep on at each other via Facebook and MSN.

So this time in 8 weeks I will be in Taupo having an early night in preparation for walking my first ever half marathon. I'm pretty nervous about the whole thing now, 8 weeks isn't a very long time when I am feeling more than a little unprepared. But I have seen many a training guide for half marathons that are over an 8 week period, so it is obviously do-able and I am walking half the distance already... Long as there are no more set backs and I get rid of my mini cold (really I'm just tired with a sore throat) then I should be sweet. My dad has offered to go for a walk with me tomorrow to push me on and push the pram for me so I can work on walking minus my child attachment, as I won't be pushing a pram on the day so may as well get used to it.

Thats all for today, I am going to have an early night I think. Have added a couple of photos of my last walk since I just realised I can actually load photos on here!!

Good night all
Nikki