Its really time for me to get back on the bandwagon.
I've been busy with a nutritionist for over a year, and done nothing but gain weight following her rules.

I have high blood pressure, so I take two kinds of medicines for that, and I really want to get off them, even though I doubt that will be possible. But I'm not doing this for that.
I'm doing this for me.
I made up my mind before my birthday.
The day after my 35th birthday, i was gonna get back into gear.
I did a good start, i went back to the gym, and made it through 30 mins of different trainings.
17 mins on the elliptical, 5 on the bike (heart rate doesn't go up too much on a bike for me)
and the rest spent doing different weight lifting.

I felt good afterwards and went home and had a nice lunch.

After having gained 8 kilos while working with my nutritionist, who thinks I need to eat 5-6 slices of bread a day, plus 250 grams of uncooked pasta or rice or two big potatoes. I am done with her, she obviously doesn't care that this is NOT working for me.

So...

I'm going back to what I know works for me and I'm gonna try and keep it up this time.
I'm 35 years old.
I weighed in on Monday at 144 kilos
my measurements:
chest 137cm
waist 128cm
hips 150cm

Maybe by noting this online I'll shame myself enough to keeping up with the new way of eating and living.

Today's breakfast consisted of:

1 banana
1 mandarine
a handful of grapes
and a glass of water

Did 30 mins of exercises including jumping rope, which had me huffing and puffing while trying to keep it up for 20 jumps without tripping on the rope or having it get caught in my hair.

I am now enjoying my lunch.

This includes:
Water with the juice of 1/3 of a lemon squeezed into it
Lettuce, 1 tomato, 2 inches of cucumber, 1 big bunch of cauliflower, 3 multigrain herb crackers, 1 slice of goats cheese, and 3 thin slices of herb chicken filet.

No dressings, no salt or pepper, nothing other than that.

I won't make promises to take pictures of everything I eat, because i tend to eat a lot of repetitive stuff. I only plan on weighing in once a week. Monday mornings... so that I can have NO excuse in the weekend to be bad. I do not plan on keeping to a strict diet, just eating less, choosing healthier foods, and drinking more water and lemon water.

Life is too short to not be able to enjoy something once in a while.
Since I have been working with the nutritionist, a few good things have happened.
I have become more aware of my eating habits. And have gained much more control on myself and my urges to snack for no reason.

I was consoling myself with food, and preferrably the worse it was for me the better. Chocolate, chips, cookies, cake, candy... I'm not talking one piece to stop an urge. No I'm talking, whole bars of chocolate (the BIG ones). Whole bags of candy and chips, WHOLE packages of cookies. I couldn't stop at one, or maybe I could have, but I just didn't want to. Compensating for something missing in my life? Or maybe so tired of putting myself on the back burner that this was the only way I saw to make me feel better.

I used to blame my mom, cause she would always make comments about, do you really need that fourth piece of pizza, or that third helping of this or that... And out of spite, I'd eat it and more. Showing my defiance... it didn't hurt her, aside from seeing me hurt myself. She tried so hard to keep me on a diet, or curb my appetite. I just couldn't deal with it.

I didn't want to deal with it.

All I wanted was the food, cause it made me feel good.

With working with the nutritionist, I had to write down EVERYTHING I put into my mouth, no matter when it was. If I had a cookie after school with the kids, I had to write it down. If I had a piece of a chocolate bar at midnight, I had to write it down. But it wasn't only the writing down the food. It was writing down WHY I was eating it, and how I was feeling.

And 99% of the time, it was because I was bored, lonely, mad or sad...

The other 1% was because it was 'feeding' time for the horde here at home.

I'm not a breakfast eater. I don't know if I ever truly was, but I was brought up with cheerios and milk for breakfast (not the sweet ones though we would secretly add sugar while mom and dad weren't looking - We HATED the plain cheerios, those nasty cardboard tasting things).

I'd rather eat some fruit, or a fruit salad in the morning than deal with bread or cereal of any kind. I know there are people who eat differently, and are going, oh how wrong is that... But it what works for me.

oh... lost my train of thought there...

But anyways...

I'm doing this for me. Not for the husband, not for the kids, not for my friends or family.
But for ME.

I am tired of being tired, of hurting of not being able to walk downtown without feeling like someone broke me. I'm tired of being big and not feeling like I am. Oh don't get me wrong, I KNOW i'm big... but something inside me doesn't feel as big as I am. And that small person inside me wants to come out. I want to be the small person I feel I am. I don't need to be skin and bones skinny, I'll never reach that and that is never my goal. Last year my goal was 50 kilos, this year, its 60, just to get me down to the same goal. I'm not aiming to reach that goal this year or the next, but maybe hopefully by the time I turn 40 I will have some good progress to show.

It took me 35 years to get as big as I am, I know its not possible to shed the kilos quickly. I don't want to either, cause I don't want to have to deal with too many operations afterwards.

I want to be able to enjoy life, and to enjoy my kids and husband. To be able to share their experiences and not feel like I'm 103.

This is my new start, and I want it for me.

I'm a bad food addict and I know it, and I'm learning a new way of dealing with my need for bad foods.

So deal with my randomness and cheer me if you want when I win small battles, support me when I lose them. I am a normal person, no super human strength of willpower. I am just me, who wants to change the way I am and the way I eat and live.

The kids must just love getting such cool lunches. I'd be jealous of I was a classmate!

Lunch t'day was tamagoyaki, rice, kimchi and a tofu burger. I've had so much energy today for some reason. Just bouncing off the walls. Literally! Dancing in the house. I suppose I outta put that to good use and actually clean some! HUOH!

Kristel's bento, snack cucumber, babybel, egg, laughing cow cheese, mini sushis, nuts, mini chocobar and shaped onigiri.

Judy's bento, the same as Kristel's.



My bento consists of snack cucumber, 2 eggs, mini sushi, onigiri with umeboshi, babybel and a laughing cow cheese and last but not least, ingredients for a bowl of miso soup, wakame seaweed, tofu, and spring onions. I found this awesome package of premade miso soup stuff so i'm gonna buy more, it makes it easy for me to enjoy one of my favourite soups.


Kees' bento has mostly the same as mine, minus the soup. He has no way to make soup, so I gave him nuts and cranberries and sweet red peppers instead.

Three months? have we really been doing this that long?
My bentos started repeating long ago, and now that my work schedule will be slowing down a bit i can get back to the real important things in life.

I made sushi tuesday evening for dinner, and it turned out good, even if it was just the cucumber avocado version.

Oh and the fake crab stuff can be frozen, i wish i had seen that on the package BEFORE it went bad.

Off to make Kees his lunch for tomorrow.
I even made TINY bento sized sushi, using only half a sheet of nori. they were CUTE, almost like the ones from the sushi place.

No more pictures from me unless the bento is exceptional. I've made enough different meals that they are beginning to repeat now and that's just boring. I have done VERY well sticking to my working out and more responsible eating. Since the promise was made to work out at least 5x a week for 15mins+ in March, I have not missed a single week and my workouts are always 30+ minutes. I have been wearing my extreme low-rise 'goal pants' comfortably outside the house for a month now and my pants size is a steady 36 (USA size 6) so long as it isn't a 36 skinny-fit pants. I hold the bulk of my fat in my thighs and lower legs, so I'd still like to trim up quite a lot there. I have cankles, it's so very sad.

All in all, bentos and exercise have been quite a success for me. I'm far more fit and much more happy in general.

Here's to the next 3 months on plan!

Potato salad and vegetarian sausage with a bowl of special K.

There was no bento Sunday because we went to Metropolis, and nothing photogenic Saturday because I had just packed up leftover BBQ hamburgers for our 60km bikeride. We got soaked to the bone on that ride, but it was still fun. Good practice for getting drenched camping soon.

South Central above and below is one of the typical festival fellas, wearing a wizard hat and holding Kermit.

Mashed potatos and 3x ikea kottbullar with lingonberry sauce. Some roggebrood and tahina. Cheese and dried sweet potato.

Yesterday was mini pizza and spinich wraps.

And it wouldn't be 4th of July without a BBQ and boom sticks :)

Somen & tamagoyaki plus spinach wraps! Simple is nice. I'm all bloat right now and wish mother nature would just go ahead and visit! My butt is still sore as heck too!