Ran like a mother

I ran the Mother's Day classic last Sunday.  The warm up by the organisers was harrowing.  I did not need "The Wind Beneath My Wings" to get me in the mood.  All it did was make me feel fragile.  But I did run my personal best time: 29:37.  This was my ultimate goal - to run the 5K in under half an hour.  So I can tick that one off.  I did learn a couple of things though.  Don't forget to train on uneven surfaces.  I lost heaps of time on uneven surfaces because I was too busy looking down and worrying I'd twist my ankle and be unable to finish.  Thus now I have incorporated uneven surfaces into my training.  Including running on sand this last Tuesday (brrr) and running on the grass next to my favourite running path from time to time.  However ultimately I was beaten by both other mothers I am friends with.  So game ON sisters!  Have to beat them at the next run!  End of the Month we have the Bulli Burn 5K run so I want to compete in that too!
The other thing I learnt in that race is I am too polite.  I need to not let people pass me so easily - especially not kids running who then run so close in front you can't run normally.  No more Miss Nice Runner!
Yesterday I logged my first ever 10K run.  It felt so good.  I could easily have kept going but had to get to a birthday party so had to stop and come home.  I actually thought it felt better than 5K runs.  Have to think about that one.  Maybe my extra fat is helpful for that?  I may have a healthy waistline and BMI now but I still have some "junk in the trunk" I carry around.  My time wasn't bad either.  Not too far from simply double my 5K best.  I am thinking that therefore my body has been lying to me that it is at peak performance on my 5K runs.  Lying liar!
Already planning my next run...

Work update

I made tenure!  I am a real bona fide academic now!
My boss was very very impressed with my teaching and unit feedback.
I got all exceeded expectations.
Very happy right now.

The beginning of Running

So I run.  I run 3 to four times a week.  I want to get it up to 6 times a week but it is hard with kids, work, PhD and other life obligations.
The reason I started running was to get fit and to lose the baby weight.  Particularly since the last baby was (when I started running) 3 1/2 years old.   I had pretty much gone up a size for each pregnancy.  Lucky for me that was only from an 8 to a 12 - two babies.  Two healthy happy boys.
Me on the other hand not so much in the healthy happy zone.  I was getting acid reflux, my blood pressure (BP) drifted back up again to pre-hypertension crossing over to full hypertension.  I got tachycardia and arrhythmia.  My doctor acknowledged that although I wasn't grossly overweight that losing 5 kgs would do a lot to fix me up.  So I did nothing for another 12 months.
BC (before children) I used to go to the gym.  Not religiously but frequently enough that I kept a base level of fitness.  I did gain weight in Canada (hello deep fried food and excessive drinking and unhappiness) but I shifted it off within 6 months of getting back to Oz.
After Child 1 I went back to the gym.  I was going fairly regularly even into my second pregnancy.  But the doctor's pulled the plug on it when my BP shot up.  (By the way exercising when not pregnant is highly recommended for lowering blood pressure - running has really smashed this problem - but exercise with high BP during pregnancy when baby is having growth retardation is NOT recommended). But after baby 2 came along I couldn't get to the gym.  It became too hard.  Not just because there were 2 kids but also because I went back to work part time when baby was 3 months old.  Then I got guilts.  I would feel guilty if I did go and put them in the creche because I was always putting them in care so I could work or study for my Masters.  I wasn't actually but that is sure what it felt like.  And it felt indulgent. Like it was me being selfish when my babies needed me.  I wasn't earning money by putting them in the creche I was just... exercising.   And you can exercise for free right?
I had a jogger pram that carried 2 kids easily.  But although I had good intentions and even tried during my depressive stage to go out and walk with them it rarely happened.  One time early on I nearly popped my c-section just trying to get down my driveway.  The rest of the walk was pure misery as it hurt to push up hill and everywhere is hills where I live!
Another time it rained so hard my kids got soaked through.  Not good.
So I stopped trying to walk with them.  Am not sure in hindsight why I didn't do what everyone else does and go down to the beach paths for a walk?  I can't remember.  Maybe it was too hard when the baby was little and then the eldest decided he wasn't a baby anymore and therefore didn't need a pram.
I vaguely tried to diet and sporadically exercised.  Even buying a treadmill.  But nothing stuck and nothing came off weight-wise (and that is very depressing).
Then I saw another mum from a playgroup I used to go to posting about her Couch to 5KM progress on facebook.  Then I saw another mum doing it too.  At first I thought " Easy for them, they don't work!  Show me a fit mum and I'll show you a stay at home mum! "  But it sat and burbled in my head.
Then I got an iPhone and I downloaded the C25K app that these mums were using.  I donned my expensive cross trainers and my best sports bra and I started the run/walk program.
Wow am I unfit I realised and also - this IS doable.  In the second week I got sick, or work got in the way and I stopped.   Then I restarted thinking I could make this work.  And I kept at it.  Even when I didn't like it, even when I was sick.  I have hardly skipped a single week now.   The beauty of running is it is over in 30 minutes.  All done and back to work, back to study, back to kids.
My husband set up his bike on a trainer so often we ran/rode together in front of a DVD (highly highly recommended).  You still watch crap but you don't eat crap and you get fit together.  Great for the marriage I tell you!

As this is as much about running as it is about losing weight I need to explain how the 10 kgs I have now lost have come off.  Running alone didn't do it.  I had already figured out that to lose weight I also needed to count calories/kilojoules.  So I found a recommended app for that myfitnesspal and started logging all I ate.  Oh.  That is why I struggled to lose weight.  It was amazing how often I simply ate more than maintenance.  Certainly more than I should to lose weight.  Plus it also showed me that if I exercised I could eat more than my allocated 1200 calories.  More importantly if I exercised I could still eat an icecream and drink a glass of wine at night and lose weight.  Not at any great rate that would make headlines in a women's magazine.  I am convinced these indulgences played an important psychological role.   I didn't feel I was "dieting" and got to mellow out.

Hence my philosophy of there are no bad foods, just some foods aren't worth the effort of burning off or earning.  I have seen running singlets that say "I earn my chocolate one step at a time", but for me I want to earn my icecream, wine and hot chips one step at a time!

And that is how I started to run and how I ended up losing 10 kilograms.

Don't call me baby

My youngest child hates babies.  A lot.  Unlike his older brother who actually has some experience of babies in the house he most definitely does not want a younger brother or sister.  Which is convenient as I don't want to be pregnant ever again.  Or have a newborn.  And especially do not want a toddler ever again.  A 6 year old and a 4 year old are good enough for me thank you very much.  So this means my baby is no longer a baby.  I will never ever have another baby!  What a strange thought.  At least 80% of that thought is relief and 10% sadness and 10% weirdness.
They play nicely together (ok most of the time) now.  This has taken four years! Four years!  For most of that I wondered at everyone's advice that every child should have a sibling where possible.  I thought it was a great big conspiracy because how is it not harder at every point to have more than one child?  Now I know.  But only when they play nicely together.
It still is hard.  Don't get me wrong.  And sometimes them playing nicely together drives me just as crazy as them fighting (oh my goodness the noise, the obsession with bodily functions and parts!).  But it is so lovely when they skip along together giggling as they get into some mischief or another together.
They are brothers.  That's why.
Love how at this age a great holiday is a trip to Canberra by car then a visit to the zoo and then back to a hotel.  They loved the hotel.  Of course I chose a suite so they had a room together separate from ours and most importantly an indoor heated pool.  They played in the water for hours!  Then quick shower change into clothes and a visit to the bar where they had apple juice with ice and parents had a glass of chardonnay.  Dinner at hotel (blessed be kids menus) restaurant then up to bed.  Asleep by 8PM.  Next day we went to the war memorial which is also a museum (my boys are army mad) and a hands on discovery centre where the kids play in a submarine, a trench and a helicopter.  Then fuel up on petrol and McDonalds and drive home.  They both agree it is a perfect holiday.
And now back to marking.

Running For My Mother

I am recruiting friends who run for the Mother's Day Classic local run.  These runs are obviously run on Mother's Day (here in Australia that is second Sunday in May).  They are to celebrate Mother's Day and to raise funds for breast cancer research.  My mother died in 2006 from breast cancer related complications.  This year Mother's Day also falls on her birthday (her 77th birthday).  So it seems a really good day for me to run in her memory.
Mum had a hard life in many ways.  Her father died when she was 6 years old, leaving my grandmother a single mum of 6 children, my mother was the second youngest.  As this happened in 1940s Australia the support for my grandmother was not always the best but this was compounded by her having too much pride to accept financial aide from others (including her Church).  My mother was bitter about this, but strangely often was the same herself.  I am bitter about my mother's pride that prevented her from asking for help (financial and other) and I wonder if I am the same?  I don't feel I am and often struggle to understand this kind of pride in others.  Even in the brief times that I have not worked and been supported by my husband (or boyfriend at the time) I haven't felt constrained or trapped or obligated in any way.  Naturally I pulled my weight around the home but that is just a logical thing to do.  He worked, I kept house.  Still I must remember to ask my children when they are grown into adults if they resented my inability to ask for assistance?!!
My parents divorced when I was 6 years old (yes I am keeping an eye on the Universe - my eldest is 6) and my mother never re-partnered.  Like many single mothers who don't re-partner she worked.  In her case, she continued to work.  My parents were radical in the 1970s - even for South Australia - my father was a stay at home dad and my mother who was a professional (school teacher) went back to work.  She worked in the Catholic system even though she was brought up a Seventh Day Adventist.  When my father left us for the last time (I think my mother shut the door to him returning) and they divorced my mother continued to work - now becoming that increasingly common late 70s early 80s phenomena - the single working mother.  There are three of us - so it could not have been easy.

Mum was lucky that her work coincided with our schooling so holidays weren't a nightmare for her.  However she pretty much did it on her own.  I have memories of a few weekends at dad's and the odd week in the school holidays but that ended anyway when we moved from South Australia to New South Wales in 1983.  The idea of the inter-state move was to get closer to my mum's family for their support but it didn't ever really happen.  In fact in hindsight it was a foolish move.  Her family didn't help her out, our schooling was interrupted and dislocated (for example I ended up being too young to go to high school and had to repeat year 6 - the principal in my new school in NSW didn't factor that in when he kept me in the grade I had been in in SA despite the fact I was well over a year younger than my fellow students) and she sold our house and couldn't afford to buy here in NSW in a suburb that was "nice enough".  Thus the family lost its only asset and gained... well a hybrid NSW/SA accent.

Then in the mid-80s she was diagnosed with breast cancer.  She still had three kids in high school then so she was quite scared of the outcome.  For whatever reason surgery was chosen and she lost her right breast and a fair bit of tissue up into the arm pit.  They stuck her on tamoxifen which seemed to work.  Although I was in Year 8 my brothers were in Year 11 and 12  (let us face it, I was also the girl) so I was the one that ran the household, cooking, cleaning, shopping and visiting her in hospital.  Famously bringing in her clothes except for her underwear for her to wear home.  My brothers didn't visit her in hospital AFAIK but I did and I brought her flowers and trashy novels to read and talked to her until I got kicked out.  I probably talked about the boy next door who I had a crush on but who asked my other best friend out and not me (a story that I could repeat ad nauseum up until I met my now husband - who incidentally tried to chat up my best friend first before realising that it was the short red head who had the brains i.e. me).  I then arranged for mum to be picked up and driven home by a helpful neighbour and continued to run the house until mum got better.

And mum did get better but work got harder and harder for her.  Eventually when I was in Year 10 she stopped working full-time and switched to casual teaching work.  This made finances quite tight.  This pattern continued until the landlord in the Blue Mountains jacked up the rent one too many times and mum now being on a pension was able to move into a housing commission rental house.  By then I had moved out of home and so had the middle child.  So mum and my eldest brother moved to the Shoalhaven where she lived out the remainder of her life on the pension in a housing commission house.

In the late 90s a doctor somewhere along the way took mum off the tamoxifen saying the cancer was gone and there was no need.  The cancer came back a second time when my husband and I moved to Canada in late 2000 (I made a trip home to see her and got caught up in 9/11 as a consequence).  They removed it from her collarbone where it had eaten into the bone rendering it fragile with lace-like holes.  After that she could no longer drive or carry heavy objects (including when he was born her first grandson my eldest Ryan) She went back on the tamoxifen and it went back into remission.  To this day I am angry at that unknown doctor for taking her off the tamoxifen because I am convinced she would have remained cancer-free and would as a consequence not lost the ability to drive and hold her grandson.

By the time my first child was born in 2004 mum was showing the costs of her hard life - she had health issues, osteo-arthritis and osteoporosis and a form of Alzheimer's.  We didn't realise it at first but when I got a call in the depths of sleep deprivation with my first child about how the next door neighbour was an axe-murderer and that a nice policeman had shown up to tell her (nice policeman was in fact a TV policeman) I figured that things weren't quite as they should be.  We then spent the next 12 months trying to get her evaluated and housed in an appopriate care facility.  It finally happened when mum was taken to the hospital in an ambulance after calling the police to investigate a murder in her yard.  The hospital kept her for a while and then miracle or miracles a place was found for mum.

At first mum hated it.  And cried when we had to leave after visiting her.  That was awful.  Then we brought her back to her house for a nice Christmas (that I cooked for of course) and I spent most of the day with her in the toilet trying to get her to come out and cleaning up her accidents (for some reason she wouldn't sit down) when I finally got her out she only ate some of the food then went and had a lie-down.  She didn't care about her gifts or the gifts I had bought on her behalf for the family.  It is in my mind the worst Christmas I have ever had.  We took her back to the home early and she was so happy to be back.  She got worse very rapidly after that and soon she was what they call a head on the bed.  She was barley responsive and visits to her involved feeding her and talking about things with little reaction or wondering who the hell Vi and Frank were and whether they had finished building their house (yes in 1967 apparently).  I did get a smile and tears when I told her I was pregnant with child number 2 but then not long after my first child's second birthday we got the call that she was dying.  That the cancer had come back again and this time was causing all sorts of things to shut down. The three of us dropped everything and went to be at her side but she hung on grimly for nearly an extra week.  I got very sick with a stomach virus so stayed home  and my mum chose that night to die.  In fact she waited until she was alone and then she died.

Now 5 years later I will run on her birthday and Mother's Day in her memory.  I hop I run well.

In Loving Memory of Mavis.

Music Woes (Rant)

I love the convenience of digital music.  I really do.   I love random play amongst 1,000s of songs.  I love that I can run and jump and the music never skips a beat (although I recommend turning off "shake to skip" option on your phone).  But I hate how its all tied up.  Let me be clear from the start that what I am talking about is music I legally own - whether purchased the old fashioned way - CDs or purchased electronically from i-Tunes.  Less than 10% of my digital music collection has come from other sources (e.g. someone else's CD for e.g.).  So it seriously seriously annoys me that I do not have complete control over my own music.  I have computers and iPods and iPhones and I want all my music to follow me where I wish.  Without stuffing around.  I just want it to work.  And if I buy a song on my iPhone while out and about I want it to synch to the rest of my music collection without issue.  Why can't mobileme synchronise my music the way it synchs my calendar?  I am not sharing my music, it is mine.  My husband has his.  I have mine.  I may purchase for my children but otherwise it's just mine!
In fact I have 1 bunch of songs that I did not buy and it never ever gives me grief.  Enough to make me STOP doing the right thing and start doing the WRONG thing.
What is also really frustrating is that I am perfectly aware I am not the target of this music industry driven stupidity.  But I am the one that suffers, because I don't have time to figure out ways to get around it I just give up and be frustrated that I can't use my music the way I wish easily.  Meanwhile the targets of this stupidity e.g. teens and 20 somethings are all busily file-sharing and solving these issues and enjoying their illegal music.
Meanwhile I stop buying music because I can't use and get cranky every time I think of it.
So please music industry, just let me use my music effortlessly and I promise not to go to the dark side!

Holding Pattern

So we are back into a holding pattern.  He probably won't have to go back in the next few weeks.  But not definitely not.  He may have to go somewhere else later in this year.  But may not.  I probably can manage my workload and scrape together something for PhD.  But at what cost, for what benefit?
I drove through a red light on my way to work on Monday morning.  Just vagued out as I drove.  I think it is just symptomatic of how stressed I am.  I do dumb things when I am stressed.  Very dumb things.
My skin is terrible and my back is a train wreck.  I think my body is desperately trying to tell me that it is overloaded.
Guess I had better get off and get some sleep then.
Goodnight.

What to do?

So we are at an interesting point in our marriage.   Nothing exciting like affairs or whether to have another baby or even a puppy (no to both thank you very much).  But what to do with two full time careers and one further education course and two young children when one of us has to travel.  Overseas.  For indeterminate amounts of time that promise to be a week and quickly turn into being two weeks or more and rinse and repeat?  For the best part of this year my other half has been away.  I am exhausted.  I am underperforming at work and my PhD.  I have flicked off work that I would normally grab with both hands.  I am simply making no progress with my PhD.  We do have some family support - we fly up my father in law to cover some of the time my husband is away.  But he has his own wife (not my husband's mother - his second wife), his own job and his own life.
The obvious solution, the one implied by senior bosses at my Damien's work, if that I stop working and/or studying.
Thing is I have worked hard to rebuild my career that got seriously derailed 11 years ago by us choosing my husband's work over mine.  I had a great job with great people in a great organisation but my husband was unhappy with his work so when he got offered a job overseas we thought this was a great opportunity for us both.  Particularly when my employer lined up an interview with its sister organisation in the same town; an interview that turned into a job with promotion.  Woot!

As it turned out we arrived just in time for the "tech-wreck" to pop a bubble.  We jumped back but only my husband got his old job back (yes the one he didn't like but this time they offered a promotion).   I tried for ages to get back in but no one was hiring - the market was flooded with tax specialists after the Big Five accounting firms became the Big 4.    Finally I got tutoring work at a university and rebuilt my career including undertaking a Masters of Law, having two children, saying goodbye to my dying mother and becoming the remaining family's matriarch.

Last year I converted all that casual slog for 8 years into a full time job.  This year I was made permanent staff.  Now its on the table to throw it all away.  A second time.

Thing is I don't think I am cut out for stay at home mothering.  I think I would go mad.  As lovely as it sounds to spend my days helping at the local school, taking the kids to sport and cultural activities and planning a household budget (ironically I am crap at budgets despite having several chapters in a financial planning textbook - one reason I work is to work off the guilt of my spending ways!).  I think I couldn't do it for more than a few months, years maximum.  But once the youngest started school and was past Kindy needs mum helpers stage then what?  Rebuild a third time?  Do I have the energy?  Could I do it again?

What to do?  And yes we have talked him changing jobs but it is difficult to find well-paid sciency jobs in our area and I am not sure I want to move.  The other thing I have done is built up a network here - babysitters, neighbours, school mums, friends.  I am not a local but my children will be.

Ah middle class dilemmas.

Management Tools

Managing time is one of the most important things in work life battles as a working, studying mother.  The first thing I recommend you do is work out what you can outsource.  Go ahead.  What can you outsource to your children, your spouse, your mother, your neighbour etc.  Can you afford to pay someone to do some of the million things you have to do?

Is there something else you can cut out so you can afford to pay someone?  Personally I pay for childcare, pay for a cleaner and ironing and my husband turns the kitchen over and helps put the kids to bed.  He also helps with breakfast and making lunches for school.  You have to have serious non-blamey conversations with people about how you need help.  Remember you need help because you are human and you have important things that need doing too.  You really truly can't do everything.  Even I concede this.  And this is the most important part.  Let them do it THEIR way.  Even if it is stupid.  So long as it actually is being done it doesn't matter that it is not how you would do it.  Back off.  If I told you you hung out pants the wrong way you would get huffy but truth is there is almost always more than one way to do everything.  Sure some things need ground rules but if your husband's idea of dinner is chicken nuggets and frozen vegetables  every Tuesday so you can get to a meeting/class/gym and the kids and he eat it then SHUT UP about it.  Actually that is stupid advice.  Don't shut up.  Thank him for it.  Always thank people for helping you.  Always.  Even if it is your spouse doing what you think is something he ought to do anyway.  Words are cheap but they buy so much happiness and inflict so much pain.  Remember focus on your goal - you have work or study (or whatever or both!) to do.  This allows you to get it done.  That is worth much more overall.  Think about it.  

Also dump things you don't need to do that don't make you happy or productive.  Be ruthless.  You don't need to make Timmy's Super-Train-Ben-Pirate birthday cake.  From scratch.  There are other mums out there who would adore to make it and who enjoy making it.  Let them.  Who cares if the kids shirts aren't ironed (ignoring school shirts which do apparently need ironing - who made that rule!)?  No one needs homemade meals every single meal every single day of the year.  Don't take positions that tie up time, mental energy or both with little reward.  Even if you are asked you can say this phrase :Regretfully I cannot take up that position/undertake this task/bend over backwards, but thank you for asking/nominating me.  Practice it so that it sounds sincere and natural (to you too).

Ok enough preaching from me.  I have some marking to do which this nicely helped me avoid.  Oh and one more tip - don't take up Twitter or Blogging...

Not today please I am too busy

A friend of mine describes me as someone who has turned multi-tasking into an extreme sport.  I can go with that imagery.  One thing that my sport of multitasking teaches me is that near enough is quite often quite good enough.  Nothing in life needs to be perfect, not my parenting, not my hair, not my teaching preparation (no such thing anyway) and certainly not my research and writing.

I choose my battles.  I don't care that my son's school uniform shirt is no longer white with a yellow stripe and black colour and is instead a nice multi-coloured smear.  Ok I do care, but not enough to bother trying to fix it.  The shirts come off my son and into the wash where they come out clean but not white.  I don't care that other mothers bake and individually decorate cupcakes for their children to take to school on their birthday (I hired a neighbour to do it).  My son was happy, my son's friends were happy, and I was happy.  Win-win as they say.

Another thing my extreme sport has taught me is that lots of people are willing to waste your time.  You have to be ruthless in watching out for them.  It could be something as nice as asking you to wait for them to join you at lunch or coffee (thus spinning out your allocated time beyond what you initially planned).  Or it could be something darkly political such as engaging in plagiarism with your hard earned material.  This latter one was particularly confronting.  I could lie down and roll over and not waste time energy and resources on it or I could confront it head on.  I took it on.  It took time (and pushed up my blood pressure) to sort out but it was worth it.  It was my hard work that was being appropriated without credit and frankly that should not happen in a university work environment by another academic (senior to me actually).  Bad enough in the private sector where bosses claim credit for your work (yes I am still looking at you Ms EvilBitchMonsterBoss) but to happen in a University where plagiarism gets students kicked out and brings down academic reputations is just unacceptable.  Now I need to figure out the best way of ensuring that does not happen again (apart from always being coordinator of a unit).  Ideas are welcome.

Back to the juggle.

Running Mothers

There is lots of stuff about mothers running.  It is a sport that particularly well suits mothers.  It gives you awesome fitness levels needed for keeping up with (especially young) children.  It gives you time out needed to recharge.  It gives you a nice figure so that you don't feel quite so turned inside out by what pregnancy does to your body.  It makes you feel powerful.  A nice counterweight to the feeling of powerlessness that is often the accompaniment to parenting.  Particularly when parenting young children where life seems to careen so quickly from chaos into totally out of control.  When you run you feel powerful, strong, in control and so so good about yourself and your life.  Exercise of course also increases your energy level (something I admit to not really understanding - how does burning energy make you more energetic?).  All things that immensely help a mother cope with life. At least this mother who juggles quite a few balls at once.  It is also excellent as a de-stresser and can justify lovely luxuries like massage.

It is also so easy to take up.  You just need good shoes, clothes that are comfortable to run in, and a really really good sports bra (motherhood often blesses you with great breasts but they need support or they become great coin-filled socks attached to your chest).  A few things are helpful but not critical are a music system like a MP3 player with headphones (buy the ones that have a bit that curls behind the ears to hold them in place); runners clothes (as opposed to just clothes that you can run in) and dare I say it, a treadmill. Although the latter is expensive and takes up a lot of room for something used only a couple of hours a week it really really is a worthwhile investment for mothers who run.  I can run in the evening (or morning but I hate mornings) when either my kids have gone to bed or my husband is at least home and not fear for my life or worry that I will step in a crack and break my mother back.    I can run on hot days in the relative coolness of my garage (I have a fan too) and I can run in winter and rain (probably snow and sleet but that doesn't happen where I live.  So my routine is not messed up by stupid weather conditions.  And now for the total utter luxury that a treadmill gives you - I set up a TV with DVD player in front of my treadmill.  Sometimes my husband gets on his bike trainer and I get on my treadmill and we ride/run and watch a TV show together.  Quite companionable.  In an average TV show I can burn on average 350-400 calories.  That is equivalent to a light meal.  I also watch my own TV shows that my husband isn't that interested in (on DVD in case you are wondering).  So it really is me time in the best sense.

Now if someone could just explain to me why exercising and watching what you eat makes you feel better than sitting around eating chocolate and drinking wine I would be very grateful.  And I would be even more grateful if the Universe would reverse that reality... actually on second thoughts I don't.  I love running and I love how it makes me feel.

Got to keep on moving!

How to Lose Weight in 6 months

I lost 8 kilos in 6 months!  Let me tell you how!  I just did 2 things that anyone can do.

1) I restricted my calories to 1200 calories a day .  I didn't particularly obsess about what into making those calories.  Although I have to say the less processed the food the less calories there were and the longer I felt full so I naturally drifted towards cooking at home, taking along my own lunch (and snacks!) and generally eating less processed food.  But this way there was no good or bad foods.  I ate icecream most days (bless Bulla chocolate coated icecreams) and usually a glass of white wine too.

I kept track of calories using www.myfitnesspal.com which made it relatively simple.
Importantly I don't fret if I go over but I try not to go over by more than 10% more than 3 times a week.

2) I moved more.  I started the C25K (couch to five km) program on my i-phone - it is also available in other formats try here as a starting point http://www.c25k.com/  It took me 11 weeks to complete the 9 week program. (Life interruptus in the beginning)

As I logged the kms running I switched to Runkeeper which enables me to track my overall kms, times, location of runs etc etc.  I love a good record.  It tells me since I made the switch in January that I have run 24 times, logging 120kms and burnt over 7,000 calories.

The more I did of 2) the more calories I burnt which then enabled me to eat more while still losing weight! Now if I know I am going out to dinner or lunch I go for a run to burn some calories so I can eat and drink (within reason) without "dieting".

I run mostly in the evenings but increasingly whenever I can grab a chance.  I run to stay fit, I run to burn calories and I run because I now love it.  But the love affair with running is a whole other entry.

My goal is to hit 54 kilos - a clean 10 kg loss from my starting weight.  And before you start screaming about me being too thin I am only 153 cm tall and fairly light framed.

Anyone can do it.  There is no magic just control consumption and exert energy.  Physics will do the rest!

Project Restart

So I thought I would start blogging again.
Checked my life goals from December 2009 for things to achieve in 2010.
Things I achieved in 2010 and into beginning of 2011 (since we are now in March)
1)lost 8 kilograms (yup 8!)
2) can run 8 kms (takes me a whole hour obviously not olympic standards)
3) published a peer reviewed article in a law journal - from my thesis
4) still married (and actually back in a warm fuzzy happy place with my marriage)
5) completed an internal training course which is 1/8 of a diploma in higher education
6) started my PhD at Sydney
7) Presented at 2 conferences - one in NZ and one in Melbourne - both went very well.  Latter extremely well received.

So all in all not too bad a year.  Hopefully things will continue on this upward trajectory.