The Lifestyle Plan
Without Prejudice
This is the diet that worked for me after I left Camp Eden and started to feel better and better.
Against all advice I did not eat breakfast. I ate fruit only until lunchtime. I cut up fruit in a bowl and kept it beside me at home where I write. Cup of coffee skim milk, lots of glasses of water, which sends you trotting off to the bathroom a lot and that is exercise. An old fiance of mine said it's the incidental exercise you do every day that matters. So keep moving.
The incidental exercise will benefit you more than a one day a week big walk or run, he had said and he was a soccer player and superbly fit, so his advice I stuck to, religiously. I would write for eight hours, just like a normal job, even though I was at home. The fruit satisfied me and I didn't feel hungry at all. I would stop writing at 2pm then relax have some dry biscuits with cheese for the protein and cut up lebanese cucumber or tomato.
More fruit if I felt like it. Every day at 4.30 I would sit down and watch the Bold and The Beautiful and have a cup of tea and chocolate. A small fun size bar. Then a normal dinner, served on a bread and butter plate. I stll ate well and I moved all the time. Doing the longer chores by breaking them in to smaller jobs and gettimg outside a lot.
I walked the block but found I hated exercise still, so danced to songs on youtube that I love and I danced like no one was watching.AC DC, head banging music from the Angels, Billy Idol, ZZ Top, anything, everything for an hour a day. And I loved it as most fat people can dance and usually swim. As soon as I stopped I would take a shower, read, watch my shows and be in bed early and start again the next day.
I had two days where I felt like I could eat the world so on those days I gave in to the cravings and had what I was craving. A whole packet of ginger nuts over one day and another where I cooked some pork with crackling and ate the lot. The weight still came off. And came off.
No one was more surprised than I when I went to my Family Doctor and I weighed 60 kilos, on carpet ! I am sure everyone hates the doctors scales as they always seem to make you weigh more than your scales at home. I used to lean on the bath when weighing so I would weigh lighter, but 60 kilos that was insane. I had been 84 kilos for ten years or so.
I had always had a big bust, big ass, big arms that looked like I carried a small child on them, each ! I had n't seen my oldest daughter for ages and I went over to visit. She could not get over my shape and wanted my help. She was going away for four weeks, caravanning at Eden with Family and wanted to lose six kilos before she went.
My oldest is tall, very tall for a woman and carried her weight extremely well, but as per normal in Melbourne it had been a long winter. Comfort eating is something we all do when it' cold. Heavy stews and casseroles take their toll. So she and I worked out a plan for her and she lost 8 kilos by the time she went on holidays.
We both sailed on through Christmas and I denied myself nothing. I made mince pies for Christmas ate one and froze them. I made two lots froze both and rushed them off to family, as I knew I would eat the lot if they remained at my place.
I cleaned out the fridge and stocked it with fresh fruit, vegetables, water, eggs. I cleaned out the pantry of all chips or cheezels, sweet biscuits, snacks and a hundred times I opened the fridge door and peered in. Nothing. I was determined to find something any thing at times, a treat, something sweet, something savoury.
So I made up my own recipes and when I was dying for something sweet I remembered my Mother In Law who had lived on a farm, miles from shops and she didn't drive. She had said she always made her own chocolate fudge so I made it. Half a recipe using butter, skim milk and cocoa, sugar. I made it in thin snap off sheets, froze it.
I found I could eat tinned diced tomatoes until the cows came home so I made healthy pasta sauce with onion, tomatoes, tinned and fresh. Loads of garlic, oregano and some chilli flakes. Sometimes I would add ham or lean bacon for the flavour and a sprinkle of Parmesan on the top. I also would make soup and eat it with Jatz crackers.
I made cream of brocolli, cream of spinach soup and toasted flat bread in the oven as my own pita chips. I would crumble the chips up a little and eat as a snack. At first I had a small bowl of sour cream with them and a dab of tomato sauce, but after a while I could eat them just by themselves.
The rumours went around like crazy. I was having my Grandsons Ritalin I was STEALING food from other people's houses. It went on and on. Then I was wrinkly. my arms folded into sheets of skin, my breasts resembled balloons going down steadily on a brutally hot day. The looked like shrunken heads from Papua New Guinea.
Sudden weight loss changed my body into one that if I shook it, it looked testicle or elbow skin all over my body. My legs slimmed down and at the top were cottage cheese old lady thighs. My arms wrinkled concertina style like a ladies fan and caused some concern to my four year old grandson. He pointed at my arms and said,
"Oh, poor Nanny, does it hurt?"
I explained it was not a sore and he looked at me like I was lying. My son in law pulled me to one side, a no nonsense New Zealander. He told me to not worry about the wrinkles,
"You look healthy, Missy, he had said. And to him that was what counted and I had to agree.
When I went to the Doctor about a month before I came to Qld he gave me a "Perfect" on blood pressure, cholesterol, the works. Everything was perfect and that was the first time I had heard that in 20 years. I was thrilled beyond measure. A clean bill of health.
So then and only then when I had shed most of the weight I began to exercise in a more structured way. Walking, I found I could run. I broke it up into 5 or 10 minute surges of energy and energy is what I had boundless stores of. I would bounce on the mini trampoline for half an hour with the boys on the big trampoline.
I reorganised the garden where we live and had the teen boys helping. I moved the massive trampoline from one side of the yard to the another. It was like moving a giant satellite dish and we had to watch out for wires running from the house to the unit. Three of us did it and everything just fell into place. I cleaned the side of the house so that it was no longer a storage area for junk.
I prepared the house for a "hard rubbish" clean out, I tarred the roof of the leaking shed and cleaned it out. Spiders had made it a safe nest so I surface sprayed it and climbed the ladder to the roof. And all the while I was avidly followed by two little adventurous boys aged three and one. If I put the tar down they were in it, if I put down a paint brush they were on it, they were so amusing and so naughty and so curious.
They made it fun and if you make it fun the job gets done.
To Be continued
This is the diet that worked for me after I left Camp Eden and started to feel better and better.
Against all advice I did not eat breakfast. I ate fruit only until lunchtime. I cut up fruit in a bowl and kept it beside me at home where I write. Cup of coffee skim milk, lots of glasses of water, which sends you trotting off to the bathroom a lot and that is exercise. An old fiance of mine said it's the incidental exercise you do every day that matters. So keep moving.
The incidental exercise will benefit you more than a one day a week big walk or run, he had said and he was a soccer player and superbly fit, so his advice I stuck to, religiously. I would write for eight hours, just like a normal job, even though I was at home. The fruit satisfied me and I didn't feel hungry at all. I would stop writing at 2pm then relax have some dry biscuits with cheese for the protein and cut up lebanese cucumber or tomato.
More fruit if I felt like it. Every day at 4.30 I would sit down and watch the Bold and The Beautiful and have a cup of tea and chocolate. A small fun size bar. Then a normal dinner, served on a bread and butter plate. I stll ate well and I moved all the time. Doing the longer chores by breaking them in to smaller jobs and gettimg outside a lot.
I walked the block but found I hated exercise still, so danced to songs on youtube that I love and I danced like no one was watching.AC DC, head banging music from the Angels, Billy Idol, ZZ Top, anything, everything for an hour a day. And I loved it as most fat people can dance and usually swim. As soon as I stopped I would take a shower, read, watch my shows and be in bed early and start again the next day.
I had two days where I felt like I could eat the world so on those days I gave in to the cravings and had what I was craving. A whole packet of ginger nuts over one day and another where I cooked some pork with crackling and ate the lot. The weight still came off. And came off.
No one was more surprised than I when I went to my Family Doctor and I weighed 60 kilos, on carpet ! I am sure everyone hates the doctors scales as they always seem to make you weigh more than your scales at home. I used to lean on the bath when weighing so I would weigh lighter, but 60 kilos that was insane. I had been 84 kilos for ten years or so.
I had always had a big bust, big ass, big arms that looked like I carried a small child on them, each ! I had n't seen my oldest daughter for ages and I went over to visit. She could not get over my shape and wanted my help. She was going away for four weeks, caravanning at Eden with Family and wanted to lose six kilos before she went.
My oldest is tall, very tall for a woman and carried her weight extremely well, but as per normal in Melbourne it had been a long winter. Comfort eating is something we all do when it' cold. Heavy stews and casseroles take their toll. So she and I worked out a plan for her and she lost 8 kilos by the time she went on holidays.
We both sailed on through Christmas and I denied myself nothing. I made mince pies for Christmas ate one and froze them. I made two lots froze both and rushed them off to family, as I knew I would eat the lot if they remained at my place.
I cleaned out the fridge and stocked it with fresh fruit, vegetables, water, eggs. I cleaned out the pantry of all chips or cheezels, sweet biscuits, snacks and a hundred times I opened the fridge door and peered in. Nothing. I was determined to find something any thing at times, a treat, something sweet, something savoury.
So I made up my own recipes and when I was dying for something sweet I remembered my Mother In Law who had lived on a farm, miles from shops and she didn't drive. She had said she always made her own chocolate fudge so I made it. Half a recipe using butter, skim milk and cocoa, sugar. I made it in thin snap off sheets, froze it.
I found I could eat tinned diced tomatoes until the cows came home so I made healthy pasta sauce with onion, tomatoes, tinned and fresh. Loads of garlic, oregano and some chilli flakes. Sometimes I would add ham or lean bacon for the flavour and a sprinkle of Parmesan on the top. I also would make soup and eat it with Jatz crackers.
I made cream of brocolli, cream of spinach soup and toasted flat bread in the oven as my own pita chips. I would crumble the chips up a little and eat as a snack. At first I had a small bowl of sour cream with them and a dab of tomato sauce, but after a while I could eat them just by themselves.
The rumours went around like crazy. I was having my Grandsons Ritalin I was STEALING food from other people's houses. It went on and on. Then I was wrinkly. my arms folded into sheets of skin, my breasts resembled balloons going down steadily on a brutally hot day. The looked like shrunken heads from Papua New Guinea.
Sudden weight loss changed my body into one that if I shook it, it looked testicle or elbow skin all over my body. My legs slimmed down and at the top were cottage cheese old lady thighs. My arms wrinkled concertina style like a ladies fan and caused some concern to my four year old grandson. He pointed at my arms and said,
"Oh, poor Nanny, does it hurt?"
I explained it was not a sore and he looked at me like I was lying. My son in law pulled me to one side, a no nonsense New Zealander. He told me to not worry about the wrinkles,
"You look healthy, Missy, he had said. And to him that was what counted and I had to agree.
When I went to the Doctor about a month before I came to Qld he gave me a "Perfect" on blood pressure, cholesterol, the works. Everything was perfect and that was the first time I had heard that in 20 years. I was thrilled beyond measure. A clean bill of health.
So then and only then when I had shed most of the weight I began to exercise in a more structured way. Walking, I found I could run. I broke it up into 5 or 10 minute surges of energy and energy is what I had boundless stores of. I would bounce on the mini trampoline for half an hour with the boys on the big trampoline.
I reorganised the garden where we live and had the teen boys helping. I moved the massive trampoline from one side of the yard to the another. It was like moving a giant satellite dish and we had to watch out for wires running from the house to the unit. Three of us did it and everything just fell into place. I cleaned the side of the house so that it was no longer a storage area for junk.
I prepared the house for a "hard rubbish" clean out, I tarred the roof of the leaking shed and cleaned it out. Spiders had made it a safe nest so I surface sprayed it and climbed the ladder to the roof. And all the while I was avidly followed by two little adventurous boys aged three and one. If I put the tar down they were in it, if I put down a paint brush they were on it, they were so amusing and so naughty and so curious.
They made it fun and if you make it fun the job gets done.
To Be continued
