addertwist

I started this all with such high hopes! But, uh. Okay, so, for context, a lot happened. I traveled, intending to be gone for an exercise-heavy week, and then got mightily ill. Then I was ill and trapped with my family. ...I get along well with my brother, but I have a latent/recurring eating disorder, and my father sets it off with his scrutiny. I also got told by a family friend all about how mould is what makes me mentally ill. :') My medication messes with my sleep, and the stress of it (plus a barking dog) meant that I was barely sleeping, and I ended up being stranded there for the last two weeks of the challenge, more or less, because of how sick I was. When I got back I was still somewhat sick, so the gym wasn't an option. Eating has... been a problem. I'm mostly living off milk at the moment, it's hard to bring myself to eat, but I'm trying. The idea of cooking only for myself feels disgustingly wasteful and I don't know what to do to make myself eat. I mean I'm fat so I don't have to right? (lmao if it were only that easy) On the plus side, tooth-brushing lapsed but is already back! Not difficult to do, I just don't like the taste of my mouth when I wake up so I automatically go brush my teeth. So I'm gonna mark this whole thing out as a You Tried and move on. Keen for the next challenge though! Bring it on!

Alright, so I'm traveling very soon (less than an hour) so I don't have time for a proper update, but on Tuesday I did go for a swim! No cooking done this week, probably going to have to skip cooking this week anyway, on account of being away from home. I'm hoping to get my walking done (I'm going to a weekend event so there'll be PLENTY of that) and get my teeth brushed every night, but the rest is on hold for now until - er, sometime next week, I'm not totally sure when I get back.

I can't believe I didn't update all week! Well... it was pretty hot, for most of it. I definitely didn't get everything done, but two cooks down - a giant pot of oh-god-that-needs-using soup (involving, among other things, the dark meat off a roast chicken, an entire butternut pumpkin, and a leek which was mostly brown and very saggy), and a stuffed marrow. As in, uh, the vegetable, not - not bone-marrow. Er - stuffed with its own insides, chicken, pickles, cheese, and other stuff, with portugese spices and topped with bacon. We ate it too fast once it was cooked to get photos, but here it is raw: I know it doesn't look that amazing raw, but I promise it was delicious. I also promise that I'm definitely forgetting some ingredients. Exercise-wise, I did not get everything done. It was hot and miserable, and while I had high hopes of my own capacity to push, I actually didn't find it in myself to do so. I did a walk down to the shops and wandered around for ages on, I think, Monday? (Time gets hazy sometimes, I really should have updated earlier.) On Thursday I did go to the gym - I tried to do an exercise class, presumably beginner-friendly. Spoiler alert: It was definitely not beginner friendly. Between complex as hell dancing moves, complex squat stuff, lunges, and mobility-reliant stretches, I got maybe 15% of the class done. I was mostly just standing there awkwardly. Met up afterwards with the PT, and actually spent time with a different PT - mostly punching the air while walking, with some 'seated squats' - that is, learning to engage the right muscles without actually trying to do the whole thing. So, y'know, trying to learn to keep my weight through my heels, trying to learn to lever myself up with my thigh muscles, balance, all that - but from sitting on a bench. I have to be careful learning to do these things, because of my hip. Probably can't do lunges any time soon, given that I could wrench my bad hip and totally destroy myself. On Saturday I went for a short bushwalk, actually! My phone ran out of battery so I didn't get a lot of photos, but we're near some really nice bushland, and we walked around for... maybe an hour? Really nice. And teeth went well! Still haven't missed a day!

I don't think it did much to the flavour. They tasted nice, but I don't think the oil permeated the egg-white or yolk particularly, since some of the eggs weren't marinated and they tasted the same. Still, I didn't waste spiced oil! So that's something! Also, as a side-note - my mouth is starting to noticeably taste gross when I don't brush my teeth, so that's actually helpful!

Alright! Last day of the week here! So - on Thursday I went to a really intense exercise class - Body Balance. It doesn't sound that intense, and objectively, it probably wasn't that bad, but part of it had us lying on our backs doing a bunch of core stuff, and I hurt my hip pretty badly, since it's not exactly a top-notch pelvis anyway. Left the class maybe 20 minutes early, out of a 55 minute class? That said, I rallied! Arms shaking a little from holding my fat body up for a bunch of complex exercises, I met up with the PT again, and we did a couple of walking laps around the oval, just to free up my hip. Once that was over, we went to the gym proper. Now, I have no weights training, no experience except for the previous PT session (all the lightest settings on the machines and a tiny bit of dumbells) and lugging around heavy shopping occasionally, plus a tiny bit of weights done ~10 years ago that I could only do once a month and gave up on 2 sessions in... So! He was guiding me, but he guided me up on what I think was a Butterfly machine (?), from 12kg/~26.5lb (10 reps) to 14.5kg/~32lb (10 reps) to a whopping 19kg/~42lb (11 reps because I accidentally did one extra). Then we got the barbell, and I did 10 barbell curls at 10kg/~22lb,10 at 12.5kg/~27.5lb, then another 10 back at 10kg/~22lb. The PT was pretty impressed! I felt pretty goddamn tank! Now it's Sunday and my arms still hurt, but I'm pretty cheerful about it! DOMS. Actually pretty satisfying! I've come to a sort of revelation in my relationship with my body. I'm still badly depressed, and badly dysphoric, and being fat and chronically ill and mentally ill is a bad combo, but... for the first time in a very long time, I'm able to enjoy my body without hangups. I mean. When I'm there, at the gym, and even afterwards, I feel more comfortable in my own skin than I ever have before in my life. I feel... I went to the gym in lycra 3/4 pants! And I didn't hate myself! Swimming was on Saturday, and it wasn't a swim class because I was at my housemate's birthday for most of the day. We had a little thunderstorm picnic inside, with delicious curried eggs, roast beef slices, wraps, salad, boston bun the size of a cake, cheesecake, fresh bread, dips, and probably more things I'm forgetting. But! After sleeping off the food, I went swimming, not in a class but just diving in the pool at the gym, in the afternoon. Diving! Basically, my housemate and I took turns throwing dive-sticks into the water. I'm terrible at diving, as in, I'm still learning how to do it. I only just figured out that you're meant to kick your legs up above you and use your arms to scoop downwards. But I learned a tiny bit, in the shallow end! Because I love chasing sticks! I'm basically a dog. Picture related: Anyway, for food, I ended up just frying a bunch of eggs in marinating-oil from a tub of Mediterranean bocconcini. I'd... eaten all the bocconcini, because I love cheese. Anyway, we had so many leftovers that all I needed to do was make the eggs for breakfast. Pretty good actually! So! Full completion this week! Thanks everyone for your continuing support!

Alright, weekly update! So far: Kinda screwed up on my first week by leaving everything too late. Food and teeth both went well, got full marks there, but I only did one set each of exercise types. Mental health issues left me doing approximately dick-all til Thursday, and my Sunday kind of got crashed by being too tired from social things to walk to the gym and swim. That said, this week is off to a great start! Monday, I went for a swim with my housemate, down at the local ocean baths. Candid shot of her: Then I came home and cooked too - chow mein! Admittedly I was working from a squishy sauce mix, which means it didn't taste... quite as I was imagining it (I won't be buying the MasterFoods chow mein sauce base thing again) - but with a little tamari and some extra green beans it was pretty nice anyway. (No photos because it wasn't exactly a photogenic meal. Assorted shades of floppy brown stuff!) Basically, scrambled meat. ' For the record - this picture is pretty accurate for a number of reasons. Going into it now, I'm taking today as a rest day because I can't focus today, then Wednesday I'll be trying to get down to the park again. Thursday I hopefully have another PT session, and possibly swimming again, or, if not, just... more gym workouts, then I'll get another swim in on Saturday. At some point I'm gonna take all the sad-looking veggies in our fridge and make a cream-of-mostly-pumpkin soup. So that's about it from me! Thanks for all the encouragement, folks! I can't express how much I appreciate it.

Alright! So - I'm running a little behind, so Sunday's gonna be a busy day, but I cooked again on Thursday night - This time, with feeling. So that's chicken and sultana sausages, two scrambled eggs, half a capsicum, half a cucumber, and some shredded lettuce. It was pretty dang good! Even if since then I've... mostly subsisted on yoghurt, cheese, and salami sticks. Cough. Other than that, swam today, swimming tomorrow, doing one set of land exercise tomorrow too. Keeping up with the brushing, and... I went and saw a goddamn personal trainer. Very exciting times for Morgue! He's going to help me come up with the list of reps I should do, and guide me through other stuff, over the next few weeks! It's gon b good!

Alright! A few days have passed, and while I have been lazy, I haven't been entirely idle. So tonight was meant to be my cooking night, but last night ended up requiring me to do some hasty reimagining, to rescue my meal from the mouth of horror: This stuff is salty. SO salty. As in it could kill sealife. So I spent like 20 minutes, adding milk and cream, fresh mushrooms, tinned corn, herbs - all in an attempt to salvage it. Eventual success happened, but it took a lot of finagling with not a lot of ingredients available, so as lazy as it might seem, I'm counting this as one of my cooks this week. Secondly, I just want to say - my carer has a sense of humour. So... yeah. Progress isn't happening quickly, but it is happening. (Also, my favourite line from my carer: "If you want to help, you can take out the broken chairs. I mean it's raining, so we can count it as your shower!" )

Alright! Halloween is past us now, or, as it actually ends up being in Australia, Summerween. Shockingly, I didn't end up eating a huge amount of sweet things - but I did have a few too many drinks, leaving me groggy today and slow to reply. But! Finally I'm up to this on my list of internet things that need doing! So: @Insanity: I'll have to try that when my toothpaste runs out - for now I have one which works well for me, called OraNurse Unflavoured (the adult formula). The only issue with it is that I have to buy it from the UK, and shipping it to Australia is not a cheap endeavour. As for meals - it's mostly feeding myself dinners that's an issue. I often skip lunch altogether, which I know isn't terribly healthy, but it's a habit I got into when I was quite poor. Your reminder actually prompted me to make a modification, thank you - a stipulation that I can substitute things on a week-to-week basis, for example, replace a swimming class with more other exercise or vice versa, or do an extra exercise day rather than cook one day, to make traveling feasible. I'll be visiting some friends during this challenge so it was important to make this tweak! I might be biting off a lot with this challenge but I'm hopeful that I'll maintain motivation this way. Alright! As soon as I wake up my challenge week starts! Let's knock this out of the park!

Oh hell! This is gonna be really exciting to track! Looking forward to seeing how you progress on this - weight loss can be really difficult, particularly when mental illness complicates things. You have my wholehearted support, along with that of the NF community!

I found @Jakkals on your recommendation and wow! A real inspiration - reading up on his struggles has been really confidence-boosting! Homemade toothpaste seems like a really good idea - my only worry is how to store it. Though... also something about fluoride? I'm gonna keep using my special toothpaste until I run out of it, then I'll probably make the switch and see how I go. And that sounds like a great idea! I know I can't live exclusively off one-pot meals without getting sick of them eventually (at least that's the theory) but I can always just intersperse with the occasional set-and-forget roast. I'm partial to pork, though the crackling goes soggy if you make it in multi-meal batches. I actually haven't found any non-mint children's toothpaste locally either! The closest I found was 'mildmint', also known as bubblemint. Still burned, but a little less. In other news, I went to the pool to do an aqua-based total body workout class! It... it didn't go so well. So I got out after about a third of the class, and got directed to sit down quietly by the bin. They gave me a... uh, icy-pop? I don't know what the common phrase is, here they're Zooper Doopers, they're like a popsicle but in a plastic tube - and I sat and sipped water and nibbled that til I stopped being faint. Still! I survived like 20+ minutes of really intensive work, so that's better than it might have been! Day 0 still and already forging ahead with renewed vigor! Thank you everyone for the support!

Yeah, I fixed that just now - I think I was aiming for 10 points and got confused? I did read the rules, but I have a lot of brain-fog, and neuro issues. So sometimes things get jumbled a little, partway through execution. I've considered getting a crockpot, it's just a matter of figuring out bench space. But there's three of us, so it's probably worthwhile, and they're not that expensive... Just totals over the whole challenge, I think - but I'll be keeping track of each thing weekly, as well, so they'll be getting ticked off as they happen. I don't shower daily, as I have trouble sometimes working up the motivation to eat, bathe, and so on. (Mental illness is such an irritating beast...) But I'm going to start brushing my teeth when I go to the bathroom the last time in an evening. The time I go to sleep is pretty flexible, but I always go wash my face and stuff anyway, so I just need to put the tooth-brushing in with that, and it should work! Thank you for all the encouragement, guys! Couldn't do it without your positive attitudes! This is going to be an exciting endeavour!

Bodies Change, Honey! Let's see how I go with this! Will keep a summary here, as well as in the start post. So far: Saw a personal trainer! A plan of action is being put into place, as well as encouragement to go to various classes, since I have an all-access pass for the gym!Skipped an exercise requirement.Went to an exercise class and then also did walking and then also did weights! MASCLESWalked a bunch, went back up the hill with groceries afterwards.

It's Apocalycious! Gotta eat less of this and more actual fresh food! Will keep my summary here. Progress: One cook down: salvaging a three-cheese sauce.Two cooks down: sausage and eggs with delicious, delicious salad.Three cooks down: chow mein and meiner, heavily modified.Four cooks down: some kind of situation involving eggs and oil-poaching?

The Moist Tub: Progress: Swim one: now my abdominal muscles ache.Swim two: skippedSwim three: Ocean baths! Blub blub.Swim four: Chasing diving sticks and little rockets!