Meal Plan Thursday: The Diet

I'm on a diet. I'm on a HUGE diet. In fact I may have died of starvation by the end of the day.

As I mentioned some weeks ago, I recently changed pill and this caused a 5kg weight gain. It didn't bother me because I'd rather have the weight gain than the side effects of the other pill. However, just between us I was somewhat narked off that I didn't get to EAT all that weight on (yes, that is an appalling attitude, I do agree).

Still, a dieting I must go.  In addition to the pill weight, I'm carrying 10kgs worth of grief eating around my middle from last year. I hate it.  I hate the way I look. I hate the way I feel.

I also hate people telling me its okay.

Its not. Its really unhealthy. It is not okay when my stomach sticks out further than my size E breasts. That is not okay.

Me being fat is not okay with me. (Frankly I don't give a rats arse what anyone else thinks about it, its none of their business. The important thing is how I feel about it, after all its my body, and how I feel is crap).

I've been a fan of weightwatchers for YEARS. I've lost significant weight with them twice. I think if you need help losing weight then they are the people to see.

However, this time around, just for the sake of interest and messing with my own head, I've decided to take a different path.  One of my idols, Lisa Curry, is running a weightloss program on her website http://www.lisacurry.com.au/, and I have signed up.

Its very low carb, I'm eating in a whole new way, I don't know if I'll last, but I'm up to week 3 and so far its been a fun experiment.  If I get sick of it then I'll be straight back to weightwatchers - I still have my online membership.

Therefore, no meal plans for the time being. However, I am feeding hubs and the kids as per usual, so I might stick up the odd recipe from time to time.

Shall let you know how I go :)

Breastfeeding is best where possible...

My breastfeeding years are behind me. Thank GOD. Yep. Not a fan.  As my posts on this blog from my breastfeeding years attest I was a milk cow of the highest order. Massive over supply and accompanying leaking, swelling and agony were the order of the day. My let down half drowned my kids, my clothes were endlessly soaked, we were going broke buying breast pads, and I smelled horrible.

I could not wean overnight. And nor did I want to. Because despite the discomfort I knew that breastfeeding was the right thing to do.  But after about three months I was over it.  Completely over it. So I got some goat's milk formula and slowly, over the next few months I weaned my baby off the breast and onto formula.

I did this with both kids. They were perfectly fine, and I was happy.

The End.

That is my breastfeeding story.

It was not brought to you by the media, the australian breastfeeding association or the formula floggers. No indeed. It was brought to you by me and my local GP, who gave me the advice 'breastfeeding is best where possible.' I took that advice and made my decisions.

I remember clearly that back in 2005, when I was pregnant, the media had obsessed itself with the 'too posh to push' issue. Where apparently, mothers were electing to have a cesarean rather than a 'normal' birth (I have certainly never met any mother that actually did this). But suddenly everyone deemed my plans for birth their business!  Conversations would actually start 'You're not going to have a Caesarean are you?" With smiles of approval when I said 'not unless necessary.'  How I got my baby out of my body was between me and my obstetrician, ffs.  Not the business of people in the checkout line.

You see, despite what the media seems to think, we mothers have the best intentions for our children, and spend most of our time half killing ourselves to do the right thing.  The decisions we make take into account our own circumstances, needs and values, those of our families and the children themselves.  We've known the little blighters since they were an egg, after all.  We love them, and you know what? Because we love them we give them the best we possibly can. Always.

It is not for the media or anyone else to judge us.  I, for one, am thoroughly sick of seeing this endless attack on mothers, these days you cannot conceive, be pregnant, give birth, have a new born, breastfeed, have a toddler, breastfeed a toddler, go out in public, stay home, work, not work, have a pre schooler, home school, or start your kid early, late or in between at school, without some journalist thinking they can have an opinion on your decisions and use it to sell a few papers or get a few more clicks on their website.

It is none of their business.

It is none of your business.

It is none of anyone's business.

A Mint Garden

Mint, in all its forms, is incredibly invasive in the Sydney climate. With no frost to knock it back, it can take over gardens and be impossible to get rid of.

Therefore, we have not had much mint in our lives - I only dare grow it in pots, and around here few things in pots survive a 40+ day. They tend to get cooked.

But, we've got this odd scrappy bit of garden. Its at the top of the drive, and is home to an apricot tree, the airconditioner and The Cat That Will Not Die - thus the kennel and the blanket.

This area is surrounded by tarmac, and has, to date, done little except grow weeds and provide shelter for the many members of our snail population.

Before

So in a moment of blinding inspiration I decided that rather than be the eyesore that greeted guests who made it as far as our front door, we could turn it into a mint garden. Its surrounded by tarmac so the chances of the mint absconding into the garden are slim. I hope.

After

I've got common mint, chocolate mint, spearmint, peppermint and apple mint.

Mint garden

I'm on the lookout for some basil mint as well, someone on twitter told me it is wonderful, and I've never heard of it before :)

Dear Liver, Please Forgive Me...

I haven't travelled for a while.  I think the last trip was my cowgirl adventure around the state with my mate Wend, where I got to explore the world of camp-drafting.

Conference lolly jars

So I was pretty chuffed when, last weekend, I headed up to the Gold Coast for a conference with my writing sister-hood, the Romance Writers of Australia.  Book Thingo has a great round up of events, I have only vague memories of things mentioned in the sessions due to having a hangover for most of it. Okay all of it.

Yes. Alcohol was involved.

Everyone takes pics of MacGyver snogging
right? right?

And whilst it may sound like I drank excessively, I didn't.  But, all those years of pissing it up when I was in my twenties caught up with me back in 1998 (the day after I drank the Lindfield soccer team under the table), and now as I venture into my forties, five glasses of champagne (tight arse hotel sized glasses) over a five hour period leaves me seedy and irritable the next day.

We reap what we sow, it seems.

I want to go back :(

Late nights and drinking weren't happy just pissing off my liver and making me hate life, oh no. Next up was a dose of tonsillitis so bad that when it came to flying home I didn't care if the plane crashed or not, as exploding into a ball of fire would make it stop feeling like I was swallowing razor blades.

Woe was me.

I took a lot of great stuff from the conference, and I'll write a post about it later in the week.  But the main message was that I AM GETTING OLD.

And if I am not tucked up in bed by 8pm with a cup of chamomile tea then my body exacts a terrible revenge.

sigh.

Search for an Author Photo

So, the Gods of branding, and the marketing gurus at Momentum, have required me to come up with an author photo.  A cool, calm and sophisticated author photo.

This one was discarded...

I risked life and limb for this photo. I DID

As was this one...

What? Xmassy and quirky.
It shows readers I have personality
Or something

And when I finally found one that I thought would be okay I sent it out to my family for final approval. Now I love my family, I really do, but...

This is what hubs did to it

And this is what my sister did to it

Thanks guys.

You're growing what??

Its mid-August, and after three days of massive gales I crept outside to survey the damage.  

Branches everywhere, but look what else I found...

Baby turnips

Snow peas

Spuds

Lemons

Nearly ripe mandarins

And winter isn't even done yet. Methinks its time to get clearing out the vege beds and getting the spring plantings in. :)

The eggs undoing

My darlings: the Eggs

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in

my heart) i am never without it (anywhere 

i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done

by only me is your doing, my darling) - ee cummings

i carry your eggs with me

(i carry them in my pockets)

i am never without pockets

(anywhere i go they go,my dear;

 and whatever is done by only me

 is the eggs undoing, my darlings) 

- Cait Nicholas (with apologies to ee cummings)

Eggs in my pockets

The Eggs; undone

Banishing Negative Thinking

Image from http://disney.spiderpaws.com/eeyore_ii.htm

At the moment Eyeore is the Winney The Pooh character I relate to the most.  It's been a long and hard few months / years for us, what with Miss 6 Aspergers diagnosis and a lot of Unemployment for hubs.  On top of this I began to suffer badly from hormone induced depression and migraines.

Things are going 6000% better now. Hubs has an excellent job, if we are talking Pooh characters then he is Tigger, and he is now working in a place where he can Tigger to his hearts content.  Seriously, I never thought he'd find a job that he wasn't bored with in the first few weeks, but it seems he has.

Miss 6 is going SO well.  We've got help at school three days a week and it is making a huge difference to her. Reading is finally coming  along and she is much more content in herself.  This means that our extremely high stress household that was filled with screaming and tears at every turn, is starting to become calmer.  Screaming happens but its not constant, and situations now come under control very quickly.

I am also bribing her with money.

Yay money.

Depression and migraines were starting to take over my life for a week a month, and on top of this I usually copped another week to ten days persistent and illogical anxiety.  The solution to this has been to change pills, and MY LORDY has it given me my life back!! It has also given me a 5kg weight gain (and it all went on the space of 3weeks, seriously, it was terrifying to watch, I just ballooned!). But frankly I can lose the weight, I've done it before without much fuss, I'd rather 5kgs round my middle for a while than depression, migraines and anxiety.

So, I now find myself in a better happier place than I have been for a long time.

But, I'm having huge trouble letting go of the stress and the negativity. Its like its been so hard for so long that I've got stuck in that way of thinking.  I dwell on the bad stuff, expect negative things to happen and I feel like Eyeore, pottering around with a sad expression and my own personal rain cloud where ever I go.

Even worse, I've realised that Miss 8 is reflecting some of that negativity - in the way she views the world around her.

So, a few weeks ago I was wandering about the net (as you do) and came across this 30 Days of Gratitude post by the wonderful Nicole Cody of Cauldrons and Cupcakes.  It seemed so apt, so incredibly well timed that I got a shiver.  It seemed that Nicole was precisely what I needed...

Psychologists have found a link between gratitude and well-being. Studies have shown that when a person is depressed, anxious, negative and directionless, they can take control of these emotions and begin to turn them around themselves through a daily practice of finding things to be grateful for in their everyday life. The practice of gratitude literally has the capacity to rewire our brains, firing off more of our feel-good emotions and thinking patterns.  It helps us to remember who we are, what makes us happy, and where we want to go in life. - Nicole Cody (https://cauldronsandcupcakes.com)

Owing to being chest deep in edits I knew I didn't have time to embrace Nicole's course at that time. But now I have time, and so today I begun.

Of course at school drop off, where I attempting to exude the golden light of positivity, I had three different people ask me "What's wrong," in a concerned tone.  Sigh :)

Rome wasn't built in a day, hey!

W(here)TF Have I Been...

Well might you ask, what have I been doing for the last five weeks...

EDITING

Or, a visual guide...

This

Occasionally This

The End.