Gooooals!

Lookie at who is blogging so soon after the last post! Haha.

I need to make some changes somehow. I am finding it really hard to train at home and I'd rather be with my Ghetto Crew training, they keep me motivated and keep me going. I'm in a hard place because I haven't got the support to get out of the house whenever I need to train and I am forced to do it at home. I suppose the main thing is this time I AM doing it at home, I'm not just sitting on my butt watching tv and thinking that I should be training right now.

I did a C25K run tonight and I had to push myself, my right shin was burning though and I did have to stop and stretch a few times. But I did notice that I can run a bit easier that it has been. All I was thinking about was what Lucia said at out Ghetto Crew info night. Yes, it's fucking hard to start running, it sucks and it hurts but if you stick at it, it will get easier and you will start to love it. Reminding myself of that helped. I ran a bit easier (besides the pain).

So anyway, the reason I'm posting today is to make public my goals for this 12wbt round. I'm taking just little steps this time. Last time my goals were too big and I gave up because they just weren't realistic.

This time:

I want to be able to run the entire 1km at the week 12 fitness test. I don't care how long it takes me to do it but I don't want to stop and start like I did on week 1.

I want to be able to wear a size 12. I set this goal at New Years, I currently wear a size 14 top and 16 bottom, I'll be happy to be in a 12 top and 14 bottom by the end of round. The work shirt I wore to work today was a size 12, but it does seem to be a big make. It was kinda cool though.

Blog my way through this round! No slacking off.

I would like to get to 75kg. My ultimate goal is to get down to 65kg.

Build up my strength. I'm not one to go and do weights, mostly because I have no idea what I'm meant to be doing or even if I am doing them right. This must change. When I did the beginners poledancing class I realised how little strength I had. I loved every minute of that course and I want to work my way through to the advanced stages. This is an area I need to improve on.

Step out of my comfort zone and try new things. I have started doing this - burlesque classes and running in front of people. I have this one in the bag.

And finally, as a visual I want to fit into this dress:

It doesn't look like I have far to go before it zips up huh? It's getting there but I also want to be able to put it on by pulling it over my hips, not over my head like I do now. This dress is a small 14/large 12.

So there you have it. There are my goals for Round 1 2012. I'll have to revisit this post at the end of round and see how I went.

Day One...here we gooooo!!!

I should be at work, but I'm not. Shhh! Instead of vegging at home I thought I'd better use my time wisely, so after the kids were dropped off at school I went to the gym. A couple of the Ghetto Crew girls had mentioned they were doing kimax and I decided to join them. If you don't know what kimax is, it is hard work! We weren't even 3 minutes into it before I felt like I was going to vomit. Lots of running and kicking my own butt and the likes. There were maybe 7 free standing punching bags around the room and then there was lots of punching and kicking going on. So much fun. The instructor reminded me of Sue Sylvester from Glee - she scared the bejeezus out of me!!!

666 calories smashed in 1 hours. Had to have a giggle to myself about the number because boy did I work like a demon today! My legs are super sore but this is not going to stop me. Tomorrow is a 5km walk after work and a 1 hour burlesque class. Awesome. :)

The food was good today, breakfast was a bit meh. I think I will substitute that one with something else as it's also on the menu for Wednesday morning. Lunch was small but delish (turkey and swiss cheese wrap) and dinner was divine!! Chargrilled steak with a corn salsa thing. I could eat that every night of the week!

Going great guns right now, the motivation is high and I feel much better about this round than last round already.

12wbt Round 1 2012

My blogging during round 3 last year never really happened. Oops, my bad. I will try my best to blog more this round as I'm now on the home stretch of my cert 4 and won't start the diploma until mid year.

I didn't get to achieve as much as I wanted to last round, for instance I never made it to any Perth Crew events. They were always on at the wrong times for me and majority of the events were too far for me to travel.

So not too long ago, I noticed a smaller group pop up on the Perth Crew page for 12wbters who are local to me. We ended up calling ourselves the Ghetto Crew and so far it's been a godsend! The round doesn't start until tomorrow and I've already been to a handful of events.

This morning saw an early (7am) gathering for the 12wbt fitness test. Quite a few turned up and I would have to say that I was a little nervous. I can't remember the last time I actually ran in front of people, I even send my hubby away if I'm running on the treadmill at home. So it was quite nerve racking, but a lovely lady got me going and I jogged on and off most of the way. I think I managed 250 metres off the bat without having to walk and it wasn't my legs that made me stop, it was trying to catch my breath!!

My stats for the beginning of this round are:

Weight: 84.2kg
Chest: 100cm
Waist: 94cm
Hips: 114cm

1km run: 7 minutes 27 seconds
Push ups (on knees): 34
Sit up: Level 3
Sit and reach: -4cm
Wall sit: 1 minute 14 seconds

There has been some huge improvements there considering the last fitness test I did it took me 11 minutes to run 1km.

With these results today it means....I've graduated to the intermediate group! Say what?! I wasn't expecting that but I guess the pole dancing classes have helped bring my fitness up since last round.

Tomorrow we get stuck into it, I've looked at the exercise plans for the intermediates and it looks fine (shame I printed off 130 odd pages of beginners before I found out I've moved up one!). My food is organised and I am ready to smash the next 12 weeks!!

Seek and Destroy

As you all know, I have 5 children living at home (and one part timer). I have 4 boys and one darling little girl - she's an angel. Really. In any case, she is an angel in comparison to her 3 year old brother. You know how everyone goes on about the Terrible 2's? Well that's nothing compared to the Terrifying 3's! I can certainly vouch for that.

With 4 boys, I've had all kinds of mischief, but Lil J has become master of them all. I will swear to you that NONE of the the 3 other boys have ever been as bad as him. Don't believe me? Well, here's a recap of what Lil J has been up to lately.

He has managed to manoeuvre furniture to reach 5 bottles of nail polish. Brand new ones. I had them up where I thought would be impossible to reach (I have to stand on my tippy toes to get to them). He then hid in the bedroom with Baby T and promptly painted her nails - at least tried to anyway. Then he painted his own, his legs, her cheek, his hair and THE WALL and WINDOW. I'm talking bright pinks and purples here people!!! Getting it off little bodies was a barrel of laughs.

He can now climb onto the kitchen bench, into the cupboards and found a sharpie. He coloured his bed with it. The linen cupboard door. His arm and belly. HIS SHEETS.

There are random photos on my camera of the wall, inside the fridge, the curtains, up his nose and the best one - in the toilet bowl...after someone forgot to flush *shudder*.

My netbook no longer works after he drowned the bottom of it with spray 'n wipe!

My rug has 4 round burn marks. He stood ON our computer and found a lighter on the shelf above the PC. Then set alight 4 make up pads o_O

And that's just this week!

Tell me that mine isn't the only one! He does it so quickly and sneaky that we go looking for him after 5 minutes and the damage has been done. The hubby was on the loo when he got the lighter and it scared the living daylights out of him when the smoke alarms went off. Please, please don't let this last much longer, it's no wonder the hubby is losing his hair AND going grey at the tender age of 28!

And so for now, Lil J is know as Seek and Destroy in our household. We cannot possibly move any more of our stuff up 'higher' as most of it is already almost touching the ceiling!

I will just continue to remind me that 'this too shall pass'.

P.S Look what he's done while I was writing this post. He was meant to be taking a nap and surprise, surprise he's found a pencil (goodness knows where/how he got it!)

Don't tell anyone but I was a bit chuffed at the drawing, I've never seen him draw people before. It's just not my choice of canvas is all!!

Still alive n kicking...

Sheesh, I had every intention of posting more but as usual, life gets in the way. I've been coming home from work with headaches every day for the last few weeks. Now that I think about it, I'd put them down to stress headaches because they came on when I took over payroll and started doing 2 full time jobs in my usual work hours. I struggled to cook dinner most nights, let alone write a blog post.

Mind you, I enjoyed learning payroll - it's not something I could do week in week out as my permanent role, but it was good to learn something new. Shit it was hard keeping up and now I have a mountain of my own work that was neglected and the boss is breathing down my neck for things. I'll probably get a lecture next week because I've been e-mailing him things that I've been finishing at home and he doesn't like me to do that. There is no way that I'll catch up if I don't bring work home!

Anyhoo, we've finally made a decision on a new employee to fill the vacant role and she starts on Monday! Woot woot!! I haven't had a headache today, wonder why that is? In more exciting news, I should be moving into my own office next week! Hopefully. The guys are building a wall in one of the larger offices and then our OHS officer will move into one of those and I'll get her office. Pretty swanky huh? It'll double the space that I currently have and PRIVACY...I finally get the privacy that I need!

Besides work, the other thing I've been trying (and I guess I would use that term loosely) to keep my eating in control. I'm not doing so great with it to be honest. The 12wbt kicks off again in a couple of weeks and I need to focus. And I need to exercise. I've been slack and having the headaches doesn't help! The weight is coming off slowly but it could be better if I really put my mind to it! Why the hell does bad food have to taste so good!!

So now I have 4 days off, I'll be spending it studying *sigh* and the hubby actually has Friday and Saturday off for once!

Have a great Australia Day!! xx

Into the swing of things...

Again. Motivation has finally found me and I got back onto the treadmill last. I'm starting the Couch to 5km (C25K) program again because I never finished it last time but thought I better go back to the beginning and ease myself into it. It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be, the poledancing classes have kept my fitness up over the last month or so.  I hate running, but I'm determine to do this. I KNOW I can do it if I set my mind to it. I met a lovely lady at lunch yesterday who has started C25K (had her first run yesterday) and we've decided to do this together. She said I had to text her when I was done and I did. It wouldn't be right to lie about it and the only person I'm cheating is myself.

I'm ashamed to say that I gained weight after finishing Round 3 of 12WBT. I don't know what happened, the silly season was rolling in and boy did I go silly. How stupid am I? Now I have to work hard again to lose kilos that I already lost last year!! What makes matters worse is that all the weight came off my top half and it went back onto my BOTTOM half. WHY? I look ridiculous!

I need to be kept accountable and I need to use this blog to keep check on what I am doing. It starts now! The good, the bad and the down right ugly!!

Anyway, yesterday I went down to one of my local pubs and had a healthy lunch with about 30 odd 12WBT locals (We call ourselves the Perth Ghetto Crew), it was fantastic to meet with people. There was one woman who looks AMAZING and she's lost 49kg. What an inspiration! We were talking about our fat photos and how we should have them up somewhere in the house to remind us of where we were, how far we had come and what we don't want to get back to! This made me go back through some old photos and...well, have a look below...

The last photo is what I look like now. Holy shit, I have a waist again! It was taken the night the 12WBT finale on Dec 10th. The hubby and I kicked on after the finale party and I made him take a pic of me in my party dress when we got back to the hotel as I had forgotten beforehand. Oh well. I find it hard to 'see' that I'm smaller than what I was, even looking at these photos I don't feel like I look much smaller. This is why I have these photos up in my room. I hate, hate, HATE looking at them but I need to. I will never get that size again.

There's me yesterday at the Ghetto Crew lunch. Dress was a bit puffy under bust as it's getting a little loose, but it makes me look a bit bigger than what I am...oh well.

20Size12

Happy New Years guys!! I hope you all had a great holidays. Mine was crazy busy. But there's nothing new there. Christmas dinner was at our house (yay) and we had an awesome culdesac party to ring in the New Year.

2011 was a so-so year. Plenty of ups and just as many downs. The biggest things to happen to us is me getting a full time job and offered to have my studies paid for doing Human Resources which I LOVE. So so lucky! Financially we're doing really good at the moment, we do have bills to pay but we're not having to budget too strictly on food and such. I'm planning to budget a bit better this year so we can put more into savings.

Matt and I also got a whole weekend away WITHOUT kids in December. We're coming up to 7 years together and it was the first time we've ever been away without any kids before! We even had one of our kids with us on our honeymoon. So anyway, we had an amazing time together and I am so lucky that we got to do it. It'll probably be a while before we get to do it again, not because we can't afford to - I don't think my in laws are up to babysitting 5 kids for more than a night in a hurry!

Those are probably the most stand out moment for me last year. Both life changing events, that's for sure. I know a holiday doesn't seem like much for some, when you work 38 hours a week from 7am to 3pm and have a husband who works 40+ hours a week and leaving the house at 4pm for work(and working every weekend!), we don't actually get to see each other much at all. Some one on one time together without kids has really helped us to reconnect.

So 2012. This year my goal is to finish my certificate 4 and be close to completing my diploma by the end of the year. Definitely achievable and shouldn't be too hard to do.

The next is what sparked the title of this post. 2012 I aim to get into a size 12. Also a really achievable goal if I put my mind to it. I'm sitting now at a size 14 top and size 16 bottoms(what is with that anyway?). If I really knuckle down and stick to the Michelle Bridges 12WBT, I will be able to achieve this. I am determined to! No more excuses!

This year I want to get fitter, I want to lose the excess kilos, I want to get stronger. This year I'm getting right into pole dancing classes and hopefully have a go at trying out for Roller Derby. When I say have a go at it...well, it's been about 18 years since I've been on rollerskates. Whether I can remember how to do it or not is the question. I'll keep you updated on that one.

Here's to 2012, I hope all of your dreams come true this year xx