Friday 29 June 2012

F*ck yeah Friday

I've been meaning to post for a while, but my phone doesn't let me type any text or add any pictures to a post. Slight problem for a blogging site, yet?

 Anyway, it is high time for a F*ck Yeah Friday! What has been making me smile of late?


  • This keyring. At first just an innocuous little Nemo knock-off...



..but then you realise he has googly eyes! Cue hours of fun!


  • Tuesday night dumplings and ice skating with friends
  • Discovering the pull up machine at the gym
  • Realising that my sweet one month for $29 gym deal was the BEST idea ever!
  • Getting a good night's sleep. 7 hours of awesome
  • My friend starting a new job. Onwards and upwards!
  • Officially starting to fund-raise for the race. Only $50 for Red Cross so far, but from little things...
  • The truth in this picture:
From Facebook somewhere

 What little moments of awesome have made you smile lately?

Friday 15 June 2012

On food, exercise and disorders

As someone who is very active, I often think that if I were to change my eating patterns I could be that person with a six pack. It is said that great abs are made in the kitchen, not the gym:


However, there are a couple of reasons why I have issues with this. 

Firstly, I love to eat. Food is so much more than fuel to me - it is a joy, a social experience, a comfort, an adventure, a connection to the land, and so much more.

When I was younger, someone very close to me developed an eating disorder. I won't go into detail to respect their privacy, but suffice to say, it changed my view of the world. I had always thought that people were happy as a baseline. The idea that people weren't turned my world upside down.

When someone else very close to me also had eating issues, it was too much. My way of rebelling was to be happy, and make a conscious decision to be happy. Part of this was by eating. If there were people who were unhappy and not eating, then clearly eating was a key to being happy.

This mentality has largely stayed with me, for better or worse. I have never dieted, partly for this reason. I have also realised that if I try to eat healthier I end up focusing on food so much that I end up eating more. And let's be realistic here - most people who are eating healthier are never going to turn their nose up at losing a bit of weight as a side-effect. Subconsciously, I still equate food and happiness - restriction means unhappiness.

It really frustrates me that society today tells women (and men) that skinny is the key to happiness. You look at all of the celebrities that were larger, lost a heap of weight and now are famous (Nicole Richie, Ricki Lee Coulter, Kelli Osbourne for some modern examples). Many of these women suffered through eating disorders or addictions and really aren't the kind of role models for health that we should have. At the same time though, looking at pictures of super toned women with abs of steel on places like Pinterest (and I love my Fitsperation board on Pinterest) isn't necessarily healthy either! What kind of work and restricted eating have they gone through to get those abs or those amazing triceps? If healthy is indeed the new skinny, at what price? 

Get healthy not skinny with this diet, fat burning and nutrition program.

I KNOW that I'm not fat. I know that I am healthy, and that that little pot belly isn't the end of the world. But sometimes it's easy to forget that with all of the images you see, all the negative reinforcement that gets given, all of the 'good' and 'bad' labels that food has. I suppose the key is to remember what happiness is. 

And sometimes, happiness is cake. 






Monday 11 June 2012

The longest weekend

This weekend was a weekend of highs, lows, and blahs. I seem to have lost my mojo of late, and I don't quite know how to get it back. Case in point: three days off for the Queens Birthday long weekend. Normally a long weekend would be cause for joy, but this weekend...not so much.

I'm the kind of person that never gets bored. Even if I'm not doing anything there's always something I could be doing or even should be doing. But this weekend, nothing really worked. I just couldn't be bothered doing much, even things that normally give me joy. Maybe it's because I don't reallky have any goals to work towards  - the half (and full) marathons are out, the wedding is over, pole dancing won't start until later in the year, and I don't really have anything to aim for or look forward to. It's a strange feeling. I need a hobby.

That's the lows and blahs. Now for the highs.

Friday was the final ever gig with Clint Boge performing with The Butterfly Effect. These guys are my favourites. When I discovered them it opened my eyes to a whole new world of music, and I haven't looked back. I love them so much that I have been planning a tattoo with the logo in it for about 4 years. So it's sad that Clint is leaving, particularly as its not the happiest of circumstances. Nevertheless, I was determined not to cry at this gig (I cried like a bitch at the last one), and I decided that this was a joyous occasion. And it was. It was a privilege to be a part of it. 


Tuesday 5 June 2012

Today


Today was the kind of day that makes you take back every charitable thought you have of Melbourne in winter. Melbourne in winter has many charms...but not today. It was 13 degrees, cold, rainy, windy and generally miserable.

However, after work I took the dog out and we ran a nice 3kms. Despite the frozen numb hands, it was the perfect temperature. Walking... not so awesome.

I ran on concrete through the streets *shock! horror!* but my knee didn't hurt. I realised that maybe it's due to one of three things: 
  • My knee doesn't like that particular running track
  • My knee doesn't like compression shorts
  • My knee doesn't like the friend I run with
Or maybe just the exercises are working. Either way...WOOHOO!

I also scored a sweet cheap gym membership today. A month at a local gym for $29. Nice. It may help to burn off some of the copious amounts of cheese we bought and consumed at the Good Food and Wine Festival on the weekend...no. What am I saying?? Cheese will fuel my workouts.I know this.


Saturday 2 June 2012

Running, and why you should cross-train

When I started running about 2 years ago, I became addicted to it. The dog got some exercise, I got exercise, I could listen to my favourite music, get out of the house, make time or distance goals and work towards breaking them, and basically life was good.

Because I was running a lot I could feel my legs get stronger. My thighs became like steel, and it was great (I love muscles). So even if I did weights or strength training at home, I wouldn't really bother with leg exercises. Why should I? My legs were strong, and I didn't want to overuse them.

This, it appears, was a mistake.

I finally attended a physio about two weeks ago, and it turns out that I have issues with my ITB. ITB syndrome is a very common issue for runners, and in a nutshell, it means that my muscles are both very tight and very weak at the same time. Awesome.

I now have a raft of stretches and exercises to do to both relax the muscles and build them up. In particular, my glutes are very weak so this week there's a focus on them.


The moral of this story people? Cross train. Make sure you're stretching and strengthening everything. Simply running won't just make you magically strong (sad but true...)