Weight Management

Throughout my pregnancy to date I have continued my training with Hyperactive Personal Training. At the end of my session last week I asked how long I could continue and the answer was so long as my body allowed me to and as long as I felt okay.

Wow, what a day!

I have, as always, kept my routine to focus on taking the more physically demanding path. I still take stairs in preference to a lift and walk whenever possible. And as always, I have watched my food consumption for it's nutritional level rather than quantity.

Today, though, I got my first really big surprise. Nathan my trainer actually patted me on the back for the first time. Why? I broke the 70kg threshold without loosing any muscle mass and with awesome hydration levels - on my way to a leaner meaner Kristy.

For those who have been following my weight loss journey it is with mixed emotions that I blog to let you know that it is now over. This is, of course, over for a good reason and that is that I reached a point where I am happy with where I am at. I have finally finished what is my final post for 'The Reclaiming'. I have also dropped into the forums of Essential Baby to say 'So long, thanks for the fish...' to the people who spend time in the Your Diet & Fitness forum area. That is where you will find my kudos from the journey.

According to my scales at home, the place where it really counts, I now weigh what I did before Karl happened along. Oh my heart rejoice that, other than some more fat to muscle conversion, I am feeling myself once more.

This past month or so I have felt a real change in my lifestyle. My energy levels are definitely up and I have been undertaking way more than I should have just because I can. I am able to run rings around my kids for the first time ever and well my husband simply can't keep up with this fine form!

Again I have misplaced my camera (about two months ago now) so when I rediscover it I'll get an 'almost after' photo up for you all. I am now six months into my time with Body Blitz however the online support group has curled up and died only to be replaced by a WiiFit group. (Can you see me rolling my eyes at that?)

My chest is feeling better and in anticipation of this weeks victory I asked for Nathan to re-introduce upper body work with a view to trying to work on fat to muscle conversion rather than straight loss for a while. This is with a view of returning to boxing by early next year.

Updated Weight

74.2kgs

Total Loss so far for 2008

4.4kgs

So there has been a lot cooking around here the past 48 hours and, again, I am finding it hard to sleep from the buzz (and fear of pain from my chest injury). First cab off the rank is the amazing ability I have had in the last two weeks to still loose weight and inches in spite of injury.

Studded with conversations with Jon Oxer and Arjen Lentz, there are many little projects on the boil which with some added help from Steve Walsh should begin to be pulled off in the coming week after I finish off the textual portion of my first published book. One of these projects will be another web site which I can only hope Donna Benjamin will be willing to assist me with also.

On the NetCraft Australia front, it appears that I will again be interviewing for an administration role this week as the candidate who accepted the role has had to pull out due to a family health issue. I do wish her the best in dealing with the situation as our prayers cover her family during this time. For us now, we have two candidates up for CV review first thing Monday morning. Fifty per cent of my battle is cultural fit with NetCraft team as our support staff need to be able to work effectively with a highly-technical team as well as know how to take time out with us without the need to 'be the life of the party'. So, I guess that means that this week will be no quieter than last week which involved arranging the press coverage for our staff who were showcasing Tarka at WiMAX World EMEA 2008.

Michael is also still looking for engineers for the team also which I do not envy. We have very particular skill needs of our systems engineers which vary only in a sidewards manner in respect to product exposure. The largest problem I can identify with the applications we are receiving is that are not adequate enough in detail to determine a candidates suitability. Primarily, candidates simply list the things they have experience in without indicating the depth of experience or type of application or deployment as this would indicate knowledge depth which is essential to our roles.

Back on topic, tomorrow I take a new Hiace for a test drive, with thanks to Gilbert Toyota, with a view to settling on a purchase as soon as the fit-out and re-inspection can be arranged. What a relief it will be to have the car we need at last, be-it not in our desired colour of green.

On the writing front, I have a book relating to the householder's budget coming out soon but also had Ezine Articles publish my first article submission over last night which brought tears to my eyes this morning as they took less than 12 hours to approve it. Having said that I have just taken it offline and back into the re-approval queue for adding the resource box.

My goodness I have managed to squeeze a lot into this week - life certainly isn't quiet in the Bennett house!

Well I am four, nearly five, months into my time with Body Blitz. The weight has continued to peel off in spite of injuries as I recovered from my hand injury only to split my ribs from my sternum.

Updated Weight

74.0kgs

Total Loss during 2008

4.6kgs

Trainer Stats - figures from my trainer's scales

Updated Weight

75.9kgs

Body Fat Percentage

34.9%

Hydration

48.3%

My big stats for where I am today compared to the start of the year are as follows:

Current Weight

74.0kgs

Bicep

32.0cm - now unchanged but looking formed when flexed

Bust

101.0cm - decreased 5.0cm, unchanged over the past month

Waist

84.5cm - decreased 8cm, and making me look curvy again

Hips

102.5cm - decreased 6.5cm, wow!

Thighs

57.5cm - decreased 5.5cm

Calves

36.0cm - decreased 1cm and looking more toned

Body Fat Percentage

33.4% - a slight improvement

Body Mass Index

25 - now scraping into the healthy weight range also!

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming...

When a mother talks about 'having her body back' she is usually talking about one of two things. Either she is talking about her body being used by another party for self-sustaining, either through pregnancy or breast feeding, or she is talking about getting her body within a stones throw of what it was before children came along. Today I am writing about the latter.

I have had an incredible week in respect to my body and I am not sure what to attribute it to. I have been eating as per my usual dietary habits with more green stuff rather than meat. I haven't been training really at all since separating my ribs from my sternum. I have been particularly cautious when doing anything other than sitting at my laptop or PC for this reason also. My only guess is one or a combination of stress and sleep deprivation as possible explanations.

However, for some miraculous reason I have continued to loose weight. Strange but true. I was kind of shocked when, this week, I reached the last of three new holes in my belt that Michael had drilled for me the week before. I got kind of excited and jumped on the scales on Wednesday and got all excited when I saw the weight and then realised that I had no-one to share the news with beyond William so I forgot about it.

Last night, however, I remembered and jumped on the scales again to ensure I wasn't delusional only to find I'd shaved off a tad more weight bringing me down to 74.0kg on the knocker according to our home scales. This makes me lighter now than I was when I fell pregnant with both Peter and William and only two more kilos to loose to be lighter than before Karl came about also.

As I walked out of the ensuite I grabbed a pair of cargo pants which were in the wardrobe that I wore all the time before children which I had relegated to work-wear for painting over the last four years, not expecting to ever fit them again. Well, they fitted and not only did they fit but they fitted well and if anything were loose. So I wandered to the office and showed Michael and as part of my demo I casually slipped my hands into the pockets to show how loose they really were and found twenty dollars! Mate, it doesn't get any better than that for rewards.

Of course, at the gym I always weigh more than at home, but I'll keep those stats for my next story. All I can say it is nice to think my body is my own again.

It has been a long week and I am reflecting back on a series of days that have left me totally exhausted.

I have spent a lot of my time working on my web site today. Now that I have hit around 120 pages I had to put some serious thought into content management, splitting taxonomies and making some areas of my web site a little more dynamic to meet the needs of areas which are growing fastest.

Yesterday, I enjoyed attending the Home Based Learning Seminar put together by Home Education Australia - South Australian Branch. I certainly appreciated their effort and found it refreshing. It was a lot of information, a lot of it not new but simply looked upon with fresh eyes, keeping my thoughts rolling well into the night. I woke up this morning with a brain stimulation hangover and much coffee was needed to get over it.

Over the course of the week I tried desperately to keep life quiet after injuring myself. Monday included a physiotherapist appointment where I was told that I have most likely separated the rib cartilage of three of my ribs away from my sternum. It was inflamed and too painful to touch at the time. Now the swelling has gone down the pain has worsened, as has the breathing difficulties, as I think the inflammation was in many ways immobilising the ribs before unlike now. I have since seen the GP and have an x-ray to get done also.

Tuesday and Wednesday included trips into NetCraft Australia to get some work done injected with follow-up calls with CMI Toyota only to come to the realisation that in January when they took my deposit for a vehicle they never actually ordered it leaving me with a 4 month wait if I want to have it ordered 'for real' this time. So, I am on the market for an Automatic, Turbo-Diesel Hiace secondhand to cover me off in the short term.

I have also discovered that there are lots of things I should not be doing with my injury. Anything involving my arms being above shoulder height, behind my back or lifting over 10kg is very, very bad. A combination of these is excruciating, should be avoided as it brings me to tears, shortness of breath and will certainly shorten the lifespan of anyone who comes near me after the attempt. Let's just say I don't handle pain well.

I have no doubt that this next week will continue to be busy. Housework will still need to be squeezed in between business commitments, physio and medical appointments, my German presentation which I should write before I present on Tuesday, and most importantly caring for my brood. I just hope that the estimated recovery time from my latest injury was greatly over-estimated!

Injured once again, I realised today that I hadn't told anyone why my blogging had slowed so much over the past few months. The answer in a nutshell is that I had a fractured hand and that from here on in I should be around a bit more as I don't think my current chest injury is going to have the same effect on my on-line productivity as the household productivity!

The full story of both incidents is in Health. It's a long winded read so make sure you have a hot drink and a good 5 minutes!

"Stop it!" I yell at one of my children, in a loud but loving manner, "Please, hop off me I am too sore to be jumped on by you!" Yep, it seems like this is my life as it stands at the moment.