Yours Sincerely, A Jogger

Dear Walker-Who-Avoids-Eye-Contact,

Don't be embarrassed to look at me - I know my face is red and sweaty, my hair all fuzzy and I have sweat stains and look horrible but I'd still appreciate a "hello" and I'll give one back to you!

Dear Walker-Who-Gives-Me-Some-Encouraging-Words,

Thanks so much! I wish there were more people like you in NZ - there were more in the UK - but you are a very rare breed here! Your kind words give me a little boost and make me push that little bit harder!

Dear Overweight-Middle-Age-Lady-Beginner-Jogger,

You are doing so awesome. I hope you are really proud of your efforts you are amazing and I hope I'm out there jogging when I'm your age! I know it's really tough to start with but keep it up and you'll be improving in no time!

Dear Much-Faster-and-Fitter-Than-Me-Runner,

Thanks for smiling at me! It can get lonely out running and it's always nice to make contact with another runner. Seeing you with your nice big strides and good technique reminds me to check my own.

Dear Dog-Owner-Who-Doesn't-Pick-Up-Their-Doggy-Doo,

Yuck. Just yuck.

Dear Dog-Owner-Who-Does-Pick-Up-Their-Doggy-Do,

You rock, thanks!

Dear Guy-Wolf-Whistling-From-a-Car,

I know I should take offense. Your whistles are degrading - in fact your whistles may actually be ironic, you may be thinking "haha lets embarrass that fatty" but secretly I choose to be flattered. I choose to assume you're actually thinking "woah nice legs" because that's what I think when I see my legs in my shorts!

Yours Sincerely,

A Jogger

Big Trip

Partly to try out Mindy's special logo for Amy posts and partly to give some context to any future rushed posts that may appear from internet cafes (depending on how much fun I'm having of course!) I thought I might as well tell Mindy's devoted blog readers who don't know about my big trip. Tom and I are off to Europe for six weeks in only three sleeps and I'm super excited!! Just so any potential robbers (who read Mindy's blog) know though my little sis is kindly staying in our house (plus we have nothing to steal anyway!)

The trip has been a long time coming, I keep leaving jobs resulting in my leave balance dropping to zero. I can't believe it's finally (almost) here! We start off in Paris then it's off to the Swiss Alps, Provence, Barcelona, Nice, Florence, Rome, then a cruise round the Eastern Med, Athens, Venice, Salzburg (hehe poor tom although I've decided not to do a sound of music tour as I'm afraid his moaning will ruin the trip), Bavaria then the Black Forest. I'm so excited about the cathedrals, ancient ruins, cheese, but probably most of all the Castles!!! (spot the difference anyone? Well it doesn't really matter since I'm going to both! (again, poor tom :) ))

Anyway, I hope you all have a lovely spring and enjoy the daffodils!

Apple Oat and Bran Muffins

Well I didn't intend to post this recipe on my blog. They're not pretty and they're not glamorous, and, well, I'm all about pretty and glamour. But I just keep making these babies and they are just that gooooood that I can't help myself. Also they're really healthy (very little sugar, LOTS of fibre, low GI) and if you make with soy milk like me they're diary free! I make 24 out of one batch of pretty small muffins (not quite mini but close) and I think the little size really works as they are quite dense. It's also a super easy recipe and you can substitute almost anything out or in. For example they'd probably be awesome with some spices like cinamon thrown in but I didn't think of it at the time.

200°C

1 C Milk (I used skim soy milk)
1 Tbsp Honey
2 Tbsp Molasses (could substitute raw sugar or brown sugar or white sugar if you really want)
1/4 C Oil (I used Rice Bran Oil)
2 eggs
1 1/2 C Bran
1 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Salt
1 C Flour
1 C Oats (any kind I used normal porridge oats)
1/2 C Raisins
2 Large apples diced (I leave the skins on, added vitamins!)

1. Mix milk, honey, molasses, oil, eggs and bran until well combined.
2. Sift in baking powder, baking soda, flour and salt and stir until just combined (try to keep it under 25 stirs).
3. Stir in the oats, raisin and apple.
4. Spoon into muffin trays and bake for about 15 minutes.

Note 2 apples is quite a lot, you end up basically spooning apple with a small amount of mixture - if you like your muffins more muffiny then just use one apple.

Enjoy!

Me & Food - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly!

The Good (i.e. things that I've learned that work for me!)

- Eating small and often, seriously I need to eat all the time like every 3 hours - if I don't I start feeling a bit faint and grouchy it's all about choosing the right things in the right amount
- Eating and being full and feeling full doesn't mean you have to be fat
- Porridge is a super food (low GI, high fibre, cheap, easy, TASTY what more could you ask for?)
- Being aware of the caloric value of food and reading the back of packs is valuable (counting calories isn't). For example 2 packets of instant noodles can appear identical but one brand has twice the calories of the other on account of being pre-fried... little things like that are good to know!

The Bad

- Eating out of habit. Hehe I do this all the time - especially at work. I play games with myself. "You are allowed a chocolate biscuit but only if you guess the type of biscuit is open today", "you are allowed a shrewsbury if the one with the heart is on top"
- Eating because things are there. I also do this a lot especially with raspberry licorice. I buy a two pack intending to eat one piece but the other one always disappears as well! Magic! Stupid licorice people who don't sell single packs!
- Eating in the car. This is a new bad habit of mine - I thought I'd try being one of those people with a packet of munchies in the glove box for emergencies - not such a good idea Mindy. Soon I found myself stopping in at the petrol station/supermarket just to buy something to munch on every time I got behind the wheel.
- Counting Calories. Not only is this boring, but it can start a slippery slope towards being obsessive about food, and in the worst cases anorexia :-( Lets face it, it takes a hell of a lot of time and food weighing to do it properly and it does basically take over your life. The amount of time I spent calculating what I could afford to eat, and what would get me the most full with my allowance I would dearly love to have back to put to better use. Lets not go there everyone, lets just be sensible and not pig out.
- Eating at night. Ah so tempting after dinner to sit down in front a movie with a great big snack of some kind. But not so kind on our bodies. You don't need to fuel up to sleep - in fact your metabolism slows down overnight so most of what you eat in the few hours leading up to bed just sits there in your stomach not being digested till morning. Gross! Waking up feeling slightly hungry is much better.

The Ugly

- Eating spoonfuls of jam. I've been there, I've done that. It starts off when I feel like something sweet. Not being a household that stocks biscuits jam on toast comes to mind, but then do I really want toast? It takes so long to cook and I'm not really hungry, ah! I know! I'll just have a wee spoonful of jam. Yup I've eaten jam straight out of the jar!

Flu!

Hello World!

Well I'd intended to start back on the blogging wagon with a bit more momentum than I've mustered so far. I've still got hopes it'll pick up there's just been a few hiccups.

Firstly I've been doing late shifts at work so life has been FULL ON! We decided to use the opportunity for Darren to start building our deck so he has been working on that during the day. Basically from 7.45am - 2.45pm each day I got to play stay at home Mum (which is not a relaxing game, it is HARD WORK as all the stay at home Mums know!). To top it off I was also playing builder's apprentice, and also being errand doer for Darren fetching things like bolts, cement for various shops around town. Then at 2.45pm it was time to leave for work and I'd get home again at 11.15pm into bed where it took a good hour or so before my brain wound down enough after working to go to sleep.

Saturday night was the first time in the whole week Darren and I got to sit down together. We celebrated by watching Cop Out a Kevin Smith movie which was pretty good.

Anyway I think the late nights ran me down a bit much and on Saturday morning I started feeling a bit sniffly, by Saturday night I had full on flu symptoms and so Sunday was pretty miserable as was today. Thankfully Joshua isn't sick and I'm not sure whether there's even any point in me hoping he doesn't get sick or whether it's just inevitable. I hate to think how horrible this would be for him when I feel so rotten and I have the ability to at least understand why I am feeling the way I do.

I do actually I know a lot of wee babies who are sick so I feel bad for even feeling sorry for myself. Furthermore I really wonderful Due Dec lady I know is going through a really tough time at the moment, so much worse than just the flu and I hope she knows how much people care about her and love her!

Stay warm and healthy everyone!

:-)
Mindy

New Format

Ok so this isn't a real post yet either sorry... but aren't my icons cool?


Recipes




Random Ramblings




Exercise




Health




Baby




Posts by Amy

Sorrryyyyy!

Hi all,

Have been thinking a lot about blogging and not doing much of it! This is mostly because I'm working 3pm - 11pm this week and super busy at work and looking after Joshua during the day.

However I have a plan. I thought from now on I'd categorise and label each post with a subject that way if it's something that you're not interested in you can skip the post (aint that nice of me?). I'm in the process of building some icons for each subject I plan to talk about. These are:

• Health (diet etc)
• Exercise (some of this will be in health but I've got a few triathlons coming up so they for example would be covered here)
  
• Recipes
• Baby related stuff
• Random ramblings

Sound good? I think so and I'm the boss of this blog. So there!

Back soon!

Mindy

Having a baby - Part 2

Sorry if you tuned into read some more about health/diet(yuck)/weight loss stuff. Saving that one for tomorrow. Today instead I thought I'd write part 2 of having a baby. I recently read what I wrote in February when my wee monkey was just a tiny tot and had a wee chuckle at how much things have changed!

Having a Baby - Part 2 - 7 months on

Wo ho ho. Here we go. First an update on February's 7:

1. The being a better housekeeper thing has definitely passed - my toilet needs cleaning - there is a bucket of reusable nappies that need washing in the laundry - I'm pretty sure we haven't vacuumed this week.


2. Breastfeeding does get easier and can be pleasant but just when you think you've got it down bubby might start doing any of the following to make it not so pleasant again:
   
   • Biting
   • Pulling
   • Yanking
   • Poking
   • Laughing at your exposed breast (it happens!)


3. Coffee consumption is back to a reasonable level in my house again.


4. I never forget to eat now :o)


5. I still hide in the shower... everyone needs a nice noisey shower with a bathroom door you can close!


6. No longer hear crying all the time two reasons:
   
   • Baby can't be heard through three closed doors
   • More importantly baby cries less now


7. Unfortunately bubs is only slightly less dumb about sleeping.


New gems:


8. You start finding some things enjoyable that everyone else thinks are totally grotty. For example when bubs grabs a fist full or hair in each hand and yanks their face towards yours then with dribble flowing from their mouth they start sucking your chin. I know what you're thinking, you're thinking "Gross!". What me as a mother thinks "Aw baby kisses!" (I know I'm just delusional).


9. Poo can be exciting. It can be a nightmare too. But the exciting poo is the poo you get to while it's all contained in the nappy and hasn't leaked out onto clothes/beddings/carpet - there is a sense of relief - "well we survived today's poo and don't need to worry about it again for hopefully at least 24 hours!". As bubs gets older thankfully more poo falls into that category.


10. Thunder thighs aren't necessarily a bad thing - they can be downright gorgeous!



11. No matter how much you promise yourself you will never be "one of those mums" you will. There is nothing you can do about it. You will find yourself grabbing the phone to ring everyone to tell them about your baby's great new trick - oh by the way did I mention how clever Joshua is (teehee) he can click his tongue - I'm pretty sure he's trying to speak Xhosa


12. Sorry to keep up with the toilet theme but farts are funny. Baby farts are just cute, they are, they still stink but they're also hilarious so it makes up for it.


13. Sleep isn't that important really. (Actually that's a big fat lie - unfortunately no matter how often I tell myself that it's still not true).


14. Lastly - one just doesn't feel like enough...

Diet (yuck) - Weight Loss - Health Stuff

Ok well I was going to be slack and just forget about blogging again after my proclaimed blogging rebirth but yay 2 people out there in the big old internet caught wind of things and so I'd feel bad just abandoning them again.

Anyway I have decided today (and possibly many days) I am going to talk about health. I wanted to say weight loss, but I have to be careful as I don't think that's exactly what I want to talk about. Confused? So am I! But I'm going to tackle this dieting/weight loss/health problem once and for all!

Firstly some background.

I thought I came from a family who just had big bones. My parents were both not skinny. Their siblings also weren't skinny. And my siblings weren't skinny. My Mum dieted like a yo yo like so many women do and in our family we have a bit of an obsessive streak so there was one time I remember she was addicted to exercise and did actually get really skinny but other than that time we were all largish (but short). Anyway now I have a skinny Mum and a skinny sister and I've been skinny myself so the "big bones" argument doesn't really fly. In fact I have quite petite bones (skinny wrists) but I do still claim to have a big frame with broad shoulders and big ribs.

Anyway I grew up being probably slightly heavier than my peers and the gap grew as I got older. Looking back to my intermediate school photos now I looked completely normal but at the time I felt big. When I was 13 I decided not to weigh myself again. Ever. And I didn't for maybe 12 years. I think that was actually a great decision - one of the few good ones I made in my adolescent years. Go me! (Actually I did make other good decisions just not weight related ones).

Ok so... gulp... lets take a look at the photographic evidence.

Phase 1: Growing up (and out)

4th Form - 13 years old well my shape isn't too bad just looks like I had more boobs than others.


7th Form - 16 years old this is typically how I saw myself, not really really fat but heavy.


Uni - Around 21 years old here I'd started running, so wasn't stick skinny but a size 12-14 I think.


Phase 2: Shrinking

Then... I lost weight. By not eating very much. And running. But mostly the not eating much part - running helped but it didn't shift the weight like not eating did. It worked. But it wasn't fun. Who goes to Paris on a work trip and sits in their hotel room eating a mini pottle of baked beans and an apple for dinner instead of going out and buying a pain au chocolat? Me. That's who. Anyway more on that later.

Malta - 26 years old (You'll notice my skinny is no where near a Kate Moss skinny but skinny for me)


Greece - 26 years old


Phase 3: Ballooning

Ah I got pregnant. Remember how I didn't eat anything much in phase 2. Well you can't do that when you're pregnant. Not fair on bubby. So I started eating again. I didn't go nuts, but close to - suddenly I had an excuse to indulge myself in all those things I'd been denying myself for years, and not surprisingly I piled on the weight. I'd put on the same amount of weight in the first trimester that was recommended I gain the entire pregnancy.

Around 8 months - 27 years old


Around 8 months - 27 years old (this shows the first photo is just a pretty bad photo - but still it was a photo of me and the camera don't lie!).


Phase 4: ???

What do I looked like now I hear you ask? Ah well I conveniently don't have any photos ready today but I'll get onto that. Where to from here? That's what I plan to write about.

My goal: is to be able to eat whatever I want and be happy with the way I look.

I know I can do this and I'm going to concentrate on two areas:

1) Changing my attitude towards food so that what I WANT to eat is a healthy balanced diet
2) Changing my body image perception issues so I'm happier with a broader range of shapes and sizes for myself

Stay tuned!

I'm back... again!

Hello World!

I've decided that I'm going to blog again. It's going to be cathartic. I'm mostly just doing it because I like the word cathartic and wanted to use it.

Here are some other words I like:

snorkel
sludge
millipede
vamoose (ok I'm not sure that's a real word but we'll let it slide)
prognosticate

Actually - wait - I've decided this blog is now going to be have a bit of a health and exercise and baking focus. Ok not the most natural mix but hopefully it'll all make sense shortly! It'll probably still have other stupid and funny stuff too.

I think I'll start all that tomorrow though. Today is just for saying... stay tuned for more!