Another week bites the dust

So, I made a commitment last week to organize my life more. I kind of promised to buy myself a planner and start writing. And wow, what an excellent exercise in reflection it’s been. It isn’t just about writing, it’s about organizing your thoughts and getting out of those moments where you ‘forget’ or feel as if you’re missing something. I can see how people can get too hung up about this, but for me and how busy I am, it actually helps me anchor thought processes, reminders and tasks. I write down a master to-do list for example, and then use it to insert small tasks throughout the week. This is another way to work on habit formation and see where you might have deficiencies in the way you plan or why you might be procrastinating. For reference, I purchased a planner like this one , however mine was a runout special with a chrome silver leather bound case. I paid about $44 AUD for mine, and the inserts (cos I got additional) were 2 for 3 special, so that was I think $15 or so. The original setup might be pricey – but the quality is way better than a Kmart or BigW version and they fill standard filofax sizing, so you can add these too. I also think if you’re going to journal and plan, make sure you enjoy the space you do it in. Splurge a bit on your journal, and make it yours.

So another thing I’ve been doing which I failed to mention last week, was a change in WOE, also known as ‘way of eating’. I’ve been hearing a lot about LCHF, Low Carb High Fat for a while and finally took the plunge about 5 weeks ago to change the way I eat. What finally spurred it on was the death of my grandmother and me being in Melbourne. As some of you know, and some do not, I transitioned my gym training program to Olympic Weightlifting about 4 months ago or so, and I ABSOLUTELY love it. I couldn’t have found a better match for me. But I will discuss that in length on another post.

So I came back home and was bloated and swollen and just felt disgusting. I was talking to my coach about it and he said, well, why don’t you look at going back to basics, and insert some more anti-inflammatory vegies into your diet to try and reduce it, and we will see where it gets you over the next few weeks (I will boast about how awesome my coach is also, on another post, cos he isn’t just my weightlifting coach, but he is also teaching me patience. He’s a part of my life nobody has access to, and I just love him and think he is phenomenal).

So I did. I came home, and started researching diets or ways of eating that were back to basics. And what came up a lot was keto and LCHF, which was targeted often at those with other medical conditions like diabetes and insulin resistance (as also some of you know, I suffer from PCOS and so my body does actually have a form of insulin resistance, buggers my hormones and all that other nasty stuff). I read and read and read everything about it, and me being me, made myself a food/meal plan, shopping list and then removed all the nasty stuff from my kitchen closets. Before I knew it, I was ready… technically… but something in my mind held me back. I started it the next day without giving this phantom thing in my mind any further thought, and have not had any slipups since then. It’s been 5 weeks – I’m 5.4kgs down, several centimeters across the measurable bits down and feeling absolutely amazing. As a lifter, I haven’t lost any strength or ability to train heavy, and believe me, I train really heavy…

So basically for those of you not in the know, LCHF is a low carb (20-50g per day), higher fat way of eating that removes all processed foods, sugars and carbohydrates and encourages you and your body to just eat clean, whole foods. It’s basically removing pasta, rice, bread, sweets, desserts, sodas etc. You still eat normal food – and believe me I have bacon and eggs daily, avocado on toast made from almond meal and flaxseed, coffee, sweets (made using stevia) etc, just no additional empty carbs. I get enough carbs and fibre from vegies and fruit and meat etc throughout the day that I have actually started reducing the frequency I eat. Training days are different, and that is expected because you will need more energy, but LCHF is basically encouraging your body to change from using carbohydrate and sugar as your energy source, to using fat. I am not a scientist, and have no idea about the science on this, but there is a lot of literature on the WWW discussing this. I will post these in a separate post because I do want to discuss LCHF on a more prominent note.

Other than that I have been incredibly busy. I don’t know If many of you know but I did get a new job this year and a sizeable promotion, so that was life saving considering the awful place I worked and spent 13 months at. Some of my angst regarding this job is written about in this blog. But it’s funny because I’ve not been at this new job for long but it feels as if it’s been more like 9 or 10 months that I’ve been there. The 13 months at my previous job that made me question life and whether or not I wanted to stay in my field of work, that’s how much I hated it. And then this new job came along. And it’s crazy. There are days I get severely bored, but it’s because the subject topic can be a bit dry. More often than not I am learning something new and that keeps me going for the remainder of the day. And I remind myself, this isn’t going to be forever, because it’s not. I know that – I know I am using this job as a stepping stone, so I am learning to just embrace the crazy and see what I can get out of it.

For the most part, settling in has been really easy. Everyone is so ridiculously nice. There is office politics there, of course, this is everywhere, but for the most part I keep out of it and chuck my earphones on and listen to podcasts. Again, I say to myself, I won’t be there forever and just get on with it. I’m currently buddied up with one of the ladies who, seems as if she is the favorite. Personally, I don’t rate her and I think there are better analysts in the team than her, but I digress. But I’m finding it really difficult being around her because she’s creepily nice, like you know the type of person you feel bad for being upset at, because they’re too nice. This on its own made me weary straight up, cos I can’t trust someone who uses facades, but anyway – she is so ridiculously technical in what she does that I feel inadequate sometimes. She just goes over the top and to use the analogy, needs to know about every single grain of sand.

For example the other day she was using a table to represent a heat map of highest percentage and lowest percentage of representation in a population group. She then had a separate section to attempt to display “relative magnitude of influence”….for me this is not only unnecessary but ridiculous. If your stakeholder reads your paper and cannot determine that 60% is a relative high sample of the population group in comparison to others, and you need to add this in, then you are stupid. She just goes over the top, and this coupled with other things makes her one of the people you just get anxiety from.

So in my quest on learning about myself and the experience of my previous job, I’m just going to go straight in and confront her, in a nice way. My only stress right now needs to be travelling to work (Because it takes a while), and I don’t need additional stress from feeling inadequate against someone who is going to the enth degree to make herself look and feel valued and important. She gives off the vibe of ‘teacher’s pet’, if that makes more sense.

Other than that, things are moving along nicely. Hubs and I are planning for the next property purchase and are meeting with a new broker who just seems as if she will fit really well with us. We had a phone conversation with her yesterday and she was straight up, ‘hello darling’ and we just, we laughed and we just got each other. We look forward to seeing her next week – which reminds me, I need to update my to-do list!

The rest of today will be finishing some of these nagging tasks and house chores, making a zucchini lasagna and stopping at the fruit shop. I probably will need another caffeine hit along the way – no, I definitely will. I did plan to do my blog content schedule, so I might even get to that today…..

Oh, and new Youtuber I found. She is phenomenal. Lavendaire . She looks at planning, motivation, changing your life, inspiration, being successful, writing, journaling etc. She just has a unique look at the world and encourages you to live the best life you can. I’ve been binging on her videos of late.

Until next time.