My dirty little secret

Aaahhhh school holidays, a time that some mums love and some dread. I sit on the fence when it comes to school holidays. I enjoy doing the fun stuff with the kids, movies, play dates, lunching and just hanging at home and love the lack of schedule, no yelling and screaming to put shoes on grab bags, jumpers, hats (I’m sure you get the picture). But even with all the fun some days you just need an hour to yourself to have a shower, do a workout, plan or prepare dinner, I’m sure there are some mums nodding along with me (please tell me you are). And I am blessed that I can take the kids to work with me when I need to (the perks of working for family).

This holidays I have taken things to a whole new level of “falling off the wagon”.

The last day of school was a Friday which also coincided with my husband going on an overseas trip and a 7am drop off at the airport, this was all fine, followed by kids dropped at school/daycare on time and me heading off to work. On the way to work I realised I needed fuel in my car so I stopped to fill ‘er up. Well the sales and marketing people at Coles saw me coming, 2 family blocks of chocolate for $7 what a bargain and $2 large bags of chips, “I’ll have 2 bags of those thanks” after all it was Friday and people might pop in over the weekend (this is what I do to justify it to myself). And there began the downhill spiral that was the next 10 days.

On the way home from work I did a quick run to the bottle shop for some supplies for the week and promptly bragged jokingly about it on Instagram.

With a post that went something like this "Should be almost enough to get me through the 1st week of the #schoolholidays

With a post that went something like this “Should be almost enough to get me through the 1st week of the #schoolholidays

Whilst I won’t bore you with the details of every morsel that I ate and drank, I’ll give you a list of what I can remember about my total debacle of a week* (*10 days).

3 family blocks of Cadbury chocolate
Somewhere in the vicinity of 4 large bags of chips
Half a litre of Ice Cream
2x Schnitzel Cotoletta (this is a chicken schnitzel topped with Bolognese meat and melted cheese, I didn’t even know it existed, epic find)
1 loaf of Sourdough in about 3 days often doused in butter and peanut butter (up to 3-4 pieces at a time)
Copious amounts of other bread products
KFC twister and Crusher
Movie popcorn (I shared it, because that makes it all better)
Double choc-top (because a single just wasn’t enough and it was barely past breakfast)
Several Frozen cokes
A bottle of champagne every night and 2 a night over this last weekend (I’m not an alcoholic, they go to meetings)
Late night cheese and crackers

And there was much more; many Chai lattes, a few Iced Chocolates, cakes, biscuits (that didn’t even taste that good), burgers with the whole bun on (gasp).

I was mindfully eating poorly at almost every meal. Sort of defeated the purpose of the last few weeks in cutting out sugar from my cups of Tea.

I’m not blaming any 1 thing for this out of control week* I was still a functioning adult, the kids were still well looked after mainly because of my dirty little secret.

The really bad shit comes out after dark.

I try not to eat the bad food in front of the kids, you know to set a good example and all that. When they ask for desert I like to respond with fruit and proceed to list everything that we have, they can also have yoghurt if we have any and on a very rare occasion a tube ice-block. So my house is not a barrage of junk because as you can see I often have no self control. The chocolate wouldn’t even get mentioned until they were fast asleep and really there was no-one to mention it to.

My addiction love of reality TV still continues and the latest season of The Biggest Loser Australia has just started. Whilst I was not in any way as BAD as the show made the contestants out to be, they were inhaling entire pizza’s while sitting alone in a car or consuming litres upon litres of ice-cream for breakfast, having a whole tray of lasagne for lunch that should feed a family, I was my own kind of BAD.

I would have to say this is my longest stint of BAD that I have had in over 5 years. Normally I can manage a good day or 2 in a BAD week, but for some reason I couldn’t get off this downhill spiral. I got to Thursday morning and thought it was almost the weekend, so why start now? Normally I can talk myself out of that mindset but not that day.

I even tampered with my own Typo light box motivational message.

I even tampered with my own Typo light box motivational message.

But amongst all of these BAD food choices I was still exercising and setting goals, in fact setting some big ass goals. 1 of which was commencing training for a Marathon on the Concept 2 Indoor Rowing machine and the other signing up to compete in the primo 2k Rowing event a the upcoming Australian Indoor Rowing Championships (I’ve been retired from that event for the last 6 years). So in line with my new training regime I sat on the rower for an hour, my body was screaming at me, “what are you doing to yourself” but even that didn’t stop me eating crap shortly after.

So what have I gained from eating like a piggy? Well about 3 kilos, a continual bloated feeling and generally feeling quite down in the dumps.

What have I lost? The ability to fit in some of my clothes, my motivation and self esteem.

What am I going to do about it? Dust off the chip crumbs and get myself together. With another week of the school holidays to go and a long weekend thrown in there and a holiday coming up this can’t go on. Stop blaming little speed humps in my life, FOCUS on the positive, because there is a lot to be happy and positive about and maybe re-word my Typo light board. Any suggestion?

School Holiday fun

School Holiday fun with my cherubs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Right Stuff – Sports Bra Extraordinaire

When I was verging on my heaviest I was playing competitive Paintball (there will be a whole story on that another time). The position I played didn’t involve a whole lot of running, but I wanted to be able to, so I embarked on the search for a Plus Size Sports Bra.

Finding a bra in my size (24DD) to begin with was a challenge in itself and I spent a lot of money on crap sports bras just because they came in my size. A miracle happened one day when I was watching Oprah (a rare thing for me to watch TV in the middle of the day) and she mentioned the Enell Bra. I knew I had to find out more, if Oprah wears them then I too should be sporting one myself.

Front view. This is not me nor my image, I borrowed it from www.enell.com

Front view.
This is not me nor my image, I borrowed it from www.enell.com

I madly googled and found out more, measured myself figured out my size and found a stockist in Australia and boom bam, cha ching I ordered one from online store Bella Forma. Once it arrived I was soooooo happy, this Bra had the most amazing support, nothing moved. They come in sizes that suit big cup sizes or big body sizes (I would say up to about a Australian size 28-30 or 52DD in bra sizes). You really need to check out the website to believe the way this Bra is designed and operates. It comes with a brief instruction leaflet as to how to put it on.

Back view. Image from www.enell.com

I have been a convert and preacher about the Enell Bra since that first day. Unlike the many other bra’s out there (sports or otherwise) the original Bra I purchased has lasted me over 7 years (still looks amazing) and only this week I put it in the “too big” pile and it still has many more miles left in it. A few years after buying the first I purchased one in a size smaller because I had lost a little bit of weight. During my love-in with Enell I was shown another brand of sports bra which I purchased only to be disappointed. Had I found this bra prior to the Enell I may have thought it was pretty good compared to the previous junk I had been wearing.

Since embarking on my Lapband Surgery and my current fitness regime I have lost more weight, and the need to buy a bra in a smaller size was imminent, Enell was my only consideration.

Because these Bras retail at $99 (still worth every penny), I hit good ‘ole google again to see if I could find them cheaper somewhere. I managed to find an Ebay store that sold brand new but Factory seconds of the Enell bra for around $38 each, the reason they are factory seconds is there are either some snags on the outer fabric OR the band that goes around your rib cage was manufactured 1 inch smaller than that size should be (read the description of each to see what the problem is). I don’t know about you but I have no problem with a little bit of snagging on a bra that nobody will see. So my 2 new bras arrived last week and I’m again loving really good boobie support and the flaws are very minimal, crazy really. The only disadvantage buying via Ebay is you may be limited by colour choice and they may not have your size straight away but be patient more sizes pop up every few weeks.

Newer purple colour Enell. Image from Australian Stockist http://www.bellaforma.com.au

Newer purple colour Enell.
Image from Australian Stockist http://www.bellaforma.com.au

Or if you want the funkiest colours and your size straight away, find your nearest stockist off the Enell website.

I’m sure you will all do you own research but I have never regretted buying my Enell Sport bra.

* I was not paid nor given any product to write this post, it is purely my own experience, research and opinion.

Who am I?

I am Rachael a 39.5 year old wife and mother of Miss 2.75.

So here I start 6 months before my 40th Birthday, debating whether I am going through a mid-life crisis and freaking out by focusing on exercise and trying, trying, trying to eat better.

I have a wonderful husband, family and friends who support me in everything I do, we have a daughter “Miss 2.75” who is adorable, cheeky, a little bit naughty, super cute and super super smart.

This is a recent photo weighing in at 108kgs. Taken at Cadbury Chocolate Factory in Tasmania, Australia

Fat to Fit and Fabulous by Forty is a blog about my current journey of weight-loss and fitness, my personal challenges, food addiction, insecurities and everything that goes along with being “Double Extra Gorgeous” and just wanting to be “Mildly Extra Gorgeous”, not to mention how the hell I got here in the first place. I am a fun, “CAN DO” kind of person, I will have a go an anything once, and if I love it will do it again and again, I think that is where my addictive personality comes out. I see myself as the “Funny Fat” girl. I have been overweight all of my life, always being the biggest at school (or so I though) and blossoming in my 20’s, excessively blossoming in my 30’s and hitting my biggest after our Honeymoon and then exploding during pregnancy. To give you some idea I am 168cm tall and on my Wedding Day I weighed 124kgs, after the Honeymoon (6-8 weeks later) weighed 132kgs and on the day I gave birth was 146kgs and was 146cm around the middle (coincidence) who knows.

About 8 months after I having our daughter, hubby and I both decided to have “Lap Band Surgery”, we had debated it prior to our wedding but thought we could do it (lose weight) on our own. We were of the opinion 1 in all in (ie both of us should do it or not at all) and he decided against it, so I chickened out as well. But it is amazing what bringing a small person into your life will do, the desire to live longer, be healthier and not inflict your poor food choices onto your “Offspring” becomes a major priority. My parents helped us out financially with the “Gap” costs of the surgery and we were very much supported by both our families.

So here I am about 25kgs down from prior to the Surgery and weighing in at 107.7kgs, I have plateaued for about 12 months going up and down by a couple of kgs over that time.

I invite you to follow my journey for the next 6 months to see if I can achieve my weight loss and fitness goals.

Rachael