I'm putting on my chef hat today!

I love, love, love veggie burgers but I have yet to find one that really rocks my world so tonight for my dinner I am going to make a veggie burger using chickpeas as a base and then just throw a whole lot of spices and vegetables in and see how it goes.

I make up loads of recipes all the time and I also modify recipes that I find online and in cookbooks. It seems to me that we are STILL eating bags and bags of sugar even when creating food from scratch. I tend to cut the sugar amount in recipes by half or substitute using apple sauce I make myself. I think our children are eating way too much sugar and white flour these days so, my kids are from now on getting a major reduction of these things in their foods, actually the white flour is completely gone! It is the devil ingredient as far as I am concerned.

I'm a photographer, surely I should be shooting!

Okay so yes I am a photographer and I really should be shooting photographs everyday so what is my problem? Well laziness to be exact. After a work out the last thing I feel like doing is trying to be creative but I need to get on with it and get those creative juices flowing! How can I expect to be an expert without the practice, I can't. I still have a bit of a learning curve with my camera too, so Barbs needs to get off her backside and get clicking and today I started. I shall take one photo everyday and post it in here, I should've started January 1st but hey, better late than never!

Heart Shaped Pepper - taken via iPhone

When it's a struggle to get moving.

The last few days I have been feeling a bit lethargic and achy. I work out almost every day, never less than 6 days per week and I feel like my body is saying 'enough already take a break!' The problem is, I get scared that if I have a day off, I will like doing nothing and then find it hard to get back into it again.

Then Saturday rolls along and I wake up, it's 8:30am, plenty of time to get a work out in before it gets too hot, and I go to lift myself out of bed and it's hard, really hard, my body is so tired even though I've just had 8 hours of blissful sleep. No matter what I try, I can't seem to get it together, so I just have a day off and I tell you what, I felt great the next morning!

So Sunday morning comes along and I am feeling fighting fit and away I go. That night however, sleep does not arrive very easily and I am up four times in the night to go to the loo because I've started drinking my water again. Come Monday, I can't seem to manage moving again, crap! But you know what I did? I am so determined and so focused to getting this fat off my body that I walked my daughter to school with thoughts all the way there of not going for my 8km walk, then I leave through the school gates and tell myself I have to do it, I have to go, I have no choice and so I go and I sweat and I pray for rain which does not come. It's 31 degrees of baking heat beating down on my already weary body and I struggle, but I keep moving because why? because I am focused on the result, I need to get this weight off, I need a better life, I need to take control and even though there are really tough days, I have to push through and fight!

Today I feel a lot better and I realise that I need to take a break in the week to recharge and give my body a well earned rest. I used to go to bed at a crazy time, 2am but now I turn off my computer at 10.30pm, read and zone out for an hour then hop into bed at 11.30pm. I'm still not used to it, I still have good nights and bad nights, but the good nights are now outweighing the bad ones and I feel a lot better, more relaxed and best of all happy :)

Barbs xx

Muscles on fire!

Has it been a week since my last post? Well since I last wrote, my fitness regime is going strong! I am having trouble losing weight at a rate I feel acceptable (I know, I should accept any loss shouldn't I?), so I have had to re-think my food and exercise. I've upped my protein and am getting enough now and to be honest, I do feel so much better, food is fuel and I need that fuel to help my body burn fat properly. As for the fitness side of my plan, I have done loads and loads of research so with the info I have gathered plus the years of training through personal trainers and gym memberships, I have designed a programme to keep my body guessing. This week every second day is a 16km walk broken into a morning and evening session so as not to be to arduous and every other day is a 6-8km walk plus upper or lower body workout using weights and resistance bands. So far so good, I feel fantastic even though my muscles are burning! Sitting down onto the loo is somewhat of a challenge and even though my thighs are screaming HELP, I cannot stop laughing and feel a huge sense of achievement!

Feeling good, feeling great and I'm seeing awesome results, loving my life! <3

When you get that feeling

Today I went for my usual daily walk and it was so hot outside AGAIN! we are on our 7th day of Autumn and yet the cooler weather has yet to show up! Anyway I went and pounded the pavement for 6km's then came home and designed a few more products for my Zazzle stores. Then this afternoon, I got this feeling like I had an immense amount of energy that I needed to expend, so I grabbed my iPhone speakers, took them into the garage where I have set up a little workout area, cranked up the music and burned some serious calories off my body. It was intense, I used the exercises I learned from youtube, plus the pump routines that are ingrained in my brain from years of going to pump classes and a circuit that I have in a book I am currently reading. So after all of that, I was dripping wet again, my pants were even wet ewwwww! but a good eww! Now I'm sitting here waiting for my brown rice to cook and I still feel like I could do more, how weird is that?

Barbs xx

Back into the swing of things....thank god!

Well yesterday I did my usual 8km walk which is more like a jog since I was seriously fast and my legs were burning, I wanted to quit but I just couldn't do it, I had to go on because I can't give up, I've come so far and it would be criminal to go easy on myself so, I sucked it up and carried on and you know what? when I got home, I was so grateful that the angel on my left told the devil on my right to piss off and let me get on with it.

Once I arrived home, I had a sudden burst of energy and decided to do some butt exercises I saw on a video on youtube the night before. So I'm down on the floor, legs into a kind of lunge position and arms in the air following the trainers and while sweating like crazy I didn't feel that the exercise was working. Fast forward 4hrs later and my ass was on fire! After sitting down for a while, I went to get up and wow, pain, pain, fabulous workout pain, I love it! So if you are wanting some killer butt exercises here's the video, give it a shot, you'll love it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEHS8XPObyo&list=PL74C51C2109232BC4#aid=P9Aw0bPBbf4

Well that's it for today, take care!

Barbs xx

Where the hell have I been?

Well, it's been a  looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooog time since my last post and really I have no excuse or reason except that life has been a bit busy and I have been a bit lazy. This does not mean though, that I have given up all together, no way, no chance, no how, I am still in this for good!

So where am I at? Well I decided that it's high time I posted a before pic of myself, and as horrifying an experience as this is, I will do it, I have posted this already on my personal Facebook and I will also post it on my soon to be released Facebook Page called "Motiv8ted, no b.s. just weight loss" where I will post daily pics of my food and what I am doing exercise wise, cool things I find and the tees and other stuff that I am creating through Zazzle.com and my ebook I am working on which is loaded with recipes of the food I'm eating, and will be for sale on etsy.com, my facebook page.

Okay so before I get completely off topic, here are my before pics, I hope you are not eating!

This is me at 136kg (299lb), I had been this weight for years and years and years!

I had shortness of breath, couldn't cross my legs, had terrible skin, bad sleep patterns, was seriously addicted to every bad food imaginable and therefore was borderline diabetic, yeah pretty scary!




Now I cannot post just before pics can I? So here is what I look like now!

 

I am now 109kg (239.8lb)!!! I haven't been this weight for years! In fact I think the last time I weighed this much I was around 18 or 19 years old!

So there you go, that is where I am at, I've lost a total of 59.2lb!!!

I hope you are all doing really well and are living life to the full, sweating your butts off and getting enough good nutrition, take care and I will post again very soon, meaning, next week at the latest!

Take care

Barbs xx