Odyssey : milestones

Who said a picture speaks a thousand words?

The answer, if we can believe Wiki answers, is an early emperor of the Xia Dynasty in China.

Well, his words resonate with me about 4 000 years later!

So, here goes everyone! Rocky Horror Show!

 

During lunch on Mother’s day May 2008, I called for everyone’s attention and then took the drastic step of announcing to my assembled family that I had reached the end of my tether regarding my skyrocketing weight. I did state what my weigh-in was on that Sunday  morning– a nice rounded kg amount that would have not been lightweight on a rugby front ranker!

I told my  family that I was embarking on a health & wellness journey and no-one must ever take offense if I pitched up at their homes with my own food bowls in hand!  There was a shocked silence and then everyone spoke at once assuring me of their support and understanding.

Later that evening I received a much appreciated email from my daughter-in-law who commended me on my ‘bravery’ and assured me of her support in any way I needed it.

Almost 10 months – March 2009 – after the big Mother’s Day Announcement, I marched into my hairdressers and Zanet gaped at me in horror. She had not seen me – previously a monthly regular – in 7 months. She shrieked across the salon shouting “where the hell have you been?”. Only  our temperamental hairdressers can get away with such cheek not so?!! I did not blame her though for the look of shock on her face. There I was with 7 months worth of hair growth – brown ends and a HUGE re-growth of silver/grey  making up the truly dreadful picture.

I told her I wanted her to cut off all the brown and leave just the short grey growth. In other words I was “going grey”. At first she point-blank refused and it took much persuasion on my part to force her to do the deed.

When she had shorn off all my wild locks, there I was with grey hair with brown tips on the ends. She dug in her heels and refused to lop off any more and so I landed up with the brown tips being bleached a light blonde colour!

The change was indeed drastic. My husband loved it and my children hated it.

On arrival at home, I deliberately had the above two ‘before’ photos taken. At the time, I had also only lost about 3kg in 10 months but I had joined a gym and I was gearing myself up to ‘diet’. Hate that word.

I knew there would come a time when I would show the world where I had come from. I also always thought it would be on the day I reached my ultimate goal weight. Not so. Sometimes we have to pause and take stock and this is what I have decided to do.

“Odyssey : Interrupted” is a time for looking back at where I was and for taking a (brief) moment to pat myself on the back! 

At the time this was taken I was just starting to believe I could do it!

I was starting to feel quite good in my very loose clothes here. I was honoured with a request from Dr Anna to speak as a patient living with diabetes at her seminar of the same name.  Hair getting longer and I was getting used to the change in appearance.

This was taken one afternoon right after getting back from gym. Marc objected to taking the picture with me all sweaty-faced. I said I wanted to show how baggy the t-shirt was. I had bought half a dozen especially for gym in size XXL as I was not about to expose my fat rolls to the lycra clad guys and dolls at VA! Turns out nobody gives a damn what you look like at gym – everyone is there for their health and fitness – as it should be.

28 May 2010 and all dolled up to talk at Dr Anna’s seminar on weight management.  Felt quite glam.

Having said that I felt quite glam, I was also checking out my loose skin and darn wrinkles! Skin is not so elastic any more when you are as ancient as I am!

These two photos were taken on my birthday  9th June and this, dear friends, is what I look like today! Looking back up the screen I am chuffed with the change.

A long journey from May 2008 and the odyssey ( ‘a series of wanderings’ remember!) continues…..

Anyone know of a good plastic surgeon???!!! 🙂

Advertisement

Odyssey : Interrupted…..

“ I try to take one day at a time,

but sometimes several days attack me at once “

I used the above quotation in June in the series of posts on quotes that resonate with me.

Well  at the moment I have to say that several months have attacked me all at once recently. Since June I have been bombarded with truly huge challenges on all fronts; business-wise, health-wise, personal-wise, feel free to  imagine any ‘–wise’ you can think of and  it has challenged me! And (never begin a sentence with ‘and’ Eileen!) the concerted attack continues unabated.

The result is enormous stress or I should say  events that are causing very stressful  loss of focus on all  mission-critical fronts and will continue to do so until the end of the year.

The catalyst for all of this can probably  be laid at the door of our impending re-location to  a lovely leafy little suburb called La Rochelle.  It will be our second  suburban move since moving to Cape Town in 2005. We currently occupy two apartments in a nice old building and we are in the process of packing up both; together with a garage which is crammed full of ‘stuff’ both business and personal.

Our home apartment is not so bad – the cupboards are pretty neatly sorted. A dear kind person has offered to just pitch up on moving day and load all our garments ‘as is’ on their hangers into her car and transport them to our new home. Cool! We are profoundly grateful to her.

My books are mostly packed and ready to roll. My chests full of craft & hobby paraphernalia must still  be attended to but I am leaning towards just transporting the drawers ‘as is’ as well.

Our business apartment is not so simple and we are presently surrounded by literally dozens of boxes packed and labelled, packed and not labelled, not packed  and ………..  ya getta da picture I am sure.The result of  darn nearly five years of not sending archive paper back to our clients. Of course, the clients have been quite happy to leave their stuff with us – saves their space!!  The garage has many more such boxes waiting to be shipped and  we only have 3 weeks to go to D-Day.

I better get to end of this post and go do something useful ! 🙂

We are determined to move with as little junk as possible and  the physical strain of all this angst  is getting to us a bit. We are not getting any younger  so it’s a case of pacing ourselves and  forging ahead in an orderly fashion. List-maker that I am, there is not much that will miss my attention even as thinly spread as we are at this time.

The loss of focus on the health and wellness  aspect of the Odyssey is hugely upsetting indeed but as Dr Anna says “ Do not beat yourself up about it” .  I will just renew /redirect focus as soon and as often as  I can. In between the (organised?!) chaos, I am still trying to keep up with all my health newsletters, still checking out the “Metabolism Miracle” option, getting to gym  occasionally and hiking on mountains and in forests every so often…… What more can I do with everything else going on?!

Talk again soon I hope…… keep well and be in touch please if you can….