“Before you begin a thing, remind yourself that difficulties and delays quite impossible to foresee are ahead…
You can only see one thing clearly, and that is your goal. Form a mental vision of that and cling to it through thick and thin.”
— Kathleen Norris, Writer
So, I ask again, when did it become OK? Just exactly when?
Just what am I on about now?
Yesterday, we spent several hours at CT International airport. On the Saturday before Christmas it’s not a good place to be. The place was heaving with people who were heaving themselves along….. as in lumbering along with their obese bodies no doubt protesting quite strongly.
Of course, there were many folk of healthy weight among the masses but, it seemed to me, that every second person I saw was obese to morbidly obese. Lumbering along with that peculiar rocking gate of protesting bones and muscles slack with lack of exercise….. Or traipsing along with muffin tops offending my eyes. (Maybe I’m just prudish and old fashioned with that one!)
I will refrain from including myself in any pics at this time, but my family companions looked pretty good!
Sitting in the Spur, watching the planes come and go (I love doing that), I also observed people come and go from the various tables in the restaurant. One family in particular came directly into my line of vision and I covertly observed them for quite a while. Grandparents, morbidly obese, trying to squeeze into the benches at their big table. The granny, I wondered about her. What did she look like when she married the old man? Slim? trim? Or already plump on her wedding day? The oupa; I imagined him just eating whatever was put on the table in front of him at home. The children, ‘30/40-somethings’, severely overweight. The son; maybe it was rugby muscle now overtaken by fat. The DIL; very plump indeed. Maybe she was trying to control her weight? Who knows? Lastly, the grandchildren. Not yet in High School. Seriously podgy and pasty looking from lack of sun & exercise. Perhaps that was the saddest part of the picture in front of me. The grandchildren.
Why do I keep thinking about the grandmother? Should she have informed herself and controlled the diet & habits of herself and her spouse? Which, in turn, could have inculcated better eating habits in her son? Maybe she is in fact informed but just could not get control? You know, somehow, I don’t think so. I think she just gave up on the calories, the ‘low fat everything’ that was supposed to help her slim down, the never-ending diets, the never-ending failures.
The food choices that family of six South Africans made yesterday were ill-advised to say the very least. And I, for one, will never give up on myself and my quest for permanent, sustainable healthy weight. I will never give up on my Odyssey.
We used them in my banking days. I am uncertain whether they still have relevance. About a year ago, I collared my long-suffering husband for a “what do we really want from life and how do we get there” brainstorm. Poor bloke. We came up with the following short, sweet 6 word statement:
“ALL WORK CURRENT,
MORE LEISURE TIME”
I want to add something about physical activity but cannot think of three words to encapsulate that! Mind you, if all our work was current, we would have more leisure time for getting active! So perhaps this mission statement is enough ‘as is’.
Hope you all had a good day 
My post this morning has to do with goals. And what’s more, this post is cribbed directly off a newsletter I subscribe to. Tom Venuto’s BURN THE FAT Fat Burning Tips E-zine : www.burnthefat.com.
‘They’ say – and I have always believed implicitly in this – that a goal is but a dream until it is written down. This post fits in nicely with my post of yesterday about New Year’s resolutions.
Whether we call them resolutions or goals, we surely all aspire to something in this fresh New Year? It’s like a nice clean sheet; a new blank page in your new 2011 Journal – you do try to keep a journal do you not?! 
You do at least try to keep a food log do you not?!
I think I have mentioned before that some years ago I created an Excel workbook which enabled Weigh-Less members to record daily food intake and the various formulas would add up and track their daily progress. If any one part of the daily formula was exceeded, the figures would start showing in RED!!! If anyone is interested, I could try and dig it up again from the bowels of my computer! Back in about 2007, I sent out literally hundreds of copies of this spread-sheet. Each page also has space for remarks where you can record what a shit day you are having!
But, as usual, I digress ….. let me just get on with it and list what Venuto calls SMART as well as SMART-ER goals:
1. Specific. Set goals with clarity. Get clear. Get precise. Be specific. Your mind does not respond well to generalities.
2. Measurable. Set goals that can be quantified in measurable units. Kg weight; body fat % (more about that soon); body measurements; clothing sizes.
3. Accountable. Set goals that you can be held accountable to. Accountable to yourself with weekly progress charts; a daily nutrition diary/food log; and possibly a training journal. Double that accountability by submitting your results to a third party who can hold you accountable!
4. Realistic. Set goals that are attainable and maintainable. ,5kg a week FAT loss a week is attainable. 1Kg per week would be awesome and not quite so easy imho! I will talk about FAT loss in future posts. I am NO expert but have been reading up about it.
5. Time bound. Set goals with deadlines. With no time limit, there is no urgency for completion. Set weekly goals for nutrition and workouts (!); weekly weight and body composition; then look ahead and check quarterly progress. Set long term goals.
Now for the ER part.
6. Emotional. Goals give direction but strong emotions are the propulsion system that drives you in the desired direction. Connect your goals to your values. What’s most important to you about reaching your goals? What will reaching your goals do for you? What will your life be like then? How will reaching your goals make you FEEL?
7. Review often. Stay laser-focused by writing and reading your goals every day. Repetition is one of the keys to re-programming your mental computer for success.
Of course, I have to add my own little rider to this – also adapted from Tom Venuto’s words –
Work HARD at achieving your goals and EXPECT success!!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
We are goofing off today with our family on one of our ‘most-est’ favourite jaunts – a trip down to Simonstown – replete with cat box in the boot. Love that historic place. Now (sorta!) settled in our new home, I am ready to rescue a kitten from TEARS – though I greatly fear it may turn out to be two kitties from TEARS as all three of our grandchildren want to be part of the process. At R450 each, they are not cheap rescues either! But of course we understand and accept that it is more about donating to an incredible organisation rather than the cost of a kitten per se.
Have a great day everyone!
“ It’s never too late to be who you might have been.”
George Eliot
Mary Anne Evans was a Victorian novelist who used the pen name George Eliot. According to Wiki, the masculine name was chosen to partly distance herself from the lady writers of silly novels but it also quietly hid the tricky subject of her marital status.
She lived with the married George Henry Lewes for over 20 years. Mr Lewes apparently had an open marriage; one can imagine how well that played in the Victorian era! Nonetheless, the Evans/Lewes ‘marriage’ was by all accounts a loving and stable relationship.
After Lewes died, George Eliot later legally married American banker John Cross – a man 20 years her junior. A Victorian Demi Moore?! 🙂
I seem to gravitate towards women who buck the system, don’t I?!
Now from George Eliot to Tom Venuto. Wow! Now that’s a jump! You can’t say my interests are not eclectic!
Tom Venuto, of www.burnthefatblog.com and www.tomvenuto.com fame, writes about his sadness when people think that it is “ too late” for them to do anything about fitness and overweight. You may like to read his 2 latest blog posts dated 25th and 29th June. Don’t be put off by the pictures of his body-builder torso! He is anything but a steroid laden exercise junkie. The man has much to say that may resonate with you!
Have a great Friday.
Those of you following this blog will know the story about my friend T who works for a friend/client of mine. At Christmas time he scraped his foot while swimming and by March his foot had been amputated. He is still getting around on crutches while he awaits a prosthetic foot.
I was upset once again yesterday when I was told that T was admitted to hospital last Thursday with deep vein thrombosis in the remaining ‘good’ leg. He remains hospitalised at this time and I will contact his son later this morning to get the latest update. The grave danger and possible consequences in this situation do not have to be spelled out.
What really, really gets to me is that this whole unfolding crisis could quite probably have been avoided completely. It need never have happened.
T really needs to supplement his pension income, his employer wants to accommodate this but also has to deal with T’s lengthy absences from work. It has placed my client in a difficult situation which will have to resolved one way or another.
When we blithely ignore the warning signs that our lifestyle is causing our bodies to deteriorate, we are literally toying with our lives. There are thousands of medical conditions that can befall us over which we have no control whatsoever. Surely it makes sense to take charge of what we can control and influence? But we just don’t do it.
I am relentlessly driven by a number of things to continue on my odyssey back to optimal (optimum?!) wellness. I cannot just let it go. I cannot just let things slide – much as I am so often tempted to do. I deviate from the path – badly sometimes – and yet I cannot throw in the towel.
One small consolation is that sanity has now prevailed long enough for me to appoint a temporary office assistant. After only 3 mornings with us, the ‘advent of Nicky’ is changing my office landscape and I will talk more about this in a later post.
In our days of being Rotarians, W & I enjoyed an active social life with much interaction with fellow Rotarians and we did a lot of community service work which is what Rotary International is all about.
At the time, it was a males only organisation and one became a member by invitation only. The wives were called Rotary Anns and we dutifully played our part in the organisation which I see is still very active in community work today.
During our year as Rotary President and Rotary Ann President, we entertained a lot. We had a large double storey home, a full time domestic worker, my folks lived with us in the ‘granny flat’ and they were a wonderful support system with our teenage boys. W & I forged ahead with our respective banking careers and did our share of community work while having fun with good friends. It was a good life and we had marvellous support systems in place.
Things are somewhat different today. We still live the good life, though in a very different way. We chose to re-locate to Cape Town and we chose to take our ‘retirement jobs’ (a bookkeeping practice) along with us.
There is little time left for entertaining and it is not easy to cater for numbers in our flat, spacious as these old apartments are. Later this year, we are re-locating (again!) to a spacious home in a leafy suburb which belongs to our middle son M. But I am getting horribly sidetracked here – that is a story for a later time.
This is the meal I threw together last night for 6 members of the family:
BUTTER CHICKEN : served with brown basmati rice, cauliflower with cheese sauce and a good tossed salad.
MIXED BERRIES DESSERT : Dessert was slightly defrosted mixed berries with a choice of diet ice cream and/or lite custard. Of course, we all chose ‘and’ and not ‘or’! Mix it all up in a purple mess in your pudding dish – divine, almost fat free and low GI.
Pretty good I would say and the scale showed no overnight weight gain at my ‘Sunday Morning Showdown’ this morning. I should have had broccoli with the cauliflower as lettuce does not count as a dark green veg. (Tabitha Hume!) Red, yellow as well as green pepper strips and home grown mung bean sprouts in the salad made up for it in a small way.
Butter Chicken!!! I hear you say. Yes, so simple really. Browned chicken thighs (bone in, skin off) in a little extra virgin olive oil, dumped them in a large casserole dish with lid and poured Denny Butter Chicken Curry Sauce over them. 20 mins with casserole lid on, 20mins with casserole lid off and left them to sit there until the Sharks had won their game against I don’t know who!
The latest Weigh Less magazine is out and included is a Coat and Cook in Sauces Guide. Get it and check it out!. It will inspire you to serve something new for your family while keeping those kilos in check! You can have a quarter of the packet of wet sauce – only 424kJ and 5.0g fat.
I was given a rice cooker recently (my slow cooker/Crockpot actually does the job just as well) and the berries I had bought in bulk out at Hillcrest Berry Orchards at the height of the berry season. I use them as a treat and am only sorry I did not buy many more kilograms of these wonderful fruits at that time. I will really stock up next year.
High Tea at the Nelly (Mount Nelson Hotel) is on my Bucket List but the High Tea served at Hillcrest Berry Orchards is really good. Situated in the magnificent Banhoek Valley outside Stellenbosch, this working farm is well worth the trip. Check it out. They also do B & B.
Hopefully, you are starting to see from my scribblings on this blog that we CAN eat delicious food while keeping to a healthy eating plan. With careful portion control we can still ‘have our cake and eat it’!
In our family, that question almost always means that someone is asking the rugby score. Usually it also means the score in a game involving the Sharks! As ex-KZNatalians, we are often berated for being disloyal to the local Stormers squad – but that’s how it is. Once a Sharks fan always a Sharks fan it seems!
I am not a huge rugby fan although I have done my fair share of screaming for our team from the sidelines; especially at schoolboy matches. Not unusual for the mother of 3 sons! I usually only become interested if our team is still in contention near the end of a series.
One score both W & I ARE interested in is our weight! Now back in CT, we both climbed on the scale first thing this morning to assess the ‘damage’ caused by our wonderful break at Mossel Bay. Also not forgetting the lovely roast leg of lamb dinner plus ‘ Jan Ellis Pudding’ we were treated to at the home of W’s sisters in Dana Bay. (You truly do not want to know the ingredients used for Jan Ellis Pudding! Needless to say, it tastes divine!)
The sisters plus W and I were a gang of 4 when we lived there in 2003-2005 and we had some great times together. Not sure why but I was quite heartsore to visit there this time and realise that the gang of 4 was down to a twosome again.
Enough of that! On to the subject at hand – the ‘damage’. I should not really use that word as a slight weight gain on holiday is par for the course – (Pinnacle Point course ha ha!!).
W returned home 0.1kg lighter than he was and we can put that down to some pretty long walks on very hilly terrain. He also enjoyed a wonderful +-9km walk with M & J along the now disused railway line from Wilderness to Victoria Bay. Those of you that know that area will know what a beautiful stretch of Garden Route coast that is; Outeniqua Choo-Choo country. A cloudy day also made for comfortable walking. All in all I would say that W walked about 15km while away and this paid dividends in increased fitness, no weight gain and a complete disappearance of stress.
My result was also pretty good – no loss but a slight gain of 0.4kg for the 7 days away. I am not in any way bothered by this and will simply re-direct my energies to continue the odyssey. W has just walked in with some yummy plums – those firm ‘black’ skinned ones. Not a huge plum fan but these are really lekker! Golden yellow flesh and they do not drip all over you like some plums do! Holford would be pleased – he promotes dark coloured fuit & veg choices almost ad nauseum!
The odyssey (‘ a series of wanderings’ remember!) continues – the green (actual) line on my Excel chart will be meandering above the solid red (target) line at the moment but the downward momentum continues.
I urge you to persevere with your own odyssey – whatever goal you have – it IS achievable.
If you have stalled on the trip; if you have lost direction; if you are feeling de-motivated or overwhelmed by what you see as an unachievable task, I encourage you to :
Stop. take stock. re-define your goals. plan your strategy. move ahead. Baby steps are all that is required; as long as these steps are consistently applied, you WILL get there!
Another wonderful thing about an odyssey is that no matter how many times you stop and wander off the track along the way, you will reach your destination if you just keep on plodding along in the right direction!
As we reluctantly ease back into work mode after a lazy Easter weekend, W & I are pleased to note that we both lost a little weight over the weekend. We did indulge in a few, small easter eggs and sundry other foods such as a lovely bacon/egg breakfast and a couple of takeaways and visits to food outlets in CW (Canal Walk Shopping Centre, Century City)
We realise that it’s not about ‘dieting’. It’s about consciously making choices (indulging our love of chocolate which we seldom do) and then simply re-focussing on what we know is the right eating regime for us.
In past years, I – for one – would have polished off lots of marshmallow eggs and any/all hollow eggs that came my way! The huge Easter egg market set up in CW was a sight to behold and I did buy a box of Lindor 60% balls. I dished them out very quickly! I could have polished off the lot by myself without much trouble but in truth I had no real desire to do that.
My glucose levels did not go haywire and we will soon see if there were any real spikes this week. I was due to go for my bi-annual fasting HbA1c test this morning but am fighting a cold that I picked up yesterday. Got up at 2am and swallowed a mega dose of Vit C so have had to postpone the test until tomorrow morning.
I will also make sure we both have our bottles of ice water on our desks – something that we tend to forget. So vitally important!
I have not posted about what I drink – I will try to do that this evening. At boarding school in the village made world famous by Alan Paton, Ixopo, a huge treat was to be ‘let out of’ hostel on a Saturday morning. We girls would all troop down to the village and settle in the ‘tea room’ and check out the boys while consuming large helpings of slap chips, hamburgers and Coca Cola!
Old habits die hard and if I was unwise I would still happily consume greasy burgers, fries and coke all these years later. Such is the influence of childhood habits!
Would love to hear how your Easter weekend went?
Where are we now?
Where are we going?
No matter what our personal circumstances are, we all face the challenge (I don’t like the word problem) of deciding what to do with our time. Yes, it is a decision no matter how we might think to the contrary! We ALL think we are forced to do something when, in fact, we have a choice in these matters.
Think on this: We are where we are today as the result of every decision we have ever made in the past.
Hate your job? You decided to work there! Depending on the degree of your dissatisfaction, you will have to decide to stay and make the best of it or look for another job. Either of those decisions will be followed by further decisions!
Hate your relationship? You decided to enter into it! Once again, depending on how bad things are, you will ultimately have to make one of two decisions! Stay or go and you know what will follow-on from there – more decisions!
Catch my drift? You can go on and on – try it and you will see that consequences (where you are now) are the result of decisions you have made. SO hard to accept that sometimes. We always want to say it’s not our fault about this, that we had no control over that.
So, we do decide how to use our precious time.
I am trying to make the best use of my time and to do that I have had to make some quite tough decisions.
I have decided to streamline my business, separate it from my private life (not easy when you work from home.)
I have decided to reverse my slide down the slippery slope to ill-health and incapacity.
I have decided toi make more time for my hobbies and interests. For my home and my family and friends.
I have decided to make a better job of working together with my spouse in our home-based business! That dear readers may be the most difficult decision of all! 24/7/365 is VERY difficult and the words ‘ chalk’ and ‘ cheese’ do come to mind! Nothing much wrong with chalk and nothing much wrong with cheese either but the two commodities do not really go well together do they?!
So, in making your own decisions about how to best make use of your precious time to reach your own goals, the following two quotations may help you get clarity:
“One of the very worst uses of time is to do something very well that need not be done at all.”
Brian Tracy
” Before you begin scrambling up the ladder of success, make sure that it is leaning against the right building.”
Stephen Covey
Have a great day everyone!
Eileen's Odyssey 