Biggest Loser

Way back in June, someone at work decided that it might be ‘fun’ to run a biggest loser competition around the office. It was something of an incentive given that I was headed in the direction of trying to drop a few kilos anyway. After all, I seem to perpetually be chasing the weight loss in varying cycles.

I did something similar in Canada a few years ago and was successful to a moderate degree.

I threw my money in the ring and decided to see what happened – even if it was going to start just before my birthday. I made some good inroads for the first 3 weeks, recognising some early gains and then at the half way mark was surprised when I was told that I was near the front runners. I’d lost 6.3% of my starting weight and was only 0.2% behind the leader.

I went a bit sideways at that point though and bounced around over the next 3 weeks without losing any more weight whilst the leader shot ahead. It turns out that she had some added incentive given that she’s due to get married in the near future.

I decided that I wasn’t going to give in and plugged away as much for the personal satisfaction of starting to see weight numbers that I couldn’t recall seeing (which is the whole point after all) rather than any glory of financial reward at the end.

Slow updates from those that have run the competition meant that coming into the last week, it was something of an unknown as to where things stood. I decided to smash myself and see what happened.

Every day this week I’ve dragged my sorry arse out of bed at 6am and hopped straight onto the elliptical trainer and spent an hour there watching episodes of Big Bang Theory and pumping the legs. Then after work, back on it for another hour or alternately off to soccer.

Today was final weigh in. The leader was being pretty cagey about her final weight and giving answers like ‘my final percentage is between 10 and 15%’. Consequently I followed my pattern of the last couple of weeks. Fast all morning, run at lunch, weigh in when I am nice and dehydrated and at the lowest point of my weight cycle for the week.

At the end of the process, I stood on the scale and have to admit to smiling. I managed to drop 11.8% of my starting weight and have apparently in doing so managed to win the competition as well. 3.25 kgs came off in the last week. Apparently all that pain was worth it.


It feels damn good.

Getting Sentimental

I must be getting old. I remember the good old days when I’d be driven to pull a post together for this blog because a small child had put themselves in hospital or tried to blow the house up or something. If you’ve been following for a while you’ll have noticed something of a decline in output.

Partly it’s because life is just damn busy. Not only is it busy, but it’s rather repetitive as well. Monday to Friday is work and then the weekends tend to be a little absorbed by the 6 games of soccer, a game of netball and a game of hockey that make up our winter. Somewhere in there, Caroline is attempting to study and occasionally we think about doing outrageously wild things like cleaning the house or mowing the lawn.

Just occasionally though something gets thrown into the mix that drags us away from the ordinary.

We were lucky enough to get to go to a wedding in Bowral. The first instinct was wow, how cool would it be to go, it’s a pity that life’s too busy. The invitation sat there though and we looked at where Bowral is and wondered if perhaps there was a way to get there.. After all, we wanted to be at the wedding, it was only logistics and dollars. After all, taking four kids gets to be an interesting exercise.

After much thought and consideration, we realised that Bowral isn’t that far from Wollongong, home of our good friends the Handicotts. A plan started to come together. If we could farm out Michael and Sam, whose interest in the whole escapade really came down to whether they’d get Krispy Cremes out of a trip to Sydney, then perhaps we could get away with only bringing Thomas and Emily with us.

It worked. The Handicotts were happy to have us and kind enough to look after Tom and Em for the time that we were at the wedding and we managed to go enjoy the nuptials and all that it entailed.

I love a good wedding and I have to say that the McLloyd affair was a wedding worth being at. We had an awesome time and everything was brilliant from start to finish.

In those moments when I wasn’t listening to the priest telling everyone about sex, I had a few sentimental moments reflecting on our own wedding (so long ago) and the whole marriage experience. Add in the chance to randomly catch up with someone you knew from primary school and what more could you ask for?  Good times and good memories. The party of the reception stopped me from getting too memory laden on the night, but it’s hard to avoid it completely.

Thanks for the invite Matt and Jac, it was wonderful to be a part of it.

The fact that we also got to spend time with the Matt and Bron, who we hadn't caught up with since Caroline's 40th was an exceptionally good addition to the trip. It brought back it's own series of memories that added to the sentimental (and fun!) element of the couple of days away.

A couple of weeks after the wedding we were invited to a 50^th birthday. I hadn’t given a whole lot of thought to the format of the night, I’d been told when we I needed to go there and that was sufficient information. It wasn’t really until the night that I thought to ask Caroline how it was going to work and whether we were supposed to bring anything. That’s when I found out that we’d actually be going to a sit down dinner. Not quite what I expected.

It wasn’t until we were sitting around the table as part of quite an intimate group of only about 16 people that I realised just how privileged we were to be there. Whilst spoiling us with a degustation menu of some 6 courses, Mike (the birthday boy) took us on a journey throughout the dinner of how the various guests (some of whom we’d known and some we hadn’t) had come into his life and ended up at the party.

I certainly felt like Caroline and I were the newcomers to the group which emphasized the sense of privilege that grew throughout the night.

It was a fantastic night and once again, as with the wedding, it left me thinking about a whole range of things, about how fortunate I’ve been in my life, the friends that I’ve accumulated and the journey that I’ve taken.

Clearly it’s a sign that I’m getting older myself. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that after a wedding or big party all I was left with was a big hangover and an absence of memories!

Holiday Envy

When we left Canada a few years ago, one of the realities that we knew we would face was the fact that holidays weren’t going to be the exotic affairs that we’d been enjoying from the frozen North.

Let’s face it, choosing to put 4 kids through private school is no small feat and the reality is that travelling anywhere from Australia is bloody expensive. One of the prices one pays for being so far away from everywhere else.

For the first couple of years I can’t say that it bothered me much. We’ve been lucky enough to holiday with family and friends and settle back into the life that we were accustomed to before Canada.

But we also had our eyes opened to a whole other way of holidaying. The skiing, the cruising, seeing parts of the world that you thought you just might never get the chance to … it might seem easy to give up at face value but it gets under your skin.

I guess it really got under my skin a long time ago. I left home and went to Singapore. Caroline and I married and took off to Europe for 3 months. That really set the tone. We talked on and off for years about going overseas to work again, but the whole having a family process meant that we didn’t chase it with any vigour. Then Canada came up … the timing was perfect and it was like fate had stepped in.

Now we’re home again. We’ve been back for 3 years and I’m getting itchy feet. I don’t want to pack up and move overseas, I just want a holiday. A holiday that sadly we just can’t afford right now.

It hurts when you get offers like 20% off Qantas flights … and then find out that it’s just when Michael will be starting year 12. Bugger.

So it’s back to dreaming and living vicariously through other people’s holiday photos on facebook. Keep them coming, I can deal with holiday envy … it just fuels the dream and desire. And one day I’ll be the one that’s posting exotic pictures and a new set of adventures to write about.