Definition of a good day

After 6 days of liquids, successfully keeping down:

1 skinny latte, 1 eggs benedict (one egg, one muffin) with avocado

1 rice thin, 1 slice of ham, 1 slice of cheese

1/2 a cup of pasta with 1/2 a cup of pasta sauce (celery, carrot, bacon, onion, tomato, garlic)

That is the first time I've kept down a solid breakfast since July. I feel happily satisfied, and don't need anything else to eat.

Oh, and I've gone down another bra size, but not a cup size.

Happy day :)

Battle of the Optis

I never thought I'd say this, but Optifast isn't the worst of the shakes.

I'm having a little while on liquids, to see if I can give my inflamed oesophagus a break. It has been really nice to have 2 days where I haven't felt like a meal is coming up to rejoin me because it loved the outside world so much.

So I've been doing the Optislim thing. They only had one out of date box of vanilla optifast and a whole stack of desserts and those horrible brown flavoured bars at my local Chemist warehouse, so I thought I'd give the vanilla and coffee optislim shakes and the tomato optislim soup a go. Won't be doing that again. It tastes horribly horribly grainy, and not even ice helps it. Thank goodness for freshly squeezed vegie juices in my kitchen and from the nice people at Boost. And the one stray vanilla Optifast shake I just found and had for dinner. So much smoother and a pleasure to drink.

Really not hungry. Loving my water consumption, and feeling really good. Very different from the last time I did this.

I did it

Here I am, still standing after the Eureka Climb this morning. I'm so absurdly proud of myself, and thrilled with the time it took me to do it. And quite disconcerted by my inability to put the race bib on straight. It looks wonky.

88 flights of stairs.

1 hour, 15 minutes and 56 seconds

801 calories burnt.

Maximum heart rate 180.

Average heart rate 154

I really thought I'd be closer to doing it in about 3 hours. Nearly died when we started this morning and someone said to us it would be about 25 minutes. I may have laughed.

My legs don't even feel sore. I'm sure they will tomorrow, but right now they feel fine. My legs were happy to just keep going and going up those stairs, but I really struggled with the humidity in the stairwell. Damn it was hot and sticky in there.

Next year, I'm aiming for under an hour.

The really impressive effort though - my husband. He hit the zone and headed up those stairs in under 40 minutes. After he waited up the top, he turned around and met me about level 68, and walked up those 20 flights of stairs again encouraging me all the way.

So over feeling this tight.

I've got my breakfast up and go in my handbag because my band is
soooooooo tight this morning. Water was decidedly unenthusiastic about
going down - sip, stuck, sip, stuck, ow. Got there eventually though.

Band wasn't keen on coffee either - not so much sip, stuck as sip, sit
and think about it, begrudgingly drain, rinse and repeat.

Might be take it slow and play nice today - I don't think the side
order of cold and cough is contributing. Can I not just get one
variation on a germ at a time? The tonsillitis has just cleared :(

Sent from my iPhone

The ultimate incentive to keep moving

I've been a little bit over not having enough of a push to keep moving, so I've signed myself up to do the Eureka climb.

Those of you not in Melbourne may not be familiar with the Eureka Tower - it is our tallest building at 90 floors, and an amazing observation deck up the top. It's OK though - I don't have to climb 90 flights of stairs as I'm only doing the walk, and not being timed. Just 88 floors.

Am I crazy? Yeah, probably. All I know is that when someone suggested it to me at band camp a few weeks ago, all I asked was "can I take the lift back down?" I definitely prefer going upstairs rather than coming downstairs.

My current trainer and my previous trainer both think I'm slightly nuts, but are both giving me as many tips as they can - mostly to find as many stairs as I can and use them like crazy, and to tape up my knees. I might pay a physio to do that the day before to make sure it is done properly.

As part of signing onto the climb I need to commit to raise funds - unless I raise another $55 I don't get to take that first step. I've emailed all of my family and will talk to work people tomorrow - I really really want to do this. I think I'll get the support I need. You can see how my fundraising is going here

The best bit - not being content with just doing Movember this year, my gorgeous husband is doing the climb too. He is lots fitter than me so should be just fine. I might just walk behind him and enjoy the view :)

Slack bloggers update

Eeek - it has been a whole month since I last posted - how appallingly slack of me. Definitely time for an update then.

Bandwise, things aren't fantastic. I've got an amazing level of restriction - and feel full very quickly, and am still bringing food back up at least 4 - 6 times a week. Really not my idea of a good time. At least I've found more toilets with calendars stamped into the base. Apparently they show their date of manufacture. Who really cares? Can't say I do, but at least I can go to the toilet with confidence knowing that I'm sitting on the newest seat available. It's the little things.

I got the results of my swallow and my bloods. All my levels are good, so I'm doing something right, and my band is positioned properly but looks quite tight. That was pretty impressive with 1ml of fill in a 10ml band. I had the last ml of fill taken out last week. By the next day I was losing meals still - couldn't even finish one of the kids kitchen (213gms) meals. Bit over that. So I'm having a gastroscopy on November 17th. Hopefully we'll be able to see what is going on and sort it out. Some days my band is fine - don't eat a lot, but get enough to sustain myself and function. That is really all I want to be able to do.

On the scales, nothing is happening. I'm not going up and I'm not going down. On the plus side, my body shape has changed, and I have dropped a jeans size. I can live with that.

Exercise - I'm a fan. I finally got my butt into gear and got myself a new trainer. He pushed me and it was sooooooooo good. He worked out that I'm most competitive with myself and really used it. Poor bugger has done his Achilles though and has been in plaster for most of the last month, but will hopefully be out of it on the 17th of November. I really miss chasing him around the gym boxing for half an hour before being tortured with interval training, or weights on the bike. So I'm walking a lot instead, and getting to the gym at least twice a week. I just need to keep moving.

I'm not the healthiest though. I filled my 6th or 7th script for Rulide for the year today. More tonsillitis. I'm really not enjoying it. I've got a referral to see a specialist to get them removed, but I'm scared. The GP spent a really long time with me going through all of the risks of having an adult tonsillectomy, and one of the biggest is around vomiting. You can do a whole world of damage to yourself if you vomit in the first 4 - 6 weeks after having them removed. Based on my first couple of paragraphs and my current digestion challenges, I don't want to have that risk. Maybe I need to consider liquids for that time. Sigh.

My husband is awesome and I definitely like married life though. Working for me. And I'm not pregnant. Really, I'm not. I promise. The next person to say I might be gets to take the next call from my husband's grandmother, the one where she asks for "any news about children". I mean it.

King George still eats salad. Good thing too, cos all forms of lettuce and I still have a virulent loathing for each other.

At least one of us eats salad

Yet again I struggled with dinner - thank goodness for King George who
helps out with leftovers