It's the end of January

I've managed to hold my 5 days of VLCD this month, ended yesterday. The last day was really difficult. I kept fantasizing about food, my neighbors cooked something that smelled really delicious and I felt annoyed. But it's done now, began my day today by eating porridge, had some wok for lunch and am now planning on going to town with my laptop, eat a salad and write some.

I've been really busy this December and January with a project I made with my friends. We did a video parody of soap operas mixed with some Film Noir style. It was so much fun to do, and I'm really proud of the end result, but it sure did take a lot of energy to do it. Fortunately there were two of us who took charge of the thing, so I didn't have to do all by myself, but still, I was the director and the editor, so the majority of the work did land on my shoulders.

January was a hard month for me, harder than I expected. Nothing overwhelming, but I did find it harder to monitor my eating, when so many thing seemed to go wrong / stress me out. For instance, I got a wedding invitation, which in itself would have been nice, but the groom is my ex-boyfriend and the bride used to be one of my closest friends. They started dating 2 weeks after we broke up, and the interest was clear while we were dating. It was actually one of the reasons I dumped him, because I realized they were interested in each other.

It's been... 6 years, but I still find it hard to forgive her. With my ex, we talked it out back then and we're fine, but my friend never apologized to me or showed any kind of remorse for making me feel miserable and worthless. So when I got the invitation I contemplated for a while, feeling some kind of morbid fascination to see the whole shebang, but thanks to my mom, soon realized I'd only be ripping open old wounds and make myself miserable. So I'm not going.

On top of all that fun, I've been sick, over stressed and tired. So I had all the chances to spiral into a bingeing craze, but fortunately I didn't. So as of this morning, my weight is at a reasonable 121 kg's. Hope that next month I can tell you it's under 120.

New Year's Resolution

Well, this is not really a New Year's Resolution since I made it in late November, but it's close enough I suppose!

What I'm going to try this year is the following: 5-10 days / month I'm going to do the VLCD -diet (Very Low Calorie Diet) so that I'll have 800 kcal / day. The rest of the month I'm going to try to eat healthy enough to keep the weight off. (Well, most of it, VLCD gets your fluids going so that there's probably going to be about 1 kg's gain after every VLCD batch).

I'm hoping that this will make me lose about 10-15 kg's in 2012. (My weight this morning was 122,4 kg's, so that would mean I'd get to about 110 kg's before next Christmas.)

But more importantly, I'm not going to be too fixated on the grams on my scale, my resolution is to try this method for a year, if it works wonderful, if it doesn't, well too bad. The only thing I'm fairly certain of is that it can't make me GAIN weight...

If I make it, and can go the whole year, I'm going to reward myself with a pair of shoes from www.shoesofprey.com, where you can custom make shoes to your own liking. They're quite expensive (180 € for a medium heel), but it's something I want and I've been thinking about getting something like these zebra shoes I designed.

Anyways, I'll try to keep you posted on a monthly bases on how it goes. Hopefully well!

Slow And Steady Wins The Race

..or at least that's what I'm hoping for. I've been doing my exercises lately and eating more healthy, and it's payed off rather nicely, I've lost 2,6kg's (that's around 5,5 lbs) in 5 weeks. Not particularly impressive, I admit, but considering that I was ill for a week and we had our midsummer celebrations in the cabin (3 days of lovely food and little exercise), I have to say I'm pretty proud of myself!

This week I've gotten back to my 10 min morning exercises, and it has felt great! I've decided that on the weekdays I do 10 min every morning, and on weekends 20 min. I'm such a sleepy head, that I can't fit 20 min into a morning where I have to be at work by 8 a.m. I wish I could, but I know myself. Not gonna happen.

So now I'm just trying to remind myself that even if the progress is slow, it's still progress. I want to amp up my exercises next week; I'm going swimming on Monday and bowling on Thursday. Hopefully this'll push me along so that I'll get under 125 kg's next Sunday. My goal is to get under 120 kg's before my vacation in Thailand in September, and I'm feeling optimistic that I might be able to do it.

Trying to get back on track

I've been a good girl this week, after about 6 months of naughtiness. I've woken up early each day to start with a 10 minute excersice, and I have to say it's made me feel great! Since last autumn I've gained about 10kg's, and I'm not happy. My scale this morning said 127.9kg's and it's not good.

So I have finally decided to do something about it. This week I'm focusing on doing my workouts, as I said I've done 10 minute workouts every morning using a DVD called 10 Minute Solution: Dance Your Body Thin. My favourite workout on it is called Slow And Sexy Moves, mainly because in the mornign, I'm rather slow, if not sexy... :D

In addition I've been taking some short walks, going out bowling and danced by myself this week. I've been trying to remind myself, that no matter how small the exersice, it's still worth doing it, it's still better than nothing!

My goal is to keep this routine up for the next 11 weeks, before I head of to Thailand. I would like to get back to under 120 kg's before the trip, but it might not be possible, after all it's summer, and with it comes ice cream, cold cider and other temptations. But as long as I keep up with working out, I'm sure I can at least be healthier and toner before I go the Thailand and it's beautiful beaches!

Oh, and if I manage to get that 8kg's off before my vacation, I'm going to reward myself with a new travel make-up brush set from Sigma! I love their brushes! http://www.sigmabeauty.com/

Shopping in Warsaw

I spent last weekend with my sister in Warsaw, and it was awesome! It's a beautiful, beautiful city, a little run down and ruged, but I think that just added to its charms. You could see the history, the damage the war and communism had done to the city, but still it wasn't depressing or falling down.

Unfortunately the weather wasn't the best during our stay, so we spent most of our time shopping in Zlote Tarasy shopping center www.zlotetarasy.pl/en, and we had a lot of fun! It's a modern, beautiful shopping mall, with an easy to get around floor plan.

Our initial idea was to shop for luxury make-up (M.A.C., Dior, Chanel), but as it turns out, they're cheaper in Finland than they are in Poland! Who knew? I mean, they're really expensive in Finland, but even more so in Poland!

So, it was a bit of a let down, but fortunately we decided to check out Inglot www.inglotcosmetics.com, thinking that it being a Polish brand, they might be cheaper there, and so they were! A 5 pan freedom palette* cost about 15€, in Finland you'd pay for it about 28€. So, we went a bit nuts... I bought two 5 pan palettes (sure I could have bought a 10 pan palette, but I like the 5 pan ones better), two gel eyeliners, one nail polish, one lip gloss and one loose eyeshadow. All these together were about 60€, which in Finland would have got me just the palettes.

*In case you don't know what a freedom palette is, it's this genious system, where you can pick out any eye shadow, lip colour, concealer, blush, face powder or eyebrow wax and combine them into a palette. So you get to choose the perfect colours for you! I absolutely love these, I have now four palettes with eye shadows, and they're awesome! Highly pigmented and I'd claim they're really close to M.A.C. in their quality!

So to all who are thinking about going to Warsaw, I can warmly recomend it! It's a beautiful city with cheap taxi's, hotels and restaurants. Our stay at Sheraton Hotel (five stars) was around 250€ for three nights per room, the taxi from airport was 50PLN, so around 15€ and from our hotel to the shopping center about 10PLN, so around 3€...

Oh, by the way, it is advisable to make sure before you get into a taxi that it is a safe one, they have different companies, and some may screw you over, or so we were told. The ones we used were Ele, Sawa Taxi, MPT Radio Taxi and Merc Taxi.

10 things to do before I'm 40

As I mentioned in the last post, I just turned 30. A day before my birthday, one of my friends asked if I'd completed my list of 10 things to do before I'm 30. Since I hadn't made such a list, my answer was no. So I decided to make a list to do before I'm 40! I've got a whole decade to accomplish these in, so I hope I'll make it!

1. Rent a house / apartment for a month in Italy or Spain, and spend it exploring the country and writing
2. Visit Venice
3. Visit Egypt
4. Visit Paris in the spring time
5. Visit Jane Austen's home and spend time in the UK visiting the scenery where Pride And Prejudice (1995) was filmed
6. Write a book, that is both funny and meaningful, light and deep at the same time.
7. Get a publisher interested in said book I've written
8. Write a script for a full length movie
9. Get paid to do more than answering phones
10. Fall in love

So there are the things I wish to do before I'm 40. For most part I think it's rather doable, but for the last point. And this is due to the fact that I've never been in love. Therefore it seems to me the one that might not be accomplished... But, time will tell! :o)

Thirty And Awesome!

I turned 30 a couple of days ago, and I must say I'm a little disappointed how this week has gone so far. Hopefully tomorrow will be infinetly better, since I'm having my big 30th Birthday party then.

So what has been going wrong? Well it all started when I went on a first date on my last day as a 29-year-old. I walk up to the guy, and he's a spitting image of my uncle! I don't mean there was something familiar about him, or that he slightly resembled my uncle, no I've seen pictures of my uncle when he was 30-35-years old, and I swear, he was standing right in front of me!

But as it turns out, he was a really nice guy (unlike my uncle, actually), and since I felt absolutely no attraction to him, the evening was quite relaxed and nice. Until it came time for goodbyes, and I realised he wanted to kiss me. As you can imagine, I wasn't up for it. So I sneakily ran into the bus just waving goodbye instead. I hardly need to add, there will be no second date.

Then came my birthday. I had taken a day off work, decided to relax and enjoy turning 30, which I did by watching Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back and eating chocolate when that magical moment came. Nerdy, and I loved it!

So on my actual birthday I had a job interview. Not ideal, but what can you do. I'm not actively looking for a job, but when I saw the position open, I felt like I had to apply for it. So instead of the day I had planned for my 30th (which included a lazy brunch at an empty café, reading bad romance novels and going for dinner with my parents) changed rather drastically, since I had to switch on my professional mode. Anyway, I went for the interview, and although I did not get the job, I thought it went rather well. The dinner with my parents went absolutely great, we went to a Finnish restaurant, and for the first time in my life I ate some bear salami, had home brew beer and Sisu-icecream. It was all heavenly and delicious!

On my way home I slipped and scraped my knee. Next morning I slipped and twisted my ankle. The next day I slit a deep cut on my left thumb. So being 30 has come with some injuries!

And to top all this off, a guy I thought I was completely over told me he can't come to my birthday party, and the depression spiral it sent me on was a slight indication, that I may not be as indifferent as I thought I was...

So, I'm 30, stuck in the same job, without a boyfriend and eating chocolate like there's no tomorrow. Hmm...

PS. Oh, I had some Fazer Blueberry Pie chocolate yesterday while I watched The Sure Thing (starring John Cusack), and it was SOOO good. Maybe I don't need men, maybe all I need is chocolate, a good movie and my lovely soft sofa!