Pregnancy modifications

Dirty Thirty

A treasure hunt in a minefield

I promised before I went off on my European holiday that I would blog each day about all our travels. I wanted it as a keepsake for Jetta. Turned out that the idea was a good one but not at all practical. Our days were so busy that I usually collapsed each night in a heap. I still want to capture our holiday here though. I plan on doing my best to document the parts that were important to me and of course add some pretty photos. I'm going to try to document each city we visited. It really was all so beautiful and magical.

First stop Venice! Such a beautiful place, just like you imagine but better. It's amazing really that it's a city built on water. A place like no other. It transports you into another time.

There were so many moments that took my breath away. One particular one is etched in mind and heart forever. Jetta, mum and I were out exploring and we came to a beautiful view atop of Accademia bridge. We stood for a while to soak up the beauty that was before us and mum started to cry. I asked her what was wrong and she said 'It's just so beautiful' and kept on crying. A somewhat normal reaction to being overwhelmed by beauty and being caught up in a moment, but to me it meant more than that.  I was so glad that I got to take my mum along with me on this trip. I wanted so badly for her to experience something beautiful. I wanted beauty and joy to help heal her. I wanted to wipe away her pain and sadness that she has felt for most of her life. I wanted to make it better. I always have.

For as long as I can remember life has been hard for my mum. I won't go into details here as this is my blog and that's her story to tell if she so chose one day. I think sometimes when we let sadness riddle our minds we forget to look around us and notice, just to notice. The less we let ourselves look up and see what there is to be seen around us, the more life we miss out on. I wanted so badly for her to just SEE, to peel back the layers of fear and see beauty. It was a moment suspended in time when I got my wish. That made the heartache dissipate, at least a little.

I think one of the most painful things to endure in life is watching someone you love suffer. Feeling helpless to help them. We want to make it better for them and we feel frustration and emptiness when we can't fix it for them. Often it's hard to watch, its something you don't want to see. So many times I've wanted to walk away, run even, to somewhere that has no sadness, where things aren't unfixable,

For much of my life I've been running away. Running away and then coming back, then running away again. I rallied against her wanting so much of me. I needed much of her but instead I was taken from, and I let her.

Today, do I still want to run a million miles? Yes every single day of my life. I always have and I always probably will. Does it make my heart heavy, like at any moment it will make me fall? Yes. Do I think of how unfair that is? Yes all the time. Sometimes life has other plans for you though. What has life had me do? It's had me sit with it, it's made me not run anymore. Running didn't fix anything, but neither did staying. Logic tells me that there should be a antidote to that, like WTF. What a fucked up situation. How can the world let that be? HOW can that be?

I'm curious about people who seem to be able to transcend pain and suffering in their lives. People that seem untouched. Maybe though that's not the case. Maybe we all have suffering but there's only a few of us that choose to make it known, to speak about it so that others can benefit and maybe even feel healed themselves. I don't have the answers. I want to be with people that know suffering and don't try to escape it permanently. Sometimes your meant to witness the suffering of others. It makes us better people. It helps you understand that a comfortable reality is not enjoyed by all.

I am grateful for the beauty around me. Even when its alongside painful things. It's sometimes easier to just find the beauty and stick to it like glue never looking in the opposite direction. Looking for beauty is like a treasure hunt. A treasure hunt in a minefield. I've decided I don't want out of there for now. Because truth, and beauty and God are there. So is my mum.

The secret of my writing is this:

'...and I realise the secret of my writing is this: my love voice speaks directly to yours. We are the same at our core. The heart rejoices when it hears the truth. Namaste-the divine light in me recognises and honors the diving light in you' - Glennon Doyle

This is the parachute

Have you ever sat down with someone and had a conversation, but it didn't turn out to be one of substance because it was just a surface one. You didn't talk of anything important, just discussed stuff, you left feeling like you missed an opportunity to connect. Even when you detect the other person had something more meaningful to talk about, even when you could sense that need, the conversation never went there. We are all too busy sometimes putting on facades that our lives are perfect and that we are coping just fine.

What would happen if we sat down and opened our hearts? What would happen if we really said how we were feeling, opened up about our greatest fears in life? What if we weren't scared of being ridiculed, what if we felt we had nothing to lose? What if all we had to lose was junk?

What would I say if I was to really tell you how I was? What would you say? I might say "Well more often than not I'm really lonely but don't want company, I swing violently between loving my daughter with wild abandonment to sometimes thinking that life was better before her, quite often I wake and don't want my day to start and then the next I laugh at how I could possibly think that and marvel at the beauty of the day that awaits me. I have a not so perfect relationship with my husband and lately I've been having chocolate for breakfast. Sometimes I have flashes of motivation but often it all feels too hard and all a little too late. I would say how scared I am of time ticking by and never knowing the real me. I would say that as postive as I try to be sometimes I deliberately like to wallow in my self loathing. It's often where I think I deserve to be and I see everything and nothing unhealthy about that all at once. I would say that sometimes I feel that I'm doing it all wrong, prioritising everything arse up. I'm scared of regrets, of missing important conversations and of relishing the not so important people and conversations in my life, but mostly I'm scared of not having the ability to know the difference. I often feel alone in a room full of people and I don't know if it's because I'm in the wrong room.

If your still reading this because your curious then great keep reading. If your still reading because your here to see the fall then fuck off from my page. This isn't falling, this is the parachute that keeps me here. If your still reading because you believe in true, real people and connections in your life then I love you. Real things in life are not always beautiful. I want real, beautiful, ugly, endangered, hopeful souls here.

The more I open my heart to people, the more I am convinced that life is equal parts brutal and beautiful. Sharing this duality is what makes us feel less alone and afraid. Life is hard-not because we're always doing it wrong, just because it's hard. I'm learning its ok to feel this, it's ok to share this or write about it. 

Maybe life gets really good when we remove all of the layers of protection we've built around our hearts and walk out into the open naked.

Guilt. Such a dirty word...

Guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt!!!!! So sick of this feeling of guilt. So sick of this word. Maybe if I write about it here it will somehow disipate. It follows me everywhere. I wake up and it's one of the first things my mind remembers. That's right it says, your Tysha the guilty one. It doesn't even have to be for a reason anymore. It's almost like I carry you around with me like a permanent  tattoo. One that you thought about getting, got it, and then wished it away, only to find that this shit is harder to get rid of then you first thought.

When does the guilt start? Is it triggered by an event or by how someome else make us feel? Is it brought on by the decisions we make, that feel ok at the time but we regret after. When did we start even entertaining the idea of guilt?

Guilt imobolizes us. It's a dead end. How does it serve us and why is it so hard to be rid of? It's almost like it's ingrained in us especially as woman and I've found even more so as a mother to feel guilty over everything!! Here's an example of my inner dialogue; (warning! going here may hurt your brain lol) #I've got so much to do today and look at my baby over there playing all day by herself. She's only going to be this little for a while you know? You should spend more time with her. Yes I know but what about all the shit I have to do, what about me? #I won't go the gym this morning because she seems tired. You really shouldn't drag her around when she needs her sleep you know. What kind of mother are you? Putting yourself first again I see? At the expense of your child hmmm but if I don't go to the gym I will go backwards in everything I've worked so hard for. You remember all that work and hours that you put into it, all those hours spent away from her. So you just going to waste it are you?....see what I mean? Exhausting isn't it. I don't think I'm alone in this one. Do you also find that you have to guilt yourself into doing things. It's like my brain and body run on guilt mode these days. How draining is that! Ggrrr there has to be a better way!

Fuck guilt I say! Fuck anyone who even tries to make you feel that way. It's usually the ones closest to us that makes us feel this, which makes it even harder to let go. We reason that these people know us so there must be a grain of truth in it. Sighhh I'm exhausted just writing this.

You know what? It's OK to feel this way. It is. It's OK to let go now and then. Why do we feel we must berrate ourselves so? It's OK! I get sick of this internal fight sometimes. It's ok to eat the wrong types of foods for a while. It's OK to go on holidays, eat the wrong types of foods and not exercise sometimes. It's called being human. Keep saying it. It's OK. It's Ok until you start to believe it. The world will not implode. It's the guilt afterwards that lingers and makes it hard to keep trucking. It's all the 'who cares' and the 'so what's' that we say to ourself to help justify the bad decisions, to make them sit ok with ourselves that hurt us.  That's where we come unstuck. That's how we get immobilised.

Banish guilt forever I say. It doesn't serve you in any positive way. I have to keep telling myself that I'm worthy of the time I need to spend on me. Time I WANT to spend on me. Everybody wins really. I'll go home and I'll be a happier mum and wife after I take care of me. Spending time on myself creates a positive role model for my baby. I want her to grow and value herself. I want her to always feel worthy of every opportunity that helps better herself in life.

OK rant over. haha thanks for listening :)

There's always a reason if we're game enough to examine ourselves a little closer...

Ok well the stats are in, yet again. I just had a dexa scan done as planned, with it being 3 months since my last one. The goal was to lose some body fat while trying out how being in a nutritional state of ketosis panned out for me (see post "Body composition progress at 12 months"). I wanted to test and measure accurately for the three months and a body composition scan is a perfect way to do that. It measures your body fat, muscle mass and bone density even giving you a breakdown of the percentages in different areas of your body. It's a really good way to gain an accurate snapshot of where your at.

So the results are that I lost 1% body fat and gained 3 kilos of muscle. If I had jumped on the scales and seen an increase of 3 kilos I would of freaked. A body composition analysis takes all the guess work out. It's been a good gain, muscle mass is going to work in my favour, keeping my metabolism chugging along nicely. With regards to my body fat the aim was to lose closer to 3%. I didn't reach my goal there but there's a reason for that. There's always a reason if we're game enough to examine ourselves a little closer.

I truthfully found maintaining a nutritional level of ketosis quiet difficult. I made sure I tested and measured each day to see what my readings were and I have to come clean that I stuck to the plan only for the 1st month. The rest of the time I was in and out of it. My main downfall was letting the sugar monster back in. I find it really hard to keep to moderation when it comes to sugar. It tends to be an all or nothing approach for me. I find it really addictive and have to make a concerted effort to wean it back out of my diet. I also found it easy enough to eat enough fat but found it hard to keep my protein low enough.

Another issue for me was that I had holidays booked. As much as I love holidays they tend to give me a little anxiety as I hate the feeling of losing control over my routine as well as my training and nutrition. It tends to freak me out a little bit. I know when I'm out of my environment my usually good habits tend to wane and I get a bit down on myself. So I think I do a bit of self sabotaging beforehand.The thought of having to fight off that sugar monster again was all too much, especially when I was only going to let him back on holidays anyway...see the pattern of poor thinking...

I'm not telling you all of this to give myself excuses or get myself off the hook. I'm not here to impress you, I'm here to connect with you. I want to be as real as I possibly can in telling you my struggles and successes. This shit is hard. Day in and day out, it's hard to keep your focus and remember why we do the things we do. I could sit here and tell you that I did exactly as I had planned and it was piss easy and lie to mysef and you, but truth be told, I slipped up this time. I took the road that I warn my clients against. I took the road of all or nothing. Ok so you have a shit day, you shouldn't let one bad decision blow out into a bad day and then blow out into a bad few days and before you realise it's become a bad week. Guilt gets the better of you. Every decision you make everyday of the week becomes you.

What I got out of this experiment was a direct correlation to what I put into it. I can't complain nor delude myself that I should of got better results. I think too many times we give ourselves the easy road and let ourselves off the hook. You can't do things half arsed and expect a stellar result, end of story and that applies throughout every facet of your life. You cant give 100% one day then 50% the next and think it doesn't count. It all counts, every single decision you make counts. You have to assess whether treating yourself with a treat meal after you've eaten so good all week is really worth it? How is it a treat if it just sabotages all your efforts?

Doing this scan when I knew that less than desirable results would come was good for me. The results weren't bad but they were not what I initially set out to get and that's hard for me to come to terms with and even harder for me to share it with you. There was definitely some positives too. I did achieve that goal of 120kg back squat and all in all my training felt good. Another positive is I regained that 3 kilos of muscle mass that I lost before. I can't be sure whether it was purely training related or due to more carbs being in my diet. I didn't plan my carbs around my training, they were just incidental. That is something I will experiment with though.

This has reinforced for me and hopefully for some of you out there what it takes to make real progress. It's also reminded me why I choose to eat well in the first place. It makes me feel good, helps me train well and to me that's the most important thing. Of course losing body fat is a bonus but this experiment has been a reminder that at the end of the day I want to fuel my body so that I can get the most out of it to do what I love to do and that's to train up a storm. Moving forward I will get back to basics and not focus on the body fat component of my journey so much but on basic clean eating, cutting out sugar and making sure I fuel up for training. Body composition results will naturally stem from there.

I know myself well enough to know that a pursuit of purely body composition won't get me to the gym twice a day. It used to be easier without a baby, but now just getting there is hard. Sure I want to look good in a bikini like everyone else but at the end of the day I need a bigger driving force and everyones will be different.

Like I tell all my clients, you have to have clear set goals. You have to have that voice in your head that reminds you why you want success when temptation comes by. Sticking to the plan some of the time won't get you to those goals. Thinking 'its all too hard' or 'whatever I do I can't lose weight' won't work either. None of us are perfect and we all struggle with the same things a lot of the time. We have to get honest with ourselves. Deep down we all know what our outcomes will be because sometimes we impose on ourselves self limiting beliefs. We've already set ourselves up to either succeed or fail from the get go. Believe me when I tell you that you can do it! You can! Put the true effort in and the results will come, always. That I can promise you.

You know what? Your life is happenning right now. As I sit here writing this, my baby Jetta is running around at her grandmas having fun maybe wondering where mummy is or maybe not? Time is ticking by whilst we sit and complain about what we don't have yet or what it is we are striving for. Make it count. Don't waste any more time on negativity. We have to just get in and do it! Time doesn't wait for us. How many more 'starting again on Mondays' will it take for you to start the new phase of your life? What will it all mean in the end? Make sure that goal is worthy of you, worthy of your time and your efforts, and most importantly enjoy the journey.