Carport Terminator.

I still have many travel stories to share, so don’t lose hope, faithful reader. They will be recorded (and to be fair, many have – they just live in a notepad on my phone). My main struggle lies with finding time to write something lengthy and coherent. I don’t wish to lead you astray, give you the idea that perhaps I have been jet setting about the world in my absence. Sorry guys, my flight just arrived, off on safari with the Colonel this week! No, it’s far less glamourous and much more mundane than that. Moving into a new flat, going back to school, living the domestic life.

I do however have a story to tell you about today. My diet and exercise plan went out the window the last time I went to America, paired with an illness lasting for months, the weight-loss odds were not stacked in my favour. Clearly the solution was to ditch the healthy lifestyle and eat as much peanut butter/chocolatey goodness as I could find. I do believe they call it a pity party. Fast forward to the present: I’ve been on the mend for a solid amount of time, which means back to the old regime. Slowly but surely, I’m growing to love it once more.

About a month ago it was pointed out that there was a pull-up bar in the carport. For about a month, I’ve been avoiding doing pull-ups.

Not today though, no, today was the day.

Outside was where I ran into problem number one: Too short to reach the bar. I looked around to see what I could use to give myself a boost: Two chairs and a tyre (population tire?). One was a fairly old office chair that appeared to have been living in the wild for quite sometime, the other was a fold-out beach chair. Neither were good climbing candidates. Unless I was looking to flying spin off one and fall through the other, I suppose. Back inside I went to retrieve a sturdy chair. Up I went and on to the pull-up bar I held. Enter problem number two: I cannot do a pull-up. I cannot even do one tiny lift. I used the chair to help me jump, so I like to think I did half of one. Still, this minor issue is actually a rather major one. Back in college we had to do lifting tests and if I remember correctly, the boys did under-hand lifts while the girls did over-hand. Maybe that was problem all along. DOING IT WRONG!

…. No. Turns out that didn’t help either.

It was there, standing atop my chair, wondering what my next move should be when I encountered my third problem: Man across the street can see me. The thing is, I don’t think he thought he was watching an unfit girl trying to exercise. From his perspective it probably looked like a crazy girl attempting to hang herself in a carport. Thus concluded the day’s exercising adventures. I grabbed my chair and hurried back inside, never looking back.

Moral of the story? Exercising is pretty cool (in theory). Would be better if I was born like Sarah Connor.

Belle Bryson

After some serious consideration I feel this year my blogging needs some direction.

My literary compass will be pointing towards travel writing, in true Bill Bryson style. However, due to my generally lackluster adventures (in a conventional sense at least), perhaps it will be better to describe my pieces as anti-travel writing.

Think of these posts as Thoughts Away From Home by Belle M. Kelsall.

Photo Phortnight

I dread every second Saturday.

It’s the day of the week where not only do I stand in front of the mirror being more critical than normal, but it’s the day that I have to document it. No best angles. No stomach in, chest out. No creative lighting. Just relaxed stance, front (snap) and side (snap). They are painful photos to take.

Don’t be fooled by this face, in reality I have the body of a 40-year old working mother of two. You know the type. Long hours at the office, eating whatever is quick and easy, no time for the gym, still carrying around pregnancy weight from fifteen years ago.

That’s me.

At twenty-four.

Seriously.

Don’t get me wrong, deep down I am genuinely glad for these awkward, unflattering photos. They are a physical time-line of progress. They make me aware of, and reluctantly accept, my overall shape: little in the middle but she got much back, just in case you were wondering (thanks, Sir Mix a Lot). But, more importantly, I also get to see that same shape getting smaller and smaller as the weeks creep by.

I think fortnightly photos is just one of those horrible but ultimately useful dieting things, like counting calories, and weighing/measuring yourself regularly. It gets easier the more often you do it, doesn’t mean it’s any more enjoyable though.

Who knows, maybe I’ll even share ‘em one day. Maybe at my pretend 10th anniversary at the office.. after they’ve installed a pretend gym in the basement and I can lose that extra weight from my pretend pregnancies.

The truth of the fatter is…

I feel that I need to be truthful about some aspects of losing weight.

You always hear about the new lease on life people have after dropping the kilos. They can’t believe their old lifestyle, things are much better now! Missing out on dessert was tough but it was worth it to fit into this dress! Exercising is a natural high, I don’t miss beer at the pub at all!

Two words: Bull. Shit.

People want to be thin AND have their old lifestyle. There is no life-changing moment that makes the whole ordeal suddenly worthwhile.  Yes, you want to wear that dress but you want to wear it whilst eating that damn cake.

I don’t eat food any more, I eat numbers (not even good numbers like 58008). I am officially that crazy person who only eats a certain amount of calories. I record every single thing that passes my lips. It works but it doesn’t mean I have to like it. I want to be able to go eat a Big Mac whenever I feel like it. Honestly, I die a little inside every time I see a thin person eating a burger. Why the hate, faulty metabolism? What did I ever do to you?

I will admit, however, exercising isn’t all bad.

I have not always felt this way. Far from it. I have incredibly strong opinions on the fact Physical Education is compulsory up to a certain age in a lot of schools.  IT SHOULD NOT BE THIS WAY. By all means, educate children on healthy lifestyles, explain the risks of obesity, malnourishment, vitamin deficiencies, diabetes, etc. But not all children are designed for sport. I’m not just talking about the little fatties running around (or not running, as the case may be), there are the kids with social anxieties that freak out at the very thought of having their whole class watch as they pitch that baseball, the asthmatic who always comes last in cross country because it’s better to be last than dead, right? Bad eyes, poor coordination, weak bladder, who knows? Maybe they just don’t like running up and down a field with a ball.

I’m all for extracurricular activity but physical ‘education’ should come under the same branch as art, music, and even languages. More importantly, it should be an option, it shouldn’t be enforced. It’s that simple.

Personally, a combination of childhood obesity (I’m being dramatic, childhood “chubbiness”) and bad eyesight meant that I have grown up with an aversion to exercise. I have been hit in the head with sport balls too many times to count. I’ve had broken noses, concussions, and more than my fair share of trips to the doctors office to make sure the impact didn’t knock any brain cells out of my ears. I just never saw them coming. I think my favourite (and by favourite, I mean most scarring) memory of enforced exercise was summer swimming. As if going through puberty wasn’t hard enough, I got to feel fat AND blind at the same time. Yaaay!

“Okay Belle, now it’s your turn to dive in and pick up the coin from the bottom of the pool!”

“… What coin?”

“That one on the floor of the pool!”

“You realise I’m not wearing my glasses?”

“Yes.”

“Do you understand you are nothing more than a talking blob to me?”

… I had my period for three entire summers of high school P.E. I hate the education system, but I love my mother and her note-writing skills.

I believe I’ve also gotten off topic. My point, physical activity is for some people and not for others. As an adult I’m okay with it, but I’m not going to compare it to something awesome. I’d only be lying to myself and to other people inquiring about losing weight. Twenty minutes of abdominal exercises is not even remotely close to being as good as playing video games.

So, is it ‘worth it’?

All this effort just so I won’t be judged the next time I eat a burger in public? Is that really the only reason I’m doing this? Truthfully, I can’t say yet. I just don’t know. I can tell you that it’s hard. Don’t listen to what anyone else says because maybe what one person finds rewarding, another person deems disappointing.

Do things for you and just pretend everyone else is a P.E. teacher.

Ignore them.

Die(t) Trying.

Two months ago I gave blood. In New Zealand you don’t get money for it, no accolades, no merit badge,  it’s just something you know you should do. As I sat in the closet-sized office for my two minute review the nurse went over the questions on the sheet of paper before her.  Any tattoos recently? I wish. No piercings. No exotic travel. No medication. No sex with gay men. etc. Am I over 50kg? I raised an eyebrow at her.

Lady, look at me. I could eat a 50kg person for breakfast.

All the right boxes were checked. I jumped on the scales, she recorded my weight and off I went to share some of the ol’ O+ with the world.

It was the first time I’d seen how much I weighed in at least six months. My initial reactions was: That’s less than I thought, go team!

But as I sat in the chair, blood draining from my arm, it occurred to me that despite how relieved I was that the figure wasn’t that bad – it could be a hell of a lot better. It should be better. It will be better.

I wasn’t planning to blog about anything weight-loss related but this morning as I stood in front of the mirror, prodding and pinching at any fat I could find (as I do every day) it re-dawned on me that I will never be skinny. Or at least, what I define skinny to be. I can probably slim down to conventionally thin, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I like bones, I think they’re far more attractive than curves and given half a chance I would opt to look like a ruler.

However, I am not designed to look that way. It’s the sad and simple truth.

One day (five years ago, so I’m paraphrasing but bear with me) Nik and I were lying down in bed. I announced that maybe if I stopped eating I’d be able to look like Audrey Hepburn. He rolled over from his back to his side, looked at me, squinted a little and rolled on to his back again. “You realise,” he said after a while “that we’re basically the same height and your rib cage is like twice the size of mine.” I looked down at myself and then over to him. He was right.

I have the skeletal frame of She-Hulk.

No amount of dieting and exercise is going to make me look like Audrey. My dreams had been hulk-smashed.

For now, I have reluctantly accepted my fate… to an extent, maybe I’ll invest in a rib-crushing corset. In the future you may look forward to: my thoughts on genetic influence, musings (raging) at BMI scales, successes, failures, and anything else I can think of.