Day 51 - Self awareness

Patricks vid last week has had me thinking. I am certainly an Endomorph.


Typical traits of an Endomorph:

• Soft and round body
• Gains muscle and fat very easily
• Is generally short and “stocky”
• Round physique
• Finds it hard to lose fat
• Slow metabolism

I descend from a family of Endomorphs. However, most of my extended family have been fairly sporty and so have been able to keep to a regular size. Fairly sporty? I am not being very generous as many of my family have been either professional athletes (footballers, tennis players), semi professionals (surfing) or representatives at state and international level in a variety of sports. My mother for example has represented at regional and national levels in pretty much every sport she has tried: athletics, water skiing, field hockey for 30 years, and even now in her 60s she is representing Australia in gateball. So I am surrounded by some pretty driven personalities who are able to keep fit and healthy despite being endomorphs too.

I too started off my life as a very sporty person. When I was a young child I started at ballet, then added gymnastics and little athletics. Throughout school I was into every sport possible: athletics, netball, softball, swimming, life-saving and water skiing. Field hockey has been a constant of course and I was quite good at one point. Never made national teams but I have always been fairly active at the state level as player, umpire and coach.

So all through school and university, I was fairly fit and my weight was around 49-55kg which for my height (157cm or 5'2" in old money) is pretty good.

Then in my mid 20's I started working and was still into some sport but did the usual gym junkie thing. I was also really into music and went to a lot of clubs on weekends and dance parties all across the country. Dancing kept me pretty fit and I stayed at around the 56kg mark for a long time.

Then at the age of 29 in 2000, I moved to Japan and had my first "desk job". All my previous work was in laboratories where I was standing up most of the day and then as a technical sales rep/consultant so I was running around all day.

In Japan, I found it hard to play sport. I have taken up snow skiing though and I don't suck. We try to go a few times each season but it is hard to get away with Hubbilicious' work schedule. I dabbled in karate and other sports as well but nothing to the level I was into in Australia. Plus there were so many other things going on. Work conferences, seminars, junkets plus travel around Asia whenever I could. And the drinking. Oh the drinking. I used to drink so much more in those first few years in Tokyo then I ever did before. Drinking and eating - the expat life for sure. I am sure many people can relate to this.

So my 30's continued in this pattern (desk job, no sport, booze, bad food choices) and I added around 15kg to my "normal" weight. It really just crept up on me and I hovered between 68-72 kg. Whoever said that Japanese food was all healthy was lying. White rice and tonkatsu (which I love BTW), ramen and all the fried foods contributed to this weight creep.

I always managed to stay on the upper range of "unfit", slightly overweight and it was just vanity that stopped me from tipping into the true "fat" category. But hey, I was happy and in love and about to get married to somebody who was really into food so it was really hard to change my lifestyle. Note: he is a mesomorph and rides his bike everywhere so he stays fit and athletic without much effort. This pretty much describes Hubbilicious:

Typical traits on a Mesomorph:

• Athletic
• Hard body with well defined muscles
• Rectangular shaped body
• Strong
• Gains muscle easily
• Gains fat more easily than ectomorphs

OK, back to me. 

Then I got pregnant.

To stave off morning sickness I grazed constantly. Then I was feeling great and tried to eat healthily to grow a healthy baby. And eat I did and grew a very healthy baby. At the end of my pregnancy I was the size of a small car. I was HUGE and over 92kg.


92KG!!

Below is a photo from a magazine shoot that I did last year. Just so you can really see the reality of the size I was.   

I walked a lot and did lots of swimming to try to be a little bit healthy. Last Summer was hellishly hot and so I did take it easy. But lets be real here, I was huge.

So, late last September, my darling Max was born a very healthy and bouncy 4.2kg. Overnight I dropped to 85kg or there abouts. My tummy was still like an overstetched water balloon with no muscle tone and my internal organs hanging out where the baby had left space.

Over the next few months my weight drops to around the 80 kg mark which is fine. But breastfeeding meant that I was hungry ALL THE TIME. I made bad choices and big portions thinking I needed to feed my baby and that the weight should fall off from just the action of breastfeeding. eerr WRONG!! So after a few months I ended up nearly as heavy as when Max was first born. I have blogged about this before. I have some photos from earlier this year and I was definitely now FAT. I didn't like it at all.

Some drastic action needed to be taken - and so here I am at Day 51 of PCP. I doubt another program could be more drastic. I still have a long way to go to get back more muscle tone on the belly but at least the fat is decreasing. I estimate that I am not even half way along my journey back to wellness and the sort of shape I "should" be in.  

What have I learned so far in the last 51 days? It looks that I need to accept that my body type requires me to be constantly vigilant when it comes to what I feed it and how I treat it. My body type means that I will always have the tendency to put on weight and that a sedentary lifestyle is not for me - unless I want to end up looking like Jabba the Hut of course. I need to accept that food "rewards" are not rewards rather they are new obstacles I am creating for myself. I need to balance the good with the bad. 

I am currently in a "good phase" as I have over a decade of being "bad" that need to be corrected. I think this good phase needs to continue for a while longer yet though. But I am on a roll so am prepared to keep plugging away. Fortunately, my sporty background has afforded me some great muscle memory and the physicality part is enjoyable. The effort I need to expend is mainly mental as my biggest enemy is procrastination. As long as I can continue to "Just fucking do it" (JFD™) I will be fine.

Today, I was very motivated and got up early and left the boys in bed and did my workout. Legs were still heavy from the punishment of yesterday's workout so skips were a bit woeful but I did them. Chest fine, well the chest dips are improving but still far from good, biceps fine and I have left the abs for later tonight when I do the 8MA.

Long blog post today but it has been bubbling around in my brain for a week or so now so it is good to finally get it out. I have lots of time in my own head while breastfeeding, walking and skipping where I keep my brain active composing future blog posts. I write these long posts so I have something to refer back to when I need some motivation. Please don't think I am trying to grandstand or show off or seek attention. That is certainly not who I am.

I do appreciate that I am NOT a woman of mystery (I have had a blog in one form or another for about eight years) but tone is so hard to convey in type.