When I arrived in Malaysia 30 months ago I was coming down from an extremely stressful 18 months. My dad, grandmother and mother-in-law had died at approximately 6 monthly intervals, we had put our home of 12 years on the market as after two years on a single income we were reaching the end of our ability to afford it, my job was on the line in a corporate re-structure due to a lack of pipeline work. There hadn’t been a lot of energy left for me to look after me and my body was showing it.
I definitely had it on my mind to use some of my time to get lighter and fitter but then we survived two months of the haze which impacted on my asthma quite badly. By the time the holidays and new year got underway a new lot of stress was on the horizon with the decision for me to go back to New Zealand for Jon’s last year at school. I remember at one point thinking I wasn’t going to fight menopause weight gain until I was sure I was done.
Anyway around June or July I clicked on a link for a eating and exercise plan on Facebook. I really liked the approach – all the food was real, there wasn’t too much fake science for me to swallow, and the exercise was by and large a known quantity. By mid August I had decided that once I was back in KL I would give it a shot and I started late November. So what does this have to do with an IKEA chair?
The eating plan is focused on small meals five times a day – which is a struggle for me even though I know it works as a weight loss strategy. My normal eating pattern is maybe breakfast then 2-3 lattes, maybe lunch at 3 pm and then dinner. The big attraction of the plan was that I didn’t have to think to much about what to eat assuming I had done the shopping. I like healthy, fresh food and having the decisions made for me about what that could be was all I really needed to stick with it.
What surprised me though was how the almost total elimination of sugar, dairy and wheat made such a huge difference to my energy levels. I decided even as I started that I would focus on food rather than exercise for the first eight week cycle and that as I had a lot to lose I wouldn’t be totally purist. I would still have a couple of glasses of wine on the weekend, still have my morning latte, still have my teaspoon of sugar in my coffee. Except 12 weeks later – I am down to a piccolo latte with no sugar 3-4 times a week, half a teaspoon of sugar in my first coffee of the morning and none after that. My daily water intake has at least tripled, and even Nick’s personal trainer is commenting on his improved performance from all the fresh vegetables he is eating.
This IKEA chair has been on my shopping list for some time, in fact since a few weeks after we arrived and I wanted a chair with a firm back and arm rests for knitting and other crafts. It was big enough that it needed to be delivered and somehow it just all felt too hard. By the time I walked through IKEA and did other things I would be just out of mental and emotional energy. Then not long after we got back from holiday this year I met some one in the shopping centre for coffee. I was five weeks into the programme and despite walking all over to show her things I still had energy to burn. After checking out how the pick and deliver service worked I went home, created an online shopping list, printed it and took it in on Thursday afternoon.
When this chair arrived this morning(along with several other things) and I put it together, all I could think was how long it had taken for me to find the energy to follow through and buy it. I am immensely grateful that I made that decision to click on the link to Kim Beach No Excuses back in August and followed through in November.
ETA – since I started this post back in February I have now had three months to enjoy the chair which now Tash has checked out and agrees is a great knitting chair. I also have a great ottoman with knitting storage to go with it!