A Day In The Life

Every wondered what it's like to live a day in the life of someone else? I have. Normally I dream about being rich, a little famous (not too much because I'm crap at doing makeup/hair before I step out the door), and having my own private chef, gardener and assistant. So I don't imagine that there is anyone in the world who would actually dream what it's like to be in my humble shoes...however I'm going to give you a day's worth anyway. Cos I can. Cos it's my blog.

Here is a typical day in my little life. Weird as it is at the moment.

0130 Wake just a little to remind myself that the alam will be going off at 0545.

0145 Another little nudge to self that alarm is going off earlier than usual today.

0230 Quick peek at the clock to see if it's any closer to 0545.

0300 Damn - 0545 is rolling in fast!

0345 Blimin tired now.

0430 Shit and blast. Only 1.25 hours of sleep left!

0545 While finally in a deep, deep sleep, alarm goes off. So not fair!

0545.01 Leap out of bed in my one moment of strength. Straight into clothes that are laid out next to bed. It's freezing here right now so I have long socks, track pants, thermal t-shirt, sweatshirt and hat. I can't face doing hair so early so I reign it in and literally stuff it under cap.

0547 Very quietely brush my teeth. Can't do anything or go anywhere with morning breath. Always remembering that ensuite pipes back onto small son's room so I have to forgo moisture. It's a dry brush today.

0550 Grab a pair of sports socks and stuff them over hands. I have no mittens and this will have to do. Yesterday I thought my hands would snap off after becoming frozen in snow blizzard (exaggeration).

0552 Out the door. Hard turn right down path to park. 180 degree turn when realising that the park sprinklers were on. They are ruthless and accurate and being sprayed with icy cold water at 0552 is not cool. Head down the road instead.

I'm walking fast. Too fast. I'm not allowed to run and I'm trying to stick to the rules, but find I walk just under a run..which isn't good for the body. My first ever 'walk-not-run' was for one hour and I clocked up close to 6km. Which is quite good considering I had to motivate a 10 and 8 year old to keep up. Then had to carry the 8 year old on my back for 2km because she had a sore stomach due to not being able to find a private spot for a quick toilet break. An extra 23kg (thank god she's a light 10 year old!!) made it a truly gruelling walk and I woke the following day with sore shins, heels and toes. Have since figured that it's ok to walk when I'm walking.

0625 Have made it to the first bridge past 'The Cow' (it's actually a bull but everyone in Katherine calls it 'The Cow'. I know it's a cow because my son jumped up and started to 'milk' it last week, and then I noticed that he didn't actually have hold of it's udders!!!). Keep walking to the next bridge.

I've passed two people walking dogs, and been 'beeped' out of the way by a couple of keen riders. I've blurted "hullo" to them all but only received one "hullo" back. Thought they were being rude but later remembered that most people these days have ipods in their ears and can't hear a thing. They are all forgiven.

0655 Home to warmth!!! Treat myself with a cup of hot coffee, using soy milk only. Woohoo - just remembered it's 'Dairy Free Week'!!! Happy days.

0715 Whizzing up; 2 x scoops of WPC (protein combination), 1tsp vital greens (a concoction of green everything!! Looks like spirulina powder but tastes better...should do at $170 p/kg!!!), and a couple of cubes of ice to keep it interesting. Sit at computer and read paper while sipping brekkie. Yum!!

0719 Brekkie over. Battle with 2 kids to get them ready for school. Arguments galore over uniforms, lunches, dishes, breakfast, shoes, socks, hair, teeth...and anything else we can scream at each about before we walk out the door.

0750 Big kids off to school. Smiles on their dials - no one would ever imagine the chaos, tears and yelling we just completed behind closed doors. Ahhh - thank goodness for doors!

0815 Out the door with child #3. Check for the following: work bag, diary, new clothes for post workout, training belt, gloves, supplements, towel, water, training schedule, phone, glasses, lunchbox, nut paste, child #3 and car keys. Race back inside to down 2 x flaxseed caps, 1 x multivitamin & a chewable vitamin C (Vit C linked to skin elastisity - am eating them like crazy to get bum skin tight!!).

0830 Child in creche. Client #1 arrives. Have a brilliant workout.

0930 Client #2. Another fab 60mins.

1030 Scheduled Break. Race to work kitchen & grab 100g of cooked, diced chicken from fridge. Nuke for 20seconds to take cold edge off. Mix with tsp of nut paste (OMG it's soooooo goood!!!!) and scoff the whole lot in about 8 seconds.

1045 Next client please!! Thank god for my clients - they keep me sane.

1145 Time for me. Organise my water, down my creatine, start loading up with BCAA's (amino acid recovery drink) and choose workout. Crap. It's chinups and chest today. You already know the chinup story and it's pretty much the same drama each and every session. But I labour through and feel great and it's done. The rest is systematic; Incline press, pressups, flies, bench press. 5 sets. 15 reps per set. I try to fit in another 20min walk on the treadmill but am fighting my mind. Want to go home!!! Need to get the 'cardio' in. Won't tell you which of them won the battle!

1330 Done. Absolutely and utterly done. Nothing left. Hungry, tired, sore & ready for home. Down another shaker full of protein and glutamine for recovery.

1345 Home now. Throw 75grms silken tofu under the grill. Feeling cheeky so splash a little soya sauce on top. Bad move. Sauce burns and it all looks like a charred mess in no time. Too bad. No time to recook. Mix it with steamed green veges and 25g (do you know how ridiculously small 25grms of anything is??????????????) pink salmon (from a can - you know the sort - complete with little vetebraes!!!) and down it in 10 secs flat.

1410 Cup of coffe. Soy milk only but who cares. It's coffee. Truth is, it's not 'on the list' but I'm a rebel. I drink it anyway. Quick read of the online paper, facebook and emails while sipping my soy gold! Swallow 3 fish oil tabs.

Time to catch up on some washing and tidying up.

1430 Big kids home. Homework is out and on the table. Fighting begins. #3 always picks this time to be extra naughty. Ditch homework and give them iceblocks instead. I didn't every propose to be mother-of-the-year did I!! Clean up the instantaneous mess these 3 create after 5 mins home. Pick up discarded and filthy socks, pick up a trail of schoolbooks and arty pictures, undo lunchboxes containing a veritable explosion of yoghurt!!

1500 Crap. Forgot to get dinner done. Start peeling veges. Anything for the kids. For me; savoy cabbage, zucchini, green capsicum, brussel sprouts & broccoli - there's a pattern here. It's green, green, green!! Feeling ruddy hungry while preparing so help myself to some nice, long, crunchy stems of celergy. Wacky doo!!

1530 Round up kids and their karate outfits. Make extra sandwiches as snacks for kids at Bootcamp. Finish dinner prep and get rooms ready for bed.

1615 Kids out the door and down to the Bootcamp oval. Love Bootcamp and the kids love it to. Tried to leave #3 at home one evening and he sobbed the whole hour so it's become a punishment to stay at home. Love the fact that our children are immersed in healthy activities all the time.

1616 Race back inside and grab 10 (that's Ten, not eleven!!) almonds. Naughty as I am, I grab about 10 sultanas too - they are a no-no but again, I'm a rebel. Slowly munch on these 20 little morsels and make them last as long as I can.

1800 After setting up, my team arrives. I'm hungry and a bit wound up. No worries at all - just start motivating others and I find all of my energy back again. Have NEVER finished a bootcamp feeling like crap. Always revitalised and grateful for the hour.

1830 Walk in the house after Bootcamp. Can smell the cooking dinner and start salivating. It's not my dinner by the way - it's next door. Kids straight into shower. Unpack car. Cook dinner and feed kids. Clean up yet again. Kids to bed by 1900-1930 so it's story time and listening to anything new that must be explained to me...right on bed time. Listen to complaints of headaches and sore tummies...that did not appear at any other time than the aforementioned bed time. Deal with ailments and moans and finally crack it and yell at them all to shuddupandgotasleep!!!

1930 Make lunches and prepare dinner. 150g for me, 200g for Rob (sorry honey - you're in there with me on this one!!) of chicken. Stirfry in a dry pan. Add pre-cut veges and stir-fry the living hell out of them all. A bit of rice or bread for Rob but none for me. Try to fit in tomorrow's school lunches at this time too. Never can find time in the morning and the bad sammies reflect the rush which makes me feel guilty. Better to do it the night before. Or teach kids how to do it themselves!!

2000 Dinner. It takes a surprisingly short time to eat 150g of protein with some veges. How sad. Finish and complete programs and preparations for the next day. Answer emails and have another look at the posing bikinis and the colours available - will the decision ever be made? I'm not sure!

2042 Pill time. 3 x fish oil, 2 x glucosamine with chrondroitin (impressed???), 1 x cholorophyll, 1 x multivitamin. Magnesium in water should follow....but often doesn't. All powdered and pill'ed out.

2045ish Dessert. Oolala!!! 350ml soya milk, 1 scoop soy protein powder, 1tsp vital greens, 2 cubes of ice and a good whizzer!! This is the highlight of my evening and I enjoy every last slurp!!!

2100 Cup of tea. Soy milk.

2130 BED!!!! This is actually an early night. Lately it's been about 2230 but we're bringing it back in due to excessive yawning noticed in the afternoons.

2132 Have a quick moan about the things I didn't get done today. On the top of the list is posing practice and organsing a massage for these very tight shoulders. Hector the posing-trainer says I look like one of those robot dancers from the 80's - all stiff and tight. Thanks Hector.

Mental note to deal with these issues in the morning. Quick chuckle to self at the fact that I will probably not remember at all and will spend tomorrow night thinking exactly the same thoughts!! Why? Because I've been meaning to do both things for the past five days to no avail.

2140 Have a read of the latest Mens Fitness magazine. Let mind wander to how I could integrate some of those ideas into client workouts. "Would it be too mean to make him do 20 Turkish Getups on each arm using kettlebells? Hell no. He'll love it! Done!" And he did do it - and I'm sure he loved it!!

2200ish Sleep arrives.

2345 Just checking the time. Gotta wake up a little early tomorrow for the morning walk......

Have You Ever Had One Of Those Moments When....

...you wish the floor would open up and swallow you whole??? You know - when your embarrassment is so complete that you can hardly remain alive???? Your face is flaming with heat, it's as red as a fire and it scarily feels like your cheeks actually have their own heartbeat??? It takes a whopper of an 'incident' to get to this point. But it does happen. I promise. It  happened to me last weekend. But I'll get to that.

I'm one of those people that has so many embarrassing 'incidents' that it's hard to pick out any single one that is worse than the rest. Time is definitely a healer and it has turned most of the historic embarrassments into funny stories, rather than the torture they were at the time of happening. So I've never been good at the whole "too cool for school" caper. It just never worked for me, even when I tried hard at it.

Let's take, for example, the time when I was a 17 year old office junior, taking my lunch break and feeling oh-so-important walking down the street with two of the senior office managers either side of me. They were going out to buy a sandwich and normally ignored little old me but, for some reason, this time invited me along. So how come, though I was walking in the middle, I was the only one who fell down the manhole???? How the hell does that happen? And there was absolutely no point in the world trying to gather my 'coolness' back while I still required physical assistance to extract both legs out of the said manhole, and ended up emerging with shredded pantyhose and dirty, smelly, brown, muddy ....shit....all over my legs and shoes!! No point whatsoever!!! The ever-caring managers just about fell over themselves with trying to pull me out but I would honestly and truly have preferred to have been swallowed up whole by the earth than have to deal with this situation. The memory now makes me laugh...with a few little prickles of embarrassment still present.

Anyhow, on to the present. So last weekend I headed to Darwin for my posing-session with a trainer called Karlene. Except I wasn't actually greeted by Karlene when I arrived at the gym, but by her partner/boyfriend, Hector. Now Hector has enough muscle on him to feed a small African tribe for a year, and he's fully South American, and as funny as all heck! That is, when I can understand him. He speaks fast and I find myself lip-reading a fair bit. But I forgave him as time went on because he's good, really good! He is a ripping example of a body-builder and teaches beautifully.

Nope, the intro to Hector has nothing to do with the 'incident'. It involves some of the attire worn by a female body builder. Now, it's prudent to point out that the female of this species wears extremely little attire when competing. So what is worn needs to do it's job extremely well least all hell break loose. Get to the point.

A few months ago, my gorgeous friend, Kylie, loaned me her proper little bodybuilding high-heels that she wore to a show a few years back. They are a typical style for a competition, consisting of an approx 1cm platform, and a 5.5cm very narrow high heel. The top of the shoe is a clear plastic strip with a thin strap around the heel. Quite unremarkable really. But very important.

So I produced these shoes for Hector's judgemental eye and, in a thick South American accent he said something like, "These shoes are shit. They are falling apart. I think you should tape them up before you walk in them". I peered closer and saw the smallest of small little lifts in the top part of the shoe where it met with the towering high heel. "Oh .... it'll be just fine thank you very much" I cockily retorted, thinking he was being a bit over-the-top (and mildly offensive!) about my little heels!

So we got started with our session and I started learning about Side Chest, and Front Biceps, and Side Left Tricep poses. I practised and practised and practised until my brain literally ached with the effort of remembering the moves. It turned into a blur of commands like, "squeeze your glutes" "never stop smiling" "thighs! Flex your thighs!" "Glutes again!!!" "Feet in, butt out, legs together, lats spread, and DON'T STOP SMILING!!!" It was overwhelming but challenging and exciting all in one.

And then the moment came. "Time for shoes on. Are you sure you don't want to tape them up before we start" he said with a cheeky little smile. "It would be a shame to roll your heel after all of the hard work you've done"

Me...cheerily..."No thanks! They'll be fine. But thanks for caring"

Him..."Ok. (why won't he stop smiling!!) "Walk on that stage, drop two poses, kiss the air and show us how it's done. Wait....I'll give you a quick intro......(after years of participating in police training sessions, Hector has no idea just how much I hate role-plays!! any form of them!!! but I'll play the game!!!) and here we have Kirsten from Katherine!!!!!!!!!!!"

Then I'm strutting out like a contestant on Next Top Model. I've got the jaunty little walk, hand on hip, cheeky smile. And I'm workin it baby!!!

Then it happened. Without warning. At precisely, and I mean precisely, the same millisecond, both bottoms of both shoes disengaged themselves from...well from the whole bloody shoe!! I immediately went from a towering 5ft9inches to 5ft6inches....well shorter actually if you count the height I lost in pure embarrassment! And I find myself trotting along with my feet strapped in clear plastic to a dirty white sole/sock thingie!!! And I can hear both heels clattering around behind me, like a pair of those dancing false teeth party tricks.

EMBARRASSMENT was total. My face burned and I just about died right there and then. Worse of all, I couldn't escape my predicament due to my feet being tightly strapped in to the soles! Meanwhile, Hector the trainer is just about falling off his chair with laughter. In between laughs he's pointing out how stubborn women are when it comes to taking instruction. I'm laughing with him but my pride has taken the ultimate tumble and I'm hurtin!!! Oh God - please swallow me...NOW!!!!

He didn't. And I didn't die. I just felt like I would. They say that pride does go before a fall, which means I must have had an awful lot of pride somewhere along the way.

But I must say that, all in all, it was a brilliant training session. Hector was fantastic, and I'm all on track. Just gotta remember, nothing is ever that serious, and laughter is a great way to start and end the day.

On that. I really hope you're smiling Kylie!! Though I tried resusitation, the shoes are deceased! I owe you one! ....two actually!

X

16 Weeks & 5 Days To Go!!

While that may seem a lot of weeks, it's time to start making some firm decisions. Let's start with the really important ones;

1. Spandex or Crushed Velvet?

2. Bling shaped in a delicate little 'rainfall' formation? Or a Star Wars style, meteor-smashing bundle of glistening rocks???

3. The 'Genevieve' style of shoes with the heart shape on the toe? Or the 'Diane' style with the little diamantes up the heel?

4. 15cm or 18cm across the bum??? Both scare the heck out of me!! Mental note: MUST make waxing appointment one day very soon or I'll be wearing bike shorts!

So while I'm pondering the answers to these mammoth and life-changing questions, I have little time to consider my new daily nutrition guide (sounds so nice when phrased like that! Should really read "My Extremely Tiny Weeny Wee List Of Things That I Can Actually Eat, And When To Eat Them' list!!!). Before you 'x' out of this or roll your eyes at my endless moaning about food, I must point out that I am not looking for sympathy! Absolutely and unequivocally not!! In fact, I was taught once that sympathy should remain firmly between shit and syphilis in the dictionary! Crude maybe, but that's how it is.

I'm more expressing my feelings about this way of life in order to; a) give you all a laugh, and b) not feel alone in my strange quest for muscle.

So this new daily guide is aligned with my blood type. The theory being that your body is more suited to some foods than others, therefore if you follow what your body best needs, it will process the food more easily and produce less problems and/or cravings. Unfortunately I have spent the majority of my life following another blood type!!! Damn!! In my honest opinion, my blood seems to have not had a problem with all of the cheese, milk and yoghurt I've thrown at it! And I have definitely given it enough to really test the boundaries!! But apparently this is not the right thing for me and it's time to stop.

Along with a few changes in food groups, I have had to face my hugest addiction.....FRUIT!! I love it! I crave it! I actually wake up thinking about mandarins and apples and grapes, and never miss an opportunity to stuff my face with some variation of fruit between Woolies and home. It has definitely become out of control and I have searched high and low for a 12 Step Program, without success.

And when I got my new eating plan on Friday I actually, physically said to Rob, "I'm going to start on my new plan on Monday morning. It seems the sensible thing to do." Now those that know me, know I consistently harp on about not waiting to get started on...anything!! The old "I'll wait til Monday" thing turns it into a big event and leads to binging and burning for the days preceding Monday. I hate that thinking and yet there I was, blabbing it off in such an authoritative tone that no one would dared have argued!!

Thankfully within 5minutes of feeling very guilty and trying to justify it all in my mind, I decided that the perfect time to start was right here and now. So I just did it. No pomp and ceremony. No laborious conversations or shopping trips. I just started. Since Friday I have limited myself to; frozen berries in my morning shake (as per my blood type regime - seems my blood doesn't mind berries thank goodness), and a mid morning orange as a great source of carbohydrates and a little smidgin (?!) of fructose sugar!

My danger time is after dinner when I could slip in about 5-8 pieces of ....whatever I could find in the fruit bin. So I'm eating dinner and, as per my program, having a soy milk drink followed by a cup of tea before bed. Nice? It's ok. It's not fruit and never will be. But it will get me to my goal and I can assure you, that's what I want most of all right now!!

Change of topic now. How about the training? Woohoo - back to my big reps, more exercises, routine. Love it and I'm sore and aching all over again!!! Can't tell you how happy that makes me feel! I got a text from one of my PT clients this week saying "I'm glad my pain is making you so happy" and I realised just how sadistic my mind has become. 

The emphasis is strongly on back and legs for now, and cardio is looking to take a big turn in the very near future. So if you see me walking briskly down the bike track, it's not that I've got an injury, it's just that I need to start concentrating on dropping fat while maintaining muscle. Not that easy when doing full-blast cardio sessions on the treadmill. Will keep you updated on this one - it's sure to produce a tirade of moaning from me. Oh well, least it's about something other than food for a change!!

Ok. I need to sort out shoes and outfit right now. Still sitting on the fence about the bling styles. Life is good!