Not an early morning riser ....

Had a 5.30 am start this morning. Not something I want to do every morning. I went to a Breakfast for International Womens Day and Jenny Shipley was the speaker. Boy, you could have bowled me over. She looked fantastic. I mean really fantastic. And she was a great speaker. Very natural. She had my attention from go to whoa.

I have to admit I’m not a huge Jenny Shipley fan. I didn’t like her politics at all. But, today she didn’t speak about politics. She spoke on what she’s doing since leaving politics. She spoke about women, health, her children and her passion in Nambia where her and her husband have set up a Trust to help a school over there. She was so taken with the plight of this school when she was doing the documentary Intrepid Journey’s. So she and her family did something about it.

Her dramatic weightloss came after having her heart attack in 2001. She had been feeling unwell for a few weeks and had pains in her arm. She went to the doctors on three occasions and was told she had tennis elbow. The Saturday before her attack she was feeling unwell and told her husband she was going back to the doctor. Monday when she said she was still feeling unwell she was rushed to hospital where she had an angioplasty to remove a clot in one of her arteries. This was her turnaround, time to make changes. So during her convalescence she started walking and concentrating on eating smaller proportions. She now walks 6 km a day and swims a couple of times a week. The results are amazing. She is now an advocate for the Heart Foundation and she stresses if we feel unwell, go to a doctor. If you still feel unwell, ask for a checkup, and keep doing it. The number of women who don’t survive a first heart attack is significantly higher than those of men and the doctors say it’s because women tend to ignore the body signs and don’t do anything about it. Too true.

Life is ticking along very nicely and I can’t complain. I’ve been low carbing for over a week now and the scales are down 1.8 kgs. So I’m feeling pretty damn good. The thing is I’m not making drastic changes. Well for me anyway. I don’t miss the bread and the potatoes. The kids came out for dinner last night and we had a beautiful roast lamb and roast veges but I never missed the potato. It can be expensive though to eat a low carb diet. My ex and I did it about 15 years ago. I gave up after about three weeks because the grocery bill just soared. He did it for awhile and lost a lot. But he was eating nearly a kg of cheese a week as a snack alone. Steak, eggs, bacon etc… his portion sizes didn’t decrease in fact I’d say they increased. So I’ll just keep on doing what I’m doing and if the odd slice of bread or the odd spud slips past my lips I’m not going to worry.

So weight wise since last November I have lost 6.2 kgs. I feel it, sometimes I think I look like I have too. Healthwise I’m fine apart from still waiting to hear about a surgery date – at least I haven’t had any more pain in that area. I’ve had a few bad asthma attacks in the past 2 – 3 weeks. But our hallway is finally getting finished and we’ve had someone in doing all the sanding and prep work and every night I come home the dust is that thick right the way through the house. It’s just impossible to dust the whole house each night but I do the main areas. But still you stir an awful lot of dust up and that’s floating around in the air. The worst is over thank goodness and Mr T and I are looking at getting a DVS system in shortly. I’ve only heard good things about them.

Righto I’d better go and do a bit more work. Till later…..

Ciao