its official

I can't deny it any further, I am a yo-yo dieter. I go from wanting to be brilliantly buff, working out really hard and eating really well for several months, I get fantastic results and then I turn on myself and become all self righteous about my body. I go on this whole stint about positive body image and trying to accept myself for who I am. I try and tell myself that I dont want to spend my entire life in a gym and I end up putting on all the weight I lost and all the great effort I put in is reversed. And here I am again, at the tail end of a righteous phase about to become a gym/diet junkie again. Watch this space you'll see great things achieved over the coming months i'm sure of it. But watch again in few months more and i'm sure you'll all that great work gone again.

Now let's talk this through. If I only exercised three times per week and ate relatively well but still allowed myself to eat the things I wanted, I would be a fairly solid size twelve, possibly the bottom end of a fourteen. When I diet and exercise like mad I can go down to a low 10. I wonder if this ever stops? Do I go through my entire life like this? I dont know. I need to either learn to love myself as a bigger girl or I need to learn to maintain such a disciplined diet and exercise regime. There is a lot more at stake now too, i'm an aerobics instructor and I cant just get fat because I feel like it. Blah. Sometimes being a woman is incredibly hard. Sometimes its fanatastic, but sometimes its just plain hard.

The funny thing is, looking fantastic for people isnt even an issue for me. Its all about how I feel and when I am bigger, I feel worse. But here's the thing, do I feel worse because I know I dont look as good? Or do I feel worse because the body naturally feels better when you're treating it well? These are the questions I ask myself a lot.

I have a girlfriend who is a little bigger than I am. She says she worries about her weight but she is so self confident that I often question whether she is worried, or she is saying she is worried because that is what most girls do... its the same thing as above, how do i really tell which is the truth?

I long for the day that I become completely and totally happy with my body. Or at least acceptance would be nice. I actually thought I was almost there, but as I see now i'm just going through a phase again. MEH!

Well I have my very strong coffee by my side and I'm sitting here thinking how the hell i'm going to muster both the energy, and the brain power I need to get my last two assignments finished. Postmodern literature is a crock and I'm just over it. I have absolutely no idea why I chose this subject. I think it had something to do with the fact that I didn't know anything about it and I wanted to learn more. Well the funny thing is, I still dont know anything about it but the only thing that has changed is that I no longer want to learn another single thing about it. I have never in my entire life come across a subject matter that meant less. Its completely meaningless. No one can define it, no one seems to know what it is yet EVERYONE is talking about it in the books. There appear to be several key theorists who have written most of the credible work on it and they write with such pretention that I just cant keep up. Whatever happened to plain english? Perhaps these people never actually spoke in plain english to begin with.

I'm doing remarkably well in all my other subjects but i'll be surprised if I get anything other than a pass for this one, which is a shame because I wanted my grade point average to remain as high as possible for the whole degree. How dissapointing. MEH!!! I somehow managed to swing an extension for over the weekend but as it turns out I now have Bodypump training over the weekend so its a complete and total write off. I need have these things finished by Friday or i'm going to be in trouble.

Paris Out of Jail

Ohmigod! So Paris Hilton was supposed to serve a 27 day sentence but after just 5 days she has been released. How lame. I cannot believe it. It makes me angry, its going to send the message that the rich are going to be able to buy their way out of anything. God, the American justice sysytem is so screwed up.

Spazzwood

Selwood is spazzing again. After he eats, just goes NUTS! He was also in his cage for quite a while today because I had a Bodystep class to teach. I'm really looking forward to the day that he starts coming to classes with me. I feel terrible leaving him in his cage. He gets these teeny puppy eyes that make me feel SO guilty.

We're not really having much progress with his toilet training and its starting to worry me. I have been taking him our hourly, as sugested and if he needs to go, he'll go while were out ther but if he doesnt he'll just wait till he does need to and dump it where ever he might be. I dont mind cleaning up after him, I'm just worried that he's not learning quick enough.

There are some things that he has learnt really quickly. Like how to sit. Unless he is in the middle of a spazz out (like now) he'll sit if you tell him to. He also has the feeding ritual down pat. He'll sit in front of his bowl and wait for permission to start eating. The stuff that he needs to learn in relation to his lead has kind of been put on hold because of his operation, so I guess I just want him to do well in everything else so that when he needs to learn that stuff, he's already in learning mode. I have two more weeks until everything with uni is due and then he and I are hitting the training big time. I'll shower him with training and love and then hopefully my guilt will subside.

He is chewing absolutely everything too. he can be such a terror but he is SO adorable that its really hard to stay mad at him. I just have to remind myself that he's only 8 weeks old. he's still an infant for goodness sakes!

The morning after

Well, this morning i'm feeling rather lousy again. I know I ate too much last night and i'm feeling terrible. I've been reading a fitness forum all morning and my god there are some incredibly dedicated people out there. These people's lives revolve entirely around diet and exercise. They are all much fitter, skinnier, toned than i am and they just participate in the industry - I work in the industry. For about ten minutes I found myself saying "I'll start dieiting and exercising like a madman again and i'll be able to look like that too". It only lasted ten minutes though. There are more important things in life than having a toned body. I know this now (though it took me several years to reach that conclusion). I do however need to stop eating so poorly. Not becuase i'm worried that i'll get fat, but because I'm feeling revolting. I teach three bodystep and five RPM classes per week so I do think i'm doing enough exercise. When I pick up bodypump as well, that is going to increase so I know for sure that the reason i'm feeling the way I am is because i'm eating badly.

Right now I just dont have the time to dedicate to 'getting buff'. Plus, my priorities are elsewhere at the moment. I've got uni for one, which is tied first as the most important thing happening with me at the moment. Tied first with Selwood that is :P He takes up a lot of time and energy. Once he gets a little older i'm going to start running again, but at the moment I cant leave him alone for too long so my exercise is limited to my aerobics classes.

I think I'm just having a bad run at the moment. The thought of spending EXTRA time in the gym is actually quite horrible. I love teaching my classes but I also love leaving at the end of class. I've been saying to people for some time now that I dont wnat to spend the younger part of my life slogging it out in the gym, and I mean it. I'm hoping that this passes soon!

Brad is in America right now for a work conference. I can't wait till he gets back. He always makes me feel better about this kind of stuff.

It's one of those days

I'm having one of those days where everything feels yuck. I got my period yesterday so maybe thats why :P

This month the thing that is bothering me is my body. So from previous entries its clear that i've had issues with dieting in the past. It wasnt until six months ago that I finally found peace with my body, but every now and then my female hormones turn on me and I have mini stress attacks all over again. I think the reason I stress about it like this is because I work in the fitness industry and I feel like I should be a better example of a strong fit person. I'm a great instructor, I just dont have the ripped, super skinny body. I must admit that in the last month i've just been eating terribly and this is probably the overall reason as to why i'm stressing right now. it was bound to catch up with me. I just need t focus on eating wholesome fresh foods during the week and then on weekends let myself eat a little more freely. That's what i've been doing and its been working, till a month ago when I actually picked up my weekend eating to all the time :p WHOOPS!

I've also been drinking a few glasses of wine about four nights a week lately, which has probably excaccerbated my mini stress attack. Actually *light bulb moment*, its a combination of the following
-consistent poor diet
-too much alcohol
-decreased level of exercise

For various reasons i've had several classes covered for the last couple of weeks and I think the lack of exercise has also contributed to the yuck feeling.

its important that I verbalise that this entry is not another false promise to cut back on bad food, pick up the exercise and just go go go so I can improve my body. its absolutely not about that. its about me venting, verbalising my problems so that I dont hit panic mode and head into that pattern again. I probably will get up early and go for a run tomorrow even though I have a class at lunch time but I have been lacking in the exercise lately so its probably warranted. I do however, want to recognise that it's probably not the best thing for me to keep drinking alcohol so frequently. I had a moto of drinking on weekends only, which was working fine. I think i relaxed TOO much and now the relaxed part of my brain is taking over the rest :P haha. I'm used to exercising like a madwoman. Not because I think I have to but because I absolutely love it. Your body gets addicted to something like that. lately, i've been so busy with uni and selwood that exercise has come last. I have two more weeks of uni before the semester break. its been a great learning curb for me, trying to juggle uni with everyday life. i'm picking up two extra subjects next semester so it will be interesting to see how my coping skills pan out :P

end of rant, I feel better. Thanks for listening!

Feminist what?!

I'm currently writing an assignment on the blatant antifeminist messages that young female protagonists are sending to their young female readers in contemporary young adult chick lit. fiction and its got my brain all ferhoodled.

According to my research/analysis the main characters in Chick Lit nowadays are turning their backs on the feminist movement, whether they realise they are doing it or not. I'm analysing "Vegan, Virgin, Valentine", "Does My Head Look Big In This" and "The Truth About Forever" for my paper and what astounds me is, that to the casual observer these books appear to be normal stories that teenagers read. However, apply some feminist theory to their respective narratives and you've got yourself a feminist's worst nightmare. All of these books are written by females and all the main characters are females, so my question is: do these authors think about these kinds of things when they are writing their novels, or are the literary feminist critics of today out of control?!

I'm in the process of writing my own novel at the moment and I can confidently say that I haven't once sat down and thought about whether the situation my female protagonist is in, is a blatant violation of the unwritten feminist law.

for my assignment, my arguement is that these young female characters are forgoing their own careers, goals and desires for the sake of romance. And it's actually true. The first time I read each novel through, I was captivated with each story because I thought they were great novels for a teenager to read. Then I started doing my research and read each book through again and tried applying my research as I read and I was appalled. These girls in these books really are giving up their own lives for their boyfriends. Its subtle but its happening. So should our teenagers be reading stories about romance and getting that guy, or should they be reading stories about academic success and career orientated narratives? Unfortunately I can't answer that...

Susan Faludi says that the feminist movement has come around and kicked women in the ass. A study found that depression and mid-life crisis' are far more common in single career women, than in married family women. Speaking as a woman, I can't imagine ever not having children. I'm actually craving to start a family. I'd give up any chance of a career for my 'husband and children' if it meant I could raise a happy successful family. But every woman is different. And anyway, who are we to decide what kinds of stories kids should be reading? How do we know that if we write these pro-feminist narratives, that someone else out there isnt going to come up with a crazy theory about how we're corrupting the minds of our teenage girls.

I feel like i'm actually studying sociology and not literature. Its incredibly challenging but I have to say, the challenge is always welcome. Except when I have assignments due and i'm freaking out about the due dates :P tehehe.