Coffee Quotas and Matchsticks

Today is filled with mixed emotion. I am gracious and excited by the long weekend (4 day with 1 day work in the middle) and then saddened by being back at work and no longer at home today.

For the first time in a very long time I had a great time at home. I spent Friday doing not much in particular but still getting things done. There was a lot of napping on the couch and flicking through magazines. I still went through with bootcamp, so I felt my good deed had been done, so I was left to wrestle with my own thoughts.

Now I’m no angel. I’ve had my little binges and I’ve had my big binges. Overall, I still stick to roughly 1200-1300 calories per day. I’d safely say that 90% of the time I hit the target. I have worked out my BMR to be sitting at 1870. This means, by just ‘existing’ I use 1870 calories per day.  Then using the Harris Benedict Formula for existing a moderately active lifestyle brings my daily calorie expenditure to 2900 roughly. This means that for me to gain weight I have to ‘binge’ on average 1600 calories a day! Now I can be completely honest and say that I do not binge daily. It doesn’t happen. I can also honestly say that when I do binge, yes, it can be up to the 1000 calorie mark but not regularly. Mostly it’s 300-500 calories above my allowance.

So scientifically, I shouldn’t be gaining weight. Scientifically I should be losing weight, although not in great huge amounts, but it should still be a loss. It has been suggested to me that I should research Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. One of the main symptoms of PCOS is unexplained weight gain. Unfortunately this means a whole new series of visits to the GP to rule this out or try to get at least one step closer to the confusion that is my body.

There was my first thought pattern that occupied my weekend. The second was sleep. Or rather, lack of sleep. For about the last week now I’ve been suffering broken sleep, not getting more than an hour or two before waking up. Unfortunately this can be a side effect of the medication so for now I just need to suck it up and get on with life. This means that I need to invest in a lot of matchsticks as I will no longer be turning to food to keep me awake and I’ve already promised myself that I will not exceed my 1 daily coffee quote whilst at work.

Now we’ve traipsed through the negatives, let’s hit the positives.

We’ve got blueberries and a custard apple tree in the ground now – I can’t wait till everything starts producing fruit – I’m going to have a field day!! Still left to go in the ground pre-Fiji is the coffee and tea plants, but they’ll go in either this weekend or next.

Last but not least I stepped outside my comfort zone. On Monday I learnt to drive a bobcat. For my very first go I was impressed. It did take some time to convince me to give it a go, but once I was in there and in charge of the controls it was amazing!! I’ve even got some proof!