Artslim, weight, life, health management.

 
 
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Worrying does not empty tomorrow of its troubles...

It empties today of its strength.

-Aunt Linda.    A quote from ‘Spark people.

Today started out tough, but turned out to be a beautiful day, here at our ‘summer retreat’, in Northern Victoria.

I have been using my observation and corrections technique on myself as I observe I am beginning to overeat again and observe this is probably in response to my concern over Reg’s health.  My husband Reg, having whooping cough at the moment and becoming very frail, having a lot of pain and difficulty walking.

I arranged for Reg and me to spend part of today in the garden, a lovely mood elevating place for a recovering man to relax for a while.  I also got some enjoyable exercise doing some gardening, and I’ve also put into practice eating regularly, more often, but small servings, today to counter my desire to eat often.

I do my weight bearing exercises, strength and balance training at gym tomorrow. I am doing this one day on and then two days off to allow myself to fully recover and it is being well supervised by my gym instructors.

I hope that soon this feeling of wanting to eat frequently, (emotional eating desire), will leave me as I put positive thoughts into place and accept that my overeating, - self abusing I will call it, in ‘straight talk’, will not cure Reg of the whooping cough. 
Why we want to walk to a fridge, open it, look for something to eat as instant gratification rather than seek the long term gratification of being slim and healthy, is obviously deeply entrenched in our nature, preconditioning no doubt from infancy, maybe someone gave us a sweet when we grazed our knee, the Doctor always had a jelly bean to give us after a needle.  It might have served us well then, but we are not children now and we don’t need to carry on behaviours that harm us. (LOL, self lecturing here  J )

I CAN DO IT.  I do not over eat.

It is OK to eat often if you crave to do so. Just eat healthy and less food, if your eating more often and you end up feeling satisfied, but not having appreciably overeaten.
As a physician once told me when I argued with him that 'I did eat healthy that i simple could not lose weight', (back then when I was obese), he said, ‘Take what you eat now and halve it’, that was good advice.

I’ve not done a lot of damage, I actually have gained one kilo of lean body mass, all muscle, according to my gym assessment and 1 kilo of fat.  They said, ‘not to stress the fat gain’, and I won’t but I do intend to release another 7 kilo of excess fat , not gain any, and so I am giving myself a little, ‘pep talk’, right here in my blog and reviewing my action plans and to do list, so I stay, right on track to my goal.

I’ll share my beautiful relaxing garden pictures with you. It was a lovely day today, and I know I’m not helping Reg by neglecting my own health and well being overeating or feeling like cutting gym and not going out when he isn’t well.  I WILL stay on track to goal, but eating portion controlled healthy foods I LOVE and exercising in a positive (my gym) environment, with people who will encourage and support me. The more I attend gym, the more they will know me there and give me the reinforcement of emotional support I need.

Surround yourself with positive people who reinforce your goals and personal belief.

 
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My daughter, Carla's dog, Kelly, not looking very thrilled about the idea of having her bath in Carla's new walk in dog's hydrobath.
My daughter Carla, who does a marvelous job of clipping our poodle Indigo at her Carla’s dog Clipping, Narre Warren, when we are at Summer studio Home, base in Victoria, during the warmest months, has added a walk in hydro bath to her dog grooming salon so she does not need to lift heavy dogs.  Some dogs are heavier than humans so I’m happy to hear that she is protecting her back.

My S-I-L, has just renovated their home, turning an en suit shower into a sit down shower bath and I have only just become aware of all these new innovations in bathroom fittings, take a look at walk in tubs ,before making final decisions on bathroom renovations..

I was reading about how a lot of people who are doing up homes to resell then make the biggest mistake in the area of the bathroom. Many, especially seniors like me, still have their heads back on the 1970’s when renovating the bathroom and if you are planning a bathroom renovation there are a couple of points to keep in mind, one is obviously to take a look at what is new today, bathroom design is changing rapidly and secondly be aware that western cultures have an aging population and bathroom design may need to consider this new, healthy trend of allowing people to live in their home independently, for longer and the bathroom is possible the room that most needs adaption to cater for disability and frail elderly seniors.

I did have to smile in agreement when I read the article that most senior’s ideas of a bathroom renovation are stuck back in the 70’s, because they were correct in my case.  Back in the 1970’s I traded a painting of a waterfall, for a luxury spa bath called ‘Just heaven’, and that is what it was, armchair reclining comfort. Fully stretched out, arms on arm rests, and semi sitting up sleeping position, I did sleep in that bath many times, also wrote long soggy letters J and watched TV relaxing. I loved that great tub 1970’s bath room design and if money were no object probably would renovate today in those same dated designs if I had not been jogged into seeing how things have changed, in bathroom fittings. J.

Today my bath is in the outside courtyard garden of a little retirement summer studio, our home during the warmer months in Victoria, in south Eastern Australia.  It isn’t even plumbed in, I fill it via a hose from the laundry that is passed out of the window and I empty it in 10 large bucket loads of water, which is the perfect amount of water to water every meter of my courtyard garden.  I lay back and look at my climbing roses and the bird life against the patterns in the sky and look at my vegetables growing around the base. 

My children are somewhat aghast that I tell people I have a backyard pool, they warn me about ‘Google Earth’ and I think they fear their less than perfect eccentric senior mum might end up with her ‘in the bath tub’ photo on show on the internet, LOL, I tell them I’ll curl up and hide under my diary if I see the ‘Google Earth’, satellite go past. 

The first photo below, shows our courtyard, before the outdoor bathroom makeover. 
The other photos are the after pictures.

The bath was new from a seconds shop, cost us $65. plus our garden plants, 6 x $10. climbing rose arches and the beautiful flat rocks came with us, from our last bush property. The total courtyard bathroom cost was very little.  We do have an indoor bathroom with a foot bath at the base of a shower and we have solar hot water service and free irrigation supply river water into the bathroom, so there is no costs involved in our bathroom use. it's a great summer retreat set up when we are not touring.

I'm going to run a hot bath, grab a cuppa and a magazine and go relax in the bathroom courtyard, right now. 
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The before photo.
 
 
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I have had three laptop computers over the past five years, my first two were Dell, one of these made the perfect gift for a grandson turning eleven.

My current one, the best I have has so far, is a Toshiba and I find it more comfortable to work at, even at a desk, than a desk top computer because I don’t seem to have to crank my neck up, I am 5’2” or 160cm, (or I was before I started to shrink), and I find it hard to adjust desk top computer screens so I can look at them without getting an ache in my neck. The pedestal the screen is mounted on puts it too high for comfort and putting big cushions into an ergo metrically designed chair, does remove all the great posture support aspects of it so my big desk top computer is kept only as a backup, in case of emergencies, and I’ll always want to own and use a laptop computer and from now on, I would never consider buying a bulky desk top computer  again, good modern laptops have fantastic memory and speed , it has been all pros and no cons, for me, since I went over to a laptop for all my computing work.

I have arthritis in the fingers and at first I thought I would find the lap top keyboard difficult to work with and the scroll and click pad harder to work than a mouse, but the reverse happened and I found these easier to work than the expensive ergo metrically designed mouse I had on my desk top, computer.  I can type with less range of movement than needed to use on my desk top.  So no neck arm or hand pain working from my lap top, it makes computing a joy and if I feel tired, yet I still feel like writing my blogs and communicating with my friends, as I usually would want to first thing in the morning and late in the evening, can pop my feet up, put the laptop on a stable table lap tray across my knees, and go on line, in comfort of a comfy sofa with my feet up.

I would not travel without my lap top computer and often when I visit my family and stay overnight the grandchildren have the computer occupied much of the time or they have used up all the internet access paid for the month and I usually wish I had brought mine along, even for the overnight stop over

 
 
 
When I first heard of MBT shoes or Masai.Barefoot.Tecnology shoes, I looked the other way, not impressed, at the time, with the ‘weight loss’ marketing of them and I considered it ‘gimmicky’ and if you read much of my blogs you would know I am very wary of ‘ sales pitches’, I’m practical and look to a shoe for support, fit, and health of bone and muscle. I like to be accountable for my own actions, not ask my shoes to achieve miracle weight loss for me .  At this point I had not looked closely at the MBT shoe or realized how it had some and even more of the great features of the Earth shoe I had found so comfortable to wear, back when I was in my twenties and thirties. 

Back in  the late ‘60’s and through the  ‘70’s  I wore ‘earth shoes’. I had always had very wide flat feet and am somewhat knock kneed, so comfortable walking shoes were not easy for me to find and these were lace up, walking shoes, with leather uppers, they seemed to be the opposite to my normal stacked heal flat wide sandals which up till that time were the only comfortable shoes I could wear.

I found it took me a couple of days to adapt to wearing these ground shoes, at first my calves ached, but after those first few days I was able to stay active on my feet for a 12 hour stretch with less fatigue than I had ever experienced previously with shoes.

I wore those same earth shoes for years, they never wore out. I was involved in a car accident over a decade later and both my feet were broken and I went from an E width fitting to a double EE and I had to throw or give away every shoe in my wardrobe and start again

Lately I have seen these MBT shoes appearing in the type of shoe store I shop in, those stores more interested in feet, core muscle, body skeleton health than fashion, although many of these healthy walking shoes are quite fashionably.

I have pain in the back, the result of spinal compression fracture due to osteoporosis, so when I see these MBT shoes being promoted as strengthening the body’s natural shock absorbing muscles and the core muscles, the very muscles I need to be working on to help support my back, I began reading reviews on the internet from wearers of these MBT shoes and I like what I am reading. 

I also read that one company will exchange the shoes if you buy the wrong size by mail order, that would be handy as some reviews said the sizing was a little on the small size. 

While they are not cheap footwear, neither are any of the shoes I am able to wear and again I like the fact that walking in these is likened to walking barefoot over uneven sand.  Reg has been advised by his Doctor to walk over uneven ground (when he is well,) to develop his balance more as he is very unsteady when he gets tired.  I think a pair of good MBT walking shoes will be on our want list for our next tour of Australia.

If you have any experience in wearing MBT shoes I would love to hear your comments.

 
 
 
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I am not alone in striving to give the healthy weight loss though positive self care, message.  There are a few wonderful friends of mine in WAS and on facebook and some great bloggers, teachers and scientists,  who are extremely positive and encourage others towards good health. A news story today, caught my eye, old news is new news, Fresh is still the best way to avoid lifestyle disease and obesity.

I am keen to get the message across and encourage others to try avoiding the shopping aisle where Tim Tams and such like are sold and the like are sold and to tune out of the ads selling that stuff.  If you do you will have so much more money at the end of the day to fill the cupboard with delicious luscious nutritious foods so you will not feel deprived.  Try mangos, blueberries, make homemade chicken soup and just forget the junk food isles exist, if not for yourself, then for your family as well.

Seriously, what is the point of eating over processed junk foods and then looking for weight loss pills to undo the problem?  Even if you were to eat non nutritious or dubious nutrient foods and maintain or lose weight you are ultimately damaging your health consuming these foods at any other than rare accessional treats. These rare occasions are just too common these days and this is why there is such a flood of lifestyle disease.  

A wowser I’m not, I had a hilarious afternoon once with a friend as she taught me to sip a cup of coffee through a Tim tam straw. It’s a memory to treasure, my first and last taste of Tim Tams, I want health more than the taste of chocolate biscuits.  Ask yourself, before you head down that shopping isle for you or your family, ‘Will you love yourself more by buying such lifestyle disease causing stuff, or will you love yourself  and your family more by buying fresh produce? You decide, it’s my blogJ, OK for me to cast my opinion and dish out tough love, because I CARE about you.

I am not wanting to see anyone spoil the enjoyment of treat foods they do consciously decide to eat, with remorse, what you ate before, is done, might as well enjoy all your eating experiences, healthy and unhealthy ones, I’m simply suggesting we love ourselves enough to choose mostly fresh foods that nurture our bodies as well as our taste buds and know you are loving yourself in this way and if we also love ourselves enough to be active in ways we enjoy and portion control our food to our bodies needs, we will become naturally slim and maintain this natural healthy slimness for life, without even thinking about dieting, calories of points.  Listen to your body’s needs and love yourself enough to answer them and join in as part of a group of other positive people who have similar ideals and you will find it easier every day to follow a healthier eating action plan to achieve your goals. 

Professor Bill Bellotti, says many of Australia's health problems are caused by diet.

"Obesity, cancer, heart disease, diabetes - they're all related to the diet we eat," he said.

For the full news story, click this link:-
Fresh approach urged in health push

Today's Chinese Proverb: The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.

Today's Motivational Quote: Wisdom: to live in the present, plan for the future, and profit from the past. -- Anonymous
 
 
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I was speaking to my bone health nutritionist dietitian a week ago and she was encouraging me to once more try pilates again for it's wonderful health enhancing effects on building strong core muscles and so protect bone health, especially in the spine.

So I was very interested when I saw pilates mentioned in a News story tonight..
As a lot of overeating, stems for depression, I felt a lot of slimmers would be interested in this story.  I don't suffer from depression but I am aware i am less likely to overeat, if I am active physically and group classes also add a social benefit to any fitness training program, I can see how this would be of benefit.
Here is the full story.
Law firms tackle depression with pilates By Meredith Griffiths for The World Today
 
 
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The new domain name for this blog is http://www.artslim.org
The former domain name will still direct you to my blog but you might like to upgrade your records and log in with my new domain name that I have taken out for 5 years as a starter.  I hope you will continue to enjoy reading what I hope to build as an informative, helpful blog for those interested in tackling slimming and living on a triple frontal approach of great nutrition, enjoyable physical activity and through satisfying emotional need in ways that don't involve overeating. 
Stay tuned for lots of 'loving yourself' helpful posts and please feel very welcome to contribute and comment.

I am also well on the track for chasing up my former web site name which became lost in transfer between web hosts.  Fingers crossed I'll have this back to launch my art tuition lessons from, very soon. 

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"If you really know what things you want out of life, it's amazing how opportunities will come to enable you to carry thm out". Quote by John M.Godard.  Jenny and max, 'Making a Splash' by artist, Kathy Shell
Priority Matrix

Is a system of sorting activities into High Urgency and low urgency activity.

And

High Importance and Low importance activity

High urgency-high importance activity is a 1/ priority, DO IT NOW, CRISIS

High importance low urgency activities are a 2/ priorityOpportunity, No time pressure.

High urgency, Low importance activity is a No 3/ priority, routine tasks and trivia, complete only after priority 1/ and 2/ are completed.

Low importance, low urgency activity, or 4/ priority, simply don’t need to be done until they become a no 3 priority and they often ‘go away’, before the need to complete them arises.

 

For peace of mind, try to keep most of your activities down in the high importance but low urgency area as much as possible.    For me, going to my gym is a high importance, low urgency 2/ activity and I need to watch that  that my need to do my weight bearing exercises for my bone health is not pushed aside by the trivial routine activities, of a 3/ priority.

So when I write a ‘to do list’ of 6 main activities I plan to do for the following day, I number them as a 1/ 2/ 3/ priority.  I never write down 4/ priority jobs, and I usually find something a lot more useful to do with my time, if something is becoming a 4/ priority it’s time I considered making changes in my life and eliminating the 4/ item as a part of my activities.

Planning a ‘to do list’

Decide on your (realistic dreams)  goals, believe in them

Make your action plan so you can see and believe in how you will achieve these goals.

Write a ‘to do list’ of 6 items to do tomorrow; take 3 of these items, directly from your action loan to achieve your goal.  So tomorrow,

2/Priority : I will attend gym.

2 priority: I will rebalance my supplies and choice selection of fresh fruit and vegetables so I will not go off track when I want to snack.

2 priority: I will interact with positive people, I will make time to have coffee at my gym and talk to people, this is my reason to choose to go to gym and not just exercise at home, this is part of my ‘care for the carer’, plan.

With those three items, taken from my action plan of how i intend to achieve my personal slimming goals, I can now add other items beginning with any priority 1/’s and working down to 2/s and then 3/s only if there is space on my list of 6 items to do tomorrow.

I will

1/ High urgency, high importance: Send the eldest grandson an birthday card.

2/ low urgency high importance to me: Shop at hardware store, Buy a pack of 6 self stick mirrors for the caravan and glue.

3/ Continue to tidy, spring clean house and put items out for garage sale Saturday as I work.

 

I try not to give myself more than 6 written down to do list items. 

I write these things down the night before the day I need to do them.  I review this list first thing in the morning.  I mark these items off as I do them.

If I complete all items, I can always add more.

I am FLEXIBLE.  Sometimes a new 1/ priority appears and you need to drop all other items on your to do list and attend to that 1/ priority NOW. 

At the end of each day, I check off all the items on my ‘to do list’ and I always PRAISE myself for what I have achieved.  I never berate myself for any thing I did not achieve.   This is especially important for mums and carers to remember.  Feel proud of what you do achieve, while you can be very skilful in guiding another, you cannot plan into your life the behaviour and activities  of the person you care for, you need to keep this ‘to do list’ loose and flexible and just try to not allow too many stressful 1/ priorities to occur and when they do, put all the 2/ priority activities aside, and don’t add the burden of guilt of not doing a 2/ priority, to the crisis of a DO IT NOW, urgent 1/ priority.

I then write out the ‘to do list’ for the following day and I reassess priorities.  Just because something was a 1/ or 2/ priority today does not mean it will have the same priority tomorrow.  He 2/ priority might now be an urgent, important, I/ or it might now, not be important or urgent and simply no longer needs to be included on the list.   Keep your priorities, flexible.  Stay loose and relaxed, forgiving in your expectations of yourself and be a loving, self nurturing best friend who is generous in self praise at what you do, have, and are achieving.  Nothing helps you achieve your goals better than going to bed feeling you are on track to achieving your goals, and that does not require perfection, simply consistently going to bed, and getting up in the morning, focussed on your goal, knowing you have an action plan that will allow you to achieve it and knowing that half of your to do list for the following day s leading you to your goal.

 

So your goal is ‘the size of an elephant’, seemingly insurmountable.  I felt like that when I was 115 kilo and wanting to be slim.  I felt like that when i had a large home and an art gallery and had to quickly downsize to a small home near family and become a full time carer for an ill husband. 

*”How do you eat an elephant”?.   ~~~ ‘One Bite at a time’.

Every day I scheduled an appointment with myself to look at the goal, look at the short term goals that were steps to achieve these big goals.  In fact if the big goal is too scary and frightening, then just look at the small short term goal today.  Look at the action plan to achieve this goal.  Actually have this written down where I see it.  Decide what I am going to do to take a bite out of the elephant. Write this in my ‘to do list’.  I do not have to ‘eat an elephant tomorrow; I simply am going to take a small manageable bite.

*If something that I am about to do, doesn’t move me towards my goals or something that is important to me at that time, then don’t do it.

 

 

There is more than one system of organizing your priorities, the Priority Matrix system is just one.  Be flexibly, this system might not be the one you choose.  I have used both this system and the Pareto Principle, the topic of my next time management introduction, post;  for four decades  and Mark McCormack of the ‘What they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School’ fame, says, ~

“I have never known a successful person who doesn’t operate from some sort of personal organisational system”

If you enjoyed this post you may like my other Time Management blog posts.
 
 
I was unpacking my sewing machine,  wondering if I’ll ever want to find time to use it again and I remembered that I bought it with the proceeds of a cashed in life insurance policy at a time when I realized I had made an error of judgment by failing to get enough life insurance quotes and information before committing to a policy I could not afford, so I ended up forfeiting half of what I had paid, when I cashed it in, and that was  my lump sum that bought my great Bernina sewing machine and now it's just one more posesion I have little use for, as I love our downsized lifestyle.

I started downsizing posessions almost six years ago,  begining with swapping my career as an artist to a hobby business, as I became carer for Reg and we downsized tools of trade, selling the pottery studio equipment and picture framing work shop and the art gallery.  I just have our simple home and caravan possesions, the remains of my art and craft supplies, and this, my ‘might use one day’, sewing machine left from our years of accululating possesions.

It was almost three years ago that I realized the downsizing needed to include, 'me', and we also decided to downsize from a bricks and mortar home into our caravan, towing car and simple country reteat.  I am very happy with what we have achieved doing this dramatic downsize, I don’t need all the possessions we had once and I love that our caravan is now parked, packed ready to go, outside our home and I love that I have downsized from size 22  to 24 to a size 12 to14 .

I’m holding a garage sale this Saturday, a little more downsizing.

The rule that I apply to everything in my home now, is, it has to be beautiful or useful and preferably both for me to keep it and I only purchase items I actually need.  LOL, now 'need', that's an interesting word isn't it?  Can I justify that I still need to own roses, wisteria, iris, day lillies and lilium? :-).  Need is an individual thing.   LOL, just as well I see the dog and the man as having both the qualities of beauty and usefulness so they are on the keep list along with both being needed so they would even meet the new criteria for added on possessions, :-), they are safely part of this downsized lifestyle I love. J
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Eildon, Original oil by Kathy shell
In order to do their magic, goals have to be very specific.

Focus

Attention

Consciously

Towards

Objectives

&

Results

Make an action plan strategy.

Begin with NOW.  Plan ‘To do’-activities.

BELIEVE in and plan the end results of those activities, = results-, effects, - GOALS

 

Set your specific, believable goal.

Plan your action plan, strategy to achieve the goal,

Make your to do list every day

“If you really know what things you want out of life, it’s amazing how opportunities will come to enable you to carry them out.” – John M Goddard.
If you enjoyed this post you may like my other Time Management blog posts.