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its such a simple question. It was put to me by my nutritionist. She asked me why do I eat. What is it inside of me that makes me eat.

I have been thinking of this a lot. I have managed to change the way i eat and i am getting used to it. but the thing that sits in the back of my mind is why cant i just have that slice of pizza, or a piece of cake, or a lovely cheeseburger.

i think the biggest reason i eat, is because i love food. I love to cook food, i like to look at food (still love watching man v food). i guess also being in travel lets me keep that love of food as i get to travel and try new and different foods.

but other than that i dont know. i know that a lot of its was convienience. A lot of it was just bad judgement. i used to skip meals, eat more than i should of, eat the wrong things (golden nugget burger comes to mind). But i know that all of these things all add up.

but i guess i dont really know the real reason. i guess i need to keep thinking about it…

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Well ive been using the fantastic plastic a bit lately and racking up some Frequent Flyer points by booking a whole heap of flying about for myself. In the coming months I am heading to Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney and Cairns. Also heading to the Sunny Coast and possibly the Gold Coast.

Who knows what else will be happening in there. It will be tough on the lifestyle choice (diet, exercise) but I will get through it. I can’t wait to visit my friends in Melbourne and Canberra and catch up with them as I haven’t seen them in soooo long. Missing them heaps!

As for life updates. Im down to 151.8kg… down roughly 20kg in 2 months. A HUGE effort… but i still don’t really see it. Work is turning around, I am back to being a consultant, trying my best to just make sales (although the first month or so will be tough!).

Hopefully everything works out!

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I have been so slack…. but life has been so busy lately. Ive been working out twice a day every day since the start of december. Things have been going well, im feeling better and better every day.

Ive lost around 14-15kg so far (not quite sure of an exact amount i can tell you that i have lost 7kg alone since xmas day) and its a bit wierd when my trainer hands me 15kg in weights to hold and says i had been carrying that around and yet, i cant really hold onto it for that long.

Im enjoying the boxing and stuff as its something different. Cardio drives me crazy cause its so booooooring. At least with weights i have to think while im doing it so i dont injure myself, same with boxing.

Thinks keep plodding along and i stick to my diet (its tough at times but i do it), and do my best every time!

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Well you have all been supporting me heaps lately and i really do appreciate it. I feel like there are a lot of people behind me with all of this stuff. So on Xmas eve (thursday) my trainer decided to take me out for a walk instead of a gym session. I thought it was a good idea until he told me how far we were going. We were aiming for 7.5k… but if time permitted… 10k… WTF

So Thursday morning I rocked up at the Gym really early and had to get ready for a long long walk. We walked all along the river from Tenneriffe to almost the story bridge and back again. I was expecting just 10k but we actually walked 11k. It was a tough thing for me however it brings me half way to my first goal. I want to be able to do a 10k run. However before i can do a 10k run i need to be able to not fall over in that distance. So i feel good that i can walk 10k at least without dying. Hell up until then i hadn’t really been doing much more than 2.5k in one session.

Since then i have done 2 days of 7.5k walks. And still several more till i go back to the gym on the 4th. The other challenge my PT set for me is a 12k walk some time during the xmas break. So I am going to do this on the morning on NYE. So if anyone wants to come help me get through this i would love the company. Walking on my own is BOOOOOOOOOORING!.

So if your interested send me a message, probably going to walk early morning on the 31st along the Kedron Brook Bikeway. Please come help support me, you dont need to walk, you can run, jog, ride or skate hell, you can walk on your hands if you want. But i just want some company.

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well… i have finally come to my first hurdle. It just happens to be about something that is close to me. Food.

So i saw a nutritionist on friday and she is pretty cool (she actually works with “The Biggest Loser”) but the thing is, I am starting to feel really restricted in what I can and can’t eat. I know i hear people say it all the time “but its good for you” but the thing is, it feels like im giving up so much to do this.

I know i need to eat better etc and i need to change the way I eat, but do i really need to give up the foods that I love. Im not talking chocolate or anything like that? but surely i can make a pizza out of this because that would seriously make me happy right about now? maybe ill look into it and come out successful somehow!. I dunno!

I do enjoy some of the foods that i have been able to eat, but seriously, its like the same thing over and over again. I am really starting to get bored and for me thats not a good thing!

If anyone has any REALLY healthy recipes please email them to me… i am desperate!

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So… its now been 2 weeks since ive started at the Gym. last tuesday was my first session. Things are totally different with me. My outlook on life has changed, ive started eating right and started to try and be a better person all around. Over the last two weeks i have had to slowly let out information about what I am doing etc as people are going to start to notice changes in me. So I have started a new category called “New Mal” and I have decided to not protect this.

I can’t hide this all now, everyone needs to see it. So with that in mind i can give you some updates on what I have been doing at the Gym. I have been working with a Personal Trainer for 2 weeks now. 5 Days a week. Its been hard but then so is life. So i have started to keep a little mantra in my life. “The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday” I came across this mantra a few years ago while reading a book about Navy Seal Training. They get put through hell and this is drilled into them that the only easy day in life was yesterday. You go into every day knowing that there will be challenges ahead and you do it without knowing what is going to happen. All you know is that it will be hard but you can get through it.

So with my new mantra in life i push forward with it. I do everything the trainers ask. I feel like a cop out if i don’t. I feel like im letting myself down. I have always been my strongest critic and I am sure this will never change. To give you an idea of what the trainers have been doing with me I do weights twice a week along with cardio every day. I have been doing double daily sessions of exercise so I will go to the gym of a morning (on weekends its more time on the treadmill at home or a walk around the neighbourhood). In the evenings it is treadmill time at home. I have been doing 2k sessions every day lately and been pushing the time down and down each time. Tonight I started 2.5k on the treadmill with a nice time of 33:30 to get myself started. My fastest 2k walk so far was this morning on the Boardwalk at Tenneriffe. 21:42. The trainers are awesomely proud that i have committed myself to this and been working super hard.

So many people at work have also been telling me they are proud of what I hav been doing and what is going to change in my life, and i have never really thought that so many people cared. I am really pleased that they do, it means a lot!

So with this i also give you that tommorrow night, the Work xmas party will probably be my last drinks for quite some time. I am not sure if I will ever take drinking back up (if i do it wont be to the same level I was before). So tommorrow night, I will have a few drinks for the last time for who knows how long.

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Its a bit early to be talking like its a New Years resolution but today was the beginning of a new step down my life.

Im fast approaching 30, i live at home still (sad i know) and im still single. Its about time i started to do something about all of this. Tommorrow i start down a new path. Tommorrow i have my first personal training session. I am working towards some goals:

I wanna Weigh 100kg
I wanna have some decent arm strength
I want to be able to do a 10km run (this is my big goal)
I want to do kokoda (in 2011 at the moment for me)

So tommorrow morning at 630am I am going to try and and get all of this negativity out of my life, and keep things going. To work towards my new goals. Im also considering seeing a counsellor. I have had some rough times in my life lately. With massive meltdowns in the last few months before i went away. If I am going to get myself physically healthy, i should probably get myself mentally healthy to. It may help!

So tommorrow is a new beginning… one step forward in my life

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Wow… thats all i can say… what a weekend! I had the most amazing time in Sydney. After not being able to go last year (was out of sales for 6 months so didnt qualify) it was so good to get the chance to go this year.

I will give you a bit of a run down of what happened over the last few days.

Friday
Really early wake up. Off to the airport to meet up with the guys at 6am. Man i hate early starts but this was going to be worth it. Once everyone was there we checked in and made our way through security with about 5-6 mins to spare till boarding and then it was all onboard. Pretty empty flight so it was nice and spacious on the flight. Watched some NCIS LA on my ipod (god that function is awesome, gonna have to use it more). The flight was pretty uneventful really. Remembered to Twitter to @virginblue as i got off to thank them for the flight and it was onto the Bus and on our way to the hotel once all the Melbourne guys joined us. We did a bit of a walk through Circular Quay as it was nice and sunny and not to hot (it was getting hotter though) and we had lunch at the Shangri La Hotel. After lunch it was off to Bridgeclimb. Things were looking good at this point. I was having an awesome time, meeting new people, catching up with old friends and just enjoying myself (apart from getting Chewing gum on my new Patriots jersey… dammit!). We got to Bridgeclimb and this is where the biggest dissapointment happened. After going through all the set ups and stuff, i couldnt get in. Because the suit was to small and they couldnt get the next size up in time i wasn’t allowed to climb. I was pretty dissapointed but i will manage to get over it… eventually. I ended up walking up to the bridge pylon (god those stairs almost killed me!) and decided to then walk back to the hotel. By the time i got back a few of the people who didnt climb were at the bar so i joined them.

After a few drinks and getting ready we all headed off to the Novotel for dinner and then a quick walk down to Star City. When we got down there we headed to the Lyric Theatre, where we were gonna go see Mamma Mia. Now don’t get me wrong. I enjoy the occasional musical. I like getting dressed up and going to the theatre. what i dont like is Abba. That being said, it wasn’t to bad. After the show we headed up to the roof top bar for a night cap… awesome!

Saturday.
Woops set the alarm wrong, forgot to change to Sydney time, so rushed wake up and breakfast before meeting the group and walking to Circular Quay. We hopped on the Taronga Zoo ferry and with a good view of the harbour we crossed over and got ready for our walk. We were to walk from Taronga Zoo to Balmoral Beach. A distance of 8km. Now it has been years since ive walked a distance like that. I remember hiking when i was a scout. PRetty sure we did distances like that, but it was with a 20kg pack on your back. I didn’t even walk that far in the USA. But i was determined to do it. The views were lovely, got to chat heaps with the girls from melbourne and also the owner. It was a good morning. There was one killer hill that almost broke me but i made sure i did it. After the walk we headed back to the city for a Harbour lunch cruise. What i didnt realise till we got there was that the boat was just for us. A private harbour lunch cruise onboard the “Sydney Showboat”. How cool. Nice and relaxing. We were meant to go out to Bondi after that, but everyone was kinda wanting a relax and a good drink by the pool. So hung out in the room, had a drink, watched some TV, had a good chat. It was a good relaxing arvo.

We met up around 7pm to head off to dinner. Off to Circular Quay to have dinner by the waterfront (near the cruise terminal). We had an amazing dinner and awards ceremony. Everyone was dressed up, looking hot and having a good time. We had plenty of awards to present (as everyone that went was the best of the best) and we had an enjoyable evening. After dinner it was back to the hotel to hit up the Club Lounge Bar on the 31st floor overlooking darling harbour. Wow… what an awesome view. It is gonna be so easy to sell that club now that i know how good it is up there. We had a number of drinks and got booted out some time around 1am ish and tried to hit up the Ice Bar in Circular Quay but it was closed.

Sunday (today!)
Alarm set correctly, slow wake up with time to pack, eat and pay my bill (room charging is a bad bad concept for a drunk man). Things were looking good. We headed off to the Sydney Fish Markets for the morning, grabbed a coffee, checked out some awesome looking knives (gotta love japanese knife makers) and checked out the crazy seafood offerings. We then headed to QVB (Queen Victoria Building) to where we were planning on doing some secret santa shopping. Everyone was given $100… im serious $100! to do secret santa shopping for someone else in the group. We had to use the full $100 and couldnt give cash or vouchers. So things were tough for some people. Sneakyness abounded and it was awesome! I was a bit confused. I had taken notes on what to get my person (had a melbourne staff person so it was a bit difficult as i didnt really know the person… hence good way to meet other staff).

We headed up to the top of Sydney Tower for lunch (wasnt hungry so didn’t eat) and we all had a good time handing out presents. We then had to rush to get out of the tower and to the airport in time for our flights. We barely made the flight and not to long later we were heading home… flying our way back through the sky to brisbane!

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Well… what has been happening since i got back. Everything was going smoothly after arriving back home after all the flying around. Life was cruising along. I was trying to rehab myself a little after 6-7 weeks of drinking every day (hah.. sif that will ever happen again). I was enjoying myself, spending a bit of the leftover travel money. Bought myself a new phone, some new clothes (ready for all stars and the xmas party). Bought some jerseys and some stuff from thinkgeek (books, duct tape stuff, a new tie) and then bought two new monitors for the computer.

So with mary getting a face lift i thought everything was gonna be sweet. not even 2 days after the facelift, Mary decides to have a breakdown on me. Primary Hard drive corrupts. This would normally be ok cause i dont normally store anything else on the primary. Cept when i bought mary i had a TB drive as the primary and stupidly partitioned the photos onto the same drive. OMG i am stupid.

Panic sets In. i try to back up the photos one night and let it back up over night (i have 44gig of photos on this machine, its all my photos for the last 5 years). I wake up the next morning and its frozen in the middle of a boot sequence. So thinking that my photos didnt get backed up in time i panic even more. The computer wont boot, it just keeps blue screening and rebooting. I am in full on panic mode as now i can’t even get access to my photos or my emails. Thankfully i have my laptop (Frenchie… thanks for the name michelle) so I was still able to keep in touch with the world (i am such an internet addict) and check up on possible causes/fixes. I leave it till wednesday on my day off. I try everything to get it working again. Fresh installs, repair install. Nothing is working the drive is screwed. So Off I go to spend more $$ to pretty much turn Mary into a fully brand new machine. New hard drives, New OS, picked up a USB hard drive caddy as well so i could isolate the corrupted drive while trying to recover data.

Managed to get her working after spending all day working on it. First thing i find. My photos. Backed up on the secondary drive. all of the photos to. I was just happy as! So that was hurdle #1 over. I instantly backed them up again to my external Hard drive so i have a double back up (something I will be doing quite often i think). So then yesterday, Geoff drops off some software for me to try and I have to use a round about way to recover it, but the effort was worth it. I managed to recover my emails from the old hard drive. Hurdle #2 is fixed! What a relief. I wasn’t able to recover any of my work files I had on this machine or anything else that was in my documents etc (never came up on the recovered data) but the emails were more important to me really.

I guess all in all, that its fine. Now I just need to get it all fixed up and running and my life will be back in check. O and the new phone i bought. They ran out of the colours i wanted. I think im gonna get stuck with pink 🙁