Over confidence

Buoyed but my walk yesterday and the knowledge that I had eaten a Baby Ruth bar, I got over confident. I decided to complete my walk in reverse. Now the thing you need to know is that I finished my walk yesterday by walking down the BIG hill just near my house. We have plenty of hills but this is the biggest. Its 200m long and STEEP! So today I set out UP this hill! I was doing fine for about half of the hill and then slowed considerably as my calves screamed, my side burned and I gasped for air. Then I got overtaken by a guy and his dog who were strolling up the hill. Strolling! That certainly put me in my place as the least fit person in the world. I never did quite recover from the Hill of Doom (my new name for it, catchy isn't it?) so I cut my walk short. I walked 2km and it took me 25 minutes. The Hill of Doom will have to wait until I am fitter me thinks.

I have yet to figure out if I had an absolutely terrible day health wise today or not. I'm going to side with terrible in the hopes that the guilt will motivate me to goodness tomorrow. I had: a 600ml chocolate Big M, a low fat yogurt, a pear, a Nandos pita, a half of a serving of Nandos peri peri chips, a piece of corn, a small bottle of coke zero, a Baby Ruth bar, a stick of extra sharp tasty cheese, a can of Pepsi max, and a serving of creamy tomato and mozzarella pasta bake (home made) which included pasta, beef mince, onion, garlic, carrot, cauliflower, green beans, peas, corn, brown lentils, mushrooms, baby spinach, parsley, the sauce and cheese on top. I have decided not to count any of my water today because I had less than 600ml, so bad!

A friend and I from work went to Nandos for lunch today (we were out safety clothes and American food shopping). We both really wanted the chips but knew we should have the corn so we compromised and had half serves of each which I think was a good balance. Although I did really like the corn so I am going to stick with that next time.

American food is somewhat of a novelty here and I (and everyone else) go a little crazy when we go to one of the import shops. Expect to see some bad stuff come up in my food list soon because of this trip. You really cannot find anything healthy in those shops! This time I came back with Baby Ruth bars, Heath bars, marshmallows (my American friend says I CANNOT make smores with Aussie marshmallows and I already had the biscuits. I draw the line at using American chocolate though, yuck!), Hershey's caramel syrup and some caramel dipping sauce. I'm sensing a caramel theme here... I also have some Fritos scoops from my last visit and I am planning on getting some salsa to enjoy them with this weekend.

One thing I have done today that I am actually proud of is making a budget like a real grown up person! I needed to get realistic about my spending and figure out how much I can save and how long it will take to accumulate a house deposit. I did a nifty spreadsheet of all of my monthly finances and figured out how much of my pay I can put into a savings account each month. From this savings account I will withdraw the yearly/quarterly bills and I deducted these from my planned total savings for the year ahead. I was honestly surprised by how much I can save if I stick to a budget. To help me stick to the budget I gave myself a weekly allowance. I have tried to do this in the past and never been able to remember what I spent so I always blew it. That's where you bow down to the greatness that is the iPhone. They have an app to track you spending! (well they have lots of them but I didn't know before now). I know all of the rest of the money budgeted is correct so I am only tracking my allowance. I entered in my allowance for every month this year and then I will add in my spending as I do it so I don't forget. This way I will also know if I have spent under my allowance, which means saved money for splurges when I can afford it. The app is pretty great; you can allocate your spending to a type e.g. food, entertainment, clothes; and then they have pie charts so you can see what types of things you are spending your money on. I love a good pie chart. The app is iSpending if you're interested. It was free.

So even though I didn't have a great food day, I made progress in other areas of my life. A step forward each day is all you can ask for really.

~Missy