Figures for Gen - and (dis)orientation

So I sat down and did what a lot of you guys are doing in regards to working out my weight loss over the past months since banded. What I see here - laid out in black and white is that I have pretty much lost a solid pound or half kilo a week averaged out. No surprise - it's just as I thought it would be. What did surprise me was the big whack of weight lost leading up to and just after I got the band in. A whopping 12.5 kilos or 27.5 pounds. I knew I had stuck like glue to the optifast like I was meant too, lol. The figures are from my start date of trying to shrink my liver and continue up to 8th April of this month. 

• May 8 2009 113.3 kilos      - (249.2 pounds is my start weight.)
• June              100.8 loss of  - 12.5 kilos - (27.5 pounds) 
• July                  98.2 loss of   -  2.6 kilos   - (5.7 pounds)
• August             95.6 loss of   -  2.6 kilos   - (5.7 pounds again)
• Sept                 93.2 loss of   -  2.4 kilos   - (5.2 pounds)
• Oct                   91.3 loss of    - 1.9 kilos   - (4.1 pounds)
• Nov                  88.4 loss of    - 2.9 kilos   -  (6.3 pounds)
• Dec                  86.8 loss of    - 1.6 kilos   - ( 3.5 pounds)
• Jan 2010         84.6 loss of    -  2.2 kilos  - (4,8 pounds)
• Feb                  83.0 loss of     - 1.6 kilos   - (3.5 pounds)
• March              79.8 loss of     - 2.7 kilos   - (7 pounds)
• April                78.8 loss of      - 1 kilos     - (2.2 pounds) End weight 173.3 pounds as of today. 

So as you can see I have been the tortoise rather than the hare. But it's ok because time passes. It always passes. And instead of being 113.3 kilos like I was some ten plus months ago  I'm currently sitting on 78.8 kilos (or 173.3 pounds.) And I've done it safely by not losing a big bang of weight at once or by crash dieting. It's not a bad place to be at all. Especially - and we have probably all had this thought at one time or another (read: I had this thought many, many times!!!) - remember when we would start a new diet and would be full of hope that THIS would be the one that worked.... this would be the one we finally nail to a new slimmer us? But instead a month or two or more goes by, we bail as we invariably do and then before we know it, another year had gone by and we wish from the bottom of our lovesick dieted hearts that we had stuck to said diet because by now a lot of time had passed - yet again - and we still weigh exactly what we did that year ago or worse still, now weigh more.

 Here's the kicker - in a magnificent way. I no longer do. This non-diet finally worked... it's almost a year down the track and I HAVE lost most of what I wanted to lose: I HAVE a new outlook as I live my life: I HAVE new trendy clothes, a new personality (well, the old one is re-surfacing) and I HAVE respect because I have finally achieved what I was never able to before.... to lose this bloody monkey on my back called being overweight. And I'm not finished yet! I still have more to lose and places I want to reach. It's still very exciting. So, the long and short of it is, it doesn't matter how long whatever weight you have to lose takes to come off. The big thing is, it IS coming off and will continue to come off if I stay focused on the big picture and I want it bad enough this time round. I just found that out for myself. It's called The rebirth of Cara  :)

On a completely different subject (and off my soap-box lol) I went to orientation yesterday for my new job. And HO BOY! I came home wrecked - mentally. There is still so much to learn. It looks like they have brought forward my starting date: I now start this coming Monday. I start at 8am and work through until 2.30pm and Wednesday and Friday are much the same but with an earlier start time. And here's something I noticed on my new roster. There's no break time. No morning tea even for five minutes, and definitely no lunch break. What's with that? And all of a sudden there's a part of me that's terrified. What if I can't do this? What if I suck at it? I will have to apply myself to this whole new way of life the way I did when I got my band in. That is headfirst and with the faith to know if I put my mind to it, I'm capable of almost anything. 

My official title is Community Support Worker. For anyone who doesn't know what that encompasses it means we (the carer) are taking up the slack and helping with any 'daily living' the elderly person can't do for themselves. This encompasses anything from showering and dressing them to cooking and/or feeding them, moving them from point A to B with manual handling (cradle and standing hoists), house cleaning (and I'm not thrilled about this to be honest. I've done that for the past 20 years with my own lot and I hate cleaning our own toilets and house let alone someone elses.. pfft.... but I figure I will do it for a bit and if I really hate it, I'm sticking my hand up to ask to be taken off that roster.) Anyway, it could be taking the client out shopping or for a coffee to running errands but mostly its helping them in the house. It's a good idea keeping the elderly in their own place as long as possible, that goes without saying. It sucks getting old full stop so there must be nothing worse than being tossed aside, with society thinking you are basically useless now your time is over and you're left to fend for yourself or heaven forbid you cop the other alternative: you're dumped in a home. 

I am buddied with three separate women for the three separate days and this new place of employment seems pretty decent on the whole. At orientation (there are three other women starting the same time as me - they all seem nice) we were given a bag of goodies. Gloves, hand sanitiser, an alarm with a light (for nights) and various medical bits and pieces in case you should discover your client has a skin tear and needs fixing up there and then. So now I arm myself with a clipboard, my roster complete with addresses and my mileage chart to log in how many km's I'm doing per week. This I leave on the passenger side of the car seat. The paperwork is out of this world. So many documents to learn how to fill out. EEK! Will let you know how my first day goes - and if I survive it lol.

Hope you all have a fab weekend. I'm going to enjoy my last taste of true freedom. Chow for now.

Cara xxx