I've lost 10kg

Christmas is almost here and I've taken some time off work to try and relax and get my head straight.

So as the title states, I've lost 10kg so far. The Optifast shakes have been working for me but I'm now starting to struggle with keeping it going. I'm going to keep on them for a while longer but being on holidays and eating out, kind of go hand and hand for me. I'm not too concerned as I know that I can get my act together again in the new year and continue losing weight. 

My goal weight is somewhere around 80kg, but I'm not sure if that's too far or not as I did some online calculator and it seemed to think that 90kg is what I should weigh. I guess I'll just see if I can even get to 90kg and see if I think I could still lose more or not.

The hardest thing about the shakes has been getting sick of only having veges or salad for dinner. What I've been doing is having shakes for breakfast and lunch, then having stir-fried veges or a salad for dinner, then having a shake for desert. Both my wife and I are really struggling with that. To spice things up, I've started adding some meat to dinner, but that then means that we can't have a shake for desert so we both start getting hungry and start looking for the kids chocolate.

Since I'm on holidays I've also bought some low carb beer and actually right now I'm having a can of Bourbon and Cola, not ideal but hey, you've still got to have fun every now and then and like I said, I'm going to get back on a more strict diet once my holidays are over.

The council finally approved our house plans so the builder is trying to get the construction certificate complete so we can actually start building. So that's great news. We're still hoping to be in the new house by next Christmas, but the builder isn't making any promises. We'd initially hoped to be in by Easter but there's no chance of that now and really we don't want them to rush. Thank-fully it seems that the La-Nina event is almost over so it shouldn't be raining so much over the next 12 months which will help the builder.

Finally, the gaming YouTube channel that I've been posting to is starting to get a few subscriptions and more regular veiwers. I'm not kidding myself as I still only get one to two hundred views per video and I currently have 32 subscribers, but hey, you've got to start somewhere and this is a genuine start. It's too early to know if the channel will become more popular or not, it may continue to grow, or I may have already peaked, who knows.

Anyway, thanks for reading and I wish you and yours all the best over the festive season and all the best for 2023.

Bomber
The biggest benefit of online shopping is that you can chose the christmas carols you listen to whilst you shop.

Life Update

 About 12 months ago I posted about how we were going to be building a new home and that we'd been designing it. Well, the process has been painfully slow but finally something is happening on the block, the builder has put the construction fences up and unfortunately that's all that has happened. 

Council is taking forever to approve the plans but we believe that we are now only a few weeks away from having the formal approval so the construction certificate can be issued. Once the certificate has been issued the build can begin. At this rate we're not expecting anything to start until January and although the builder has 12 months to complete the build, we're hoping that they'll be finished by next Christmas. All up, it will be roughly 3 years from when we paid the deposit on the block until we can actually move in. We knew that the process was going to take a while but we didn't think it would be 3 years.

I think the two biggest lessons that we've learnt from this experience are.

1. Buying a piece a land that isn't even registered yet isn't ideal, if we are ever going to build again then we'll buy a piece of land that is ready to build on. Due to the current market and the time things have taken to progress, the cost of the build has increased significantly. The builder has already sent an updated quote adding roughly $30K to the total cost and we've only got construction fences up.
2. We'll find our own architect and design the house that we want with them. The process of having to go through the sales person and not having any communication with the architect was extremely painful and changes kept getting introduced that we didn't ask for.

But as my wife and I keep saying, "it is what it is" and we're not pulling on the reigns just yet. We've been saving lots of money recently but it looks like we're going to need it.

My gaming YouTube channel is still going. I release a new video every week and sometimes do a mid-week short video but I need to work on the quality of the content. My subscriber base is very slowly growing, I currently have 22 subscribers, I had 9 old subscribers before I restarted so 13 new people. I've been trying a few different things to try and get more views but it is very hard going. I usually get only 10 or so views in the week that I release a video. For the shorts that I've done, I usually get several hundred views. I didn't really want to try and use click-bait but I'm thinking that's going to be the only way as that's how the shorts are doing so well. I'm still enjoying making the videos and am starting to realise just how hard it would have been to make the moto-camping videos I originally wanted to make.

Finally on to diet, exercise and losing weight. I'm currently at the end of my second week of being on Optifast. I've lost roughly 4kg so far by doing the "Intensive" program. I currently have an Optifast shake for breakfast, then only water water between breakfast and lunch. For lunch I have an Optifast chicken soup, then again nothing but water until dinner. For dinner I have a vegetable stir-fry or some other low starch vegetable meal, like cauliflower mash in a vegetable gravy/soup. Last night I had baked curried cauliflower with a cabbage, carrot and capsicum slaw on the side. I need to have at least two cups of vegetables a day and this is the easiest way to achieve that. Then I continue to have water and at around 8pm I usually have an Optifast chocolate desert. The results are currently there so I'm going to continue with this program for as long as I can.

I can't continue on the intensive program for too long, but I do intend to break my diet for Christmas, I'm not sure at this stage if it was just be for Christmas Day or if it will be for a week or so. My brother is coming to visit so no doubt there will be a few family get togethers. 

I've started doing weights again too, well when I say "started", I mean I managed to do them once last week but I'm hoping to do them several times a week from here on in.

Take care out there,

Bomber

Random Blogger at Best.

Tubing the Yous

It's me again, I was just watching some YouTube videos and thought about how things have changed and what hasn't. It's one of those things that make me remember about this blog. I can't believe that it's been so long since I last wrote here. 

About two months ago, I started playing a game that I used to play about 7 years ago, DayZ. I really enjoyed playing it again and I decided to make a little video of me playing it and published it to YouTube. I can't remember if I've mentioned this previously or not, but about 7 years ago I tried to start a YouTube channel based around some of the games I was playing. I made half a dozen videos and shared them with the friends I was gaming with and that was about it.

Currently I'm up to about 15 new videos, I currently publish one each week and have them scheduled to come out for the next 7 or so weeks. I'm enjoying making the videos and editing them. I guess I'm putting to use some of the skills I started practicing back when I wanted to make a motovlog channel.

I have about 3 or 4 more videos I can make with the gaming that I've already captured and I have a couple of ideas for other videos in DayZ.

On to other life updates. Construction is still yet to start on our new house, the plans have been submitted to council and we're waiting for the approval to come through. I'm still in the same job and I'm still over weight. I haven't bought a new bike yet either. Oh well some things never change.

My mental heath has been suffering a bit lately, but I think that's mainly due to the stress I've been experiencing because of work. There's just so much that needs to be done at the moment and I still have people in my team that get away with doing nothing. The team has a new boss, so I'm hoping that he'll be able to straighten things out a little and let me get on with actually enjoying my job again.

Anyway, that's quite a lot for now, considering it's been so long, I don't know if I'll get back to writing more often again or not at this stage.

Bomber
I thought I'd just say g'day!