Day 1 In the Life....

 

The day approached quickly. I thought I had longer. I was gently exploring the idea of starting comp prep and I foolishly spoke it out loud just 7 short days ago. “Being organised” I thought. Giving myself time to contemplate the more structured life while sitting back in my food-freedom for a month or two more. Ingrid had other plans and worked at lightning speed. I suspect she was secretly insanely jealous of my relaxed approach to nutrition.

I got the message to begin on Monday so Sunday was ear-marked to get it all ready. Being on nightshift, I had not made one move toward prep as of Sunday lunchtime. That’s what happens on nightshift…nothing. I’m like a walking zombie. I work all night, sleep all day, and rip people’s heads off during both portions. It’s not that I hate nightshift per say….I just don’t think it likes me very much.

So Sunday came and Rob took the bull by the horns and took the shopping list and smacked around the debit card a bit. He came home with every possible combination of my plan. There were green bags loaded with food in every direction. It’s about at this point that my OCD kicks in a little and I am then compelled to sort the mess out and load up that fridge with Tupperware.

First job for me….roasting walnuts. What a butt-stupid thing to do on a hungry Sunday arvo. Nothing wrong with a few nuts in the gob…..it’s just that half a kilo of nutty goodness is not necessary unless you’re a piglet who knows that full freedom is on its way out! I felt really queasy after that little session. Never mind, I washed it down with fresh pears….that I also had a little gorge on. Finally I put it all together and assembled my lovely little pear, walnut and spinach dressed salad.  By the time it was completed, I didn’t ever want to look at a pear or walnut again! Or at least until the morning.

Monday came, as I knew it would, and I arrived home from work at 7am ready for a small snooze. First in the mouth goes a concoction of oats, fruit and protein – seriously and honestly… I feel I could never get sick of fruity, creamy porridge! I really think this sport favours those with a boring palette. Those that don’t mind shovelling in the same old tastes day in and day out for months on end. Not that it has to boring but we live in a world where boredom is a buzz word. People get bored with their food, bored with their jobs, bored with their…stuff (I hate stuff!!!!). Most of the innovations these days revolve around providing the quick changes in life to protect against boredom. Well I happily claim to be a boring eater who doesn’t mind trudging along with the same stuff for months (if not years) on end. Makes life easy. As long as I have salt, pepper and vinegar/oil dressing.

Moving On. I slept until 11am and tried to open my lil peepers. Looked like one of those furry animals that used to scream, “bright lights, bright lights!!” on some 80’s movie. Decided I would scare children if I faced the world looking like that so I gave in to a couple more hours in the sack and finally arose like Lazarus at about 1pm. From there it’s time to shovel in my pear and walnut salad with some tasty tuna before heading to the gym.

Hamstrings day and I’m only doing about 4 reps. I got it nice and heavy. Heavier than I’ve ever gone before. Heavy enough that, when I foolishly took all of the weight plates off one side of the bar, the other end tipped and the plates crashed off and rolled around the gym floor. The world constantly works in ways to never make me feel cool at the gym.

Completed workout with eyes still burning from not-quite-enough-sleep and returned home to down another meal dominated by chicken cakes. Yep. You can have your chocolate cake. I prefer mine chicken flavour. Actually, prefer  might be too strong a word. Maybe choose is more accurate.

Kids home, homework tackled. Homework is like another workout in itself. I am pulled in three directions at once. Child number three likes me to test his spelling first. Swiftly following spelling are two reading books. And finally, he is trying to learn the moves to “Let’s Get Ridiculous” and he takes this task very seriously. Child two is writing a piece on what Easter means to our family. I prudently thought I should explain to him the Easter Story before he admitted that it only means a chocolate hunt. I needn’t have bothered because he wrote, “Easter doesn’t really mean anything to us. We don’t do anything at Easter. We don’t even really get much chocolate”. How stingy does that make me look??!!! Finally, Child Number 1 is doing a persuasive text on Why School Is Better Than Staying At Home. Thank the Easter God that she is on the affirmative and I offered tons of reasons from a parents’ perspective of why going to school is better. Mostly she went with her own ideas.

Following homework is housework. In our house, starting up the vaccume means that the tv needs to go on even louder. Very uncool on their behalf as it only highlighted that they were watching tv while I was working! Nightshift Boxing Day means I’m allowed to yell like a mad woman with good reason. I only have the 12 hours immediately post the last nightshift to do so legally so I made good use of this and gave everyone chores to do and no tv as a background.

Following housework and it’s food time again. This time it’s salmon and veg. Can’t complain about that. Then it’s kids’ bed time which is yet another mini-workout. Each wants to be the recipient of the last kiss so we do this mad sort of dance around the bedrooms. I’d like to say we laugh and giggle and make a big joke out of it. But we don’t. It ends in some sort of scary growl and mumbling about bare bums being spanked if there’s another peep….more grumbles about how unfair kids are to their parents and why won’t they consider how much we do with work, house work, dishing up dinners, paying for camps…..until they are so bored with our grumbles that they all go to sleep.

From there it’s an icy coke zero. I don’t normally do fizzy (that’s “fuzzy” for my kiwi comrades) drinks. But it’s a bit of a transition from the treats I’ve been eating to the more structured comp prep life so I decided to cut myself a break. Needless to say it was on my menu otherwise I wouldn’t have had it.

Bit of tv. Tried to download the last season of Sons of Anarchy…but I’m a download retard and ended up looking at pages full of ads offering me Chinese women for cheap. So I watched Louis Theroux who was visiting the Pro Wrestling capital of America. They did some scary shit with barbed wire. Made me glad I’m into bodybuilding.

Finally it’s bed time. But not before a casein shake. Rob chooses shake, I choose goop. Whatever the case, a little gooey bowl of choccy goodness is AOK with me.

And then sleep…sleep…sleep.

Day one done and dusted. Day two has just started and the porridge is down. Now it’s time to hit those legs.