Week 3 - Hungry, Tired & Trusting the Process

This week felt HARD. Not life-is-falling-apart hard.

Just everything-feels-like-effort hard.

I think the deficit is finally kicking in because I spent a lot of this week dragging my feet. I was tired. Hungry. Unmotivated. And honestly, everything felt harder than it should have.

Monday was another public holiday.

I caught up with one of my girlfriends and we walked 6km around the lake. It was such a beautiful day.

The kids got their motorbikes out with the neighbours and spent hours riding around. We even convinced Arlo to have a turn. He absolutely hated it 😂

Once Arlo went down for a nap, Jason and I somehow found ourselves playing soccer against the older two kids for hours. Honestly, if I'd known I was going to spend the afternoon running around pretending to be an athlete, I probably wouldn't have done the walk ha!

By the end of the day I was absolutely wrecked and had a nap before the support call. The kids loved it though. Sometimes amongst all the chaos, it's nice to stop and have that one-on-one time with them.

Tuesday was back to reality.

4:15am alarm.

Freezing gym.

Red Bull.

The usual.

While getting everyone ready for school, Arlo decided to do three separate poos. Not three poos at once. Three poos spread strategically throughout the morning, timed perfectly to interrupt every important thing I was trying to do.

Eventually we escaped the house. Arlo also tried to escape down the driveway, like were weren’t rushing already!!!!!

At lunchtime I planned on doing my usual hike but it was raining again. So instead I did what every basic bitch does and walked on the treadmill. Not quite Mount Taylor but steps are steps!

I also started my next qualification this week. Certificate IV in Human Resource Management. I've worked in HR for 17 years now and I still genuinely enjoy learning more about it!! Like I don’t have enough on my plate already??????

Tuesday night I meal prepped 2.5kg of chicken.

Honestly? I couldn't be bothered. At all. I was tired.  I didn't want to do it. But I also knew future Casey would either thank me or hate me depending on what I did next. So I cooked the bloody chicken.

This week I also started reading Throne of Glass. I absolutely love reading. In fact, I love reading so much that I tried reading during soccer training in the car and accidentally fell asleep. Apparently, exhaustion beats fantasy novels.

For anyone looking for recommendations, some of my favourites are:

📚 Fourth Wing Series

📚 ACOTAR Series

📚 Zodiac Academy Series

📚 Quicksilver & Brimstone

📚 The Serpent and the Wings of Night

And for anyone who likes their books a little darker 👀

📚 Edge of Darkness Trilogy

📚 Haunting Adeline & Hunting Adeline

📚 Lights Out

Wednesday brought another classic scale moment. I woke up 300g heavier. Fantastic.

My scales also informed me I'd gained 300g of muscle. Do I believe it?

Absolutely not.

Will I accept it? Absolutely yes. Thank you very much.

Wednesday was also one of those days that reminds me why I'm permanently tired.

4:00am - 6:30am work 6:30am - 8:00am kid prep 8:15am - alterations drop off 8:30am - school drop off 9:00am - 2:00pm work 2:00pm - 3:00pm work calls 3:30pm - 4:20pm workout 4:30pm - chiropractor 5:15pm - alterations pickup

And somewhere in there I probably consumed enough caffeine to kill a small animal.

Thursday my mum popped over for a visit. Arlo ran to her and wouldn’t let go! OK mate, is life that bad with us?!?! Hahaha!!!!

The family had KFC. I had chicken and rice.

Then………….. I woke up around midnight and remembered I'd left 1.5kg of air fried potatoes sitting in the air fryer.

Cooked. Forgotten. Ruined. I did ask ChatGPT and he said:

Honestly if you listened carefully you could probably hear my soul leave my body. Thankfully I'd already put the chicken away! Imagine if I left BOTH out?!

The next day I took plain chicken to work, bought some Youfoodz meals downstairs and turned it into an emergency meal plan.

Not ideal. But better than ordering Uber Eats and pretending calories don't exist.

I also caught up with a dear friend of mine Mike! He started a really funny Instagram journey under @slighty_enhanced and it was so great to hear all about his new found reality with influencing!!! Check out some of his hilarious and disgusting videos.. (you will understand when you watch them)………….

Friday's workout required some adjustments. My back was a bit sore after the chiropractor so I skipped hip thrusts and deadlifts and focused on exercises that felt good.

I'm not skipping training. I'm training smarter. Big difference.

The biggest battle this week though wasn't training. It was food noise, and it all felt too hard. Really hard.

I found myself falling down that familiar rabbit hole. “Nothing is happening anyway. What's the point? I may as well binge. I'll just start again tomorrow.”

I think every single person trying to lose weight has had that conversation with themselves.

This time I didn't listen. I read my book. Drank water. Brushed my teeth. Distracted myself. Focused on the kids. And eventually the feeling passed.

That's probably the thing I'm most proud of this week. Not the scale (which is being shit anyway)… Not the workouts. The mental load. Because nobody talks enough about the mental side of fat loss.

Another thing that helped this week was looking back at photos from my last journey.

Not to compare myself in a negative way, but to remind myself that I have done this before.

When you’re in the thick of it and the scale is moving slowly, it’s so easy to feel like nothing is happening. Looking back at those photos reminded me that the small weeks, the hard weeks, the boring weeks and the “only 100g down” weeks all still counted.

They added up then, and they’ll add up again now.

It was actually a really good reminder that I don’t need to panic or change everything just because one week felt slow. I just need to keep doing the things I know work.

Saturday was a big breaky for the kids before sports! I love how Arlo loves hashbrowns! I ate my own version of breakfast and golly it was good! Ill be repeating that all next week too!

Sunday finally brought a decent scale drop. Hopefully that shows up properly next week because after the week I'd had I bloody earned it.

The rest of Sunday was pretty cruisy. Kids sports wrapped up. Jason built a goal post from plumbing pieces?! He is really clever!

I prepped lean mince, brown rice and veggies for the next few days and settled in to watch the Socceroos win.

And a healthy dinner for the family!!

Ok, ok.. enough whinging!

Week 3 Check In

Nutrition Adherence: 6/7 Weekly Average Steps: 9376 Training: 5/5 Average Body Weight Change: -100g…………ONE HUNDRED GRAMS.

The things I'm most proud of this week are:

✅ Finally ate more vegetables

✅ Didn't give in to cravings or food noise

✅ Kept training despite feeling exhausted

✅ Continued meal prepping even when I couldn't be bothered

Things To Improve

🔸 Bring cardio back

🔸 Increase steps

🔸 Work towards averaging 15,000 steps

🔸 Time my meals better because I'm starving after lunch

🔸 Hit 7/7 nutrition

Am I happy with my current rate of weight loss? Absolutely not.

But here's the reality. I'm already eating 1200 calories.

I'm already training. I'm already getting up at 4:15am.

Could I do more? Probably.

But I also need to be realistic. I don't want to burn myself out.

I don't want to make fat loss so miserable that I quit.

So instead I'm focusing on what I CAN control.

Strength training.

Protein.

Movement.

Consistency.

One thing I did do this week was go back through my food diary and look for some easy wins.

Not massive changes.

Not starving myself.

Not cutting out entire food groups.

Just small swaps that save calories here and there without making me miserable.

Because let's be honest, if I hate my food, I'm not sticking to it.

Some of the swaps I'm going to trial over the next few weeks are:

🧀 Cheese slices and shredded cheese  to smaller portions, light cheese or cottage cheese

🍫 Protein bars to Greek yoghurt, cottage cheese, chicken or boiled eggs

🍪 Muesli bars, crackers, chips and random snack foods to fruit, yoghurt, Jelly Lite, popcorn, rice cakes or a planned treat

The thing I've learned over the years is that fat loss usually isn't one big dramatic change.

It's lots of tiny decisions that add up. A little less here. A little more protein there. A slightly better choice when you're tired.

If you're struggling with progress, sometimes it's worth looking at your food diary too. Not to judge yourself. Just to see where a few easy swaps might exist.

The truth is, when I finally reach my goal weight, I won't be proud of the weeks where everything felt easy.

I'll be proud of the weeks like this one.

The weeks where I wanted to quit and didn't. Let's keep going. 💪