WI – Wednesday 27th April 2011

In a word – disaster!  Scales showed a gain of 3lbs which takes me back up to 11st 11.5lbs which just sucks.

I walked out of WI and I was really p*ssed off, and I realised how much of a control freak I am with my food.  Let me break it down:

• If I had gained due to my own decision to not stick to the plan then I would have been slightly annoyed with myself but would have picked it back up from today (Thursday) – this is mainly due to it being my decision to eat the wrong foods, so no one else to blame apart from myself.
• As the mother-in-law has been with us since last Saturday (and not leaving us till this Saturday morning) I have basically been kicked out of my kitchen and we have had 4 meals out as well (including a mega Chinese meal, a café breakfast and an Indian meal).  I appreciate the reasons why she likes to indulge in these meals as she cannot get the same out in Cyprus (where she lives) and it is nice that she wants to do the cooking while me and Stew are at work – I don’t want to sound like a spoilt brat however I have not had much of a say in what we eat since Saturday and although I like the food I have eaten I now feel extremely blotted, I haven’t been to the loo properly for the last few days (sorry to share that!) and my skin is starting to suffer as I seem to be having a mini outbreak of spots.  I think the thing which has bugged me the most is that the meals we have had at home have not been in anyway WW friendly – yesterday for example was sheppard’s pie with the most mash potato and cheese on top I have ever seen, and I was presented with a huge plateful – I admit I didn’t help myself as I ate the whole thing but this was mainly down to me feeling ‘what’s the point’ and also not wanting her to feel that I didn’t like it and therefore throwing questions at me or trying to feed me up with chocolate or cake or something.  Tonight we have beef stroganoff made with lashings of cream and a huge mound of rice to go with it – potentially a pudding as well if Tesco’s was ventured to today, woop!
• Another thing I realised after WI was that I only really trust a few people to cook for me and actually take my considerations into account – these are Stew, my mum and my best friend Nikki – no one else seems to really take it seriously that I’m trying to make a permanent life-style change. 

To be honest, after WI I wasn’t surprised or shocked by my result, I hadn’t had the opportunity to stick to the plan and gave up writing down my food by Sunday night.

I know I will get back on track on Saturday and already have a mental list of food to get in the shopping, etc.  Even a BBQ at my mum’s on Sunday won’t put me off track as I’m going to be following the SF method and therefore can work my way round it :o)  I’m more concerned about Stew – he has been tracking his calories for the last 2 months and was close to his 1 stone loss mark!  The sad thing is he told his mum all about it and she didn’t seem interested (which upset me as I’m so proud of him!) and every meal he has been told ‘well its only a one off, don’t worry about it’ – helpful!  Safe to say this week has thrown him off completely, I just hope he can get back on track on Saturday as well (fingers and toes crossed!)  

Anyway, rant over (hopefully it is out of my system now!) – roll on Saturday (Zumba class in the morning to get me even more motivated!)

WI – Wednesday 9th March 2011

Well this is not a good result – 3lbs back on (over the course of 2 weeks) which brings me back to 12st – blergh!  I guess the good thing is I know why this has happened, a combination of overeating due to stress at work, eating more than usual during the day before WI and being due on this week which almost always leads me to retain water *sigh*

But the main factor – stress – is something I’m going to work on.  I had a long talk with Stew and my mum yesterday (not at the same time) about work and what was stressing me out and that really helped.  Plus I have made a decision that if things don’t improve over the next few months then I shall start looking for something else as to be honest this isn’t what I was lead to believe it would be.  Just making that decision has helped me and last night I actually slept better which means today I’m not as tired and therefore was able to resist the huge amount of cakes which were in the kitchen at work :o)

I’m off to a taster session of Tai Chi tonight with Stew, he has been going to the classes for just over a month and I really like the look of it.  Plus the taster session is free so that makes it even better!  In addition to this (if I decide to carry on after tonight) I think my Zumba, C25K and a few sessions of 30 Day Shred will be a nice combination of exercise and should hopefully mean I do not get bored! 

Speaking of 30 Day Shred – Oh My God!!  It is so tough, and to be honest I’m useless at push-ups and ab crunches, never been able to do them properly.  The rest of the level one workout though is good but difficult, I was really sweating at the end!  However I have not been able to do the continuous day after day which the DVD suggests you should do, I just can’t fit it in!  So I’m going to try and do it at least once a week at the weekends and try and build myself up to a second one during the week if I feel up to it :o) 

So in a nutshell, I’m feeling good about this week.  Only major event this week is my sisters birthday, we are heading out for Greek/Turkish type food – restaurant is called Mekan and the menu looks lush!  (Mekan Restaurant - Menu).  Still trying to decide what to have as my main course (we will be having mixed meze for starters), but I’m planning to have fruit and muesli for breakfast and stir fry for lunch so I should have plenty of points left for food, a few glasses of wine and possibly birthday cake – yummy!!

And just to share my moto for the week – ‘I hope to see less of you next week’ as said to me by my WW leader Karen – I have it on a post-it note on my desk at work to keep me going.

Self Sabotage...

Even though as I typed my last post I was sure I would leave my binge eating to one side but it didn't work out this way – and I think this morning I have worked out why.......

I knew I wasn't getting weighed this week so I lost all focus

So simple and straight forward but also slightly pathetic I feel. If I can't keep control for one week without getting weighed how am I going to cope when I finally get to goal and start maintenance?! Guess that's a bridge I need to cross when I get there (to be honest focusing on getting to goal is hard enough!).

So, last week I get an email from some of the girls I worked with at my old job and the only night we could all make was Wednesday (last night). At the time I thought “I'll be fine, I usually have a treat after WI anyway so this will just be the same just without the WW meeting first”. Then work stress lead me to have chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate and I just lost it (and my skin is showing me why I cannot eat like this long term, an outbreak of spots is not nice and can snap a girl out of it!) Turns out our meal out last night was very mellow and between the 4 of us we only had 2 jugs of sangria and loads of food left over (We had a set menu, forgot it came with paella as it turned up 15 mins after the other food so I even took most of the paella home with me for Stew to have for his lunch today as it seemed such a waste to leave it!).

All in all today is my first day back on plan. I feel focused, I feel motivated and I also have today and tomorrow off work (new bed and exercise bike being delivered today – woop) which means I will not be tempted to have any sweets, cakes or biscuits which may appear in the office kitchen over the next few days!

As well as the exercise bike (which is actually Stew's but I'm going to try and steal it a few times a week!) my copy of '30 day shred' turned up yesterday – I have seen so many people rave about this on the WW message boards that I just have to give it a go. Usually I'm not a fitness DVD kind of girl but I do love Jillian on The Biggest Loser USA and 20 mins a day can't be that difficult..... watch this space! 

The weekend has landed

Think I have almost snapped out of my WW funk, yesterday I have an inner dialogue going for most of the day where I told myself I just need to stick to the plan, eat all of my points for the week and see what happens at WI on Wednesday - I have therefore planned to have all of my weekly points eaten by the end of Sunday so I have 2 days of 29 points on Monday and Tuesday to help settle everything down (and if it doesn't work at least I can't be told that I'm not eating enough!).  

Menu for Friday looked like this:

Breakfast:

• 2 slices of brown toast with jam - 7pp
• 1 apple - 0pp

Lunch:

• 1/3 of a large tub of reduced fat hummus (M&S) - 6pp
• 2 M&S pitta bread - 8pp

Dinner:

• Homemade chili - 7pp
• 70g (dried weight) rice - 7pp

Snacks:

• 3 clementines - 0pp
• 2 chocolate & hazelnut wafers (Aldi) - 5pp

TOTAL - 40pp out of 29pp - 11 weekly points used

This leaves me with 16 weekly points left for the weekend, more than enough :o)  

Off to Zumba soon, really looking forward to it, I have noticed that now I have more of an idea with the routines that I can put more effort in - last week my leg muscles did ache a bit on Sunday from the higher intensity!