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! 

Week so far...

... has been a mixed bag I guess.  Had a major sweet tooth on Thursday so ended up using 16 of my weekly points!  I'm putting it down to TOTM and it seems to be under control now (although I could happily munch my way through a huge bar of milky bar right now!).  Menu's for last couple of days have been:

Thursday:

Breakfast:

• 40g Swiss style muesli - 4pp
• 1/4 pint ss milk - 2pp

Lunch:

• Jacket potato with tuna, sweetcorn and red onion - 14pp

Dinner:

• Fish pie (Aldi) - 9pp
• Veg - 0pp

Snacks:

• Mullerlight - vanilla with chocolate sprinkles - 2pp
• 2 curly wurlys - 6pp
• 1 apple - 0pp
• 1 sunrice crunchy square - 2pp

TOTAL - 45pp out of 29pp - 16 weekly points used

Friday:

Breakfast:

• 40g Swiss style muesli - 4pp
• 1/4 pint ss milk - 2pp

Lunch:

• 1/2 packet couscous - 5pp
• 15g sultanas - 1pp

Dinner: 

• 2 sausages - 7pp
• Swede mash - 0pp
• Veg - 0pp
• Gravy - 1pp

Snacks:

• 2 apples - 0pp
• 1 M&S banana & honey cake - 3pp
• Strawberries and raspberries - 0pp
• Mullerlight - vanilla & chocolate sprinkles - 2pp
• 1 curly wurly - 3pp
• Options hot chocolate - 1pp

TOTAL - 29pp out of 29pp

Saturday:

Breakfast:

• 3 crumpets - 6pp
• 10g chocolate spread - 2pp

Lunch:

• 2 slices of toast and marmalade - 7pp
• 100g fat free Greek yogurt - 1pp
• 20g Swiss style muesli - 2pp
• Strawberries and raspberries - 0pp

Dinner:

• Homemade beef & veg stew - 5pp
• 1 bread roll - 4pp

Snacks:

• 1 square of M&S banana and honey cake - 3pp

TOTAL - 30pp out of 29pp - 1 weekly point used

So not too bad really, have 32 of my weekly points left which is great as heading to Pizza Express tomorrow with Stew for an early valentines dinner - already decided to have my favourites, bruschetta to start, Padana pizza for mains and cheesecake with ice cream for dessert - yummy!  These add up to 49 points which leaves me with 12 points for the rest of the day, totally doable :o)  

On the exercise front I did my zumba class this morning and plan on doing my W2D1 session of the C25K programme in the morning.  May also try and squeeze some boxing in on Monday night with Stew as last week this seemed to do me some good. 

WI - Wednesday 26th January 2011

Well I was slightly surprised with a very small gain this week - put on half a pound which puts my current weight at 12st 1lb.  I'm not too sure why, I'm pretty sure I was within my points for the week but I had been having sandwiches for my lunches and bread does have a tendency to bloat me a bit.  Needless to say I was pretty down when I left my meeting last night and proceeded to get chicken satay and egg fried rice for my dinner along with a milkshake and some chocolate - comfort eating at its best!  

Anyway, I have drawn a line and am focused on doing well this week (easy to do as my points restart on a Thursday).  The only thing which I thought could jeopardise my week was a client lunch today (at Zizzi's) but that wasn't as bad as I thought - menu today was as follows:

Breakfast:

• Toast with jam - 7pp
• 1 banana - 0pp

Lunch:

• Bread board (I had a couple of piece of olive bread) - 6pp
• Strozzapreti Pesto Rosso (Pasta, spicy chicken with spring onions, crème fraîche and red pesto) - 17pp
• 2 vodka and diet cokes - 4pp

Dinner:

• 2 egg omelette with onion, mushroom and small amount of chorizo - 5pp

Snacks:

• 1 M&S white chocolate cookie (from a box selection) - 3pp
• 2 5ths of a 100g bar of Milky Bar - 6pp

TOTAL - 48pp out of 29pp -  19 weekly points used

I really thought lunch today would have been worse than it was, helped that no wine was ordered and no time for dessert :o)  19 points over is not bad in my opinion!

Anyway, I'm focused and ready to take on the week - hope your all good and ready for the week ahead

I did it!! W1D1 of C25K - Woop!

I actually did it! I managed W1D1 of the C25K programme! This is a big achievement for me for 2 reasons

1. I'm not a runner, never have been and always assumed I never would be; and
2. I didn't give up after my first attempt! I went back out there and pushed myself!

When I finished the last of the jogging segments I had the biggest smile on my face – anyone who saw me probably thought I was a bit crazy but I really don't care!

While I was walking home from the park this morning I was thinking about why I have started to push myself more – to be honest I'm really not too sure what it is. I think it could be a combination of the following things:

• Age – now I know I'm not old, 27 is a good age and I still feel like I did when I was 20. But a lot of people I know have been settling down and having kids and since my best friend had her little girl (18 months ago) I feel like I'm getting to that point where I would like to have kids soon. Due to this I guess I want to make sure my body is ready and it is widely known that if you are an overweight woman it can potentially cause issues if you become pregnant (I think at my current weight I would be ok but I wouldn't really want to wait and see – I should point out that I can be slightly neurotic and once an idea is in my head it is very difficult to shift it!)
  
  

• 

  L-R - Me, Kelly and Claire at Kelly's Wedding  (Nov. 2010)

  Image – this probably happens to most women but the image of myself I see in the mirror always seems different in photos. When I get ready for a night out I usually think I look good (unless I'm having a 'fat' day in which case it doesn't matter what I wear I just won't be happy with it!) - but once the evening is done and I'm home and look at photo's that have been taken (the joy of camera phones and facebook!) I always think 'oh my god, what the hell happened!'. The main issue is being the 'bigger' friend in the group which I go out with most often – I always seem to look huge in comparison, probably because they are both in the 9 stone bracket and I'm around the 12 stone mark. 
   
• Health and fitness – my fitness levels are not great, and this was proven to me towards the end of last year when the lift at work was broken for over a week, having to walk up to the 6^th floor really got my heart rate up and made me out of breath, not good at all! 
   
• Goal – over the years I have done numerous diets and eating plans but I have never gotten to a goal weight (for one reason or another I have abandoned which ever plan I have been on and never got back into it). This really bugs me and I want to prove to myself that I can actually get to within my healthy weight range and stay there.

There probably are other reasons which I didn't have chance to think about on the 10 minute walk home but these are the main ones for now. So I have decided this year I will get to goal and I will increase my fitness levels so I am at a reasonable level for my age.

I think I'm doing quite well so far for 2011 (I know we are not even at the end of January yet!) - in addition to my triumph this morning I also did my Zumba class yesterday morning. I currently have 18 of my weekly points left (Stew and I went to Wagamama's on Friday, chicken katsu curry and duck gyoza are my downfall! Plus the Mojito I had added 6 extra points to my meal – totally worth it) and I have planned most of this weeks dinners so I should only have my 29 daily points until weigh-in on Wednesday evening.

Hope you are all having a good week

WI - Wednesday 12th January 2011

To be honest I wasn't expecting much from this WI as I didn't feel like I had lost anything but I must say I was very pleasantly surprised!  Got on the scales and my current weight came up as 12st 1.5lbs - a whopping 4.5lbs lost!!  Woop woop!!  

Me and my 'Girls' on our night out - I'm in the middle

So after a great week I had a night out with the girls last night - it was so good that all tracking went out of the window, loads of cocktails and a few shots combined with a platter of food.  On the plus side there was a fair amount of dancing so that's good from an exercise point of view!  I have decided that the best way to proceed is assume all of my weekly points have been used and just stick to my daily points for the rest of the week, hopefully that should counteract the damage caused!  At least it happened on the first day of my tracking week, much better than closer to WI :o)

Got my Zumba class tomorrow morning, really looking forward to it.  I have also been looking into other exercise plans and have come across the 'C25K' jogging plan - as anyone who knows me can confirm I'm not a runner and I don't seem to be built for running to be perfectly frank.  But this plan has peaked my interest and from reading about other people's success with it I feel I should be able to cope with it (although I'm not too sure about being able to do the 3 runs a week as its still really dark - so I may just start off with 1 or 2 a week until it gets lighter in the evenings).  I'm thinking of trying out the first session on Sunday morning, figure if I go out as soon as I'm up and about I should avoid too many people in the park. 

Zumba!

I attended my first Zumba class yesterday morning and must say I had so much fun I didn't even feel like I was working out!  It is going to take me a few weeks to get my coordination into gear with the steps (I'm the typical '2 left feet' type of person) but the instructor makes everyone feel at ease right at the beginning of the class by saying 'there is no right way or wrong way for your body to move, just have fun!'  And when I got home I worked out that I had gained 5 activity points for the hours class, bonus! 

Menu for yesterday was as follows:

Breakfast:

• 2 weetabix - 3pp
• 1/4 pint ss milk - 2pp
• 2 slices of toast with marmalade - 5pp (had after Zumba)

Lunch:

• KFC Chicken drumstick - 4pp
• medium fries - 7pp

Dinner:

• Homemade chilli - 6pp
• 80g (dried) rice - 8pp

Snacks:

• 1/2 chocolate tart (at Ikea) - 6pp
• 5 mini daim bars - 5pp (guessing 1pp each)

TOTAL - 46pp out of 29pp - I was 17 points over, using my 5 activity points means I used 12 of my weekly points today

After Zumba I had an impromptu trip to Ikea with Mum and Laura (my sister) hence the chocolate tart shared with Laura from the cafe when we had a drink break, it was unexpected and if I had gone to the counter I wouldn't have got it but it was very yummy :o) 

2011 is here, time to get down to business

So Christmas and New Year have been and gone, I had a great time, spent time with my family and close friends and have had loads to eat and drink.  I have even sampled one of my Christmas pressies which was an ice cream maker by making a full fat custard based black cherry ice cream which was lush!  

However for the last couple of days I have had a stomach bug and over Saturday and Sunday I ate the grand total of 2/3 of a slice of bread with marmite, a tiny ham sandwich and 3 fingers of a kitkat Sunday evening.  Feeling much better today although still not got my full appetite back (which is probably a blessing!) so I guess it is a good time to start back on the ProPoints.  Going to ease myself back in by sticking (or trying to) to 29 points per day until after WI on Wednesday when I'll give myself the extra 49 weekly points again to use if needed - although to be honest not much happens in January so shouldn't be having any big nights out!

And as I'm not too good with New Years resolutions I'll make one I really think I can keep - from now on my ice cream maker will be making frozen yogurt for me to consume and not full fat creamy based frozen delights :o)

Roll on Wednesday so I can see what the damage is and wipe the slate fully clean!

One more WI till Christmas....

Another hectic week at work and people have started bringing in tins and tins of chocolates "as its almost Christmas!" - despite this temptation I managed to stay on track this week and when I went to WI yesterday I had lost 3 and a half pounds!  So I'm down to 12st 1.5lbs which is good, and it has given me the motivation to stay on track this coming week as well (I was considering just not tracking now until the new year - I know that's not the best way of doing things but it is easier and less stressful!).  

So I worked out what I have coming up this week and the only stumbling block is a night out with some of the guys and girls from work on Saturday (weather permitting - snow has been threatened again this weekend and we know that seems to grind Greater London to a complete halt!) which will mainly consist of a meal at an Indian restaurant - I figure if I try and not use any of my weekly points between now and then I can use them all on Saturday and not worry too much about it, going to study the menu beforehand and decide what food I'm having which should help as well.

And the way I see it, after WI next week it is basically Christmas!  I will have just one day left of work (I have booked Christmas Eve and the time in between Christmas and New Year off) and I can really get into the Christmas spirit :o)  

Woop woop, its the weekend!

So it has been a stressful week, very busy at work which normally turns me to feast on chocolate!  But since WI on Wednesday (in which I found out I had put on 2lbs putting me back up to 12st 5lbs - could have been a lot worse considering the last two weeks I hadn't stuck to the plan at all!) I have stuck to the plan - menu's as follows:

Thursday:

Breakfast:

• 2 weetabix - 3pp
• 1/4 pint of ss milk - 2pp

Lunch:

• 1/2 packet spicy couscous - 5pp
• 15g sultanas - 1pp

Dinner:

• Sweet & sour prawns with noodles - 12pp

Snacks: 

• Pineapple & Mango - 0pp
• Low fat hummus & carrot sticks - 3pp
• Curly wurly - 3pp

TOTAL - 29pp out of 29pp

Friday: 

Breakfast:

• 2 weetabix - 3pp
• 1/4 pint of ss milk - 2pp

Lunch:

• 1/2 packet spicy couscous - 5pp
• 15g sultanas - 1pp
• Prawn, tuna and veg sushi pack (from Tesco) - 6pp

Dinner:

• Haddock fillet (from Aldi) - 4pp
• 40g (dried) pasta - 4pp
• Veg - 0pp

Snacks: 

• 1 banana - 0pp
• 7 Roses chocolates - 9pp
• Crisps (from Aldi) - 4pp

TOTAL - 38pp out of 29pp (9 weekly points used)

So far so good I think :o)  

Going out tomorrow as Stew and I have tickets to see Stewart Lee in his new stand up show (can't wait!) - will probably grab dinner out so really glad about the 40 spare weekly points!

Stewart Lee - comic genius