Lose Weight, Or Die Trying!

This was my motto this last week. It was a motto I chanted to myself on a regular basis. There was no way on earth I was going to allow myself to return to the scales last night with anything but a loss. The size of the loss didn't even matter, one again it was simply about regaining control of the situation and getting those pounds moving off again.

And happily I once again proved that when I give it 100% effort, I can indeed shed the weight - a nice healthy 2.5lbs loss this week, bringing me to 1st 8lbs off (and over 4st since this whole thing began back whenever it was, which is good for me to realise sometimes, when I am in a less positive mood!)

I achieved this loss by doing a "Speed Food Challenge" which involves choosing more of my food from a list identified as being good for speedier weight loss. So most fruit and veg (for some reason when we talk of speed food in class, we all think of pineapple, but that's not the only speed food!), poultry, beans, some fish and so on. I could have been limited by my budget, as pay day is next week. But Google is my friend and upon searching for speed food recipes I found Mushy Pea Curry - and all the ingredients were already in my cupboards! I confess to feeling a bit nervous about trying it - let's be honest, you're never going to see it made on Masterchef! But actually it was really tasty and filling. It was very reminiscent of chip shop curry sauce, and although I enjoyed it with Basmati rice, I could well imagine eating it poured over Slimming World chips instead. The only thing I would say is if you are the sort of person for whom presentation is important, you might want to close your eyes when you sit down to eat this curry!

My other great revelation this week was frozen chopped onions - how could I have got to 43 years old without knowing about them? They have saved me so much time and effort this week, and I can make a chilli without all those onion related tears now! Whoever invented them, I salute you!

In which my brain broke.

After that amazing 6lb weight loss, wouldn't any normal person be inspired enough to keep up the momentum? You'd think! Sadly, my wiring is all wrong and so that wasn't what happened. Instead I have struggled to find the plot. First of all there was more camping which meant I let things slide a bit. On our return I did battle like mad to recover from any harm done, and managed a half pound gain. And then this whole week I have just struggled constantly to make the right choices.

And then, if we needed any further evidence that there is something not working as it should in my brain, an hour before weigh in I went to MacDonalds and out of my mouth spilled an order for a sweet chilli chicken deli sandwhich, fries and a Mars milkshake. What the hell was I thinking?!

If anyone out there has any idea what would drive someone to do that, an hour before weigh in, please please enlighten me because I don't know!

By some miracle I got away with a maintain this week but I'm going to have to work damn hard to avoid converting it to a gain next week. I'm doing a speed food challenge which I know can have amazing results, but the main result I desire is control.

Give Yourself A Shiny!

I'm still doing it! Why I haven't updated the blog I just don't know, other than being busy with working and camping and stuff! I do have an incomplete post I started a couple of weeks ago after weigh in, but it feels out of date now!

So a couple of weeks ago I lost 1lb, gaining me a lovely shiny 1 stone award, and then last week, mainly due to being too hot to bother with much food, I lost an incredible 6lbs! This right after telling Heather that I was very happy to lose a pound a week - she must think I'm a big liar now and went out to have a big loss on purpose!

We went camping again this weekend and it was a very very basic site with really no facilities. This meant the easiest thing to eat was sandwiches really, so I did, but hopefully in sufficient moderation to have done no real harm to the weight loss. It did however invoke evil heartburn in me - there is little doubt in my mind that I am quite intolerant to wheat, since I only have to eat a small amount of wheat based food to need to heft out the Gaviscon. Coming from many generations of bakers, this is either shameful or hardly suprising, I'm not sure which!

I'm hoping for a 1lb loss this week to bring me neatly to my 1 1/2 stone award. Fingers crossed!