Dreaming of Size 12

Moving Day

2011-08-19T15:02:00.002+01:00

I have decided it's time to own my dream, and to that end have bought my domain name!

Therefore this blog has now moved to http://dreamingofsize12.com

Please come and see me there!

Ssshhhhhhh!

2011-08-15T21:10:00.002+01:00

Can you keep as secret? Promise to keep it under your hat?

Well, here it is, but I don't want the whole world knowing it - I'm back at Slimming World as of today, and as fat as ever. When you look up the phrase Yo-yo Dieter in the dictionary, you'll find my picture there. It's not a pretty sight.

So I have sat through several series and 3 continents worth of The Biggest Loser and allowed myself to slowly but surely absorb the message - exercise and healthy eating will change my life and win me £250,000. Only one of those is true. But genuinely, seeing what most of those contestants achieve in a matter of months is very very inspiring. I dearly wanted to apply for the UK version this year, mainly for the benefit of working with the trainers, but sadly 3 months away from home, family and work is just not a realistic option so I have to find my own way to reclaim control.

So in addition to Food Optimising which starts now, I am looking for a way to heave my bulk into an exercise regime. I am still a member of a gym, and must dust my card off soon. I still own a lovely bike. But since neither of those things has got me off the couch for several months, I found myself searching for something that might. Some of you might remember my most triumphant moment in 2008, when I did the Race For Life. That's the feeling I want to get back! Now if you google the terms "couch" and "5k" a remarkable thing happens. That's right, there's an actual training programme called Couch to 5K! It's goal is in it's name, and it is made to sound oh so simple. 30 minutes, 3 times a week. Start off by walking some, jogging a little bit, walking some more, and week by week improve the ratio of jogging:walking, and at the end of week 9 you too can be running 5K. I've done day 1, I actually made it and didn't die. I posted my small triumph on Facebook, as you do, and my brother commented "The first step is the hardest!". Well I'm telling you, I've read the rest of the plan and I think he's mistaken :)

Recycling

2010-10-09T12:54:00.003+01:00

Just a quick update:

Where I am right now is getting back into exercise. I was having my blood pressure checked last week as part of my hypertension review, and chatting to my doctor at the same time as you do - relax, don't get tense, keep those numbers as low as possible! Anyhow, somehow he managed to get through to my tiny stubborn little brain with the words "you need to be doing an hour a day exercise, every single day. You need to prioritise that hour, and if you were to do that and change nothing else, you would lose weight."

Nobody else has ever told me that I need to exercise for a whole hour per day, 7 days a week. This was new, startling and frankly unbelievable advice. I went away thinking there was no way I could ever find an hour a day! But then the whole needing to stay alive thing kicked me in the head, and I was suddenly very very motivated to do my best, come what may.

I already have my bike, I already enjoy riding it. So I just need to step that up really. That and be less lazy, walk or ride instead of using the car, go a bit further and brisker on dog walks and so on.

So on Saturday I dragged Rebecca out against her will and we went for a 10 mile bike ride. It took an agonising 2 hours because I had to be extremely positive and encouraging to get Rebecca to keep moving forward, and we did sit and have a little picnic at the halfway point. We have a similar ride but quicker, planned for tomorrow. And in the meantime I have cycled most days, walked harder, and generally kept myself physically active in a way that I haven't for quite some time.

Right at the very beginnning of this journey, before I started blogging, before I started slimming world, I started exercising in earnest. Once I had a good solid exercise regime up and running, that was when I felt able to tackle the eating. So maybe, just possibly, cycling will, well, begin the cycle again!

Haste Ye Back!

2010-09-07T22:37:00.012+01:00

Oh god, I've been missing all summer! And this is true of real life too, we spent the summer swanning off on various camping trips, punctuated by a few short bursts of work. I'll pay the price of the lack of working in my wages at the end of this month, October may not be easy!

So rather than prattle on about my weight or my diet, I thought I'd share my holiday snaps with you for a change.

To launch the summer, we headed off to Delamere Forest, with our bikes in tow. We had just 2 rides in the forest before my brand new bike's chain jammed between the gear cogs, rendering it unusable. The conversation in the bike shop began like this: "So, I was out on my bike in the middle of the forest, miles from home..." and happily ended with my bike repaired and returned to me the same afternoon.

For our second jaunt of the summer holidays, we headed to Bakewell in the Peak District, where we spent a few fabulous days with my imaginary friends from the internet. We've all got them, right?

Finally we headed north, to Bonnie Scotland. We stayed in a Eurocamp tent at Cobleland, near Stirling. We had the best time, being absolute tourists and visiting places we had never visited before - Edinburgh, Stirling, Loch Lomond, Gretna Green!

So that's it, the summer's over, it's September and it's high time I climbed back on the wagon!

Lose Weight, Or Die Trying!

2010-07-23T10:47:00.003+01:00

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.

2010-07-16T10:01:00.002+01:00

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!

2010-07-06T18:05:00.003+01:00

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!

Judgement Day

2010-06-19T05:15:00.000+01:00

You might have gathered from my last post that I spent last weekend enjoying food and drink with no attempt at moderation. We were celebrating a friend's upcoming 40th and really you can't do these things moderately! Knowing what was likely to happen, at class last week I decided to aim for a maintain this week, and I knew that even that was going to require some Herculean effort for the remainder of the week. So once the debauchery was over, I survived on fruit, salads and jacket potatoes. I kept my syns way down low and reduced my portion sizes from gluttonous down to hearty.

Thursday arrived and I stood on the scales with a deep breathe to steady my nerves. I was genuinely amazed to see a number 1.5lbs lower than last week, a result I wouldn't have had the brass nerve to hope for!

So I don't really have any right at all to feel in any way disappointed to have hovered half a pound away from my one stone award, but we know how much I enjoy receiving those little shiny stickers! So colour me ungrateful and prepare for my celebration next week when that sticker shall be mine. Oh yes it will!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Dear Future Me...

2010-06-14T19:12:00.002+01:00

Hi there, how is the 45 year old me doing? Did you manage to resist all those leftovers from the party when Dom brought Debs over to meet us? There was so much food left over, torturing me every time I went in the kitchen - all that white bread, the Pringles, the dips! Luckily there was also lots of salad and fruit and as I type those are the leftovers that I am enjoying. But only the future me knows right now how well my resolve lasted!

Sitting here writing this, I am 43 years old and weigh 19st 4.5lbs. I lost only 1/2lb last week in spite of my monumental self control while camping, proving that every single thing we eat does definitely count - that loss of control on the Saturday exacted a price! This week I am only aiming for a maintain because of Debbie's 40th - remember that Friday / Saturday at the hotel? Amazing I can remember it now really, when I think about those Pimms Debbie was making. And it turns out that drinking Cava from the bottle in the hot tub was a fairly serious breach of Health and Safety rules! Still, no harm done, not until I stand on the scales next time anyway. Did I manage to maintain in spite of the Cava, the Pimms, the £25 bottles of wine, and all that food? When I write it all down I have to say I don't hold out much hope! Good job I played some tennis, at least I can lay claim to some Body Magic.

So how has the weight loss journey gone in these last 2 years? If I lost just 1lb a week between now and this letter reaching you, I would be 104lbs lighter and that would be fantastic! Have I achieved anything that amazing? Maybe I'm even at Target, whatever that turns out to be. Maybe I am the elusive Size 12. Am I?! How does that feel? I bet it feels like a dream. I can imagine looking in the mirror and not recognising myself - when you have always been fat, it must be quite hard to see yourself any other way.

There is so much to ask you, Future Me. Where am I living, working, how is Rebecca doing? Are we all happy and fulfilled? But I guess I'm just going to have to wait and see, unless they invent a way for you to reply to my email.

See you in 2012!

Wendyxxxx

http://www.futureme.org/

The Holiday is Over

2010-06-06T08:44:00.002+01:00

We are home from camping! We got home late yesterday afternoon, and just in the nick of time since I am now looking out of the window at miserable rain!

We had a brilliant time, the sun shone brightly the whole time, so we have come home hot, sweaty, filthy, sunburnt and totally knackered - all the hallmarks of an excellent camping trip! I have written a long review of the campsite for www.ukcampsite.co.uk and will let you know if/when it gets published.

So. How did the dieting go? Well I had very strong resolve, and actually did a really good job of staying on plan all week. I didn't drink, and I ate meat and salads and jacket potatoes, and fruit for dessert. I made my low fat version of Eton Mess one night and it went down a storm with everyone which was nice. I do have to confess to slipping right off plan yesterday though, starting at lunchtime, when I could still have salvaged it - we were packing up and the kitchen stuff was all boxed up and put in the car, so we ended up sharing a portion of chips which I could easily have counted the syns for and not strayed at all. But then I succumbed to some wine gums in the car for the homeward journey, and totally blew it by getting Chinese for tea - doh!

No worries, that's done and dusted, and is only 1 day out of my whole life. I'm back on it this morning and don't at all have that "I've blown it now, may as well carry on!" feeling - if anything I'm more determined than ever because I am absolutely hell bent on seeing a decent weight loss when I get back on those scales on Thursday!

I will report back!

Happy Camper

2010-05-31T21:26:00.002+01:00

We are off on a camping trip to Shrewsbury tomorrow, so I've had to weigh in today instead of Thursday, so only 4 days since my last weigh in. Truth be told I was a touch apprehensive, worried that 4 days might not be enough to see a difference, or that last week's mega loss might turn out to be an anomaly. I was psyching myself up to have a brave face if I'm honest. So I'm delighted to be able to report a nice steady 2 lbs loss tonight. Phew!

Now obviously the important thing is not to lose my grip over the next few days while we are away. So I have meal planned, snack planned, emergency planned - there should be no meal situation I am unable to deal with! I have already cooked our meal for tomorrow night - a nice Food Optimised spaghetti bolognaise, so very easy to heat on a camping stove once the tent's up! There will be barbecue one night, chicken salad another, and I've even built in a takeaway plan - I will have fish with the batter removed and half a portion of chips. My breakfast porridge is packed, and fresh fruit and salads will be bought on a day by day basis. Nothing will go wrong.

See you on the other side!

Forgotten.

2010-05-27T21:52:00.003+01:00

I had forgotten so much!

I had forgotten what to eat, how to eat, what I ate when, and how I made it. This week has been a journey of rediscovery as I dug out old favourite recipes and remembered just how much I enjoyed making them. I have eaten so many delicious meals that have left me wondering what on earth made me go back to beige food 5 months ago. It's been such fun furtling among my jars of herbs and spices, choosing which to add to that chilli or this pasta sauce. I make awesome pasta sauce! And fruit! Sweet, sweet fruit. The simple delight of a peach, the satisfaction of a banana eaten to stave of an early morning blood sugar drop when I'm working a night shift, the complexity of the wonderful pineapple - worth the effort every time!

I had forgotten what it was like not to suffer with heartburn all the time. I have a very large bottle of Gaviscon on my bedside table, and I had needed to take it every day, sometimes several times a day. But for the last 7 days I have not needed a single drop. My stomach is calm and settled.

I had forgotten what it was like not to be slightly worried every time I got dressed that this time something would be too tight to wear, this time my bra might not fasten, this time I wouldn't be able to breathe in my jeans, this time my one last fitting uniform wouldn't pull on over my arms. That slight nagging fear has grown over the last several months, even coming true in a couple of cases. This week the fear is gone. I have been able to dress myself in a relaxed manner, and in fact even had to add a belt to my jeans today, so much looser than only a week ago!

I had forgotten the feeling of elation caused by standing on the scales at weigh in and seeing those numbers drop. But I remember now, because when I stood on the scales tonight, I was 9.5lbs lighter than one week ago. Can you see my grin from there?

2010-05-21T09:14:00.004+01:00

Once Upon A Time....there was a woman who seemed at first so very successful at following her healthy eating plan, and lost lots and lots of weight. And then she began to struggle, and bit by bit her victories began to slip away. Pound by pound, inch by inch the fat returned. For a long time this woman battled to regain control, and sometimes it seemed as though she might win! But then in the depths of a freezing winter the war was lost. She stopped turning up to her Slimming World class, stopped taking the Orlistat her GP had prescribed, stopped cooking delicious healthy meals from scratch, turning instead to convenience food, instant comfort. And the longer she allowed this to go on, the harder it became to return. At first she felt horribly guilty each Monday evening, knowing that she should have been at her class, being weighed, being inspired, offering and receiving support from other people in the same boat. But eventually the guilt began to fade, leaving nothing more than a slight sense of failure...

If you have come to read about gloriously successful weight loss, you may have landed in the wrong place. But if you are happy to read about someone who is prepared to get up, dust herself down and start all over again, I'm your woman!

Last night I took a deep breath and walked back into Slimming World. Stepping back on the scales was terrifying, but also somehow a relief. It was as bad as I expected, but no worse. I weighed in at 20st 2.5lbs. A weight I never wanted to see again. But the only way to stop myself going all the way back to my highest weight is to stop it now, and that is what I am doing. I haven't got any other goal in mind than "getting back in control". Once I feel as though I am in control I will consider goals.

So my target for this week is to lose anything at all that I can, and I will do this by following the Plan 100%. No pills, no gimmicks, no shortcuts. It's all about the food.

Wish me luck!

Choose Your Vices Wisely

2010-01-21T16:14:00.003Z

I'm a bit late with this update due to work getting in the way of my writing. But the eagle eyed among you may have spotted this weeks's result when it appeared on my Twitter updates over there <---- on Monday. For those who missed it, I lost 4lb, bringing me down to 18st 4lb. I'm delighted with that result and think I can attribute it to my 100% effort in the main. The Orlistat may have had a hand in the matter but I think only a small percentage because I don't think I'm giving it anything to work with. I'm certainly not experiencing any of the adverse scary side effects that I have seen reported on the internet, and any initial discomforts that I did have settled down quickly. So I shall plod along happily with the Orlistat and Slimming World working hand in hand. I have to say I am feeling lighter already!

When I was in the chemist collecting my prescription last week, I found myself waiting near the "New Years Resolutions" dislay, the one containing all the smoking cessation and diet products, and it came to my attention that it is cheaper to give up smoking than it is to lose weight if over the counter pharmaceuticals are your method of choice. Alli, the over the counter version of the Orlistat I am taking will cost you a hefty £32.95 for a 14 day supply but Nicotinell patches will only cost a measly £12.98 for the same timescale. And that cost is easily offset against the fact that you won't be buying cigarettes at, I believe, over a fiver a pack. AND the Alli purchaser not only still has to buy food, but if all goes to plan, new clothes as well!

So my lesson for the day children is this: if you must develop a bad habit, make it one that is cheap to give up. Put those crisps down and have a cigarette instead.

Only kidding. Honest!

Magic Potions

2010-01-12T16:44:00.002Z

I bring glad tidings! I got weighed ysterday (after only 4 days, I wanted to bring my weigh in back to a Monday!) and had already lost 3 1/2lbs (bringing me to 18st 8lbs)- yay me! I knew I had lost some, I was spending an abnormal amount of time dashing for a pee! It's nice to feel the effects of healthy eating so quickly though. And I'm really loving feeling in control again.

Has anyone heard of magic porridge? I stumbled across this on the internet, and tried it with trepidation, and it was soooooo tasty! Basically all you do is mix 28g of porridge oats with a muller light (or a yoghurt of your choosing!), any flavour, leave it overnight and the oats absorb the yoghurt so it's mega creamy, and then you can eaither warm it gently in the microwave, or just eat it cold. I ate it cold, with some blueberries and banana and really loved it. I'm going to try it warm in the morning just to see how that works out.

I went to see my GP this morning and my blood pressure is really not well controlled at all, so he has increased my meds even further. He also wants me to take Orlistat because he feels we need to optimise the weight loss. He is happy with me doing Slimming World, and is accepting me going there in lieu of a referral to a dietician, but he just feels that the blood pressure is so related to my weight that we have to take medical measures to deal with it. I'm disappointed and kind of feel like I'm going to be cheating. But I have every reason to trust my GP so I'm going to go with it. I'm nervous about starting the Orlistat though - I know about the side effects! If I suffer bad side effects, I'm stopping, I have a limit to how badly I want to be skinny!

One Day At A Time

2010-01-09T20:17:00.003Z

Oh god, here we are, year 3. I've spent 18 months or so yo-yoing, but always managing to at least stay below 19st. And as I emerge bleary eyed and bloated from a lengthy Chrsitmas and New Year binge, I can only be thankful that I am still just about the right side of 19st.

So when I last wrote, I think I was doing OK, and I did OK right up till about 14th December, which was my first Christmas party night. And from that moment on, Muller Lights were swapped for mince pies, homemade soup became home baked cookies, and every day began with a "fresh start" and ended with a guiltily full belly and possibly a large glass of Baileys.

No matter, I am now back on it. I weighed in on Thursday and eventually got around to looking at the figures. I am now 18st 11.5lbs. And my blood pressure? Well it had been reasonably well controlled, and then in the week or so before Christmas I started feeling really unwell - headaches, throat pain, exhaustion. And so checked myself out agin and it was back in the 170/120 zone. When this had gone on for a few days I increased my own meds. It took about 5 days for that to really help but now I am again doing OK, but on double the dose I was on before. So I have an appointment with my GP on Tuesday to find out whether I should try to decrease again, or stay as I am. I wonder whether my weight gain is enough of a factor to have caused this?

Exercise at the moment is fun - we have about a ton of snow, like everyone else in the UK. My thighs ache with the effort of walking through it, or maybe it's the effort of staying upright? Or maybe it's the climbing to the top of big hills so we can sledge down? I wouldn't have dared sledge a couple of years ago so we can add that to the list of things I can do now that I couldn't do before! Also we have a new Wii game called Just Dance. It does what it says on the tin and is very energetic and addictive - no matter how exhausted I feel, I always want to do just 1 more dance. I've been working up quite a sweat in my front room. With the curtains tightly shut!

So, on to New years resolutions. Well, if I've learnt one thing, it's not to set myself up to fail, so with that in mind, I'm going to do this on a week by week, if not day by day basis. I can eat well for 1 day. I can eat well for a week. I make no promises about a month! So I hereby promise that this week I will give 100% effort to eating well, exercising often and losing weight.

Good Habits

2009-11-19T07:54:00.004Z

Well after a week of being 100% on track, cooking everything from scratch, resisting all temptations and pitfalls, and standing at a party nibbling celery and cucumber, I gained a pound. Ain't dieting great?! But no matter, I will admit to a little despondency after weigh in on Monday, which led my hand to stray too the sweetie jar - a few times. But by Tuesday morning I was totally over that and back in the zone. I'm not going to get knocked off track by a measly 1 pound gain, nope, not me!

I was ranting recently that bad habits seem to form as if by an invisible force, and return in the blink of an eye, but good habits never ever seem to become actual habits and are shaken off just as quickly as the bad sneaks back in. But since I said all that, I've noticed a small but hopefully positive change. Cooking from scratch seems to have become very normal for me, and easy. I've never been a natural cook. I've enjoyed following recipes and trying new things but it has always taken a big effort. But for the last few weeks I've been knocking up pasta sauces, soups,curries, chillies etc without a second thought, substituting and altering ingredients according to availability and taste. In part this is attributable to planning and organisation, and also increased confidence. But also, I think, maybe, possibly, it's become a habit!

In other news, this seems to be the week when I get lots of free stuff! On Tuesday I was in town getting some materials for making Rebecca a fancy dress costume for Children in Need day at school. Part of her "look" was she wanted to wear glasses, and I wasn't happy to pay lots for them. So I went round all the opticians on the high street asking whether they had any old frames they were just going to be throwing out. Most just said no, without bothering to look. But the guy at Vision Express went to look and came back with a pair of Armani frames that they couldn't sell because of some tiny flaw that I can't see. And then he had some plain glass lenses put in for her, and charged me nothing at all, bless him. So big up for Vision Express, and if you see me in new glasses anytime soon I've probably pinched them from the dress up box....! Then, on the way home, we walked past the flower seller as he was packing up for the day and he thrust 2 big gorgeous bunches of flowers in my arms to take home, which really lifted my day I can tell you!

Yesterday I had my groceries delivered and was very disappointed by the short use by dates on the meat so rang to complain. Sainsburys refunded me the cost of the meat and asked me to please tell them if it happens again, so it would be churlish not to be happy with their customer service, and finally (so far!) thanks to Money Saving Expert, I was able to get a free album download (I got Robbie Williams new one, love it!) from Sky Songs.

Quite a haul, and most pleasing the week before pay day I'm sure you'll agree!

Death by Chicken

2009-11-13T11:38:00.002Z

It would have been astonishingly easy to fall off track yesterday. First of all I was seriously tired after having no sleep for over 24 hours. Plus I had a busy evening, with the "do your homework!" nagging which can go on for a long time, and looking after the 2 dogs and 2 hamsters, and I had to go to a meeting at school, and I had to get Rebecca to Cubs. All in all, the temptation to grab something quick and less than optimal was great.

But what stopped me was the fact that I am overly familiar with that slippery slope. It's not that a cheese sandwich would have exactly been the end of the world on it's own. It's the fact that the voice in my head would have said "ah well, you've had the sandwich, may as well have a glass of cider now. And you'd be wanting a bag of nuts with that. May as well get a bag of chips too. Ah what the hell, you've blown the week, may as well pig out till Monday night now!"

So instead of falling into that oft visited trap, I made plans involving left over chicken and some nice veg. But that nearly killed me. Reheated, the chicken was so dry that it lodged itself firmly in my throat and wouldn't move. For what felt like forever I couldn't breathe! So the chicken was binned and that left me using tonights planned meal instead - spag bol I'd made for the freezer.

I did have to settle my stressful evening with a nice cup of coffee and a fun size Milky Way before bed. Syns duly counted and still totally on plan despite the universe conspiring against me. If I can survive that, hell I can survive anything!

I'm off to make something to replace the spag bol now.

Hello Mojo!

2009-11-11T15:52:00.002Z

Woot! Another pesky 3lbs shed, and I'm back where I was about 6 weeks ago! Let's ignore the fact that I'm still about a stone heavier than I was last winter, and my winter coat doesn't fit - minor details dear readers, minor details!

I need to share a wonderful winter warming recipe with you. Very healthy and possibly the nicest soup I've ever tasted. It was on the table at SW on Monday so I apologise for not knowing who to credit it to. Also, this is kind of a rough approximation of what it actually said, since I just jotted the outline, but it works!

Tomato and Pepper Soup

1 large onion
2 large red peppers
2 tins of tomatoes
1 teaspoon of chilli powder (I used more, adjust to personal taste!)
1 tablespoon of sweetener
3/4 pint of stock
Frylight

Chop the onion and peppers (I did them chunky since they get blended anyway!) and gently fry them. Add the chilli powder and a bit of the stock if needed and fry for 3-4 minutes.

Chuck in the rest of the ingredients and simmer for 15 mins.

Blend, serve, go back for seconds!

I expect sales of red peppers and tinned tomatoes to go through the roof once you've tried this, it is perfect.

2009-11-07T10:29:00.003Z

Just checking in quickly to let you know that I lost 5 fatty pounds (weigh in was Monday - I'm so slack at reporting in here!) and I remain fully fired up and 100% on track. What I'm loving is that I am feeling the excitement of losing weight again - it's felt like a dreary, if not agonising, chore for a long time if I'm honest. But now, nothing is more thrilling than seeing the numbers fall, feeling the clothes get a little looser, and nothing is more satisfying than knowing that I have all my meals planned, and if I go in the kitchen right now for a snack, there's a good choice of fruit, yoghurt, cereal bars or if I fancy something more substantial there's left over turkey chilli to keep me away from the bread bin!

My new discovery and possible saviour is online grocery shopping. I have thought about it before but always lacked the kind of organisation that gets the job done. But at the moment my car is off the road so I'm kind of dependent on Mark for being able to get the weekly shop done (I'm capable of walking to the corner shop for immediate essentials!) Anyway, on Tuesday, having planned my meals for the week and written a shopping list, I was aiming to get my hands on his car at around 5pm, but sadly it didn't happen and I had to rustle up a meal from what was in the cupboards (thank god for pasta!)

It then occured to me to consider having my shopping brought to me instead of me going to it! I logged onto mysupermarket.com which is a site I highly recommend, and whizzed through my list in no time. The website compares prices between the 4 main online supermarkets (Asda, Tesco, Sainsburys and Ocado), suggests swaps you can make for a cheaper product or a lower calorie product and shows all current discount codes available for each store. Once you have decided which store to use, it then transfers the contents of your trolley to that store's trolley with a nifty little gif showing that happening to keep me happy :) The next day a nice man carried all my shopping including 15kgs of dog food up the hill to my front door, where it took him a few moments to recover enough to speak. I know how he feels, and I'm glad that I have discovered I won't have to do it anymore!

On the writing front, I've written 3 chapters and am seriously behind schedule but haven't had much time to knuckle down to it really. I need to press on instead of rabbiting on here!

All fired up!

2009-10-30T22:45:00.002Z

Hello again! Sorry I fell off the radar after my last post - I hate blogging about failure, it makes me feel like I've let everyone down! Also I have been fairly busy, what with half term, a birthday trip to London and just real life in general.

We had a fabulous time in London. We went last weekend, hopped on a train at the crack of dawn on Saturday morning and returned home late Sunday evening. The hours between are a blur of tourism - open top bus tours, river cruise (my favourite bit!), London Eye, Trafalgar Square, National Gallery, Science Museum, St Pauls Cathedral, London Monument, tubes, escalators, platforms, queues, taking photos, and we even managed to sleep a little bit too! We saw so much, yet left so much more to be seen next time. 2 days was just not enough for our wonderful capital city!

I gained a pound, but hey, we were on a tight budget, it was cheap chips and value butties all the way!

The happy news about dieting and stuff is that this week I am totally excited about it all over again. I had the good sense to stay to class on Monday, and accepted the Speed Food Challenge, which requires me to cook from scratch, keep a strict food diary and eat at least 5 speed foods every day. Speed foods are pretty much covered by most fruit and veg so it's not so hard, but it's some much needed structure that has me fully motivated and running with it again. I hope I can report an impressive loss on my next post!

I'm also a little bit excited about something else. For a long time I have had people telling me I should write. I've written work related articles that I have been advised to submit for publication, but never had the courage to do it. This blog is my first foray into writing for public consumption, and has generated many more comments from people who know me, urging me to try to write a book or a column. I'm still not brave enough to try that, but I have just signed up for NaNoWriMo which runs for the month of November. I basically have to produce a 50,000 word novel in a month! That's a little bit scary, but I enjoy stretching my brain, I enjoy writing, and hell, it's a month to find out whether I do in fact have a book in me!

I may not have time to eat, I may be reporting excellent weight losses for the next few weeks!

I need a map!

2009-10-11T21:18:00.002+01:00

I fell off the rails last weekend, and now I can't even find the damn rails!

I knew I was going to have a bad weekend because I went with my friends to a hotel for a "girls night in" which lasted for approximately 24 hours, and never in all my life have I eaten or drunk so much. Ever! A wonderful time was had by all and I heartily recommend it, but it's bad for your health, no matter how much "use of the spa facilities" is allowed!

Then Monday rolled around and I couldn't face the scales. I swore to myself that I was just going to miss the weigh in, but I'd be back on the rails. But when I turned around, the rails were gone. I'd drifted so far off course that I didn't even know which way to go to find them. I still haven't found them and now I'm feeling sick at the the thought of weigh in tomorrow.

So if anyone has a map showing me the way back to the rails, I'm ready to climb back on. Google Earth is no help. Can anyone show me the way?

2009-09-30T11:56:00.002+01:00

28th September
Weight: 18st 4lbs
Gain this week: 2lbs
Total Loss: 4st 7 1/2lbs
Blood Pressure: 125/87

Well at least my blood pressure's gone in the right direction!

I was a bit gutted at the scale on Monday, I wasn't expecting a 2lb gain. But standing back and looking at things in the cold light of day, I can see how it happened.

First of all, couple a woman with PMT with the week before payday, and you tend to get a sub-optimal diet! I took in a lot of poor quality carbs over the weekend, mainly in the name of staving off the chocolate cravings, but I will confess to having cup-a-soup and *gasp* white bread! (The cupboard was bare, I had the choice of that or tinned peas....)

And then there is the whole cholesterol thing. I have found that the food I am supposed to eat to reduce bad / increase good cholesterol is highly likely to actually have increased my calorie intake. For example the Benecol yoghurts are 2 syns each, and you're meant to have 3 servings per day for the health effect to kick in. And I don't normally tend to have the Healthy Extra A choices, but now I'm eating porridege every morning, that's lots of milk (calories!) my body isn't used to having. And that "little" glass of red wine a few nights a week - well the syns are mounting up at an alarming rate!

So my plan for this week is to be more careful! I've found the Benecol drinks - only 1 serving per day required, and still 2 syns each, which means I can go back to my Muller Lite yoghurts which are syn free. And I'm going to have to measure that glass of wine ;)

I am away at the weekend - we are having a girly night in a hotel, which will include drinks and "snacks" so the scales may not be a cause for celebration next week either. But at least I'll be giving it my all for the rest of the time - the balance will be better!

Weights and Measures.

2009-09-21T19:41:00.002+01:00

21st September
Weight: 18st 2lbs
Loss this week: 4 1/2lbs
Total Loss: 4st 9lbs
Blood Pressure: 181/103

Today I have started medication (2.5mg Lisinopril)for the blood pressure, so I'm taking the liberty of using my blog as a diary for that as well as my weight. And since I'm being cheeky, the least I can do is return to comprehensive detailing of my actual weight and loss. So there it is in black and white, for all time.

I told you being catapulted into middle age was good for focus! 4 1/2 lbs off and Slimmer Of The Week (SOTW). Mind you, there were others in the class with losses as good, and better than mine, my advantage was only that I also had a loss last week. So well done to them too. Part of the SOTW prize booty is a bag of assorted fruit and other food donated by the class members. One of the items is a bag of beetroot crisps which apparently comes in at 3 syns. I'm eyeing them with interest and caution..if they satisfy crisp cravings then they are a wonderful discovery indeed. But beetroot?! Well, I'll try them, maybe tonight at work, and report back.

I have also left class today with a wealth of tasty fish recipes - lots of delicious suggestions and I can't wait to try some of them. I'm particularly looking forward to baked salmon with sweet chilli sauce, and fish curry. I do like a nice curry! I am loving Porridge at the moment, made with Scott's Porage Oats. What a tasty hearty breakfast, it properly sets me up for the day. It's a slight faff to make when you are running round in the morning trying to get even 1 small child to school in time, but very worth it I feel, on balance.

There's a shiny new recipe book in my bag - if all goes well, I shall do a recipe post later this week. If it doesn't go so well, I can tell you about that too ;)

Mirror, Mirror on the wall.....

2009-09-18T09:39:00.003+01:00

Well there's nothing like being launched into "high risk for cardiovascular disease" to focus the mind - I could no more eat a pizza right now than fly to the moon. (when I say right now, I use the term loosely since it's barely 9:30 in the morning!)

In addition to the high blood pressure, I now know I have high bad cholesterol and low good cholesterol. The odds are stacking against me. Good job I don't smoke and am not diabetic, or I'd have the full set of risk factors!

So, cholersterol then. I'm struggling to think of what I can now cut out to help matters. I scarcely touch meat these days, maybe once a week maximum. I can't remember the last time I used any kind of fat other than Fry Light to cook. I eat tons of fresh fruit and veg, pulses, grains, a variety of beans and only very low fat dairy products. Even when I was off track and gaining, I wasn't down the chippy every night, nothing even close to that unhealthy.

Raising the good cholesterol concerns me a little bit too - oily fish seems to be the way forward but I'm not a huge fish fan (although I did actually have fish for tea last night before I even knew this latest news.)I will have to do my research!

Many years ago, when I was a student nurse, we were taught about Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs, the premise of which is that as humans we need our physiological need for food, water, shelter etc fulfilled before we are able to address our higher needs such as the need for love and personal achievement. It's all a bit woolly now, it is 23 years since I looked at it! But I've remembered it this week because I have found myself floundering at the lower levels involving health, and so unable to focus on any higher needs. It's astonishing how much these simple test results have adjusted my own view of myself. I feel mildly embarrassed about myself and suddenly the reflection in the mirror looks like an imposter - that person who I still perceive as being young and full of opportunity in my reflection bears no relation to the person who's blood pressure is 166/118 and has high cholesterol. The two identities are incompatable.

So I'm looking a little bit harder at the mirror, and who is that I see? Why, it's my mum!

Too Little, Too Late?

2009-09-15T12:44:00.002+01:00

A very lovely 3lb loss this week, definitely in the right direction now!

But is it too little, too late? Well it's never too late as they say, and apparently every little helps! But maybe if I had done a lot more a lot sooner I wouldn't now be back from the GP with a raft of blood tests to be done, and the strong probability of a lifetime of medication for high blood pressure.

The high blood pressure was an accidental finding, although if I'm honest I've been feeling less fit, more tired, maybe even a little breathless on relatively little exercise of late. I put it down to the slight increase in my weight over the summer. I felt as though I'd crossed an invisible line between fit and unfit, that one particular pound gained must be a pound too far. And maybe that is so, and maybe in a few weeks this problem will magically melt away with the pounds.

What happened was this:

I had a crack in my tooth at the start of the summer holidays, and I preferred to wait if I possibly could until Rebecca was back at school before I had the dental work done. This meant I was taking Ibuprofen regularly for some weeks, and eventually I suffered some painful gastric side effects. So I popped off to the doc for a remedy for that, and while I was there she checked my BP. The reading was very high, but at that point she dismissed it as being her "useless machine", prescribed my some meds for my gastric pain and sent me on my way. However, I'm a cardiac nurse with a pretty strong family history of cardiovascular disease, and I wasn't happy to just be fobbed off, so over the last week or so I have been using the Coronary Care equipment to monitor my own BP while I've been at work and readings have without fail been depressingly high.

So I trotted back to the GP with a list of my recent blood pressures this morning and I have to have lots of blood tests, get an eye health check, keep monitoring my BP, and return when the results are back. I can't decide whether it would be better to find something (treatable!) wrong with the blood tests that would explain the BP, or for it to just be one of those things and for the BP to need lifelong treatment. But I know I feel utterly weird about a future that includes me having to say, when asked about my health, "I have hypertension".

Reading that back, it sounds like a cascade of health issues and I sound so unhealthy - I have never been unhealthy and poor health would be a very bad fit on me. I won't stand for it!

But I lost 3lb this week :)

Cut off at the Legs!

2009-09-08T09:54:00.002+01:00

Well I haven't literally been cut off at the legs, but it certainly feels like it. My car isn't working - the radiator is like a leaky sieve, and since it's already been patched up a couple of times recently, I'm starting to think a new radiator may be the way forward. So in the meantime I am having to walk everywhere or rely getting a lift at the odd time I can. The walking part isn't so bad in itself, all good exercise. The trouble arises when you've got the shopping, and you forgot the car wasn't in the car park, and home is all uphill...oh, and don't forget the whining child who thinks the world is ending because you've got to walk the mile or so home! Walking for leisure and exercise is lovely. Walking home from town with the groceries is, I have discovered, a form of hell on earth.

So what I am doing a lot of at the moment is trying to make a tasty healthy meal out of whatever is in the cupboard and that is remarkably hard! My cupboards are very full, but somehow nothing seems to come together to make a meal. The other day I was thwarted for the want of an onion - how frustrating is that!

What I need is some planning, organisation and a good stock of useful ingredients rather than random tins of soup and veg. I don't even like tinned veg, they are an abomination! If I do some meal planning, I can do my grocery shopping online and have it delivered to my kitchen - a process I have resisted until now because I like to go and choose my own produce, but all of a sudden this seems like a damn fine idea!

I went to SW last night (late, because of no car!) and lost 4lb. This is a nice chunk of my summer holiday gain gone. I've got nothing standing between me and success from now until the end of October, when I've got a weekend in London planned. So I'm hoping to be down a stone or so in time for London.

I'm sad to have to confess to having to buy a pair of jeans a size bigger, but they have a belt and I look forward to tightening it!

How Does Your Garden Grow?

2009-09-01T16:36:00.003+01:00

Badly as it turns out!

All my hard work and high expectations has led to some delicious home grown food, but a fair bit of disappointment too.

The lettuce has been a great success - minimal effort has yeilded a steady plentiful supply of delicious fresh Lollo Rosso throughout the summer, with no sign of waning yet. The blackberries that tried to take over the whole garden are sweet, delicious and have contributed greatly via tasty homemode puddings to my current weight situation (which is being dealt with even as I speak - Quorn, welcome back to my life!) Spring onions worked well despite repeated snail attacks. And the strawberries keep on growing and ripening, but we can never get them before the slimy critters, so I have no real clue whether they were a success or not! If success is measured by meals on the table, then clearly not!

Sadly the tomatoes perished. I don't know whether it was weather, disease or just neglect, but on return from one of our short breaks in August, the plants were all dead. Some of the fruit continued to ripen, bizarrely, but doesn't look healthy or appetizing, so mark that down as an abject failure. I did taste 1 tomato before the fatalities, and it was divine. But effort certainly didn't match yeild!

If nothing else it's been a learning experience. Next year I will be more successful! And actually, it has been something else - 2 other things. It's been fun, and it's been great exercise, so you can't say fairer than that!

Summer Holidays

2009-08-25T14:36:00.004+01:00

Let us not speak of dieting and weigh ins! Instead, let us speak of summer and sunshine and fun!

The summer is of course awash with excuses for eating ice cream and burgers and I am not immune to these tasty temptations, but be assured that I am fulfilling my "turning up for weigh in" obligations when I am not away, and will be a good girl again very soon!

So far this summer we have had 3 trips away, with a 4th happening later this week. We are jumping on a train to Bournemouth to stay with my best friend from junior school - we've not set eyes on each other for over 30 years, but we found each other again thanks to the wonder that is the internet and the grand reunion is on Thursday! I'm excited and scared in equal measure and I bet she is too! But she has lured us to Bournemouth with the promise of endless sunshine, and after a quick look at the grey sky here, well who am I to argue!

Speaking of meeting people, I have been in the presence of greatness! I went camping with some friends and had the very great pleasure of meeting Spence Kennedy who writes Siren Voices. I have to admit to feeling pretty much star struck. I love the way Spence writes, the way he paints the picture with his words, and that he never ever passes judgement on what he has seen. There is no political debate, no angst at the issues that rage within the NHS, just stories about people. So I was in the presence of a great author, and all my words deserted me. He probably thought I was quiet or standoffish or something because the best I could do was smile and say hello most of the time - how embarrasing! But he's one of the good guys so I doubt he'll hold it against me. And he did try to help me jumpstart my car, and left me with a pack of wet wipes so I could clean my hands once I'd managed to get going again.

I should have got him to autograph the wipes - one day this guy will have his writing in print, of that I am certain!

Light Bulb!

2009-08-04T10:53:00.003+01:00

Weight: 18st 1.5lbs
Loss: l.5lb
Total loss 66lbs

A little smaller loss than I would have liked but I am totally determined to see any loss as a good thing and not allow myself to fall because I became downhearted. So yay!

I had a little lightbulb moment this week. Without a doubt we all know that its important to eat breakfast and drink plenty of fluids. And usually I put this into practice because rules are rules after all. But one day this week I got involved in a busy day without eating or drinking before I began and as the day wore on I found myself battling severe cravings. I wasn't hungry. I couldn't have sat and eaten a big meal or anything. But I wanted chocolate or cake oh so badly. Badly enough that that my husband/enabler found me standing peering into the fridge frantically drumming my fingers on the fridge door. When he pointed out what I was doing I reverted to standing wringing my hands as I tried to head myself off at the pass. I call him enabler there because, bless him, with the best intentions in the world, he rushed out to buy me chocolate. I am proud to report here that I didn't eat it. It remains, 4 days later, uneaten and now hidden from me.

So when I looked back at my day, I very quickly saw where I had gone wrong. No breakfast, a rushed lunch, and shockingly little to drink. In fact once I realised how little I had drunk, I poured myself a huge glass of diet coke (yeah I know, it should have been water, but I was resisting chocolate in the actual house at this point you know!) and very quickly my cravings were suppressed.

I can't claim I will never make this mistake again, but at least I know there is a readily availble solution to the problem, and that's pretty empowering. Better than a Chunky KitKat!

That's what I'm talking about!

2009-07-28T20:50:00.002+01:00

Weight: 18st 3lb
Loss: 5lb - oh yeah baby!
Total Loss: 64.5lbs (according to my ticker!)

We're heading in the right direction once again, and it feels good. And as well as feeling good, it feels comfortable. I achieved that loss eating well, filling up on healthy food, and using between 5 and 10 syns per day. I used to try not to use my syns, but I've decided this time round that syns are there to use, and they make things much more tolerable in the long term, so syns will be used. I've mainly used them for salad dressings or sauces to perk things up a bit, but the odd cereal bar or slice of toast has been a big help too, and I think could well provide the answer to the age old problem of the 24 hour days I often endure when working.

It helps that there is so much delicious food in season right now. Peaches and nectarines have never been sweeter or juicier, melon is divine, strawberries to die for.

And my most exciting purchase this week? A salad spinner just like my nana used to have!

Something Awesome

2009-07-25T14:00:00.001+01:00

I was just catching up on some Blog reading, and I read a brilliant post (one of many!) on Jack Sh*t, Gettin' Fit and I thought it would be a crime not to share it with you. Go, read, enjoy. I imagine you'll be gone for some time!

http://jackfit.blogspot.com/2009/07/reversing-it.html

Improvisation

2009-07-23T11:27:00.002+01:00

Last night I was looking for a syn free snack, and I had a couple of Healthy Extra A choices in need of being used. I ended improvising with some ingredients from the fridge and cupboards, and it was fabulously tasty so I thought I'd share!

Ingredients:
Corn on the cob
Fry Light (the "butter" version)
Sea salt
Laughing Cow Light cheese triangles
Peppers
Tomatoes
Sainsbury's Be Good To Yourself Sweet Balsamic and Smoked Garlic dressing (0.5 syn)

I sprayed the corn with the fry light, wrapped it in foil and bunged it in the oven for 10 minutes. Once cooked I sprinkled it with some sea salt. While it was cooking I finely chopped the pepper and tomato and mixed them in with the cheese, and added a splash of the dressing to loosen the mix a little. And then I just ate and enjoyed - simples! Obviously it was totally improvised using what was in my house, I'm sure the veg, dressing and cheese variety could be varied without any loss of enjoyment.

I'm happy to report I'm doing well so far this week. 100% on track, no problems to report and I'm peeing for England which is always a good indicator halfway through week one! I'm about to go and make sweetcorn soup for lunch - link to recipe over there <--

Can't wait for Monday now!

Homecoming

2009-07-21T18:46:00.002+01:00

Week - what the heck is it now? Shall we call it Week 1?
Weight: 18st 8lbs
Total Loss: Shall I start at zero again? I'll come back to this!

Shiiiiiit! But it's OK, because the reason I have this knowledge is that last night I went back to Slimming World. Is there a way of portraying a wide grin on a blog post? I feel so relieved to be back! I got a lovely warm welcome when I walked in, and I just felt like I'd come home.

So today I have had a lovely familiar Green day, and I have eaten salad freshly picked from my own garden, new potatoes picked last night from my own garden and lots of colourful tasty healthy food. Beige is banished!

I have a happy glow today, all's well in my world, how about you?

Home Grown

2009-07-15T16:41:00.002+01:00

I'm not sure whether I've mentioned it before, but I embraced the "grow your own" philosophy this year, and since March I've worked hard in the garden to turn it from a muddy quagmire that I was too embarressed to let visitors into for a smoke, into a haven of lovelinees that can provide us with food and flowers, and be a venue for chilled out afternoons in the sun. It was very hard in the beginning, but it's been worth it I can promise you. I love sitting in my garden now and surveying my little kingdom.

And now it's yeilding actual food! How exciting is that! I have lots of little green tomatoes waiting for some sunshine to ripen them, a reasonable amount of strawberries from plants that I didn't expect to flower until next year, carrots, a host of spring onions, potatoes, lettuce, sweetcorn and enough brambles to keep us in pies and jam for a long time to come! I had some coriander too but the very hot weather recently caused it to go all leggy and flower so now it just looks nice in it's pot. Nothing wrong with looking nice! I've enjoyed having fresh cut flowers from my garden adorning my house too.

This year my intention was to learn from my mistakes, so that next year I could produce successful crops, so anything we get to eat this year is a bonus really. My biggest learning curve in this has been that everything grows much much bigger than I expected! Teeny tiny seeds grow into very large plants! So next year I will sow less and be more prepared to give them room to grow. And I need frogs and birds in my garden to deal with numbers of snails that would give me nightmares if I let myself think about it :shudder:! I lost a lot of my early efforts to the snails and now have to have a daily snail patrol. 6 months ago, if you'd told me I'd be picking snails up with my bare hands I'd have run screaming from the room. Now I just go out there and pick the litle sods of my gorgeous plants and hurl them away.

Dietgirl Shauna has been gardening too, and she has managed to come up with some clever reasons why gardening is like weight loss. This is why she has a book and I don't ;)

Short Circuited.

2009-07-13T10:10:00.002+01:00

Wow I'm bad at this blogging malarky lately! It's because I have nothing [good] to report really. I gave WW up because it messed with my head very very badly. I should have seen the signs, it's not the first time it's happened, the "can't stop thinking about food" post was the big clue! So I ended up on a binging spree, which I'm not proud of. But I'm over that now, and levelling back out into normal eating again. Let this be a lesson to me!

Naturally a 3 week binge means I've gained weight :eyeroll: so I'm not loving myself overly much at the moment. My SW exile ends in 2 weeks time though, thank god!

I'm pondering at the moment. What is it that last year made healthy eating seem so very easy, and this year it seems all but impossible for me? Clearly I'm wired up wrong and a fuse has blown somewhere. Someone needs to invent a diet that can fix my head!

It's all about fear.

2009-07-02T08:55:00.003+01:00

First of all my apologies for the delay between posts - a busy life coupled with a problem logging in has caused the radio silence. Hopefully the login issue is resolved now, because here I am!

Today I have mostly been wondering what holds us in the grasp of diet plans such as Slimming World and Weight Watchers, or more specifically what makes us shy away from other methods such as very low cal diets (Lighter Life, Cambridge etc) or even surgery?

I'm sure that I'm not the only diet blogger to receive numerous messages suggesting amazing solutions to my problem, or asking me to recommend things to my readers. It's the reason I have my comments set to moderate, and those messages tend to be binned as spam. However I have recently received such a message from a person that I know, used to work with in fact. So this gave him a unique chance to be heard. The message was pretty much the same as everyone else's if I'm honest - scientifically proven shakes, bars and supplements, FDA approval, success stories, and some emotive language thrown in. I'm sure that the "2 shakes and a bar" method of dieting would be effective so why don't I want to try it (yet!)?

Well first of all, I like food. Liking food is of course what has put me where I am today, but I'm not blaming the food for that, and I'm not going to shun it. Every day I have to prepare meals for my family, and that remains true even if I personally am not eating them. I struggle to see how me not eating food would set any kind of positive example for my impressionable 7 year old, and I also fail to see how doing that would in anyway help me learn how to eat healthily. But those concerns aside, there's something else stopping me.

I remember a few years ago, on a diet forum, one lady was having great success on a liquid diet, success I freely admit to envying. But among all the congratulatory posts, there was one member who was a consistent voice of doom. "It's not good for you, it's not healthy, it isn't sustainable, you'll regain all your weight as soon as you start eating" and so on. We all know someone like that don't we?! I don't know whether the person was jealous of the lady's success, genuinely concerned for her health, or just a bit of a bitch. But I do know that there is a perception that anything that is in anyway different from normal is cheating or wrong in someway and a huge part of me wants to avoid any hint of that attitude.

In darker moments I've considered bariatric surgery (gastric band). Witness the outrage and scorned heaped up the lovely Fern Britton when the press revealed that she had undergone bariatric surgery. Why on earth anyone thinks life threatening surgery rendering you unable to enjoy a hearty meal ever again is in any way the easy option or cheating is just beyond me. Fear of death is what keeps me from asking for surgery. Fear of derision isn't far from the door either.

So largely it's about keeping up appearances then. Or certainly avoiding bringing any more negativity into my ife than I have to. It's about fear of the unknown, it's about fear of being hungry, and maybe most of all it's about fear of failure. Imagine how much of a failure I would be if I failed at those last resort options!

I'm not ready for last resorts yet!

Summer Solstice

2009-06-21T08:23:00.003+01:00

So it's not going so well. After my last post, I had actually lost a pound, but then for whatever reason, I slid backwards, I can't even pretend I tried to stay on track, and I have had some horrible binges. I know when I've eaten badly because I'm woken from my sleep choking on stomach acid. This used to happen to me a lot, but hasn't been a problem since I started losing weight at Slimming World last year. This week it has happened, and I'm horrified.

I lay awake in bed this morning trying to sort things out in my head. And I've come to the conclusion that I am desperate to be able to get back to my SW class. I miss it. I miss Heather, I miss the support. I miss the food. When I look back, it worked so well for me for months, and when it stopped working so well, that was my own fault.

There's only a few more weeks now of me not being able to get to that class, so I am going to carry on with WW just for damage limitation, and then as soon as I can, I'm going to be back to SW. I know WW has worked so well for so many of you, but for whatever reason it messes with my head. I do think it was starting to reduce my appetite though, right before the binging! So if I can get it back under control then when I return to SW it will be with a smaller appetite and therefore a greater hope of success.

This week in June always seems to represent a turning point for me. I can think of many major changes in my life that have occured around the summer solstice. It is a year ago today since I did the Race For Life, and also a year ago this week since my first weight gain on SW. So I hereby vow that this will be a new turning point and a change for the better. I don't want to binge, I don't want to taste acid, I don't want to be fat, I don't want to die young, I don't want to feel out of breath walking down the road.

I will NOT press that red button!

Beyond The Edge Of Reason

2009-06-08T08:58:00.003+01:00

I can't stop thinking about food. I lie in bed awake thinking about food. I sit at my computer looking for ways to make my Points go further. Even as I eat each meal I'm wondering when I can eat the next. I spend ages furtling through my cupboards working out the Points value of each product and wondering how I can possibly utilise it in a low Point meal. Hunger is never far away, and I'm resorting to bizarre food combinations - couscous sandwich? Yum! The best news all week is the discovery that I like my porridge made with water so I can eat more porridge for the same Points - result!

I feel like an alcoholic, constantly seeking my next drink, scary stuff! I'm really wishing this phase would hurry up and be over, my appetite suitabley reduced and my weight steadily falling. I understand that this is a process I need to go through, but Weight Watchers has totally sent me over the edge!

10 Things You Should Know...

2009-06-03T15:19:00.006+01:00

No diet blog would be complete without a comment on the BBC programme "10 Things You Should Know About Losing Weight" which was aired on 27th May and is available on BBC iPlayer for just a few more hours now.

I watched it with a notebook and pen in my hand, and scribbled several pages of notes as I watched. I have made less notes at uni lectures! It was actually full of very interesting information, not all of it necessarily obvious even to the lifelong dieter that I am. For those who have watched, share your thoughts in comments! For those who have not, here's the 10 things, plus a few bits of further information, and maybe a comment or 2 from me!

1: Don't skip meals.

OK we all know we should at 3 meals a day because that's what we've always been told. But now we've been told exactly why skipping meals is so very counterproductive to healthy eating. Through brain scans, scientists have been able to show that there is increased brain activity when starved subjects are shown pictures of high calorie, high fat foods, verus low cal food. When the subject had eaten, there was no difference in brain activity. So in other words, when we starve ourselves, our brains compel us to seek high calorie food to make up for the lost meal. Sounds pretty obvious when you put it like that, but it's nice to be told that it isn't merely a matter of willpower!

I can eat regularly, it will take discipline, because currently I don't. But I can.

2: Use a smaller plate.

Again, we know this don't we? An experiment was shown where people were given either a large or "small" bucket of popcorn while watching a film, and instructed to eat their fill. Apparently the buckets were all large enough that everyone could eat as much as they wanted, and still leave some food. They found that those with the large bucket ate a lot more than those with the small bucket, possibly the size of the container leaving them unable to recognise their full signals? The conclusion was that by reducing plate size it is possible to cut calorie intake by up to 22% without even trying!

I have 3 different size dinner plate in my cupboard. From now on I will certainly choose the smallest even if only eating a salad.

3: Count calories.

Calories, points, yep that's fine. Common enough knowledge. It was interesting though to see all the different ways of consuming 300 cals - a large bowl of fresh fruit salad (a popular choice of mine!) or a small pork pie, a chicken dinner or a smoothie - those healthy treats (every Friday after school, delicious!) certainly do add up!

4: Don't blame your metabolism

OK I'm sure many of us must, at some time or other, have tried to blame slow metabolism for our inability to shed pounds. So what the programme makers did was send a lovely volunteer, actress Debbie Chazen, a lady who eats a healthy diet and gets plenty of exercise but is still overweight, for a metabolism test. And the result was normal which must have been a bit of a blow really! She then had to keep a video diary, plus a written food diary (written at the time of eating the food!) and in addition she was given a special water to drink that would enable scientists to analyse her urine and calculate her calorie intake and output.

Now personally I'm just not sure about the special water! But the result of the test claimed that Debbie was under reporting her food intake by 43%, even when writing her food diary at the time of eating. Isn't that a little bit astonishing? I mean, if I am keeping a food diary, and I have chicken, veg and rice for a meal, how am I going to miss 43% of the meal off the list? I know from doing an SAS log a while ago that I tend not to look at food values until I have already eaten them, but that's a whole different issue.

So if we believe in the magic water, then this lady with a healthy diet is actually overeating by around 1000 calories per day, and portion sizes are the main problem. I can't argue with portion sizes, and that leads back to points 2 and 3.

5: Protein staves off hunger pangs.

Now this one is interesting! Eating 10% more protein at each meal floods our brains with a hormone called PYY and causes the brain to think we are full. That's pretty useful information. If I choose a boiled egg for my breakfast, that means, allegedly, that I should feel fuller for longer than if I choose toast or more usually fruit and yoghurt. This is going to come back to discipline though, making the effort to have a little bit of protein with every meal - it's a small change but new habits do take a while to sink in.

Atkins fans must be delighted by this information now I think about it!

6: Soup keeps you fuller for longer.

Wow, this one really is quite surprising in my opinion. This theory was proven by giving the exact same meal to 2 groups of people. I think it was chicken, rice, veg and a glass of water. Group 1 ate the meal and drank the water. Group 2 had the water mixed with the food and liquidised it into a soup before eating. Then they had scans done of their full bellies, and the soup group had full stomachs for longer than the solids group. We are told that this is because when the glass of water is drunk seperately, it briefly inflates the stomach but then leaves quickly, leaving the much smaller volume of solid food left to digest. But when the liquid is mixed with the food and consumed as soup, it isn't able to pass through the stomach as quickly, leaving you fuller for longer. Result! I love soup, I have a blender, happy days!

7: The wider the choice, the more you eat.

Apparently we are absolutely hardwired to eat more when there is greater choice. The prrof presented to us was in the form of 2 bowls of sweets. 1 multicoloured, the other all one colour. They were left on a table with a hidden camera in a public place. The multicoloured sweets were rapidly eaten, while the single colour sweets were largely ignored. Hmmm. Again, not sure about this - the evidence is a bit flimsy there really. Multicoloured sweets look more appetising, in the same way that a multicoloured salad looks much nicer than a plate of beige food. I'm not convinced restricting choice has any connection to that. But I agree with them that at a buffet table there is a tendency to overeat because there is so much choice. Hmmm. What do you think?

8: Low fat dairy helps you excrete more fat.

Wow, low fat dairy works like Xenical! Apparently the calcium binds fat molecules in the small intestine and transports them undigested from your body - brilliant!

Well that's me in trouble then because I consume very little dairy. I hate milk, I don't even use milk in hot drinks. I take my coffee black. I do love cheese, but cheese is a real danger food for me so I don't buy it. No point buying it if I'm going to end up eating my own body weight in the stuff - I doubt it's *that* magical! I eat yoghurt, but not loads. And especially not now on WW because there's no particular incentive to do so. I ate more on SW because, as any SW member can tell you, Muller Lights are free food!

So give me your top dairy consuming tips, pretty please!

9: Exercise goes on burning fat even while you sleep.

Here's some heartening news. For hours and hours and hours after you step off the treadmill, your metabolism remains higher, and the fat keeps on burning. But we already knew exercise is good for us in so many ways. It is nice to know it just keeps on giving though hey!

10: Keep moving and lose weight!

Yep, and writing a blog isn't using that much energy, so I'm off to walk my dogs!

A catalogue of bruises!

2009-06-02T22:34:00.002+01:00

Wow, what gorgeous weather we are having! I've managed to get a teeny bit sunburned, even though I've really not spent ages in the sun. I suppose accumulated time must count almost as much as lengthy roastings on hot beaches. If you take into account 20 minutes or so twice a day to school and back, plus dog walks, plus pottering in the garden, plus sitting in the garden reading for half an hour, plus whatever else I do outside, and not forgetting being in the car with windows and sun roof open, there is a fair chunk of exposure, and my shoulders know it!

There isn't much of me that doesn't hurt right now. 10 days ago I had a couple of falls while skating. My own fault entirely for getting carried away and joining in a game of British Bulldog (a game that I believe is banned from school playgrounds but is alive and well and on skates at the leisure centre every Saturday!) I bruised my hands, my wrists ached, but primarily my coccyx hurt. A lot. It still does. I can't sit properly, any sitting position has to be carefully considered and arranged so that my weight is taken on one cheek or the other, but never on my coccyx. Levering myself out of the car involves hauling myself up a little on the handy handle above the door (why *is* that there anyway??) so that I can exit the vehicle with the least possible pressure on my bottom. I'm semi reclined on the sofa, on my right hand side even as I type. Thank God for laptops!

So there's the bruised coccyx and mild sunburn. And then there's the bruises all down my left side from when I fell of a wall onto a bike. That happened Friday I think. It's hard for me to explain how, but I was sober and it only happened because I was wearing a skirt. Had I been in jeans, my stride would not have been curtailed halfway through my leap and I would have landed on my feet on the path, instead of face down in a bike halfway down some steps. So my left arm is a criss cross of brusing (think bicycle wheel spokes!), plus there are 2 cuts on my elbow, and further bruising to my left thigh, which hurts deep into the muscle! Oh and a couple of less dramatic bruises to my right shin.

So I'm moving like an old and very infirm woman. At church on Sunday I had to give serious though to whether it would be wise for me to kneel for communion, but in the end the call of leaving my hard seat for a few minutes was too great and I went for it.

It's a good thing I have no pride, because if I had any, you can bet that would be hurting most of all!

Holiday Snaps.

2009-05-29T08:04:00.008+01:00

We're back!

We ended up coming home a day early because we had a day and a half of horrible weather, high wind, driving rain and so so cold, so in the end we gave up, packed up and headed for a day trip to Blackpool on the way home instead. As it happens, the weather turned and the sun shone that very afternoon, but I still think we made the right decision because we were getting tired and grouchy in a cold wet tent. And the tent suffered a modicum of damage, in the form of a rip to a seam, so water was getting in. But I am actually very happy with the tent's performance - it really was getting battered by the wind, enough that I was up in the night walking round checking everything was still pegged down. The wind can sound scary in the dead of night when you can feel the groundsheet underneath you trying to lift off the ground!

Anyway, photo time!

We had a visitor in the form of Barnaby Bear from school, and our task is to create a photo diary of Barnaby's half term, so the first photos are of Barnaby at a ballet class, and the following day at church.

We went to a lovely camp site near Morcambe, called Red Bank Farm. We've been before, and loved the wide open spaces, but found the facilities just a little bit too basic. But since then there has been an upgrade, and the facilities are lovely now. There is even a lovely cafe on site, which was very handy for a warming breakfast after a night of holding the tent down. No Points counted I'm afraid, my excuse was I was cold to my very core and if I didn't warm up I might die!

Here's the view from our tent.

Gorgeous isn't it!

Rebecca playing, plus the required inclusion of Barnaby!

The weather looks fab there doesn't it! How could I possibly need a hot breakfast bun plus hot chocolate then?

I think you can actually see the chill in the air in those shots!

But we went on to have a blast in Blackpool, walking along the beach, playing with the waves, fair rides etc, and I think these pics show that we found fun in the end!

We camped with friends, but obviously I have not used photos with them in, since I haven't asked their permission to plaster them all over the internet!

Oh yes, this is my diet blog so I had better mention it! I found a Weight Watchers class in Morcambe and trotted along to get weighed - I lost 4 1/2lbs! I can't complain at that at all, it makes it all worthwhile.

Hope you enjoyed my holiday snaps!

I'll have a banana!

2009-05-25T19:28:00.002+01:00

Well, this Weight Watchers malarky is quite a revelation! Early signs are that it is easier to eat the wrong things on WW, whereas it is easier to eat to the point of gluttony and beyond with SW. So I guess what works best will depend on what your particular vice is. I did a good job of learning to make wise food choices with SW, but the portion control side of things was out of the window. So in that regard, WW is proving to be a good thing, although I'm not in love with feeling hungry!

Here's what I mean about eating the wrong things though. In a direct choice between a banana and a packet of WW cheese puffs, the right choice is clearly the banana. But the banana is a higher point value than the cheese puffs, so the person who has a bigger appetite won't need much persuading to take the orange coloured maize snack. I could have 3 packets of them for the price of 2 bananas!

That said, I'm enjoying making different choices to when I did SW. It's easier to eat on the go - I can buy a ready made sandwich if I need to and just work out the points. It really never seemed so easy to work out the values of the same meal on SW to be honest. Your experience may vary.

I am off camping tomorrow. I've printed out a list of the nearest WW classes to my campsite, so all things being equal, I should be getting weighed while I'm gone, but I won't be able to tell you about it until I get back at the weekend. I'm crossing my fingers for a decent loss, because the portions of rice I have been eating have made me feel ravenous! A bad result will hurl me into the pit of despair and I don't like that pit one little bit.

From SW to WW - It isn't Easy!

2009-05-21T20:10:00.004+01:00

Oh man, Weight Watchers is hard! The concept is easy enough: Eat this many points worth of food per day and you will lose weight. It's the execution that has my head spinning. I need to forget everything I ever thought I knew about eating and start from scratch. No longer can I grab an apple, or gorge on a punnet of strawberries because fruit is not free food! It all has points, and it's going to take me a while to adjust to that cold hard fact!

And as for portion sizes, well I'm feeling faint at the WW concept of a medium portion of rice, pasta, cereal etc. This is what I expected though. I ate a LOT of these foods before, I filled my boots. And now I can't. 'Tis a fair shock to the system!

The truth is, I am currently feeling properly hungry, but stupidly I don't need to be. I have points left. But I also have to go to work tonight, and I don't want to leave myself short of meal options for there.

Here's what I've eaten today:

Breakfast was a sachet of Oatso Simple with 180mls of semi skimmed milk. As fas as I can tell, this is 4 points worth. I would love to be corrected if I'm wrong!

Lunch was a handy WW ready meal consisting of 5.5 points. It was delicious. It fitted on a side plate. I followed this with a tasty WW yoghurt at 0.5 points.

For tea I had a WW pizza (3.5 points) and filled up with a massive salad, including about 1 points worth of coleslaw. I don't intend to survive soley on WW branded products, but I'm just trying to feel my way in to it. Tomorrow I will cook from scratch. Probably. I have also had a sugar free jelly (nil points) and an orange (0.5 points)

That's 15 points. My usual points allowance will be 26, but I think I'm meant to be having 18 this week, for the Fast Start thingy. That leaves me 3 for the night shift then. I'm pretty certain that the only way I can survive it is to take a day, whatever sort of day, work or otherwise, to be midnight to midnight meaning I can take a cereal bar and some fruit to eat after midnight, and still be able to have a mini pitta with tuna and salad before midnight.

It's all very complicated. I needed to wear my glasses to do the grocery shopping today, because I spent all my time reading food labels and trying to work out the points.

I implore all the WW followers in Blogland to come to my aid and give my your best tips!

Very Conflicted!

2009-05-20T12:13:00.002+01:00

My last weigh in at SW was 13th April, and I weighed 17st 5lbs. Since then I have let one bad habit after another slip back in. I'd be in Tesco buying lovely salad inrgedients, and then a Chunky Kit Kat would fall into my basket. The call of white bread proved too strong, and in particular toast suddenly became part of my daily diet again. And then the convenience of the vending machine at work, which I hadn't visited for well over a year, suddenly became essential!

So it goes without saying that the pounds have crept back on, and that's why I've not blogged - I didn't want to blog about gaining weight, and I couldn't just chatter inanely and ignore the big fat weak willed bloater in the room! So I kept logging on to my blog, starting a few sentences and then clicking the cross in the corner and leaving it "for now..."

So what brings me back? Well I couldn't allow this to go on for another day, so I've taken a drastic step. One that I feel very conflicted about. I've been this morning and joined Weight Watchers. I had a voucher out of the newspaper making this week a freebie, so I went with the "nothing to lose" mindset. The reason I'm so conflicted about this decision is that a: I know SW works as long as you do actually stick to it, and b: I really really miss being inspired by Heather and the members of my old SW class. But I can't get to my old class. Heather does a class on another day too, but for all sorts of reasons a Weds morning class is actually very convenient for me. And I did say when I was on the eternal plateau that I needed to change something, so let's give WW a go. I need to sit down and look at the points, shake the SW plan out of my brain and work on some meal plans now.

Oh, you probably want to know about the weigh in. It is with deep, deep regret that I have to inform you that I weigh 18st and half a pound this morning. I could blame my heavy denim skirt, or that "last meal" breakfast I ate before I went. Or I could even say the scales are probably wrong because they are on carpet and definitely wobbled when I stood on them. But what I'm actually going to say is 9 1/2lbs on? It could be a hell of a lot worse actually, I gained 7 in Xmas week alone! We are away next week for half term, so I'm going to have to find a class to attend to get weighed while we are away. I could have waited until we got back to join, it would have been easier in a way. But I couldn't just keep sliding for another fortnight. Today's the day I take myself in hand!

And now I'm going to find the WW forum and look for some inspiration and ideas. Wish me luck!

A Wonder Pill?

2009-05-04T20:37:00.002+01:00

Ack, too much time has slipped by since my last post, that's no good!

So how has it been going? Well, I've made some good choices, some OK choices, and some bad choices. I feel as though I'm relearning how to function at the moment which is a bit mad. I need to focus now though or things will slide away from me. I got weighed in Boots shortly after my last post, and according to their scales I had lost 1lb. Obviously I have no idea how their calibration compares to the SW scales, so I'm just going to have to take that weight (17st 4lb) as the baseline and see how I go from there.

Interestingly, the day I went to weigh myself, use of the scales was free. This was due to an instore promo for the release of the over the counter diet pill, Alli. As far as I can gather, Alli is the little brother of Xenical, containing half the strength of the active ingredient, Orlistat, making it available for over the counter sales. I've taken Xenical, oh yes! I'm sure you will have read all about the heinous side effects of that little wonder drug...most notably, and horrifyingly the way the fat is expelled, often without prior warning, from your body. I didn't suffer that particular unacceptable side effect, I tend to think this is because while I was taking them I followed a very low fat diet. I shudder to think what would have happened if I had fancied a curry one night....

The crux of the matter though is that they didn't prove to be the answer. Yes I followed a low fat diet for a while, but as soon as I fell off the wagon, I just stopped taking them. I probably have the unfinished pack somewhere. Would I take them again? I wouldn't rule it out, I would consider all the options available to help me get to a healthy weight. I would by far prefer to do it without pills or surgery or witchcraft, but I had a lightbulb moment after writing about wanting to be in Slimming World magazine. It's meant to be about me losing weight, not glory seeking. I don't need to appear in print to be a success. I just need to lose the damn weight! So I will give due consideration to any and all possible solutions. What I won't be doing however is paying £1 a day for a pill that is half the strength of the version available for the price of a prescription. There is a recession on after all!

School Days

2009-04-24T00:58:00.003+01:00

A copy of my school report from when I was a tender 13 years old fell into my hands the other day. I was almost scared to read it, after all it was addressed to my parents! But read it I did, and it was quite interesting to look back on, knowing how my life went on to turn out. My best subject at 13 was Human Biology. I had no plans at that age to become a nurse but it's nice to see that i was already keen in the subject that would be most useful in my adult life.

I wasn't massively shocked to read that in Games I was "inactive and self concious" Hell yeah, I was horribly self concious! I felt like a big lumbering giant alongside my peers, of course I was self concious! What a shame though. The reality is that if I could have got over my self conciousness and enjoyed running around a tennis court or whatever, then maybe my adult self wouldn't have been writing this blog now....hmmmm, I like writing my blog though, so maybe all things have led to this creative point in my life, who knows!

We went to see 17 Again at the weekend, a film in which a disillusioned father of teens wishes he could go back to relive his High School days and do it differently this time around. And so, with the magic of movies, he does. It was a good film, i enjoyed it greatly. But would I want to go back to my own teen years and put them right? Erm, no. I can honestly say I hated those years. I don't recall them as anything other than miserable and excruciating. I didn't start to find my way in life until I began my nursing career. It would be cool though if I could go and tell my younger self to run around, lose her inhibitions, have fun and don't start dieting because I swear if I had not started dieting at 15, I would never have climbed to nearly 22 st.

Never mind my awful teen years, how about now? Well this is a very good week so far, food wise. I'm happy with my food choices and full of renewed enthusiasm. I look forward to leaping off this plateau very soon!

Ramblings.

2009-04-22T10:34:00.002+01:00

Thank you all for the lovely comments on my last entry :-) Lots of support and useful tips there for me. Outlaw, I may nip into town later and investigate this smart card to get weighed in Boots. I'm not going to weigh myself weekly though. Maybe monthly. My idea is to remove arbitrary deadlines, free myself to enjoy the odd special occasion without the fear of damaging the weekly weigh in, and therefore lose the "I've blown it now anyway..." mentality. God knows I've worked hard on that for the past 16 months but somehow it has remained entrenched deep within my psyche.

PLUKlurker I like the look of the book you suggest. I'm not offended, I'm not easily offended anyway and I see nothing to be offended by in your suggestion. Have you read the book and benefited from it yourself? I will probably buy it when I've been paid, so will get back to you on how that works.

Lots of comments on the portion control issue, which is interesting. I'm glad I'm not alone in finding that a concern. I'm not here to slag SW off, god knows it's been good for me, I do still weigh 5 1/2st less now than I did in January 2008 so it clearly does work. And there are lots of target members at my class. So maybe it depends on the cause of your weight problem. Maybe if you are someone who eats a fairly normal amount of food but the wrong type of food then SW is going to get you to target. But if you are someone with a big big appetite who can and does eat to the point of gluttony, then SW is going to have it's limitations. The big problem I see is that if my appetite doesn't reduce, then when I do fall off the wagon from time to time, it's a big fall because I can eat a lot. A lot of grapes may not be too damaging but a lot of pizza is a bad bad thing!

So how am I doing so far? Well, I had a couple of days of "relaxation". I didn't go berserk, I didn't want to have to report back here that I am in fact a weak willed bloater! I vowed to myself that I would be eating healthily from Tuesday morning. On Monday evening, while Rebecca was at her dance class, I nipped to Somerfield to get something for tea and because of the rushed nature of the evening I opted for a pizza with salad and garlic bread. I chose the healthier option for the garlic bread. I'm such a saint ;-) I had just drifted into the chocolate aisle and was considering a chocolatey treat when I bumped into the lady who takes the money at my SW class. I felt so embarrassed to be caught in the chocolate aisle with pizza in my basket that I made a hasty exit without any chocolate, so I was saved from myself by SW even though I don't go anymore.

I'm happy with what I ate yesterday. I decided to take a "low fat" approach, so I ate 2 crumpets for breakfast, with a smear of jam. No butter of course. This is much less breakfast than I was eating on SW, but because it was something I truly fancied, it was enough. Lunch was a jacket potato and beans, and for tea I was very lazy. I made chickpea curry using a jar of low fat (<3%) sauce. Snacks were fruit and yoghurt. Oh, and I made an effort to drink more water too. That is something I had let slip before.

Today I have had the yummy crumpets for breakfast again, for lunch I have a lovely salad and jacket spud lined up, and for tea I will be having leftover curry and boiled rice.

I realise my 5 a day was a bit absent yesterday, I've sorted that now by going shopping.

So I hope I'm on track. I'm certain that I am eating physically less with these meals which is a primary target for me. I think I am aiming to eat food that is less than 5% fat, that should keep me out of major danger. But does allow me a little bit of what I fancy which is a very good thing indeed.

Right I think I'll nip to Boots and get a baseline weight before I eat my lunch.

The Big Decision

2009-04-18T15:47:00.002+01:00

You may recall I recently posted that I was considering my options. Well, a decision has been reached, and in a way it has been based on events slightly outside my control.

I am taking a break from Slimming World.

I'm quite scared of being out in the wilderness on my own, but I know the plan off by heart so no excuses for not being able to apply my knowledge. The reason I've come to this momentous decision is that Rebecca has a dance class every Monday at the same time as my SW class, for the forthcoming term. I don't want to Pay & Weigh, I can't see the point in that. So if I can't stay to class, then this seems like the right time for a natural break. Mind you I hovered for ages over the "Send" button when I was emailing Heather to let her know..as I said, it's scary!

It is going to be interesting to see how I deal with food without the spectre of a weigh in hanging over me. What I'm hoping is that less pressure will actually have a positive effect, rather than a negative one. I'm hoping I still make wise choices and don't pile any weight back on. My work uniform is very snug fitting, I can't really take even a few pounds gain and still hope to fit in it, so that will be my monitor. If, god forbid, I find I can't fit in my uniform then I will be back at class faster than you can say "weak willed bloater"! I've thrown my big uniforms out, just to make sure.

I suppose I also need to decide whether to stick to the SW "rules" or try just a bit of common sense eating. What I'd like to try out is learning a little bit of portion control. If SW lacks anything it's portion control. It's a wonderful thing to think that you never have to feel hungry and you can gorge yourself on as much of the right food as you like, but I worry that my appetite has stayed huge and that's the cause of my immense plateau.

So smaller portions, healthy choices, more exercise, no weigh in so no pressure. But lots of blogging to help keep me focussed.

It's a new beginning of sorts.

I'm almost too scared to hit the "publish" button now - once I do that, it's true!

The Good Life

2009-04-17T05:07:00.003+01:00

I am afraid I have to confess that I had another gain this week, but only 1lb, and I had actually taken the whole week off dieting! This wasn't intended, I woke up each day with all good intentions but fell by the wayside for one reason or another. So with that in mind, 1lb isn't too bad really.

I'm sitting at work at the moment. It's 5AM (yes, there really are two 5 o'clocks in a day!). I've just read an article in Glamour magazine that tells me that I can lose 10lbs without even changing anything about my diet or exercise. All I have to do is one very simple (and lovely!) thing. And that thing is go to bed at the same time each night and get 7 1/2 hours sleep every night. Hurray!

Oh, wait....!

How I would love that! My god, earlier this week I actually spent 4 hours out of 60 in bed. No wonder then, that I opted to feed us on Macdonalds that day (which day? I don't even know which day it was, I was so bleary!). Even if I'd had the energy to choose a healthy meal, I sure as hell couldn't have summoned up the strength to shop and cook for it. Planning may have helped, in that I would have had ingredients in. But you are talking about the person who forgot that the shops don't open on Easter Sunday....still, can't beat tinned soup for a special Easter dinner ;)

On the subject of planning and ingredients, I'm morphing into Felicity Kendall in The Good Life. I've been doing some gardening and am trying to grow some fruit and veg. I feel stupidly excited at the idea of nipping into the garden when I need some carrots, and I'm gazing adoringly at my lovely little strawberry plants every day. We may have corn growing in the lawn shortly though because the wind blew my little "greenhouse" over the other night and scattered my seedlings wherever they blew. So it will be fun and exciting to see what pops up, and where!

I'm going to a retirement party later tonight - it has a 1970s theme so I will be there in my maxi dress and turquiose eyeshadow - more Margot than Felicity I think. I'm quite excited about it though, it feels like playing dress up when I was little. I used to prance around in my nana's evening gowns and fur coats, how very glamourous she was! My life lacks that glamour. Maybe one day.....

If you do what you've always done, you get what you've always got.

2009-04-07T08:54:00.002+01:00

Week 65

Weight: 17st 4lb
Gain This Week: 2.5lb
Total lost: 77.5lb

Clearly something has to change. I'm just not sue what yet. I was determined, utterly singlemindedly determined this week to get below 17st. Other than the slight screw up midweek with that once recipe I don't think I put a foot out of line, so no way in hell should I have gained 2.5lbs. 2.5lbs is something like 8000 calories allegedly! This means that either I'm doing something catastrophically wrong and I just don't know what it is, or this is the longest plateau that mankind has ever seen, or maybe, just maybe, there is some other reason why I can't lose it now.

I've never ever tried to blame anything other than eating too much and moving too little for my weight. But now I'm starting to consider all possible options, and maybe there is an underlying problem. I don't know. I doubt it to be honest, but I was driven to Google this morning. I didn't know what search term to try, since overweight, obesity, weight loss would all bring up the obvious diet sites, and no doubt blogs like mine. So I tried "Weight gain" and discovered 310 possible causes. That's a pretty long list! Many of them I can rule straight out for myself. I know I don't have heart failure, I'm not a growing adolescent and I'm not pregnant. I haven't quit smoking (I don't smoke, maybe I should start!) I haven't sustained a brain injury and I don't think I'm depressed, but I could be if this carries on much longer!

So how about things I can't rule out? Well there's a handful of gynaecological conditions in the list which I can't absolutely rule out, since I am actually experiencing some abnormal to say the least cycles at the moment. And then there's hypothyroidism - I don't have all the symptoms, but I have enough to make me think it may be worth a trip back to the doctors.

Truthfully I don't think there's anything much medically wrong with me, but I am searching because I don't want to throw my hands in the air and give it all up. I don't know whether I need to try something other than Slimming World, but I feel slightly weak at the thought of a plan that involves weighing and measuring and counting points! Maybe I should speak to my GP about medication? But I feel weird about even thinking that. It's like I'd be cheating or something if I did that! I wouldn't be able to go to class every week because I wouldn't be on a level playing field. And I wouldn't be able to be in the magazine when I reach target either, and I bloody well plan to be!

Aaaarrgh I'm being driven insane by my body! Where's the weight loss fairy when you need her most?!

Arrabiata Sauce

2009-04-02T20:15:00.004+01:00

Following my plea for recipes earlier this week, I was delighted to receive some fab ones! Loth's lentil and chickpea curry sounds divine, and I'd be willing to hop up to Scotland to try it ;) I'm a bit scared of recipes that don't tell me how much of what exact thing to use though. I need to be braver!

One Too Many has given me a very exotic spinach and ricotta pasta recipe which I will definitely be trying. Pasta is one of my favourite ingredients, and as a bonus it's free food on green days. Perfect!

Tat looks to have some most excellent recipe ideas on her blog too, as well as lovely turf. I have major turf envy Tat!

But the recipe I am posting for your pleasure tonight came from my friend Debbie. She got it from a Slimming World recipe book I believe, and it is just gorgeous!

Arrabiata Sauce

1 onion, chopped
1 chilli, chopped and deseeded
Garlic Puree (I used very lazy garlic, it's syn free!)
400mls Passata
200mls stock made with chicken Bovril

Fry off the onion, chilli and garlic for 5 minutes, then add the passata and stock, and simmer for about 20 minutes. Job done.

Debbie suggests adding Chorizo or spicy sausage. I added a chopped red pepper and reduced fat smoked pork sausage which is hefty syn wise, but I didn't know that until I'd eaten it! Also, I chucked a bit of sweetener into the mix, and the result was a wonderful rich sweet and spicy and smoky blend, which I served with penne pasta.

I'm confused about the sausage, I could have sworn it was on the low syn table at class on Monday. If I don't have a loss this week, at least I'll know why!

Seeking Recipes

2009-03-31T17:25:00.004+01:00

Week 64

Weight: 17st 1.5lb
Loss This Week: 3lb
Total lost: 80lb

I got weighed wearing my jeans, and still lost 3lb, I'm happy with that, oh yeah!

So I end March weighing exactly the same as I did at the start of March - am I good at maintaining or what?! I consider this all good practice for when I'm trying to maintain my weight at 9st something hehehe!

The version of the plan I followed last week was the "desperate for Payday" plan. Poverty is good for weight loss apparently. This week I will be following the "Just been paid and gone mad in Sainsburys" plan and it will be interesting to compare and contrast the 2. Will I fare better on fresh melon and raspberries, or naked pasta and savoury rice? I know which one makes me feel healthier, but there is something quite nice and comforting about the kind of food you find at the very back of the cupboard. There's some mushy peas there calling my name just now, hmmm, what shall I have with them?

My aim for this week is a nice conservative 2lb loss. Slowly, slowly, ever so slowly. Let's not forget, it was the tortoise who won the race with the hare.

I have been trying to keep the spark alive by trying a new recipe every week (except that final empty purse week of the month!) so do me favour, lay your recipes on me. I am open to any suggestions, veggie or otherwise. I'll have to come up with an incentive for you, a competition or something. If I do that, I'll feel like a proper blogger! In the meantime, if I use your recipe I'll review it here, and of course link to your blog - how does that sound?

Aiming For The.....?

2009-03-24T13:17:00.004Z

Week 63

Weight: 17st 4.5lb
Loss This Week: 2lb
Total lost: 77lb

Yay for a 2lb loss since I last stood on the scales. Bearing in mind the Birthday Weekend that occurred between then and now, I'm very pleased with that result!

This week I'm mostly wondering about how our high expectations can affect how well or badly we do at weight loss. There has been more than a handful of weeks where I've thrown myself heart and soul into The Plan, with the desire to shed 3 or more pounds, or to reach some transient goal, only to be disappointed. And disappointment can take me in one of two directions. It can either make me even more determined the following week, or it can make me throw my hands metaphorically in the air (to actually do it would be better for toning my upper arms though) and slide back into bad habits faster than you can say hot buttered crumpets.

Now, I've never been someone to set my sights low. I firmly believe that you have to aim for the stars to reach the moon. But even I can see that repeatedly setting myself up to fail may, in the long run, prove slightly detrimental to the overall goal. I know I'm not the only slimmer who is hard on themselves when they don't lose as much as they hoped for, and in the cold light of day, away from the emotion of the weigh in, I think it's a shame when we can't be kinder to ourselves. So this week, I aim to lose a nice steady pound or 2. I took years to get fat so I can afford to spend a fair bit of time getting slim too. I'm not going to set unrealistic targets, I'm not going to beat myself up for tiny losses and maintains when I have stuck to The Plan. And I am most certainly not going to fall by the wayside just because it's taking me a long time to get to where I want to be. I believe I have proved I'm in it for the long haul now, so there's no point stressing about how long that may turn out to be.

A final thought. Apparently it has been proven that owners tend to look like their dogs. What part of me looks in any way like either of my skinny greyhounds? Maybe the me we will see one day :-)

Long Time No See...

2009-03-17T16:14:00.002Z

Wendy looks around furtively to check no one's looking, and runs back in!

Hiya! Fancy seeing you here!

OK, I confess, I didn't blog because I gained weight and ran out of ways to say so. But I miss my witterings, so I'm blogging despite that fact now! So what's been happening in the fortnight since I last put erm, fingers to keyboard?

Well I've had lots of fun! Last week I went to a Ceroc class which I've wanted to do for aaaaages! I finally decided to just do it and dragged a friend along for good measure. It was really good fun, and good exercise too, so I will be going back for sure, although not this week as I'm working that night. Can I just say though, if you are a man reading this, please go and join your local Ceroc classs! The class I was at was seriously short of men, and it's a man-led dance so we need you!

It was my birthday yesterday, and was preceded by a girls day / night out in Manchester on Saturday. We went to all the "nice" places, including cocktails at the Midland Hotel, which makes me feel sooooo sophisticated! And my friends (I was out at the front of the group somewhere and managed to miss this!) saw a boxer called Ola Afolabi leaving the Radisson Hotel on his way to a match. He went with some top girly training tips ringing in his ears (try and kill him, and if you think you're going to lose, walk away!) and he went on to beat his opponent which was apparently a bit of an unexpected result! So maybe my friends have missed their vocation and should be ringside telling boxers to be careful!

As the nicer weather has started to peep out, thoughts turn to the garden. My "lawn" was a disgrace, thanks to the work of 2 dogs. I decided the only thing I could do was fence it off to keep them off it totally, dig it up and start from scratch. My first plan involved paying someone to do it. But I'm not rolling in cash, and it's hard graft rather than rocket science so I've been doing it myself. The fence is a cheap and cheerful affair, low enough for me step over, but high enough to confuse 2 long legged greyhounds who have no idea of the concept of jumping. Digging the old lawn up was a massive task, but I finished it yesterday in the sunshine and am rather proud of my efforts. Today I have raked in some fertiliser, and now I'm torn between buying some turf for instant gratification, or grass seed. The decision comes down to cash really, but I'm going to be unhappy if the birds eat all my seed, that's all I'm saying!

So I've not been the most committed dieter these past couple of weeks, but I've certainly been doing the "move more" part of the equation. And as always, I'm delighted by my ability to do these things. I'm healthy and active, and that's what's important.

Hair, Makeup, Wardrobe, Action!

2009-03-03T18:34:00.002Z

Week 60

Weight: 17st 1.5lb
Loss This Week: 1lb
Total lost: 80lb

That was a week of herculean effort for 1lb, but hey, I won't complain at a loss, just hope for a bigger one next time!

This week it's all about my look again. I just feel very "meh" about my hair and wardrobe at the moment. I've got clothes that will do rather than clothes I love and that just isn't good enough! I've been browsing clothing collections online and in catalogues and I don't even know what look I want to be in! I kind of know what I like, but I'm not finding it. And as for my hair, well you can all see the state of that - the picture over there <------- shows it in it's true colours. It is pretty frizzy if not well tamed. It can look lovely when the natural curl falls just right, but a bit of rain or humidity and I'm a wreck. If I have it cut shorter the curl becomes more prominent but I'm never convinced I suit short hair.

On the plus side I'm happy with my face right now. I don't know whether you had noticed but I've done a bit of work on my blog, sorting out links to posts so recipes, photos etc are easy to find. In doing so I was forced to confront my "before" pics and it really showed me how far I've come! My face is so so different now. My skin is pretty good too, and in the last week or so I have made the effort to wear a bit of make up every day. I have had so many people telling me that I look "well", "healthy", "fresh", etc that I know it's more than worth the few minutes a day it takes to do.

Of course, all this means shopping. A hard job, but someone has to do it.

3 Bean Chilli

2009-02-26T16:38:00.002Z

One of the staples of my eating these days is 3 Bean Chilli. It's delicious, nutritious and very very filling. As an added bons it' totally free on Green days and Extra Easy.

Here's the recipe.

1 onion
3 garlic cloves
400g can of red kidney beans
400g can mixed beans
200g can chickpeas
small handful of fresh coriander or 1 tbsp dried
Fry light
1-2 tsp chilli powder
1 tsp ground cinnammon
2 tbsp ground cumin (I half that!)
2 X 400g cans chopped tomatoes
1 tsp artificial sweetener
salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 tbsp very low fat natural fromage frais
Pinch of paprika

Method

1. Finely chop the onion and garlic cloves. Drain and rinse the beans and chickpeas. Roughly chop the coriander.

2. Spray a large pan with Fry Light and place over a medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and stir fry for 2-3 mins.

3: Add the chilli powder, cinnamon, cumin, tomatoes and sweetener. Bring to the boil. Season well, cover tightly and cook over a low heat for 10 mins.

4: Add the beans and chickpeas. Mix well. Return to heat for further 10 mins.

5: Serve in warmed bowls. Spoon over a tablespoon of fromage frais, sprinkle with paprika and garnish with coriander.

I am casual with this ingredient list. I use whatever bean selection is in my cupboard, including baked beans and it's fine. I often chuck fresh chilli in, which is great. If I don't have any fromage frais in then I just miss that part off and it's still fine. The fromage frais is delicious though! I serve it with boiled rice and it goes a very long way! It's a brilliant midweek, close to payday store cupboard ingredient meal and allegedly costs only 75p per serving so perfect in the current economic climate.

(I have copied this recipe directly from Slimming World Magazine.)

SAS Swoops In!

2009-02-26T16:12:00.002Z

I mentioned on Monday that this week I would be doing an SAS Log. Here's how it works. On 1 side of the page is a list of daily aims and potential danger areas, plus space to write any of your own thoughts. On side 2 is a sort of food diary, but as well as writing down what you've eaten, you tick to say whether it was Free Food, Healthy Extras or Syns. And whether you planned to eat it or not, whether you knew the Syn value before eating it, whether you accurately measured or estimated for Syns and Healthy Extras, and whether you are writing at the time of eating, or later.

I'd say most people would claim to have a clue about their eating habits. Certainly I'd say I knew what I was eating pretty much every day. If I was trying to appear virtuous I would tell you that I nearly always stick to plan 100%, and that most days I have less than 5 Syns. If I was being honest I would admit to the odd spoonful of cereal or square of chocolate, or bite of toast. I would still be adamant that my Syns were minimal.

Well not any more! The SAS Log has sprung my eyes wide open. Day 1 revealed it, Day 2 confirmed it and Day 3 is making me try to change it.

Here's what I'm doing. I am regularly (as in most of the time!) eating things with a Syn value without knowing what the Syn value actually is. I estimate, I eat, I forget. Or as in this week I estimate, I eat, I look it up and recoil in horror! Yesterday I consumed around 8.5 Syns in this way. This would be OK if it was always so low and I never went over the 15 Syns per day allowance, but this week I am being very careful to write down everything I eat, so when I snaffled a crisp it was one crisp, not a handful. On a normal week I can well imagine I am going well over on some days, and it certainly brings last week's gain into perspective.

Knowledge is power! I guess I'm armed and dangerous now then.

I love dieting, I do.

2009-02-23T22:51:00.002Z

Week 59

Weight: 17st 2.5lb
Gain This Week: 1.5lb
Total lost: 79lb

*Bangs head repeatedly on desk*

Okaaaaay. My frustration knows no bounds! I thought I'd been on track this week. I was on a high from last week. I was intent on seeing "16st something" on the scales. I went to a friend's house for dinner and we did a SW meal, each of us providing one course. I did the Strawberry Dream pudding. That's really making an effort, that is! Now OK, I'm going to admit here, there was nachos and dips too, and I did have some, but I didn't drink. And it was my only indiscretion of the week so I don't think I "deserved" the gain. Stupid scales!

Upon reflection, I think maybe some unwise eating behaviour may have been in evidence. It was half term and I was off work so I spent several days reorganising my house, shopping at Ikea, building flat pack furniture and going back and forth to the tip. All good body magic mind you - one morning I screwed 56 screws and banged in 104 dowels! My bingo wings should be in great shape! But what was happening was I was getting up, throwing on my scruffy clothes, making a coffee and getting straight to work. Add in the dog walks, and most days I didn't have time to eat anything until teatime. And of course by then I was hungry enough to eat the table I was sat at! I think I may have accidentally slipped into old habits like eating some of whatever I was making for Rebecca while I was in the kitchen, and lots of little things to tend to add up to a big disaster!

So I'm not downhearted, I've recovered from the misery of the weigh in. I have a plan for this week that involves an SAS log (for non SW readers, this is like a food diary but for behaviour, to pick up on any little bad habits you don't know you have!) And I think I'll go back to my green days again. I hate meat. Yes, I really really do. Chickpeas rock!

Photo Tag

2009-02-20T10:30:00.004Z

Thanks to Rosiero for tagging me and giving me a nice midweek blog entry! Here's the deal. I have to go into my photo collection, take the fourth folder and the fourth picture in that folder and explain it. Then tag four more bloggers to do the same.

With trepidation at what might emerge from the wasteland of my Pictures folder, I started clicking.....

OK that's not too bad!

This photo was taken in September 2005. It is my daughter Rebecca, shortly before her 4th birthday, and it was taken in Canada, my favourite place in the whole world. I had wanted to go and visit Prince Edward Island because we were considering emigrating to there, but Mark couldn't take any time off work at that stage (being self employed sucks!) Not to be deterred, I booked flights, hotel room for the night we arrived, and car rental for just me and Rebecca, and planned a roadtrip round Nova Scotia and PEI - how exciting!

When we arrived at Halifax (Canada!) airport after a 7 hour flight in the middle of the night, we didn't know the problem about to befall us. We headed gaily to Passport Control, only to be directed to Immigration. Feeling a little anxious, and with Rebecca bursting for a wee, we went over to the desk and discovered that they were not happy that I was arriving in Canada with my 3 year old child, but not her father. I'm not sure how single parents navigate this problem! Apparently I should have taken a letter from Mark giving his permission for me to take her abroad. (Permission! My hackles rise at the very word!!) Anyway, They wanted to see our passports, our return flight tickets and our hotel reservations. This made it worse because of course I had only booked 1 night. The plan was get in the car, drive to wherever we wanted to, find a motel and stay however long suited us. In the eyes of the Canadian Immigration official with a gun on his hip, this made me irresponsible. I resisted the urge to argue that it merely made me adventurous! They wanted to speak to Mark, to make sure that I wasn't in the process of kidnapping my own daughter, so I had to think where he would be (in the pub watching football!) and give them his phone number. To be fair, the scary man did smile when I told him where Mark would be! I was worried that being in the pub, he might be slightly drunk, think the phone call was a joke, and say something stupid that would see us on the next flight home, with a police escort!

We where sent to wait in a stark little room, and I finally got Rebecca to the loo - too late though and her Disney Princess knicks were despatched to the bin! After what felt like a lifetime we were told we could go, but not without a stern lecture on how irresponsible I was to travel so far from home with my 3 year old child on my own, and without hotel reservations for the whole visit. I took my lecture meekly and off we went!

Despite the "memorable" start, we had a wonderful wonderful holiday, we got to all the places we had planned, and managed to find somewhere to sleep every night without any great difficulty, and I discovered that this was truly my spiritual home. I hope we will return for good one day.

As a PS to this story, Mark says they didn't phone him at all, so they must have decided to let me suffer a little bit just for the hell of it! Huh.

I've enjoyed revisiting this memory, thanks Roisero! Now who shall I tag...hmmmmmm...

OK I've decided to take the lazy way, and say if you are reading this, you are tagged! If you like the idea, go forth and post your photo, and leave a comment to let me know you've done it - I look forward to seeing your memories.

Finally Lost The Baby Weight!

2009-02-16T20:47:00.006Z

Week 58

Weight: 17st 1lb
Loss This Week: 4lb
Total lost: 80.5lb

Woohoo! A landmark week. I've now got a BMI in the thirties (my BMI is less than my age - woohoo!), I weigh less than 240lbs, it's the lowest weight I've been since about 2001 before I had Rebecca, and ... hang on a sec, I think I just spotted another one.... yes! I've lost around 25% of my body weight! (anyone who fancies checking the maths on that is most welcome - I'm not known for my mathematical genius!)

I knew this was a good week. My highly unreliable bathroom scales showed a loss every time I stood on them, in fact if I had kept on standing on them, I may have been 9st by tonight! So the Speed Food thing worked well for me. That and the meal planning. Without a shadow of a doubt, I shall be meal planning this week too.

This is a big cliche, but this week I read the book again. My friend Paula started SW last week (and lost 5lb - well done Paula!), so I was going over things with her which brought a few things nicely back to my attention. For example bananas and grapes are free foods but not Speed Foods, whereas most other fruits are Speed Foods. I had been eating a lot of bananas and grapes, and it was clear to see that they are the not the wisest of fruits to eat in abundance. So I changed to oranges, melons and strawberries, and the results speak for themselves. I also realised I should be trying to eat more fish (something I did eat a lot of while pregnant so me eating fish makes Mark go a little pale.....) so I had 3 fish based meals this week, and surpsingly enjoyed them.

So here's to another great week, and hopefully a new landmark as I drop in the 16st bracket!

Food Heaven

2009-02-12T20:21:00.002Z

I'm loving this week! In order to rise to the challenge of eating more Speed and Super Speed foods I've immersed myself in recipe books and I've meal planned to within an inch of my life! I'm not normally a meal planner at all. I'm not very organised and I tend to cook what fits in with my time / energy level / preferences at any given time. So I've not been too rigid about this, I've selected 7 meals that vary in complexity and am cooking them in an order that suits me at any given time.

So far this week I have made Chicken Fajitas from the Jamie Oliver Ministry of Food book, Chicken Dopiaza from this month's SW magazine, and Strawberry Dream from my SW class. Still to come is homemade fish pie (which should do 2 nights), homemade leek and potato soup, and the old standby 3 Bean Chilli which will definitely do 2 nights! And last night it was a rushed sort of night so it was a simple tuna, sweetcorn, salad and jacket spud tea!

I don't normally do puddings, I tend to think if I want dessert then a Muller Light and some fruit will suffice. But I have to say the Strawberry Dream has re-opened my eyes to the joy that sweet stuff can bring! For those who didn't see me talk about it on Facebook, here's the recipe:

Punnet of Strawberries
Lemon or Lime sugar free jelly crystals
3 plain digestive biscuits
500g very low fat cottage cheese

Smash the biscuits to smithereens and press into the base of a serving dish (go deep rather than wide when choosing the dish!)

Chop up half the strawberries and cover the biscuit base.

Dissolve the jelly crystals in 1/4 pint boiling water. Make up to half a pint using cold water. Add the cottage cheese and blend. Pout the mixture over the strawberry and biscuit base, put in fridge to set for 2 hours.

Use the remaining strawberries to decorate the top of the set dessert.

This is supposed to serve 4, at 3.5 syns per serving, but they would be massive servings! I'd say it would easily serve 6, if not more really. I'm thinking it would be nice with a blob of Total 0% Greek Yoghurt on the side too.

Tell me about your low syn puddings!

Mr & Mrs

2009-02-09T19:28:00.004Z

Week 57

Weight: 17st 5lb
Loss This Week: 1.5lb
Total lost: 76.5lb

I think my maths may have gone awry - I'm going to check my figures later - the total lost is now 5st 6.5lbs anyway.

So tonight was a good night. Yes, I lost some weight, but tonight was about much more than that. A disappointing night tonight could well have been make or break because I was really losing heart and motivation. I was planning a blog entry that explained why I may be absent for a while, while I would be considering my options. I felt as though my internal monitoring system was letting me down badly, and from one week to the next I had no clue whether I was losing or gaining.

But happily I don't feel the need to post that entry! Before I even stepped on the scales I was smiling with unexpected delight, because Heather told me that I was Slimmer of the Month for January! I have a new fridge magnet and a very sparkly new sticker! If asked, I would never have guessed that I could have been in the running for Slimmer of the Month. I might have told you that my month for that would surely have been February last year, because I recall that being an excellent month! I might have told you that on balance I had probably only lost a pound or 2 in January. This is how distorted my internal monitors have become because I lost 10.5lbs!

So I was in good spirits for the rest of the meeting, and then Heather announced that tonight was a competition - Mr & Mrs! Those of us who are Food Optimising with our partners told the group a little about how we do it, what we eat, etc and then the group voted, and Mark & I won! So I now have a certificate, a sash(!) and a lovely pen holder to add to my booty - photos of me wearing the sash to follow! The total amount of weight we have lost between us is - drumroll.......... 10st 1.5lbs - that's something approximating my goal weight!

So I feel renewed and happy tonight. Heather has set a challenge for us this week - to eat as much "Speed" and "Superspeed" food as we can fit in. I will take up the challenge with gusto and look forward to a fabulous week!

Hills, Snow and Karma

2009-02-03T18:21:00.002Z

Week 56

Weight: 17st 6.5lb
Gain This Week: 0.5lb
Total lost: 76lb

*Sigh* Another week, another rubbish result. I was good as gold all week so I'm hoping that will show in the scale next week then! Anyone who knows me on Facebook would have seen my status towards the end of last week say "I have to have lost a few pounds this week, I can feel it!" so it's fair to say I had no idea what was coming when I stood on the scale! I'm not letting it get me down, I'm learning that these things happen sometimes!

I've done some good exercise this week, walking loads, and on Sunday we chucked the dogs in the car and headed for the hills for a change and had a lovely hour walking up hill and down dale, across muddy fields and amazing views. OMG the wind as we went up the hills, it nearly blew us off our feet a few times!!

Anyway, to enter the field at the start of the walk, we had to climb over a stile, and the dogs ducked under. When we came to leave, my great big lump of a dog decided he couldn't possibly duck under. So he dug his heels in. I tried to coax him through, no good. I tried to pull him through by his harness, no good, his harness shockingly just slipped off over his head - not what I need it to do. Tried to get him to go over the stile, nope. A degree of anxiety was setting in at this point. We hadn't seen another human for quite some time, I didn't have my mobile phone with me to summon up another adult pair of hands, and it was starting to snow! (He's a very big strong dog - when he doesn't want to move, he doesn't move!)

In the end Rebecca had to stand behind him and shove, while I stood in front and literally hauled his front legs through - it was like a farmer pulling a calf out of a cow :lol: (apologies to the readers who may have read that story elsewhere this week - I don't necessarily have enough material to be unique and exclusive all the time. Or ever really!)

This snow has caused it's share of aches and pains. My legs are aching as though I had done a 10k run (not that I'd know what that was like!) and yesterday I fell over on the ice no less than 5 times over the course of the day. The final time was when I was walking to work. Over I went, flat on my back, bruising my coccyx nicely. I was rescued by a good hearted stranger who turned her car around on the ice rink loosely termed a road, and drove me safely to work. I don't know who she is, but I hope her kindness is rewarded in spades by the Good Karma Fairy.

The Hippopotamus Is Now Smiling!

2009-01-26T16:07:00.006Z

Week 55

Weight: 17st 6lb
Loss This Week: 1.5lb
Total lost: 75.5lb

A result that can only be explained by a miracle!

Thank you to those of you who replied to my last entry. I think writing it was cathartic because I pretty much got my head back in gear straight after, and a few well aimed kicks from you guys have certainly helped! Turns out I was indeed hormonal, and add into the mix the fact that it's January, and therefore a very long time since the pre Christmas payday, so I haven't been able to go and fill a trolley with delicious healthy food and I can see why I let it get me down. I get paid on Wednesday, and have got lots of yummy recipes lined up to keep me excited for this week.

Because laughter is the best medicine I'm going to just leave you with a clip from this week's Dancing on Ice. If you are in the UK you must have seen it by now, but enjoy it again anyway!

Or I would, if only I could work out how to post it on here!

Just go to Youtube and enjoy. And if anyone can help me out with the technical know how (cos I am following the instructions given on Blogger.com!!) I would be mighty grateful!

What can make a hippopotamus smile?

2009-01-24T09:01:00.002Z

What can make a hippopotamus smile?
What can make him walk for more than a mile?
It's not a party with a paper hat.
Or cake and candy that will make him fat.
That's not what hippos do!

They ooze in the gooze without any shoes.
They wade in the water 'til their lips turn blue.
That's what hippos do!

This is the cute song my lovely daughter has been singing a lot this week. But it tells you a lot about how things have been for me when I tell you that she changed the first line to "What can make my grumpy mummy smile?"

I don't know whether I've been really hormonal (I ought to keep track of these things!) but I've been awful - snappy, tired, and oh my god the hunger! Pasta Queen Jeanette talks about food addiction and describes trigger foods as those into which you usually find yourself plunging face first. This is a very graphic representation of how I have felt about food this week. I have fantasised about plunging face first into certain foods. And although I have resisted doing that, I haven't resisted much else.

Today I am mostly hating myself and wondering whether I can keep doing this. Right now it just feels futile. I haven't actually lost weight since August, if you add up all those losses and gains. I get so many "Your an inspiration!" type comments, and I'm so not! I had high hopes that a New Year would revitalise me, and January isn't even over yet and I've lost it. God I'm a fraud!

OK I don't do self pity, and I don't want to start, so I'm going to stop whining right now.

To end this crappy entry on a high, let me just say a HUGE Congratulations!! to Bryher, who made it to target this week, losing 6st 9lbs in just 362 days. Now that lady is an inspiration!

Just a Fling?

2009-01-20T00:55:00.002Z

Week 54

Weight: 17st 7.5lb
Loss This Week: 0lb
Total lost: 74lb

I stayed the same?? I stayed the bleeding same? Huh! Not only did I stick 100% to The Plan, but I had a 24 hour vomiting bug which probably negated everything I ate for the previous 3 days!

And I stayed the same.

OK, a maintain I can deal with. It's ok, it's not a weird random gain. It may be worth me stepping away from the joy of Extra Easy though, and going back to my trusty old green days, maybe keep the exciting stuff for special occasions.

It's as though I'm married to Green, and having a little extra-marital fling with Extra Easy! It's fun, glamorous and exciting but it's not the kind of plan you can take home to meet your parents ;)

Wii Fit Review

2009-01-16T19:38:00.004Z

As requested by Loth and Lakeland Jo, here's what I think so far of the famed Wii Fit.

I love it!

The end.

Only kidding, I do love it, and I shall tell you why!

First of all, it thinks I am 32, when in truth I will be 42 in March. This is allegedly due to my superior athletic and balancing ability. It strokes my ego, what more can I say!

Life on the Wii Fit begins with a Body Test, which consists of measuring weight and BMI, and setting goals. It then goes on to check out your core balance and ask if you fall over a lot! How rude! There's nifty charts to track your progress, but it does prefer you to weigh in daily which I don't like! You can skip it though, so it's no biggy.

The training has 4 sections: Yoga, Muscle Workout, Aerobics and Balance. Let's look at them one at a time.

Yoga: I haven't done any yoga for ages, and I used to love it. It was just too hard to fit the class in with my work / sleep pattern. So I am enjoying the Yoga! I miss the overall class experience, with the incense and the chill out music, the dim lights and soothing voice of the class instructor. But that is compensated for by the feedback! Getting a score for how well I hold a pose really appeals to something in me! The idea is the instructor of your choice (male or female) leads you in the poses and then as you hold the position you are scored on how well you keep the dot inside the predetermined area. Too much wobbling and he knows you fell over! For some reason I score well on pretty much all the Yoga poses, and this pleases me. At the end of the Yoga session my body knows it has worked, no doubt about it.

Muscle Workout: I'm just going to skim over this because it lacks appeal to me so I don't tend to do these exercises. I should discipline myself and do them! But the principle is the same as the yoga, complete with instructor. I'm sure they are excellent, but I'm the kind of person who skips this bit on exercise DVDs too!

Aerobic: This section is very cool! It starts out with some simple hula hooping, jogging and step, and then you get to unlock harder step, much much harder hula hooping, boxing and something I've not yet unlocked! The hula hooping is hard. Oh so hard. I'm doing the 6 minute Super Hula Hoop at the moment - 3 minutes right, 3 minutes left. If you don't do it right, you drop the hoops. It's hard enough exercise that I have to cheerlead myself through it to get to the end. "Come on - come ON! Keep going, you can do it, you can do it! Aaargh!!!" I'm glad I don't usually have witnesses to this. One day soon, when I can have an ambulance on standby, I'm going to try the 10 minute segment! The step is fun too, but not as much fun or as challenging as my old Cher step video. But again, feedback and bettering your score is what keeps you going back for more. The Wii Fit exercises very cleverly tap into my competitive core. For those days when you are full of pent up aggression, the rhythm boxing is cool. You get instructions in what sequence of punches to make, and then you give it your all - "Left! Right! Left! Block!" and at the end you get to beat the hell out of the punchbag in a manner of your own choosing. You'd need a shower even if this was the only thing you did.

Balance: This section is just pure fun - all the games are about making slight changes in your balance to roll marbles safely into holes, or navigate a ski slope, or catch fish dressed as a penguin without sliding into the sea, or walk a tightrope while a metal monster tries to bite you....This is where I go first when I turn Wii Fit on. The balance games get me in the mood and provide a good warm up for the harder stuff. I literally danced round the room in glee when I made it across that tightrope! And I'm the only person in the household to do so at the time of writing!

I end my session in the Balance section too, on a game called Zazen, which involves sitting cross legged on the balance board and gazing at a flickering candle. If you move, the candle will blow out. They try to make you move, but I'm very good at sitting still so they can't catch me out! It's a nice way to cool down and empty your mind though.

Out of the box, there's only a handful of games unlocked, but the more time you spend on Wii Fit, the more games you unlock. It is pretty quick and easy to do the unlocking - there's no horrendously difficult tasks to achieve before you do.

If I was forced to criticise anything about the Wii Fit, it's that you can't swap between players without having to go back to the Wii Fit Plaza and swap totally. Some of the games lend themselves very nicely to drunken party fun, but having to have each player fully exit the game in order to allow the next to play is a bit of a drag really. But I'm nitpicking.

My Wii is in the front room. I have big big windows. It's the innocent passers-by I feel most sorry for!

Part Two!

2009-01-12T17:54:00.002Z

Week 53

Weight: 17st 7.5lb
Loss This Week: 4.5lb
Gain lost: 74lb

It works, it really works! Extra Easy was my plan of choice all this week and look at the result! I felt pretty confident all week too, until I was in the queue for the scales, and then I started thinking "Oh god, what if I have gained weight? I can't believe I could lose weight when I've eaten meat and rice on the same plate!" Obviously it is possible! Witchcraft.

I haven't had time to blog during this week because I've been buried under a mountain of clutter. I foolishly decided that I wanted to make the spare room into a play room. To do that I first had to move all the stuff already in the spare room to somewhere else. To do that, I had to empty the cupboard under the stairs, and the stuff from there had to move to - well, you can see how it escalated! It wasn't until late Saturday that we reached the stage where we could get toys moved into the new play room, and it took until Sunday lunchtime to sort out the resulting shockwaves on just about every other room in the house. I've been to the tip, I'e freecycled, I've been to the charity shop, I've been to the recycling bins. And my house doesn't seem to have much less stuff in. Bizarre! Now I just need to sort out the toys in the way that a mother can do only when her child is out of the house!

I have had requests for a review of the Wii Fit, which I have to say I love a lot. I will make that my next entry later this week, assuming I survive the Great Toy Cull of 2009!

End of Part One

2009-01-05T21:48:00.003Z

Week 52

Weight: 17st 12lb
Loss This Week: 4lb
Gain lost: 69.5lb

Week 52! Wow, that's a whole year of Slimming World! That's huge!

I can take on the world, and win!

I'm delighted with my loss this week, not least because the weekend was somewhat.....celebratory..... teehee! But I was good as gold for the first half of the week, and I did try to moderate myself even when I was swimming in alcohol. Honest!

Going back to my last entry, I did give the Extra Easy a go in the end, and I liked it! I'm definitely going with it this week, because I suspect it will actually be very beneficial. For example, I had a late lunch, more of a brunch, of egg, bacon, sausage, mushrooms and beans and I was just totally full for the rest of the day. I didn't need to snack at all, and I only needed a light meal later. So I ate lots less than usual. Which may be why it works.

I'm working on my "move more" resolution - my wonderful brother got us a Wii Fit for Christmas and I've been playing on it since yesterday. Initially I thought it seemed easy and doubted the possibility of actually improving my fitness. But a few goes on the hula hooping had me near collapsed so I've reviewed my opinion and fully expect to get very fit indeed! I have awesome balance apparently and am brilliant at the Yoga poses. Good to know :) (Rebecca thinks my little fat Mii is hilarious!)

I need to rest now. I've promised Rebecca I'll pull her to school on her sledge in the morning if it's still snowy. I need to get my strength up!

Extra Easy

2009-01-01T10:17:00.002Z

Slimming World have pulled some witchcraft, and created a plan that lets you eat anything at all, in any quantity you like, and still lose weight. Well, anything except bread and cheese - you have to limit them. Other than that though, fill your boots!

OK, it's not quite that free! But reading it for the first time, that's the feeling you come away with!

It goes something like this:

You choose 1 Healthy Extra A (cheese or milk in the main) and 1 Healthy Extra B (breads, cereals etc) per day, and 5-15 syns. And eat as much as you like of lean meat, fish, eggs, fruit, veg, pasta, rice, pulses etc. Yes, on the same plate! You don't have to choose whether to have meat or rice with your curry, you can have both. As much as you want!

There has to be a catch, surely?

Is it one of those rigid, no good for nightworkers, 3 meals per day plans? Nope.
Can you only snack on carrot and celery? Nope.
Have we lost all the branded free foods then, that made life easy sometimes? No.
Aaaah, it must be a much more limited choice of food! Happily not! The sole proviso appears to be a recommendation that a third of your plate is filled with "superfree" food, essentially veg or fruit, although not exclusively.

I came away from class very excited about trying this! Chicken curry made with actual chicken? Jacket potato filled with tuna! Oh my word, I can make stew with potato in!!

However, haven't been able to do let myself do it. I've tried, but when I look at what I've eaten it's been fine for a green day, with (for example) tuna as a HEB. It's as though I've been given too big a gift. I've taken it out, looked and admired it, and put it reverentially back in the box.

It's nice to know it's there, it is going to come in handy on special occasions, meals out etc, but it's too good to use every day!

And So To 2009

2008-12-30T08:01:00.002Z

Week 51

(Can't quite bring myself to type the stats...)

Did everyone have a lovely Christmas? We did. I'm now very ready to embark on healthy eating again! What I wish is that I could bottle how bad all the excessive eating actually makes me feel, to stop me making the same mistakes again - bloating, heartburn, clothes too tight, lethargic, and headaches, terrible headaches! I can feel every single one of the cough[7]cough pounds I gained in the last 2 weeks. No regrets though, it was Christmas and could have been a lot lot worse! It did bring home to me though how incredibly bad I would feel if I suddenly weighed what did this time last year - I wouldn't be able to move!

I found resisting blogging in the last couple of weeks harder than I expected. Several times I logged on and started writing some random entry, but then I would get called away and end up deleting what I had written. You didn't miss any great dieting revelations, I just had an urge to waffle!

A Nintendo Wii has entered our lives this Christmas - what a wonderful device that is! As yet we don't have Wii Fit, but we will! But even playing Wii Sports is working up quite a sweat, and my arms are killing me! And I'm getting a bit competitive on the tennis game - playing every point like I'm on the verge of winning Wimbledon ;)

So, on to the serious business of New Years Resolutions! I don't make many, I don't like setting myself up to fail! But here they are in all their glory:

1]Continue Slimming World with renewed vigour, aim to lose another 5 stone this year.
2]Spend less time online!
3]Exercise more, and train for the next Race for Life which I have promised to actually run this year, in support of Ted again, who is going through a truly terrible time at the moment. My heart goes out to Ted and his family.
4]Save some money (this is likely to be the one I fail on, something always comes up that takes anything I have managed to save!)

That's the lot!

My next entry will be about the brand new SW plan, Extra Easy. I want to try it before I give my opinion, but my first reaction is Wow!

Festive Tidings!

2008-12-17T11:41:00.003Z

Week 49

Weight: 17st 8.5lb
Loss This Week: 5.5lb
Gain lost: 73lb

I toyed with not revealing the figures this week. Truth be told I tried to avoid seeing them myself, but the lovely lady on the scales made me look! I won't attempt to defend myself, I overate, and drank too much, but damn I had fun! Party season is upon us after all. I anticipate ongoing "problems" until Boxing Day, when I am back at work and the party is effectively over. I'm hoping I start 2009 still 5st lighter than I started 2008. If I do that I will be happy.

On the subject of parties, I loved dressing up for my work party - I was very comfortable with my choice of outfit, and the compliments flowed all night! People who I see all the time appeared to suddenly notice I'd lost weight. It goes to prove how unflattering a nurse's uniform is! I can't wait for next years now :-)

Apparently there is a shiny new Slimming World plan being revealed in January. I've seen a hint of it in the current magazine and I'm very excited to see the full details revealed, although I'm not sure quite how it will work, as the little I've seen has both red and green day components piled freely on one plate! My best guess is this means the food list is more limited, but until January I won't know!

I don't anticipate getting the chance to blog over the Christmas period so

See you on the other side!

On Resolutions.

2008-12-08T18:54:00.002Z

Week 48

Weight: 17st 3lb
Loss This Week: 2lb
Total lost: 78.5lb

Phew, a loss! And actually a new low, by a whisker!

There's an interesting phenomenon occurring here, so far not mentioned. On the weeks I gain, Mark loses, and on the weeks I lose, Mark gains. What the hell is happening here? You'd think we'd be charting a similar course, but no, not at all! He has almost caught up with me now, but slipped back a bit this week. I imagine he can look forward to a healthy weight loss over Christmas and the New Year ;)

Is everyone all organised for Christmas? Presents bought and wrapped? Tree up? Cards posted? No, me neither. I've bought nearly all I'm buying but there's not a card written and not a fairy light to be seen. Happily I have a week off work next week so I can get it all done then. I don't like the decorations up too early anyway, they tend to get on my nerves fairly quickly - bah humbug!

Oh! Pedometer - what pedomoeter? ;)

OK I promised to walk how ever many steps, and last time it was mentioned I was trying it out to see how many steps I took on a normal day. It worked out pretty much as I expected, around the 7000 mark. But the following day I very rapidly racked up 99,999 steps, leaving me a tad suspicious that it wasn't very accurate. And there endeth that experiment. I like gadgets and figures and charts, but I can't cope with inaccuracy at all! If anyone wants a pedometer, let me know, there's one going dusty in my drawer.

What I need is a New Year, and some New Years Resolutions. I'm going to have a careful think about what they may be, and I will post them here when I've refined them. I'm happy to say that I pretty much achieved all I wanted to this year. OK I never made it to 15st by Christmas, but that hardly matters, I lost 5 1/2st over the course of the year, I did the Race for Life in June and already have my name down for the 2009 race, and I went rollerskating! I'm happy to see the year drawing to a close with that lot under my belt.

'Tis the Season to be....?

2008-12-06T15:50:00.004Z

I'm so 100% on track this week that I feel quite excited about getting weighed! I actually feel slimmer and lighter too. Now I'm getting my hopes up, god forbid they are dashed on Monday! I swear if I don't lose this week, I'm defecting to Weight Watchers! (Only joking Heather ;) )

What I really really want to do soon is some more progress pics, and maybe even a "measure in"! I know I look different, and I want to share, those of you who are sticking with me while I get nowhere deserve to see something encouraging I reckon. My usual rule is progress pics every 2 stone, so I'm around half a stone off doing them. I don't know, what do you think? Should I do some if I lose weight this week? I'm tempted!

Is anyone else kind of dreading Christmas? It's all about food! No matter how much you don't want it to be, unless you lock yourself in a darkened room for a fortnight (minimum!) then it's all about damn food! And not in a good way! I know nobody forces me to eat, I know I can just say no. But that is a lot easier said than done at this time of year when there's nuts and chocolate just lying around, when mince pies lurk in cupboards to lure you in, when it's party season and the alcohol and nibbles are there just to get you started! God knows I don't want to weigh more in January than I do right now, but how I'm going to achieve that without going into hiding or getting very depressed I don't know! I'm not planning on buying all the usual trappings in, so I should be safe at home. But even work will be full of temptation! Does anyone have any foolproof strategies to get through this season? Tell me quick! There's less than a week to go till my first test!

And Again.

2008-12-02T09:49:00.002Z

Week 47

Weight: 17st 5lb
Gain This Week: 1.5lb
Total lost: 76.5lb

I'm so frustrated, I could gnaw my own arm off ;-)

Actually I'm OK about this one, it's almost certainly attributable to the fact that I ate a late lunch while out with friends, before weigh in. If all things were equal (I would normally have just got out of bed after working a night shift and would be getting weighed on an empty stomach) I imagine it would have been a maintain, or close to it.

However I really really really do mean business this week! I have absolutely nothing standing in my way, possibly for the last time between now and Christmas. So I'm giving it 100%. I'm going to do a food diary which I haven't done for ages. That should keep me focused. And I already have my Quorn Curry on the go - smells wonderful!

Yesterday I was on a girlie shopping day - I needed something to wear for our work Christmas party, so we went to Stoke and I shopped at Matalan for the first time in my life. I was so impressed! I got a gorgeous gorgeous dress which is nothing to do with the party, but just because I love it, a lovely bright coloured top, a black velvety skirt, earrings, necklace, rings, xmas cards and presents, all for £70. I definitely need to shop there again!

Now the next burning question is can I get away with coloured tights in order to be "on trend" or should I just keep my legs encased in black and play it safe? Hmmmmm. Decisions decisions!

Mirror Mirror On The Wall...

2008-11-29T17:49:00.003Z

I've always hated mirrors, at least those mirrors that pop up in front of you when you are least expecting it. I have always needed time to prepare my face into a pleasing expression, to turn my body to it's most advantageous angle, to suck in my belly, lift my shoulders, and make sure that my cute dimple is present to distract the eye from any less pleasing aspects.

Come on, tell me you all do it!

Anyway, while Christmas shopping on Friday, I stepped into a lift which had a full length mirror lining the entire back wall. Who came up with that idea! But an amazing thing happened. As quickly as I cast my eyes away from the view, I found myself drawn back for a second more detailed look. I realised that I hadn't hated what I saw. Closer inspection revealed that actually I was looking astonishingly good! I shouldn't have been looking good - I had just finished a night shift and was frankly rather tired. I had no make up on and my hair was scraped back in a ponytail, with several strands making a bid for freedom. But my skin looked clear, my cheekbones were visible, my Asda coat was fitting and flattering me beautifully and dammit, I liked what I saw!

It is of course possible that I was so tired that total delirium had set in and I was hallucinating. But at least I got happiness instead of spiders and snakes!

Neither Rhyme Nor Reason.

2008-11-24T21:49:00.002Z

Week 46

Weight: 17st 3.5lb
Loss This Week: 3.5lb
Total lost: 78lb

I have absolutely no explanation for this result so let's not talk about it!

Instead, let's talk about Strictly Come Dancing and X Factor - much more fun! I adore Strictly. How I would love to be able to dance. Like John Sergeant at a minimum ;) but more ideally I would like to dance with the gorgeous hunk of manhood that is Austin Healey. I want to do the Quickstep with him - that would burn a few calories hey!

Who do you think will win? I think it will be Tom & Camilla and Rachel & Vincent in the final, and Tom will win. Rachel has peaked too early, and Tom just keeps getting better and better.

As for X Factor, my God, who is voting for Diana ?? That girl murdered my favourite ever Take That song on Saturday, murdered it until it was stone dead! There's quirky, and then there's just plain bad, and I know which side of the line Diana has fallen.

Poor wee Eoghan couldn't reach the high notes, so they wheeled out the extended Von Trapp family to do it for him, and his mentor the mighty Simon Cowell as good as admitted it when he said "Just doing what I have to do, protecting my act!" with his smug smirk.

Ruth to win! That woman can rock it!

Goals

2008-11-21T12:17:00.002Z

Thanks everyone for your supportive comments - every one appreciated!

I've struggled so far this week. I felt so demoralised, that I was falling at every hurdle because I struggled to see any reason not to. So when I've gained this week, I shall of course deserve it!

I don't want this to become a weight gain blog, so I need to pull myself together right now! So I need to look at my goals and work out how I can motivate myself again. Weight related goals aren't going well, not at all. Food related goals haven't worked for me so far this week because it's almost as though thinking about food so much has been counterproductive. How bizarre that this time last week I was cruising along finding it all so easy!

So that leaves exercise goals. I need to up the ante and get moving more. But I really need it to be a goal I can achieve, failure is not an option! So I've invested in a pedometer to try to increase my steps in a very tangible way. Today I'm trying to have a normal day so I can see my baseline. So far today I have walked 4049 steps, and that's just the school run and dog walk really. The school run alone was 1000 steps. The dog walk was a nice long one because the weather was nice and I had nowhere else to be. I don't go so far every time, but it all adds up. I'm guessing today will come out at about 7000 steps. Once I have a baseline I can look at realistic achievable goals. Achieving them should give me the boost I so desperately need! I wonder if skating will register as steps? I expect so! If so, that will make tomorrow's step count most excellent!

Don't give up on me yet, I'm still in the game!

The Tyranny Of The Scales

2008-11-18T17:30:00.003Z

Scales, an inanimate electrical or mechanical device, have the ability to elevate my mood to positively glowing, or dash it to smithereens on the rocks of despair!

I wish I could ignore the scales, walk away from them never to return. But the scales are the auditor of my self discipline, the gains are the taxes levied on slips, indiscretions, or sometimes for no good reason at all. If I didn't face the scales every week, I would never have enough discipline to keep this weight thing moving down.

So since I know I can't walk away from the scales, I need to find a way to stop them from hurting me. How have I arrived at a position where I am brought to tears by the wrong number flashing up on the screen? They have me in their tyrannical grip and I am their unwilling slave. If I'm really good 100% of the time, they are supposed to be a benevolent master.

I can only conclude the Heather's scales are moody and mean, and like to torment me. I'll show them! I'm going to make those numbers fall, and I'm going to break free of their shackles! Ha!

(don't send for the men in white coats, I composed the entry in a sleep deprived haze and I kind of liked the metaphors!)

Gutted.

2008-11-17T20:34:00.003Z

Week 45

Weight: 17st 7lb
Gain This Week: 1lb
Total lost: 74.5lb

This gain has come as a real blow and I'm too gutted to find anything positive to say about it.

I know it's only 1lb, but if I lose 1lb I get to say "a loss is a loss!" so I'm forced to admit that a gain is a gain!

I'd had such a good week too. I'd enjoyed my week, I'd stayed on track and enjoyed the food I cooked. I was feeling smug for gods sake, smug that I had sailed so easily through the week. In fact this entry was meant to be me musing about why some weeks it's so very easy to stay on track, and some weeks it's so very very hard.

*shakes head and sighs deeply*

Onwards and upwards and all that!

Recipe Corner

2008-11-14T09:49:00.003Z

I have simply got to share this recipe with you, it's gorgeous!

Sweet and Sour Chicken

6 skinless chicken breasts
6 spring onions finely sliced
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons light soy sauce
Frylight
1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
2 tablespoons artificial sweetener
2 tabespoons raspberry vinegar
1 teaspoon paprika
1/2teaspoon Chinese 5 spice powder
100mls passata

1] Slice the chicken very thinly, place in shallow dish. Sprinkle over the spring onions and garlic. Season well and pour on the light soy sauce. Toss to mix well, cover and marinate in fridge for 30 mins.

2] Spray wok or frying pan with Frylight, when hot addthe chicken mixture and cook over a high heat. Stir and cook for 5-6 mins, and then add all the other ingredients. Stir to mix and well, and bring to the boil.

3] Reduce heat and cook gently for 3-4 mins, or until chicken is cooked well through. Check seasoning and serve immediately.

It's very very easy and just to die for! I actually use just 113g of chicken per person, and bulk it out with veg suitable for stirfrying, so peppers, mangetout, mushrooms, whatever is in the fridge. That way I can eat it with plenty of rice and it's just 1 healthy extra b choice on green. (Or free on red if done as per recipe and not served with rice!)

Also watch the seasoning - don't forget the soy sauce is quite salty so don't go mad with the salt (I made this mistake first time!)

I tried it with Quorn, but it didn't work so well for me. But it is endlessly adjustable to suit your own needs and tastes I think.

Oops nearly forget to say the recipe is taken from Slimming Worlds 100 Comfort Foods recipe book.

Try it and let me know what you think, and any variations you make too because I'm all for variations!

Porridge, Soup & Diving Suits

2008-11-10T13:45:00.005Z

Week 44

Weight: 17st 6lb
Loss This Week: 2lb
Total lost: 75.5lb

My feeling this week is overwhelming relief. Although I knew I had been on plan all week, and had no reason to have gained weight, my useless godforsaken home scales have been creeping up and up all week. I can no longer explain why I keep standing on the stupid lying machine, other than the fact that I am obsessed, and, well, stupid!

Brrrrrr I'm so cold, winter is definitely well and truly set in I fear. I've just read Jeanette's latest blog entry, she's just back from a Quaker Oats weekend and I'm hankering for some nice warming porridge now (remember the Ready Brek ads with the warming glow??). I'll add it to my shopping list and concede that I am an ad-man's dream.

Is it easier or harder to lose weight when it's cold? This was touched on at SW a few weeks ago, when we had a stand in consultant. Looking at my stats, I'd have to say I tend to do better in the winter months. I think this is because I am more motivated to cook delicious warming meals when it's cold outside, but it's possible that there is something psychological at work too...I'm just not sure what! The type of food I love - curries, casseroles, soups, lend themselves best to the colder months and probably it is no more complex than that.

This tiny bit of self analysis is only possible because I have been on this campaign across all 4 seasons now, for the first time ever. This unprecedented longevity, with all it's ups and downs, encourages me to believe that it might just be possible for me to go the distance this time. If I keep getting back up every time I fall, then I will make it to the finish line, even if everyone else has packed up and gone home by the time I get there. I'm like the man who walks the marathon dressed entirely in an antique diving suit. Except far far less heroic.

The Shape Of A Woman

2008-11-05T10:51:00.006Z

Week 43

Weight: 17st 8lb
This Week: Maintain
Total lost: 73.5lb

I did a unique thing this week - I stayed the same! That never happens ever! I'm almost pleased with that just for the novelty factor. And frankly I didn't do anything to help the cause for getting a loss on Halloween, so no angst from me for this one!

No blog entry today would be complete without saying a mighty Congratulations to Barack Obama. What wonderful news to wake up to this morning. A historical landmark, and a very emotional result. Well done.

Apologies for the late entry - I worked Sunday and Monday night, and was way too tired to blog yesterday, having got no sleep because I had to run around trying to get solutions to the problem of fireworks and a terrified dog. I'm not against fireworks, I love a good organised display. On November 5th. I hate hate hate the incessant banging that has been going on for the last week, and which I don't expect to really stop until January. If it were up to me, fireworks would not be legal for anything other than organised public displays by people holding a special expensive licence.

Rant over. For now.

Today I am thinking about the shape of women. Without the influence of TV, Heat magazine and Photoshop telling us what shape we should be, what would we all be happy to look like? I was watching Last Man Standing and couldn't help but notice that all the Wauja women where overweight by any western standards. But these women are hardworking tribal women. They eat the food that they and their menfolk can catch, they don't have fast food restaurants and takeaways. They can't even nip to Sainsbury's for a handy prepacked salad. They look happy, healthy and fully loved up - they even complained on the show that the foreigners (the contestants) were taking too much of their mens' time up, causing them to have less sex! These are strong confident women, and not a breast implant in sight!

I'm not for one moment suggesting that I'd swap my life for theirs. But how I'd love their body confidence, belly overhang, swinging breasts and all. I wonder how many western women would share that confidence, no matter how toned, slim, tanned, waxed and enhanced they may be? We are bombarded by photoshopped images of women, never the real deal. Breasts are always perfectly pert, bellies are always flat. Skin is airbrushed to plastic perfection, and of course the body is posed and positioned to create an artists impression of beauty. Meanwhile in the pages of Heat et al our celeb women are ripped to pieces for being too thin, or a few extra pounds later, too fat. No wonder they develop issues!

I revelled in seeing those Wauja women last night. I will continue my journey to conform to the acceptable standards of our society, while feeling quietly chuffed to bits that there are communities out there that would love me just as I am!

Blood Soup and Worm Cake

2008-10-31T10:57:00.005Z

Happy Halloween!

I'm just back from my kitchen, having rustled up Blood Soup and Worm Cake for tonight's Halloween party. Blood soup is really carrot, beetroot and leek soup from this month's SW magazine - I'll have to get back to you on how it tastes because it's still cooking. Worm cake is of course cake with worms! And green vanilla flavoured icing, and jelly pumpkins and ghosts.

One of those dishes is a healthy choice.

I'm happy to be fully back on plan so far this week. I am of course partying tonight, and there will be many more dishes than just my blood and worms. I chose to do the soup so that I have some kind of control over what I can eat but I'm not going to be sitting po faced and pious at a party where everyone else will be eating doughnuts suspended from the ceiling with their hands tied behind their backs (it's the doughnuts that will be suspended - there will be children present ;) ) I will try to maintain a semblance of control though.

This week I've shaken it up a bit and done a couple of "Red" days. I never do red days because I crave carbs too strongly, but I really wanted to try something different, I think it helps to keep focussed! I said in a previous entry that I thought my dieting mojo was lurking within the pages of a recipe book, and I do still think that's true. I definitely stay on track better when I have new recipes to try, and 100% better if I have some healthy food already prepared and ready for when the munchies hit!

So on Wednesday I made a Beef Goulash, also from this month's SW magazine, and very nice it was too. Expensive to make though, compared to veggie food! But to be fair, it made 4 very hearty portions, and it was much, much tastier on day 2! So in future I will make it a day ahead of time to give the flavour chance to develop.

I'm off to check out the Blood Soup now - exciting!

Dieter In Weight Gain Shock!

2008-10-27T20:16:00.002Z

Week 42

Weight: 17st 8lb
Gain this week: 4.5lb
Total lost: 73.5lb

Well not a shock, but I'm still very cross with myself. I've set myself back weeks! It's so much harder to lose than to gain,if I totally starved myself I'd be unlikely to lose 4.5lbs! I felt so embarrassed to have done that as well - everyone else in class had really good losses this week and then there's me with all that weight piled back on! F for effort this week for me!

Oh well, line drawn, clean page opened, etc!

I'm tired and cold and I've got to go to work in a few minutes so I'm running away from my failure leaving you with a very short blog entry!

I Can Resist Anything....

2008-10-25T16:05:00.004+01:00

...Except temptation!

I'm facing a gain this week I'm afraid. I need it to be Monday night ASAP so I can get onto my clean sheet. Yes I know it is in my power to make a clean sheet right here and now, but I seem to be having a problem with that. I was stood in the kitchen earlier wrestling with myself over a prawn cocktail that was in the fridge. I had a very convincing argument for not eating it. I firmly and wholeheartedly believed that I didn't want or need a prawn cocktail, and that what I really wanted and needed was to lose weight. I felt very serene and in control. Then I grabbed a teaspoon and headed for the fridge. The prawn cocktail is no more *sigh*

So what has brought about this downfall? Well it began with a bit of a binge on Monday night to be horribly honest. For a start I couldn't stay to my SW class, and time after time I prove to myself that I do much better if I do actually stay to class, although I have no clear idea why. Anyway, I decided to have a little tipple, and that led to the munchies and a total loss of anything approaching control. Then on Tuesday I was in Manchester on the first of 2 days of tests, following my recent course. The morning was hellishly hard, and I thought I was doing really really badly by lunchtime (The first test paper was 15 questions, which we had 45 minutes to answer. People started handing their papers in while I was on question 3! I glanced at my watch in horror and 30 minutes had already passed :( I finished, but in a terrible rush). Lunch was lush, so I comfort ate. I discovered in the afternoon session that I hadn't done really badly at all, in fact I did fine. But the damage was done by then.

Wednesday I tried to regain control but wasn't 100% successful to be honest. Thursday I was fine, praise be! But Friday was Rebecca's 7th birthday and involved taking her and a friend to Pizza Hut and then to see High School Musical 3. I had 2 1/2 slices of pizza and some salad, and then some maltesers in the cinema, and then some birthday cake, oh, and then we had prawn baguettes for tea. But I'm not going to beat myself up about enjoying a special day, that isn't what this is about. If only that was all I had done wrong! So bring on Monday when I know the battle will be over and I will be a few pounds heavier than last week, and I can work on losing them again. No matter what I tell myself between now and then, I know I'm going to be fighting a tough battle to stay on track until I stand on the scales.

And now an appeal. If you are anywhere near the New Forest, please please could you keep an eye out for Meg, a lost greyhound? She has been gone 24 hours now and everyone is worried about her :( (not my dog btw, but from the same rescue)

"I Love Your Blog" Award!

2008-10-22T08:39:00.005+01:00

A big Thank You to Kate at School Gate Chic for this lovely award! My first award ever, I'm chuffed to pieces :-)

Now I have to award it to 7 other people and the rules are as follows:
1. The nominated is allowed to put the picture on their blogs.
2. Link to the person who awarded you.
3. Nominate seven other people and link to them.
4. Leave a message on those people's blog to make them aware that they're nominated.

I choose:

1: Kath at There's a Me Hidden Somewhere
2: Brhyer at Bryher's Blog
3: Spence at Siren Voices
4: Loth at The Gym Isn't Working
5: Shauna at The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl!
6: Sharon at Sharon's Blog
7: Jeanette at Pasta Queen

So many blogs, so hard to choose only 7!

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

2008-10-20T17:46:00.003+01:00

Week 41

Weight: 17st 3.5lb
Loss this week: 1.5lb
Total lost: 78lb

Yaaay I got a shiny! And that's 4 consecutive weeks with a loss now, I am truly on a roll!

Guess what I did on Saturday night? Go on, have a guess and then I'll tell you!

OK, I only went rollerskating!

Since last November I have sat on a bench, or often the floor, at the side of a hall in the leisure centre every Saturday night watching Rebecca skating. That whole time I have longed to join in. I even went as far as getting some skates for myself from Freecycle, but I could never do it. First of all the skates didn't fit because my ankles were too fat, and second of all I'm a great big cowardy custard! To be fair the last time I skated was when I was 9 years old, and I broke my arm that time so my fear isn't entirely unfounded. But still.

But on Saturday I was riding the crest of a joyful wave, after my Cinderella experience, and I vowed that this would be the day that I would skate. Rebecca argued very strongly against it, and I had to promise that no one would ever know she was with me before she caved in with a resigned sigh and agreed that it would be OK if I gave it a try.

I'd given my skates away by now so I had to hire skates from the skater dudes. I elected for the kind with a wheel at each corner rather than inline skates because I really wanted to minimise the "making a total arse of myself and breaking my collar bone" opportunities. Rebecca kindly reminded me that she was advised to learn on inline skates because the wheels are slower. Damn, that left me open to the terrifying prospect of flying into orbit with no way of stopping until I hit a wall. Or a small child. Or, as nearly happened, a show-off skater dude who got right in front of me then proceeded to do a series of jumps and spins. Nice and impressive and all, but I would have killed him if I'd hit him at speed!

So when I first wobbled to my feet, my legs were like jelly with fear. But I have watched kids learning for nearly a year so I know what you have to do! I put into action the lessons I have been absorbing and teetered round the hall, grabbing the wall and praying no one got in my way.

An hour and a half later my legs were like jelly from the sheer physical exertion of skating for all that time. I was loving it! I had my balance, I was skating relatively confidently, I had released the wall to those in greater need, I'd had only a small handful of collisions, none of them fatal, and I think I had somehow annoyed my daughter because she had been sitting down and demanding to be taken home for about half an hour. Sorry baby, no dice. I sat on that bench for 11 months. Now I'm off it I'm staying on the skates!

A Cinderella Moment.

2008-10-18T16:17:00.003+01:00

I was just sat here browsing online clothes shops, and bemoaning the fact that I can't buy skirts and dresses for winter because I can't get boots to fit my fat legs. And I love dresses with opaque tights and long boots.

Then I had a little lightbulb moment. If I'm a size 18/20, it's inconceivable that I have the fattest legs in the kingdom anymore, surely. And Evans makes boots for the chunkier of calf. They used to be too small, but now?

And then lightbulb moment number 2. Somewhere in my cupboard lurks an old pair of black high heeled knee length boots, from my younger slimmer days. So I found them. And tried them on, more in hope than expectation. It was almost a Cinderella moment. I slipped in my foot. It went easily. I grasped the top of the boot and tugged on the zip. Up it went,up and up! And they were on, and fastened, and enough room in the boot for an extra arm!!

I can get BOOTS!

(I swore a tiny bit but didn't think it added anything to the story so left it out!)

Utterly Gratuitous Post!

2008-10-17T16:50:00.002+01:00

Indulge me if you please! I just thought I'd share some photos of my beautiful greyhounds (plus a couple of my gappy toothed daughter!)

Click on the thumbnail to view :-)

Greyhound Montage

I Love Chickpeas, I Do!

2008-10-13T19:57:00.003+01:00

Week 40

Weight: 17st 5lb
Loss this week: 1.5lb
Total lost: 76.5lb

Hurray for another loss. I think that's 3 consecutive weeks with a loss now, which is my best run since July. There's no way I can break a good run like that by failing to lose this week, plus I still need that flipping 5 1/2st sticker that I really really thought I'd got in the bag this week. Damn my hopelessly inaccurate home scales!

Right so how am I going to make sure I get that loss this week? I think carry on doing what I've been doing is the best answer - it ain't broke, nothing to fix here! I like the whole "try a new recipe every week" idea, and it certainly paid dividends for me a couple of weeks ago. I did it over this last week too (sweet potato curry), so to stick to the theme on I'm the lookout for a good new recipe. Something that uses that butternut squash that's in my fridge would be good.

I've been browsing cookbooks in Waterstones - so many books, so little time! The trouble with most of them though is that a hefty proportion of each book contains recipes that I just wouldn't be able to modify to fit into the SW plan. Probably because I choose to do the green plan, ruling out so many tasty meat dishes, not to mention the puddings! I've got a nice veggie cookbook here - Vegetarian Express by Rose Elliot. There's loads of quick and tasty dishes in there. I'm thinking Fusilli with tomato sauce and chickpeas has got promise. I'm loving chickpeas at the moment.

If you'd have told me 12 months ago that I would type the phrase "I'm loving chickpeas..." I'd have laughed and told you that could never happen. Funny how tastes change!

When the Inner Voice is Wrong...

2008-10-11T14:29:00.004+01:00

Last winter I was without a warm winter coat. I found one I liked, warm, comfortable and a good fit in a size 28. But I didn't want to spend £80 on a coat that I said would only do me for one season, since I had no intention of being a size 28 for very much longer. So I put it back on the rail, didn't buy it and made do with what I had. But my little inner voice was saying "yeah yeah, heard it all before. Next winter you'll be back here looking at the size 28s again."

So I just want to tell my inner voice that it was oh so very wrong. In fact I have just purchased a winter coat for this season. But I didn't want to spend a fortune because I don't plan on staying this size for very much longer either. So I've just splashed out an amazing £15 on Asda's Little Black Coat. In a size 20. What a bargain! And this year my little inner voice knows it's place!

Funny how 1lb, or even 2 or 3lbs, doesn't sound like very much. Some weeks I've even felt a but fed up when I've "only lost 1lb". But just look how it adds up! I'm thinking in January I will be about half way to my ultimate target. Not that I've set a target yet, but I'm starting to feel vaguely halfway there. And it feels good.

The post with no name.

2008-10-06T16:07:00.003+01:00

Week 39

Weight: 17st 6.5lb
Loss this week: 3.5lb & Joint Slimmer of the Week!
Total lost: 75lb

This has been a really top week for me. I've been really fired up and enthusiastic. I've enjoyed some great food, and I've felt at the top of my game where healthy eating is concerned. My Syn intake has been through the floor, and I've never felt hungry or craved anything other than seconds of healthy foods.

That all by itself is kind of interesting actually because this morning my period crept up on me, and usually I would know it was coming, in spades! Normally I get cravings and insatiable hunger pre-menstrually, as well as being a bit of a moody cow (no, really!) So is it possible that the kind of food I've eaten heartily this week has actually had benefits beyond weight loss? Pulses, grains, vegetables, spices mainly. It may be worth me noting a lack of pasta in my diet this week, where normally I eat quite a lot. Hmmmmmmm. I've always known that I have a bit of a problem with bread and wheat based cereals (you know the one I mean!) in that they cause me to get heartburn and feel very bloated. Pasta doesn't have that effect on me, but maybe it is something I should keep an eye on, for future reference.

I already have a raft of wonderful meals planned for this week, and my fridge is chock full of beautiful fresh fruit and veggies. So I am aiming high and looking to get a shiny sticker next week :-)

Recipe Post.

2008-10-05T13:15:00.008+01:00

As promised, for Kath and Shauna.

Both recipes are taken from Slimming World publications and modified in some small way by me. Hoping I don't get in copyright trouble for posting them here! If I disappear, will anyone visit me in prison? ;)

Carrot & Lentil Soup

About 10 medium carrots peeled and chopped
1 large onion, chopped
1 clove of garlic, chopped
1 tsp ground coriander
85g red lentils
85g pearl barley
2 pints of stock (I use chicken bovril)
salt & pepper to season

Place all the ingredients in a saucepan, bring to the boil, simmer for about 90 mins, checking regularly and adding water if necessary (Tip: Don't walk the dogs while you do this!)

Blend, season, enjoy.

I likes my recipes simple, I do!

Quorn Curry

1 onion
1" piece fresh root ginger
2 garlic cloves
Small handful fresh coriander
2 Green chillis
Bag of Chicken Style Quorn Pieces
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
Fry Light
1 tsp each ground cumin and coriander
1/2 tsp crushed cardamom seeds
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp each ground cinnamon and paprika
1 tbsp mild or medium curry powder
1/4 tsp turmuric
400g can chopped tomatoes
1/2 pint stock (chicken Bovril, natch!)

1] Prepare the ingredients: finely chop the onion, grate the ginger, crush the garlic, chop the coriander, deseed and slice the chillis. (The recipe says season the chicken but I'm not sure applies to chunks of frozen Quorn....)

2] Fry the onion in Fry Light for 5-6 minutes. Stir in the ginger, garlic, cumin, ground coriander, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, paprika, curry powder and turmeric, and cook for 1-2 minutes.

3] Add the Quorn and cook for a few mins. Then add the tomatoes and stock, bring to the boil, cover, reduce heat and simmer for 45 mins, stirring occasionally.

4] Remove from heat, season to taste, and serve garnished with freshly chopped coriander and sliced green chillies.

Bon Appetit!

Rolling Rolling Rolling!

2008-10-02T17:31:00.002+01:00

There's a bandwagon in town and I've jumped right on!

Cooking. I'd forgotten I'd learned to love this thing! OK it's early days and by tomorrow I might be saying "toast for tea!" but right now I'm fired up and cooking!

I haven't made the 3 bean chilli yet because I got distracted by the Curry booklet that came with the SW magazine. So yesterday I went to Sainsbury's and loaded my trolley with every conceivable spice, went home and made Quorn curry. OK the recipe was for chicken curry but since I don't do red days and need a load of carbs before I feel like I've eaten it had to be Quorn. I was nervous. Very nervous. I wasn't at all sure how this wild combination of spices could end well. In fact I wondered if it might be better eaten at the end of a night out with a pint of lager! But you know what? It was bloody gorgeous! If I had any Quorn in I would have made it again tonight! I have never made any kind of curry from scratch before because long lists of ingredients scare me quite a lot! But this long list was just all the spices.

As I type there is a pan of carrot and lentil soup simmering on the stove. There's a bit of improvisation in this recipe since I didn't have all the ingredients, but I can't see why it wouldn't work out just fine.

Did anyone watch Jamie Oliver's new programme - Ministry of Food? I wish someone like him had come to Cheshire and taught me this stuff years ago. It's pretty shocking seeing how badly people eat, and feed their kids. It made me stop and wonder why I didn't really have great cooking skills, since my mum was actually a pretty fine cook in her day. The reason is this: she used to make it seem horribly hard work. She'd be hot, bothered, stressed. She'd be in the kitchen for hours, and dishes I now know are pretty simple would seem to require a bewildering array of pots and pans and complicated processes (she used to leave the shepherds pie outside for some reason!) Certainly she never wanted her kids under her feet trying to learn how to cook. So I grew up with the idea that being in a kitchen was a form of hell. Therefore I consider it my duty to make my daughter think cooking is fun, and to this end she has just peeled and chopped all the carrots for the soup, and she helped me with all the spices for the curry.

Yes, that's it, I'm facilitating her learning. Not using her as slave labour at all ;)

The Fame Game

2008-09-30T10:18:00.002+01:00

Week 38

Weight: 17st 10lb
Loss this week: 1lb
Total lost: 71.5lb

Humph! That felt like a lot of work for 1 pound off! I suppose not everything shows on the scales immediately though, so I maybe had really gained more than 1lb last week so have in reality lost more than 1 this week. Or something like that!

It's on the way down and that is of course the main thing. But I'm going to have to work extra hard this week now to be on track for my 10% off by Christmas!

The challenge this week is to try something new foodwise, so I am searching for a recipe that is cheap, simple and appealing. I have found one in this month's Slimming World magazine for 3 Bean Chilli. I already have most of the ingredients for that one in the cupboard so I may well try that tonight. I will report back on how it goes!

I forgot to mention last week, we had a press photographer at class who took a group photo of us...I would have been happier with a bit of lippy on but hey, maybe this is a lesson to me to be well groomed at all times, just in case! I don't know whether the picture appeared in last week's local paper because I forgot to buy it! I'd make a rubbish celeb!

A Recipe for Success

2008-09-27T13:51:00.003+01:00

This week is going along nicely. I've eaten healthily, lots of good walks leaving me the required "slightly out of breath" and I think I maybe may have lost a teeny bit of weight. The scales in my bedroom long ago ceased to be a reliable indicator though, so it's a case of fingers crossed!

Yesterday I dug out one of the recipe books I used loads way back at the beginning - I think my mojo is lurking within the well used pages of that book. Along with various food stains. That is the mark of a good recipe book though. A pristine recipe book is clearly not doing it's job!

I have decided to give you the recipe for the divine soup I ate yesterday. In the end it was nearly all I ate, it was so filling!

Sweetcorn and Coriander Soup

Ingredients

Fry Light
1 medium onion, chopped
1 clove of garlic, chopped
handful of fresh coriander or 2-3tsp dried coriander (I like a good handful of fresh, adjust to your own taste though!)
Large can of sweetcorn (I like the creamed variety best in this recipe)
3/4 pint of stock made with chicken Bovril or Vecon
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Fresh coriander to garnish

Method

1] Spray a non stick saucepan with Fry Light and gently cook the onion and garlic for 5 mins until soft. Stir in the coriander and sweetcorn and continue cooking for 2-3 mins. Add the stock and simmer for 10 mins.

2] Transfer the soup into a blender (in small batches is safest!) and puree. Return to the pan and simmer for a few more minutes.

3]Season, serve and garnish.

How quick is that! The recipe in the book actually has pasta added but I tried that and thought it ruined a very nice dish. I like coriander a lot, but you can make it as mild or as strong a flavour as you like. For those of us on SW, it's free on green.

A New Dawn

2008-09-23T10:37:00.003+01:00

Week 37

Weight: 17st 11lb
Gain this week: 1lb
Total lost: 70.5lb

I never know quite what to say here when I've had a gain. I don't want to appear to be making excuses for my slip up, nor do I want to slip into negativity about the whole thing. Sometimes I may transiently feel negative but I'd prefer that not to be the overriding impression left on my blog!

So I will merely say here that I am really very much OK with a 1lb again,bearing in mind I haven't been to class for a fortnight, which just inevitably leads to a loss of discipline, and I know there have been enough times where I went off track for me to have fully earned a gain!

So no angst here, nothing to see, move along please!

I have decided that I'm going to have to shake things up a bit in order to keep this lifestyle going. Of late I have definitely slipped into a bit of a rut with regards to what I eat. Naturally that is going to get dull and dreary. There are a million wonderful healthy recipes out there, the shops are groaning under the weight of delicious ingredients. What I need to do is rediscover the excitement that I felt 6, 8 months ago and get experimenting! And revisit some of the recipes I adored when I was last feeling experimental too.

Last night at SW, Heather asked us all to set a mini goal for 3 months time, which takes us to Christmas. I'm not seeing my 15st by Christmas goal as achievable anymore, and that's OK, I'm not about to beat myself up over that when I have lost 5st so far! So I decided to make my goal to lose 10% of my body weight, which roughly equates to around 25lbs. When you start at SW, one of the early targets is to lose 10% of your weight as that has been shown to reduce the risk of heart disease, diabetes and obesity related cancers. Club 10 was a brilliant award, I remember feeling really really excited about achieving that. So this now feels like a fresh start. Yesterday was the Autumn equinox so I have a brand new season, a new goal and a refreshed attitude.

You officially have my permission to kick my arse if I mess this up!

Testing, testing...

2008-09-18T12:55:00.003+01:00

Apologies for the absence of words this week - I've been on a course in Manchester all week - long long days of filling my head with clever stuff, in the presence of people far cleverer than me. I now have 4 weeks in which to really really learn all the clever stuff before the first of 2 testing days. I wish I could show you the amount of information I have to learn. I'm quite overwhelmed!

Because of the course I wasn't able to get to weigh-in this week, so no update available on that score.

The venue of the course was most pleasing, and they provided an excellent range of food and refreshments. I was really really happy with the vegetarian choices, but I couldn't really have them because they weren't diet choices! The 2 things, sadly, are not synonymous. On day one there was a wild mushroom risotto, which I did eat, followed by cheese and fruit (or a fabulous looking chocolate gateaux which I resisted!) Day 2 was a Quorn moussaka which I thought looked wonderful. But I didn't eat it, I went to the salad bar instead. I followed with cheese and fruit again, resisting the fruit pie and custard option. Day 3 I wasn't so virtuous, I chose the lamb with olives and chorizzo because I can never afford to buy lamb and it's my most favourite meat in the whole wide world. And then I followed it with lemon meringue pie because of course the faulty wiring in my head inevitably leads me to say "I may as well, since I've already blown it....." So the bad news is that even on the days I made the healthiest choices I was not working to The Plan, but the good news is that I'm right back on it now, no question.

I'd best go and get my nose back in my books. My brain my explode with the amount of new information now held within. If that happens, at least I'll have eaten lamb before I died.