Haste Ye Back!

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!

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

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

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

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

In which my brain broke.

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

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

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

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

Give Yourself A Shiny!

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

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

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

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

Judgement Day

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...

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

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!