Weigh in – yeah baby!!!!!

Can you guess what I did?!?!?!  That’s right, I hit my target.  In fact, I went half a pound under.  Go me!!!!!!!!!!

Wow!  I never thought I’d do it.  I mean, I hoped that I would, I wanted to, but every other attempt has derailed after a few pounds so I was expecting to get bored with Slimming World way before I got this far.

I cannot thank enough my consultant, Linzi, and the support of my group.  There were times when things weren’t going well (series of gains/maintains) but staying to group and listening to how others have got through these phases really helped.

And now, I positively crave my fruit and veggies during the day.  Whilst this may not sound impressive to you, I spent the first 43 years of my life refusing point blank to have anything to do with 99.9% of them.  In my life the 5 a day idea translated into 5 a month if you were lucky.  So big changes have happened; big changes that have embedded into my psyche and now feel normal and right.

Have I finished losing weight?  For now, yes.  In the future, who knows?  I have another target in mind but others have told me I look fine as I am.  So I’m going to give it a while and see how I feel in a few months.

Weigh in – Slimmer of the Week

3lbs off and SotW.  1lb to go.

It has been a fun week in a very not funny way.  Hubby’s surgery went according to plan, as is the recovery.  Unfortunately the recovery includes lots of pain and just when you think you’re about done with that it ramps up even more for a few days.  This is where we’re at right now and it’s tough on both of us.  The running up and down stairs has got the Body Magic ticking along nicely.

The stress of seeing your loved one in absolute agony and there’s nothing you can do is hard to take.  So, my appetite is down and I’ve been eating a little ‘off-plan’ – not as much as I would have done last year so the SW way has obviously gotten ingrained.

Roll on next week.

If you’re doing Slimming World …

… I can heartily recommend the Little Book of Lunches.  I’ve been working through some of the recipes this week, making larger portions where necessary for dinner too.

Today I made crustless red onion and courgette quiche.  I’m going to ‘fess up now and say that I have some sensory issues and little slivers of food that stick to you (or feel slimy/damp) really make me want to run away.  As you’ll see if you click the link, this recipe calls for you to grate the raw courgette, then place it in a sieve and press it down to get rid of as much of its moisture as possible.  EEWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I did it though.  Fortunately it turned out delicious.  I might approach the grating a different way next time.

Then for dinner tonight we had the special fried rice and pork.  The senior chef (hubby) got the fun job of dicing the pork while I did the more pleasant task of thinly slicing the spring onions.  Absolutely gorgeous!!!!!

Both of these meals are FREE – no syns (on Extra Easy)!  As my breakfast is als syn-free I am now sitting here typing this and ‘inhaling’ several syns worth of chocolate.  S’a good day.

Weigh in – I’m back

Today’s weigh in saw a 1lb gain over 2 weeks.  I’m actually quite pleased by this as the second week was spent on a cruise ship and, if you’ve ever been on one, you’ll know how more-ish the food is.

On board I realised that I AM capable of judging my appetite AND want versus need.  It wasn’t always easy to stick to the Slimming World plan – salad and grated carrots gets a bit samey after a couple of days, plus the veg choice at dinner wasn’t always something I liked – but, even eating more bread/pastry than I should, I managed to make mostly sensible choices.  My plate was never filled up (unlike previous cruises), plus I still managed to have a large glass of wine most evenings.  Maybe having to push the wheelchair around for at least an hour most days helped.

So, I’ve learnt that I can possibly loosen the reins a little and, as long as I show constraint on portion sizes, it won’t bring about too much weight gain.  And that, my friends, is good for my soul.

(I did go look at the gym on board but that was all I did.  Far too many sporty, fit looking types for my comfort level).

How I’ve changed

I thought I’d give you a before and after of how my eating habits have changed.

Before

Breakfast – 2 slices of toast with butter.

Lunch – 2 slices of bread with butter and ketchup.  Packet of plain crisps.

Dinner – Meat, sauce, chips (most nights), maybe baked beans or mushrooms.  Large glass of wine.

Snacks if required – biscuit, chocolate

The bread was granary.

Now

Breakfast – at least 3 of the following: 2 chipolata sausages, bacon, eggs (baked in the oven or poached), baked beans, mushrooms, toast (my Healthy B choice).  All baked in the oven with no fat.

Lunch – either salad with cooked meat and cheese (Healthy A choice); or pasta, passata, beans of some kind if not had at breakfast, cooked veg, chicken and cheese (A choice); or home-made vegetable soup made from whatever veg I have in, a chicken stock cube, and seasonings.

Dinner – meat, veg, sauce made with either some of the soup from lunch OR passata, jacket potato/rice/potato wedges, spices and seasonings.  Sometimes a small glass of wine.

Snacks if required – 0% fat natural yoghurt or muller-light yoghurts, a handful of grapes (rarely as I’m not a big fruit fan).  The occasional piece of chocolate but not if I’ve had wine.

So, there’s quite a difference in quality and quantity.  I couldn’t believe how much I was supposed to eat on Slimming World’s plan but it works.  It must do, I’ve lost very nearly a stone.  I don’t feel restricted or that anything is banned.

Another big change is when we go out to eat.  I find myself scanning the menu and seeing how synful the meals are.  OK, there are times when I think “stuff it, I really fancy ….”, but I mostly can’t bring myself to eat something that’s too far off the plan.  If I do succumb to temptation there’s a little voice in my head reminding me that I’ll have to be very good tomorrow to make up for it.  Who’d have thought that the guilt-trip would already be so entrenched.

Fingers crossed

I’ll be happy with maintaining my weight tomorrow.  It’s been an interesting week, foodwise.  Plenty of slipping into bad habits.  In my defence an American friend was staying with us so we did a lot of going out, joined by another local friend.

Last Monday I really fancied home made pizza for tea so that is what we had.  Not much in the way of Superfree at all, although I did make veggie soup for lunch.

Tuesday was spent cleaning and tidying the master bedroom and en-suite for friend to use.  I was on the sofa-bed for the duration.  That killed my thigh muscles, making walking up and down stairs fun for a day or two,

Wednesday was spent picking up friend from Heathrow.  So glad he wasn’t arriving on Friday.  Breakfast was good, lunch was nearly good (except for the mayo on my chicken salad – premade service station food), dinner was Indian takeaway so really not very good (chicken tikka massala, rice and poppadom).

Thursday we went to Queen Elizabeth Country Park for a good walk round before the impending arrival of snow.  It was good fun.  I walked up Butser Hill for the first time ever and only needed 3 rest breaks on the way up.  Once up there it started to snow very lightly, as in you had to look hard to see it.  After we got back down we headed for the cafe and I very naughtily had hot chocolate with cream AND marshmallows but balanced it with a jacket potato with cheese and beans.  (Yeah I know, not really that balanced).

Friday it snowed so we didn’t bother going out.  Instead I made a big pan of veggie soup for lunch and cajun beef with rice, tortilla chips and salsa for tea.  Again, hardly Extra Easy style but very tasty.

Saturday American friend and hubby joined local friends in Portsmouth.  I wimped out because there was still enough snow around to need me to dig out my hiking boots.  I haven’t worn them for at least 10 years and decided that this was not the time to start.  I had more soup for lunch.  Then they all arrived back here and we had Dominos Pizza for tea.  I am ashamed to admit that I ate an entire half of a large Meteor.  But, oh boy, was it nice!

So I was somewhat shocked this morning when I jumped on the scales to find that there may well have been a half-pound loss.  Fingers crossed it is that way tomorrow but I definitely don’t deserve it.  Today’s meal plan is VERY much Extra Easy Style.  American friend has caught the train to London so he can do tourist stuff before going to a hotel ready to catch his plane tomorrow morning – today’s snowfall willing.

Sensible Eating makes the Headlines

I see that a member of parliament has written to various magazines asking them to basically cut out promoting “get thin quick” diet schemes; you know, the ones that promise to help you lose 7lbs in a week.  What those of us who have tried some of these quick fixes (or even some slower ones that we didn’t keep to) will tell you is that the quicker it comes off the quicker it will go back on – with interest!

I’d just like to point out now that the ‘you’ used below is a theoretical/general you, and not aimed at anyone in particular. 

The way that the word ‘diet’ is used these days conjures up images of deprivation and hunger, the thoughts of all those goodies you can no longer eat.  It is usually this very thing (no more chocolate/booze/fried stuff) that sabotages good intentions.  Then, once you have caved you berate yourself for being weak-willed and go bananas, stuffing yourself with all the forbidden foods.  Then, feeling a total failure you give up.  Also, ‘diet’ comes across as a temporary thing.  You know, “on a diet”, “off a diet”. The word ‘diet’ refers to your whole eating regime, not just some temporary fad.  Thus, the changes need to be permanent.  Put simply, if what you are currently eating is causing you to carry excess pounds, is it really sensible to expect that same regime to keep you at your new, lower weight – you know, the one you have just put yourself through hell to achieve?  Of course not.  It wasn’t doing you any favours beforehand (otherwise you wouldn’t need to have shed that extra weight in the first place) and now that you have lost those pounds your body needs less calories to operate, so going back to the excesses of ‘before’ is just giving it even more calories to store as fat – hence the weight going back on with interest.  That is why a lot of diets (maybe most) don’t work – people go back to their old habits and wonder why they pile on the pounds again.

Now, I have been doing SW for only a month and I can honestly say that I am rarely hungry (only when it’s nearly a meal time and I’m waiting for it to cook), nor am I deprived of ANY of the above ‘forbidden’.  Nothing is off-limits on SW.  NOTHING!!!!!!!!!  The less nutritional choices (the chocolate/booze/fried/etc) carry a points value (Syns), but you are allowed up to 15 of those Syns per day.  250ml of dry white wine (one third of a bottle of Chablis, for example) is 8 Syns, leaving some wiggle room for a Muller Light flavoured yoghurt or two.  I should point out that I am following the Extra Easy plan, and that Syn values vary according to which plan you choose to follow that day.

So, we all need to take a sensible, well-thought-out, approach to weight-loss, and not fall for these quick fixes that tend to make things worse in the long term.

Thank you for reading.

 

 

Harder than it looks

Today’s bugbear has been to find something Superfree (most fruit and veg) to have with breakfast.  The aim of the game is to have one-third of your plate made up of Superfree foods.  I really do begrudge buying fruit out of season.  Not only is it expensive but it’s also had to travel a long way to get here, meaning it was picked before all the goodness and flavour could develop.  Up until now I’ve been having mushrooms with my bacon and eggs.  But there’s only so many days I can eat the same old, same old before HAVING to have something different.

Next week I plan to buy a melon and cut it up into pieces.  Then that can be my standby Superfree when I can’t think of what else to have.  I MAY also cave in and buy some strawberries too.  Lunchtime is a bit easier.  I’ve been having chicken and cheese salad.  Then a good mound of veg in whatever I’m cooking for dinner.  So, it’s just breakfast where I’m stumped for inspiration.

It’s also hard to make time to exercise.  As I said in yesterday’s post, I am so busy at the moment.  And by 8pm I am ready for bed, exhausted.  After a short read it’s lights out till tomorrow.

Enough of the whinging.  Must maintain a positive attitude or I’ll talk myself out of this malarky before it’s had time to do any good.

The Beginning and a little Back History

When I was a teenager I weighed under 9 stones, even though I could eat ANYTHING and lots of it.  As I got older, and marriage, kids and life in general got in the way, I moved slowly and surely up towards the 14 stones mark.  Several attempts to lose it brought limited success – old habits die very hard!  In the past 18 months I think I’ve lost about 3 stones, unfortunately the same 7lbs over and over again.  I have yet to crack the 13 stones barrier.

Enough is enough!  The weight NEEDS to come off.  I have lost various relatives to cardiovascular issues and I think I’ve played Russian Roulette quite enough.  So I’ve joined Slimming World (other weight-loss clubs/methods are available).  I need to have the oversight as, left to my own devices, I can find any excuse not to “be good” today foodwise.  I’ve warned the SW consultant about this and she is ready to keep me on track.

Today is Day One.  I’m following the EE path and the only difficult thing for me is to choose the Healthy Extras – one dairy and one fibre.  It will get easier.  Otherwise, I have managed to over fill myself on all the free foods.  My Syn of choice is white wine.

A downside is that I’m sitting here nursing a headache.  Given my ‘proficiency’ with the stuff I doubt the 125ml of dry white has caused it, so it’s either because I’ve been busy today OR a sudden shortage of carbs (though rice appeared plentifully at dinner tonight).

(Apologies that the weight-loss ticker is so small.  Call it a work in progress).