I'm so dizzy

The only thing I ate all day were two caramel rice cakes, ready for my weigh in this evening.  As I sat in the car in the pouring rain waiting for the doors of fat club to open, I came over all faint.

I happend to have a packet of smokey bacon crisps sititng next to me - my reward after the weigh in.  I just had to reach over and eat them before I went in.  I was a little embarrassed when the club leader pulled up next to me in her car and witnessed the whole thing.

Anyway, despite the crisps, I lost 2.5lbs this week.  I am happy with that.

We are off on hols tomorrow - I am determined to stay on the straight and narrow.

Slowly

I lost 1lb this week.

PMT and wine and feeling bloated

I was a shouty mum on Monday, and I was horrible to my husband.  I was in a foul mood, all thanks to PMT. 

I have a rule that I am not allowed wine mid-week.  However on Monday I buckled and ended up drinking an entire bottle in bed. 

When I have been drinking, I become dehydrated, and can drink gallons of water the next day but nothing comes out the other end.  You can see what I am building up to can't you?  At my weigh-in on Tuesday, I was expecting to have lost 4lbs (this was according to my scales), but in fact only lost 2lbs, and I am convinced it was from the wine.

So no wine this week!

YIPPEEEEEEE

The first week back at Slimming World and I have lost 5.5lbs!

Trying again

I really am one of those pathetic women that bang on about losing weight, do it for a while, and then the lure of the pizza and wine and chocolate gets too much and I fall off the wagon.

So, I rejoined Slimming World last night and was hopefully shocked into losing weight properly this time - I am 5 pounds heavier than I was when I first joined the last time.

If I carry on at this rate I will be become morbidly obese.

Eating fest

All you thousands of lovely people who read my blog may have noticed that I didn't post last week - that's because I was still away, and I buckled, big time.  Having admirably sought out a Slimming World group near to where we were staying, I went the first week, but as soon as I left the building with the news that I had lost half a pound, I let go - I was on holiday! And what is a holiday without wine, Pringles, Minstrels, and cheese?  So I felt it would be a waste of a fiver to go to the meeting the following week, while still away.

A couple of days into my holiday eating fest, I was at the local Tesco, stocking up on salami and Pringles, and as I stood in the queue to pay I looked at the lady in front of me, more specifically her stomach.  I then looked at my own stomach, and tried to do a comparison.  Did I look like what she looked like? I wondered.  Was I as big as her?  How do others see me?  These were all thoughts going through my head.  I looked at her, and then looked at myself several times before she actually caught me doing it, and gave me an awfully filthy look. I actually thought she was going to whack me over the head, or indeed in the stomach, with her large bottle of coke.  It turned out I am considerably smaller than she is. 

On my back in the car, I tried to place an opened packet of crisps on my lap as I drove.  I was dismayed to realise that there was no room between the steering wheel and my stomach to comfortably place the crisps without them getting crushed.  The last time I was in this predicament was when I was 9 months pregnant.

So anyway, now back at home, I went to my usual SW group last night - a very brave thing to do, considering my two week gluttony - and I had put on three and half pounds.  So this week, I intend to lose four pounds or more, to get myself back on the straight and narrow.

Symmetry

I am away at the moment, but being the truly dedicated dieter that I am (ahem), I tracked down a Slimming World group just down the road from where we are staying, and it just so happens to run on the same day as my group back home - I love the symmetry of this - keeps things nice and neat.

Considering that we are on holiday, I have been pretty good - hardly any wine consumed, and only the odd packet of chocolate buttons here and there. We have been eating out a lot (who wants the chore of cooking on a holiday) but there hasn't been a burger in sight.

So I went to this group yesterday evening, and what a jolly bunch of buxom ladies they were! The leader was so very lovely and commended me for my commitment to the cause.

I am not sure that the effort of going to a fat club whilst on holiday, and only losing half a pound, was worth it, but it's good to be sociable - I sort of viewed it as an excursion, and enjoyed the ten minute respite from my kids.

Aiming high

I lost one pound at Fat Club last night.  Total weight loss since this blog begain is now 9.5 lbs.  I am happy with that.  I am aiming to reach a stone by next week. 

The comfort eater has left the building

I feel like I have had a massive breakthrough in the last month or so - I have ditched food (namely doughnuts, cornish pasties, Dairylea and crisp sandwiches) and wine, as my comfort, when things are stressful.  In my head it always seemed like a fabulous idea to turn to these things in times of need, but recently something has switched in my brain.

There are many things in life that we have absolutely no control over; things happen, sometimes awful things, but it is beyond our powers to stop them.  However, being fat, or not, IS something we can control - if we stop putting the wrong food into our mouths, we won't get fat (unless there are other health issues of course). 

In the last month or so I have been through an intensely stressful time with my best friend (she is not well) and where normally I would have eaten my way through it, I didn't.  My friend's illness was way out of my control so why lose even more control in my life and get even fatter?

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Up a mountain

Some friends came to stay with us last weekend. They suggested we walk up the huge mountain next to our house. 'Yes' I agreed faux-enthusiastically 'let's do it'.

Stupidly I didn't have the foresight to change out of my Birkenstocks - even though everyone around me was milling around finding walking boots/socks and windproof anoraks etc.

So off we set up the mountain. My husband and the other husband headed off up into the distance with our two kids, and their eldest. Soon they were out of sight. I was feeling relieved that I had got off lightly and that I only had to get myself up the mountain. While my friend, carrying her three year old on her hip, effortlessly breezed past me up the near vertical mountain face, I tried to disguise my puffing and panting and sweating and shaky legs by having a sit down to 'admire the view'.

When I was about half way up, my husband bounded back down towards me with both our kids and told me he was going to the top without them, and that it was my turn to have them. I gave him a pleading look of horror in such a way that my friend wouldn't see. Unfortunately he didn't see it either and he was gone.

There was no bloody way I could continue upwards with my chest about to explode and two kids hanging off me. My two year old refused to walk and my four year told me she was a bit scared of falling and insisted on holding my hand. So with my feet sliding around inside my Birkenstocks and my legs like jelly, we slowly made our descent, cursing my husband every step of the way.

We had almost made it to the bottom when my friend glided up to us, having just been to the top and still holding her three year old, saw me struggling and asked me if I wanted her to carry my child as well. All pride and dignity now gone, I handed my daughter over, and breathed.

The moral of this story: I need to do more exercise and wear proper walking shoes when on a mountain. However, this little bit of exertion paid off and I lost 2.5lbs this week. To celebrate I went out for burger and chips and a pint of cider afterwards, BUT I couldn't physically finish the burger - my stomach has shrunk - hoorarr!

Onwards and downwards

I suppose that stealing my kids eggs on a nightly basis was never going to lose me any weight this week - but none went on either - I shall cling to that.   Fortunately I am now sick of the sight of the bloody things (the eggs, not my kids) and although they are still coming out of our ears, I am very definitely back on the rabbit food.

There was a real sense of misery in the fat club room last night, with everyone whispering to each other about how many eggs they had eaten - that flippin Easter Bunny has a lot to answer for.  Why are members of a slimming club so rubbish at dieting?

Glory days

On Tuesdays it seems fairly common practice for members of my fat club group to starve themselves, to give themselves the best possible chance at the weigh-in that evening - that, and wearing their lightest clothes, taking off all jewellery and trying to do a poo moments before they go in.  I have always thought these antics pretty ridiculous - JUST STOP EATING PIE AND CHIPS I want to shout. 

However, as I stepped onto the scales last night I found myself pathetically telling the barrel of a lady weighing me:

'I am wearing much heavier jeans this week, and I didn't do my usual poo this morning, AND I have got my period'. 

The lady, without even looking up at me, muttered: 'You've lost a pound' took my five quid, then beckoned for me to get off the scales, still without looking at me. 

My friend (a fellow fat club member - in fact it is her fault I started this whole thing) and I then went for our obligatory pint of cider and packet of crisps in the pub down the road, not before going via Spar and picking up three Cadbury Button eggs for £3, and then eating them under the table at the pub.

The Creme Egg and Cider diet

Last week started off fairly calmly, and I had been happily chomping my way through small portions of pasta and fat-free tomato sauce for every meal.  But by Friday I found myself in the middle of a serious crisis with one of my best friends - it has been horrendous.  This lead to me either forgetting or not having time to eat. 

I survived solely on Smoky Bacon crisps, Creme eggs, and Easter eggs (I have been raiding the kids hidden supply given by grandparents - needs must) and lots of Bulmers Original, for five days before my weigh-in yesterday.

The large Slimming World Consultant asked how my week had been.  I just shrugged, but almost cried.,  I felt like asking how her week had been and why she felt qualified for this job.  I looked around at the other members, most of which are very skinny elderly ladies, and wondered why on earth they came to this group.

I was weighed and had lost another 3 pounds.  It is amazing what a bit of stress and chocolate does for weight loss.  Now where's that Creme Egg...?

Harder to shift

I stupidly looked at an old scrap book I had lovingly put together, containing photos of a holiday in Tenerife with my first boyfriend.  And if I may say so, I looked pretty damn good: no wine-induced ruddy complexion, no bags under the eyes and not an ounce of fat on me.  But then hey, I was 18 years old, 20 years of aging and two kids does a lot.  The sad thing is though, at the time I genuinely thought I was fat.

After looking at these photos of me frolicking in bikinis, coming down water slides, jumping from rocks and floating on li-los, I felt positively depressed.  At least I was doing something about it I reasoned.

Slimming World say that you can eat as much pasta, rice, noodles and potatoes as you like - so I took them at their word and really went to town on my carb portion sizes this week, but boldly cut right back on my alcohol, chocolate and bread intake.  I felt I had worked hard at it, and was very proud of myself, but did wonder whether all those lovely carbs were too good to be true...  and they were.  I was weighed yesterday and had only lost a mere 2lbs.  My mum tried to cheer me up by saying: 'at least you didn't put on 2lbs - you are going in the right direction'.

She is of course right, I am going in the right direction, but boy do I find it hard to shift the pounds now that I am older.  Five years ago I only had to look at a stick of celery and the weight would come flying off within seconds.

And it doesn't offer that much inspiration when the Slimming World 'Consultant' at my local group, who boasts to having been a member for 9 years, is very very large.

Shocker

My husband saw me sitting here at the computer creating this blog and said: "Why don't you use the time you are spending on that blog, on your exercise bike instead?'

After weeks and weeks of nagging, I finally agreed to go along to 'Slimming World' with my friend last night.  I have rejected the idea of going to a group like this in the past, because I have always felt losing weight isn't rocket science - stop putting food and drink into your mouth and you will lose weight.  Ashamedly, I have been known to be rather scathing  about people who spend £5 just to be weighed and told to stop eating Mars Bars.

Anyway, there I was getting more and more depressed about my weight, and almost went to pieces when a pair of size 16 jeans felt too tight, and my eldest daughter made an innocent comment about the 'size of my tummy', all in the same day.   This is when I decided to give it a go.

I went along to my first meeting last night, was weighed and told that I am currently 12 stone 5 pounds, which in itself was a massive shock - my scales at home are obviously very wrong, so the situation is indeed even worse than I thought...

This blog will chart my weight-loss journey.  I need to do it.  I have to do it.  I CAN do it...