Week 1 Report

Summary:

Weight loss 10/10 – with a 3lb loss 🙂

Eating 8/10 – generally stuck to my calories, eaten tons of fruit and veg and still enjoyed some treats within my calories, oh and back to drinking more water

Exercise 0/10 – Basically I haven’t done any and I haven’t made any effort to increase my daily activity in any way

Positivity 6/10 – I have managed to nip some negative thoughts in the bud but much more room for improvement here

Work Productivity – 6/10 – I got quite a few jobs done but this could still be improved!

The negatives this week – some arguing with the boyfriend but the positive spin is that it meant we tackled some issues . Eating not perfect but the positive being that I have dealt with some higher calories by cutting or substituting elsewhere which is a long term realistic way of eating. No exercise or increase in general daily activity and I have no way to turn this into a positive! I have been kicked out of my room at work while it is painted for a couple of weeks but the positive is that I am going to have a lovely newly painted room and it gives me an ideal opportunity to re-jig my table layout and seating plans when I get back in.

The positives this week – 3lb weight loss some lovely food eaten, I’ve still had treats, I weirdly have enjoyed work this week, we bought a new kitchen (exciting!), I have discovered a couple of new bands I love, I had a reasonably productive and organised this week at work, I have been more positive, I have laughed a lot, I have really helped the new guy at work, I’ve put out my new bird feeder I got off my mum for Christmas (left) and I made a gorgeous home made pizza for tea last night and (reasonably) healthy pancakes for breakfast this morning (see right)

Here’s to week 2!

Update

Firstly, weigh in the damage is that I’ve put on 5lbs taking me back to 207lb. Not good!
Progress on all other fronts are (in a score card style homage to my back to school status):

– eating: 7/10 – I ate 7 portions of fruit and veg, drank my water quota, didn’t eat any crap most of the day but didn’t manage to avoid the mini pork pies, quiche and minature cakes (I ate 4 ooopss) at the lunch Buffett.
– exercise: 0/10 – 😦  didn’t make it onto the crosstrainer. I probably won’t make it on tomorrow or Wednesday either as I have meetings after school. Maybe I was a bit ambitious thinking I could manage this one in my first week back.
– finish school by 4pm: 3/10 – I got home for 5.30pm
– stop school work before 8pm: 2/10 – I stopped at 9.30pm
– Not letting work stress me out: 6/10 – the trick is that when I feel myself thinking about it and stressing I just stop thinking about it by stopping the internal, stressy conversations I have with myself.
– Not doing schoolwork in front of the tv and doing it at the kitchen table instead: 10/10 – I missed all my usual soaps though 😦 I missed them but I don’t feel like my life is over or empty without them though so this will get easier I think.
-taking off my make up before bed: 10/10 🙂

I’M BACK DOING THIS!

Sleeping like a baby: hopefully 10/10 – knackered!

Nighty night!

A New Old Plan v278.3

I’ve been crap on all accounts. I have eaten nothing but crap and too much of it. I have done far too much sitting on my arse watching TV. I have done some but not nearly enough of the work or jobs I had written about in the last post or tracked any calories. I have spent the last three weeks making myself empty promises about how I will get out of bed at 7.30, how I will start schoolwork before 9 o’clock and how I will work solidly all day without the TV on. I am still feeling completely overwhelmed, stressed and dreading going back to work.

To be honest I can’t be bothered to even write this because its the same old drivel that I keep writing, going round and round in circles affirming myself to the same old thing and then not actually doing it. I’m hoping that the more times you do something the more likely it is to work or be right?? Even Einstein didn’t finalise his maths on the theory of relativity on the first go now did he! So for what its worth here I am doing it again!

Whilst the thought of going back to work on Monday is terrifying me in diet terms it’s a good thing as the routine helps to keep me on track. So on that basis the plan is:

• Weigh myself tomorrow morning to assess the damage of the last few weeks and face up to the fact that I have probably put all my weight back on.
• Plan meals a week in advance and track calories on myfitness pal
• Come home from work as soon as work finishes to do my schoolwork instead of staying there and getting fed up because I feel like its all I do
• Get on the cross trainer for 20 minutes as soon as I get home with a minimum of 3 cross trainer sessions a week
• Do schoolwork at the kitchen table so I’m not distracted by TV and  DO NOT OPEN FACEBOOK therefore I don’t end up procrastinating
• Prioritise schoolwork and don’t work past 9 o’clock. Only open Facebook/watch TV once all my work is done or I hit the 9 o’clock curfew.

A simple plan which no doubt will fall at the first hurdle (namely going back to work!) but we can only try.

I am also going to try my absolute best to stop this negative smack talk conversation that I constantly have going on in my head. Maybe I can fool mydelf into thinking this diet, exercise and schoolwork lark is actually quite enjoyable!

I’M HOPING I CAN DO THIS!

Warning! Lots of Photo’s Coming Up!

A beautiful church adorned with flowers as part of a
religious festival that had happened
before we got there.

A breathtaking coastline view from near the top of the cliffs

Helloooooo! Well it’s been a while and what a good few weeks it has been! 207 photo’s were taken on our holiday to Madeira. Here are just a few of the selection of amazing views and scenery on this beautiful island. Wonderful people, amazing food and a superb holiday. We went on three different tours around the island to try to take in some of the beautiful sights and views and discover some more about the culture and history of this amazing place.

Madeira is basically an inactive volcano in the sea therefore there were A LOT of hills to climb. The combination of this, lots of walking in general and not as much eating as I normally do on holiday resulted in something I have never had happen on holiday. I maintained my weight! Brilliant! I do think I had actually lost weight on holiday but I didn’t weigh myself as soon as I got back therefore Ive had another week of not so great eating on top of that so when I finally got round to weighing myself I showed a maintenance. Happy days! I will weigh in officially on sunday to assess the damage of my week back home after our holiday.

Another stunning coastline view

The view from our hotel room each morning

Another beautiful view at the top of the mountains.
Above the level of the cloud.

Amazing view from the top of mountains over the valley

One of the places used in the TV series

After our amazing week away we came back and had one day at home and then went off on a day trip to a place in the Yorkshire called Goathland. This is where they filmed one of my favourite TV shows so I was a little bit excited!

Three A4 locomotives including the famous Mallard

The next day we were off again. This time to York. This is somewhere that I have wanted to visit for a long time and I wasn’t disappointed by this beautiful city. It was however very expensive to park anywhere!

We stayed overnight in a lovely bed and breakfast hotel just near the abbey gardens and up from the river. We visited the railway museum and the castle museum which I loved as they have a victorian street set up. I’m really interested in social history so this was ace!

All in all it has been a brilliant couple of weeks. Absolutely knackering, but brill! Seen as though I am in a situation where I have maintained my weight that I lost I am quite positive to get back on track for the next three weeks before I go back to school and hop back on the relentless work/stress hamster wheel! I would love to be under 200lbs before I go back to work. Ideally I would like to have lost a stone in total for my birthday on the 19th September. Then I have three months to try and lose another two stone before new year. That will leave me with only two stone to lose next year for me to reach my target.

I WILL DO THIS!

Granola – The Healthy Calorie Sponge

I love granola. I love how it stays crunchy even after it’s been sat in milk for a while. I love the subtle sweetness without being sickly sweet, I love how you have to chew it a lot so you feel like it is a satisfying meal. I love it! The problem are the calories. They are huge! Granola is the calorie sponge of the dieting world. If I eat granola as a breakfast I tend to team it with some sultanas and dried cranberries and semi-skimmed milk, or maybe a banana in place of the raisins. This tends to soak up around 450-500 calories of my daily allowance. My daily allowance is only 1710kcals in the first place. But I love the granola, I don’t want to let it go 😦

This (left) is the brand I eat. I tend to have 60g for breakfast which sounds a lot but granola is heavy so it really isn’t! This morning I had 30g with strawberries and yoghurt (right) which was yummy but hasn’t really kept me as full as the 60g does. I read on other blogs and sites that in america there are lots of different varieties of low sugar/low fat/reduced calorie and I guess I could probably get these over the internet but they are expensive! The little village that I live in doesn’t really have the same variety so unfortunately I will have to just stick with it and reduce my calories in other meals or on other days. Oh and I can’t be bothered making it myself either!

 

So, I have planned all of my eating for next week, I have a meal out tomorrow and a gig watching Madness next weekend. I am feeling confident for the week ahead again. Weigh in day is tomorrow. I am not massively confident about this. I am predicting a 1lb loss at most. I know that I will have to deal with my usual negativity when I see a 1lb weightloss. ‘1lb is not enough’ is what my brain will say, I will be disappointed, annoyed, my heart will sink, ‘this is going to take forever’ is what I will think. Yes it will, it will take forever but thats the point; this is forever. I need to change the way I think about this and see and FEEL that this is a forever change. Anything more than 1lb would be amazing! Fingers crossed.

 

Week 1 Day 4 – Hitting the First Struggle

I am knackered! I can’t describe how knackered I am but its a lot! Again work is the cause. I haven’t been home before 6 any night this week and each night I have had to then do another couple of hours or more of work when I have arrived home. Averaging 13 hour days is taking its toll. So tonight I just want to eat and eat. I know it is just through tiredness and nothing else. I am craving sugar and all kinds of carbs! I’m putting my evening snack off; a white hot chocolate and a couple of squares of dark chocolate, until as late as possible. I am really glad I factored in the ‘chocolate’ need accurately in my planned eating week as being today. I definitely need it today!

Other than this things are still going really well with food and drink. My skin is starting to clear up somewhat, probably down to the 2+L of water I am drinking each day. I am peeing like a pregnant woman however! Still no walking done but I have accepted that this week is a right off in that department and I will try again next week.

Hot chocolate is calling me!

Week 1 Day 2 and Way Too Much Information!

Another stressful work day but another good eating and drinking day too. I even managed to resist the massive bar of Milka chocolate (one of my favourites!) that a collegue had ‘kindly’ put in the office for everyone. I still didn’t manage to get out for a walk tonight due to the sheer volume of work I had to do again and sadly I won’t be going out tomorrow either as I have a parents evening at work. Nevermind, the new shoes will just have to wait before they get their first outing.

I am feeling a couple of benefits already and I’m only two days in. Firstly I feel a little less sluggish and I am sure that this is due to the increased water intake and generally just eating more fruit and veg. I really think these two things massively help to regulate my blood sugar better. Secondly (too much info coming up!) I am finding toilet duties are far easier and ‘satisfying’ (I can’t think of a better word to describe the phenomenon, well not one that isn’t too graphic!). I often find I feel bloated and constipated but this is righting itself. Well, not so much with the bloatedness but thats just my body adjusting to the increased fruit and veg consumption. I also often feel like I haven’t fully ’emptied’, to the extent that I was begining to panic thinking I may have some sort of tumour making me feel like I hadn’t quite finished. Ridiculous hypochondia to be honest but thankfully that has also improved. Sorry about the TMI but if I fall of the wagon later down the line then reading about my benefits will hopefully help to get me back on track.

Onwards and…..well…..downwards I suppose!

Week 1 Day 1

First day back at work and first day back on the wagon. I arrived in work at 7.30am and after only an hour back in work I was begining to feel like the healthy eating was already slippling. The masses of work I needed to do started to get me panicy and I had been in work nearly an hour and still hadn’t sat down to eat my breakfast. Cue the negative voices – ‘you’re going to fail again, back an hour and you’re going to fail’, ‘Whats the point? Work just takes over and then you don’t stick to it’. So I stopped mid panic mode, mid drowning in work mode and had a selfish moment. I countered the negative voice with a very positive ‘bugger the work, it can wait this is now me time for the next 10 minutes and I am going to sit down and eat breakfast!’ So I did. Next moment of slippage came at lunch when an upset pupil came to see me and took up my whole luchtime whilst trying to calm her down. So, two hours later I hadn’t eaten any lunch. Unfortunately the nature of teaching is that you’re tied to the pupil breaktimes and I was teaching all afternoon. Again the negatives started but I silenced them and pushed on. As soon as I hit the end of the school day I ate my lunch and afternoon snack in one. Unfortunately due to the sheer volume of work I had to do today I didn’t leave work until 6pm. I then had another hour and a half of work to do once I got home so I didn’t eat dinner until 8pm. In some respects it was a good job I did have lunch late! Because of this however I haven’t been able to get out to go for a walk and it’s nearly dark now 😦

Anyway, to the right is what I have eaten today and to sum up the first day in three sentences:

1. Work is crazy, mental busy and still crap!
2. Eating and drinking has been nothing but successful. Hurrah!
3. Exercise has been a bit pooh but it’s sort of not my fault

Oh, I also forgot to say that I weighed myself in bra, knickers and socks only this morning on an empty stomach. Not good; 208lbs. The aim is to be on or under 200lbs in time for my holiday in 7 and a half weeks. Highly do able with some focus, commitment and effort. 😦 I will be weighing on sunday mornings from now on otherwise I’ll forget to do it before work.

Week 1 Begins

Just a quick one. I have been out and bought some lovely new lightweight walking shoes today for my new walking venture and I have sat down tonight and planned all of my eating for the next 7 days. The more prep I do the less chance I have to fail, well, the less excuses to use towards failure that is! I will do this!

Here We Go Again

The brain programming hasn’t gotten off to a roaring success to be honest. It’s too easy to choose not bother telling yourself the bad things about what you’re eating! I’m still going to use the basis of it for exercise and healthy eating but I don’t have high hopes for it! Oh well, back to square one!

Square one as it happens is exactly where I feel today. Not in a negative way, more of a positive fresh start. Fresh start number 3958…..oh I’ve lost count! I’m fed up of saying ‘fresh start’, ‘lets try again’, I’m back on the wagon’ but I realised today that this is a long and complex issue that is probably going to require A LOT of back to the drawing board moments. After all, I doubt, in fact I know that Einstein didn’t come up with his theory of relativity after just one calculation! So thats where I am again. I owe this to firstly another blog scouring session. This one was straight out of my head! Similar issues, feelings, thoughts etc. Secondly, I have taken a friends dog for a walk the last couple of days as a favour. I love dogs, I love walking, I loved walking the dog. So I’m going to walk. Simple. At weekend I plan to go and buy some new lightweight walking shoes, some proper leather walking boots, some wellies and some new shoes for work. I also plan to buy a few crafty bits to start card making with again, although this is probably going to take a number of weeks to build up a good stock again.

So the new plan is:

• Walk – I live in a beautiful area of the UK. The picture right shows a beautiful old hall hotel that is literally on my doorstep. The hotel itself are private grounds but there are some lovely walks around it. You can see from the countryside stretching back around the hall, it really is beautiful. Yesterday I discovered a lovely little walk through Rapeseed fields, past fields of horses that begins at the bottom of my road. I couldn’t ask for better walking! I don’t really have a schedule for this walking in mind. I just plan to get out as often as possible, oh and take some pretty pictures of the walks! The little rapeseed walk is also the walk that I plan to use when I begin the C25K programme later down the line and yes I do plan to do it (brain programming stylee!)
• Log Eating – Everyday! Everything, no excuses, in advance if possible so that my eating is planned. Stay within my daily and/or weekly calorie allowance on myfitnesspal.
• Move More – Get off my bum more in the evenings. I was thinking one little job each evening, like dusting, weeding, vacuuming. Just half an hour on the days I don’t walk. Just so that I am moving more when I get home from work. It’s too easy to plonk myself in front of the tv and not move for the evening.
• Eat More Fruit – I have been rubbish at this lately!
• Drink More Water – I have been rubbish at this also!

A simple plan but one that should be effective if followed. Not foolproof, I know this from experience but as simple as possible to make it as easy to stick with as possible. This is also about me. Me time. Time for me, bollocks to anyone else, bollocks to work, bollocks to me worrying about spending time away from the other half, bollocks to him if he doesn’t want to come walking with me; I’m still going, bollocks to eastenders/coronation street etc, those programmes are not the be all and end all, they will not make me happy. This is about me. I am back to work on monday. I have 7 weeks until my next holiday and therefore 7 weeks until my actual holiday to Madeira. I’m not setting a weightloss goal as such, 7-14lbs would be amazing but embedding the habits are the most important aspect. 7 little weeks, thats not long. I can do this. I OWE this to myself. I WILL do this.

P.S. That last statement scares me, it immediately makes my negative voice pipe up with ‘yeah right’. Well F**k you negative voice. I WILL DO THIS.