Week 4 Report

This week has been a week of illness, TONS of school work and not much else! I have had the worst cold, sore throat and sinusitis ever which is hanging about like a bad smell for the third week running. To make this even more fun my eye decided to also contract conjunctivitis mid way through and this is also hanging around. I am a holiday haven for viruses and bacteria at present however the holiday is over pathogens, so you need to board micro organism airways and feck off back to where you came from!

After my week of no weight loss I had a week of not logging and not really being particularly good but not going overboard. This seems to have paid off in a weird way though as I lost a pound this week. So I’m back on it today and it should be a decent week as my other half is on nights and I feel tons better this week so fingers crossed for a 2lb weight loss this week but I’ll take 1lb. This should then take me to half a stone in 5 weeks. Not bad going really and a tenth of the way to target!

In other news…….oh yeah thats right, I don’t have any because I have so much bloody school work to do that I currently don’t have time for a bloody life. Grrrrrrrrr! Roll on half term in two weeks!

Preparation

Three weeks in I have realised the importance of preparation. Every sunday I make a point of planning my eating for the following week and generally I stick to it maybe making a few adjustments here and there when I don’t get round to eating something or if I substitute it for something else. This, so far has proven successful. It is very time consuming though! It is also difficult when there is an event or occassion coming up. For example this week I have planned all of my eating as normal however on Friday night I am going to a surprise 40th with a buffet so I can’t pre empt and pre plan what I am going to eat. On Saturday I am going to a friends barbeque; again, no way of being able to pre plan. This is where my will power usually falters and I have a tendancy to I fall off the wagon. I really hope I can eat sensibly on both occassions. Especially as this week my boyfriend is working days and so meals tend to be a little more calorific on these weeks.

Fingers crossed! I guess life still has to happen despite being on a diet. I suppose by factoring ‘life’ into the equation I am in fact making more realistic, long term changes. I WILL DO THIS!

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.

Habit Update

Still going strong! Not one day of breakfast missed! Slight downside, I have put on 2lbs. I have a number of other possible reasons for this, I have started a new contraceptive pill, I weighed myself the morning after I had done exercise the night before (water retention???), I have also started making sure I eat lunch every day (only a healthy wrap though:- 1 wrap, table spoon of low fat houmous, two slices wafer thin ham, lettuce leaves). Other than the addition of breakfast and lunch I haven’t changed my eating in any other way. I am not giving up on my new habits though as I believe thay are both healthy ones. I need to introduce a new habit to combat this one I think. I’m still not ready for the introduction of regular exercise, I need lots more practise with the habit breaking/forming needed before I tackle that one. I think the new habit will be tracking what I eat on myfitnesspal. I find I naturally restrict my intake if I am tracking and I’m more aware of what I am eating therefore I won’t be able to make excuses like the ones above! So, 5 minutes a day, tracking on myfitnesspal, everyday. Thats it. New habit!

Falling at the First Hurdle…..Getting Out of Bed Early

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh, bed! Look at that picture, look at the fluffy pillows just sat there patiently waiting for a tired, heavy head to sink into them. The covers, lay in wait ready to mould themselves around a weary body like a night-time vacuum pack.

I love being in bed. As a teenager I used to often fantasise about having a bedroom that was just one giant bed. I seriously think that if I didn’t have a job, family, friends and boyfriend then I would spend my whole life in bed. Lack of accountability in life for me would mean a permanent sleep. When I wake up in the morning, on a morning when I am not going to work I lie there thinking about how good it is to be in bed. The warmth, the comfy mattress, the weight if the covers on my body. I snuggle down further under the quilt and I am in absolute paradise. If it wasn’t for the fact that my boyfriend would think I was a complete lazy sod and if it wasn’t for the fact I had jobs to do I wouldn’t get out of bed at all. I love my bed.

Some people have criticised my love of being in bed. ‘Why would you want to be permanently in bed? What a waste of your life!’ And yes, to some degree I agree with them. Some people would see the accountability comment as the fact that I have no life, nothing to get up for, but this simply isn’t true. I just love my bed more than I love other things in my life and I REALLY love some of the things in my life.

Like my old post though, where I discussed my love of tv, it is a love hate relationship. Whilst I love my bed, I hate that I love it so much. I hate that it ties me in to its fibres making it ridiculously difficult to get out. I hate that I set my alarm clock for 7 o’clock the next morning with every intention of bounding out of bed on my days off and LIVE my life, only for my bed to tempt me to hit the snooze button. before you know it, it’s half past nine (okay, okay, more like half past ten!) and I have ‘wasted’ the first three hours of the day being in bed.

This is definitely one of the things on my ‘Things to Address in 2013’ list. I did a bit of research about this last year, about how I might go about tackling the issue. The result? Well, the result requires will power which I clearly don’t have otherwise I wouldn’t have the bloody problem in the first place! One thing I am going to give a go this year is hypnotherapy. I have been considering this for a while now but I have decided that this year I might dip my toes in the water. I am initially going to try it to help with my spot picking issue as I feel that first of all this may not take as long to sort out compared to my other issues the result being it won’t cost as much and secondly it will give me the chance to see if it actually works for me before I waste a ridiculous amount of money on it to help with my other issues i.e. weightloss.

Bad Habits 1:Good Habits 0

Wow it’s been a while! So much has been happening and yet so much has not been happening all at the same time. I’ve now been in my new job for a week and a half and so far, so (very) good. I don’t want to get too excited about it yet as I have so far found that teaching jobs take at least a term until your true feeling for the job show but I am still a little bit excited already as initial feelings are very promising. I have some challenging kids to deal with along with some extra whole department responsibilities that are currently keeping me really busy but I am loving the new challenges. The new job however has temporarily but severely interfered with my diet and exercise plan that I was doing so well with.

As statistics currently stand I have not weighed in or measured myself for a couple of weeks, I haven’t done any planned exercise since 2nd September and I have now also slipped with the eating and more importantly, logging of my food. My last food log was on the 5th September. My eating hasn’t necessarily been bad in terms of exceeding my daily calories, it has just been sparse, poor quality and inconsistent. I haven’t eaten a proper lunch during work days for about 5 days sadly and on some of those occasions I haven’t eaten anything between breakfast and tea. I know this is not good but the new job is keeping me massively busy at the moment and when I am busy or occupied I don;t tend to feel hunger in the same way. I am also currently running on stress, something my stomach has repeatedly been telling me lately with horrific bouts of heartburn, indigestion and acid reflux. My brain is struggling to switch off when I get in bed (usually late) and I am working every night until bedtime. My day currently runs like this:

• 6.00 – get up, breakfast, get ready for work
• 7.00 – Leave for work – 35-40 minute drive, through some beautiful scenery and lovely little villages though! This is just one of the beautiful roads I drive down.
• Arrive at work at 730/7.40 and begin general schoolwork, planning, sorting out lesson resources, admin etc.
• 8.40 – Kids arrive, lessons start.
  Break, lunch time and any free periods currently involve me doing more work
• 2.55 – kids leave I carry on working
• 5.30/6.00-I leave school to go home arriving home around
  …
• 6.40 – jobs around house, washing up etc, cook tea, eat.
• 7.30 – start school work again
• 10.30-11.30 – bed

Obviously there is a really crap work life balance going on there, especially when you consider that I am also working most of my weekends too. I know this is not a permanent schedule, if I get ahead with my work then it should start to ease off in the new year.  My other problem is that I struggle to motivate myself to exercise when I have so much on my work to do list. I’m certain this is because I don’t see exercise as a relaxing way to spend my time but instead see it as a mundane, unenjoyable task that I have to ‘endure’. However, I also know that it will help me to unwind and de-stress, it’s a catch 22 situation at the minute.

As it currently stands I am not promising myself anything in terms of exercise or my commitment to it. I find that if I do this and fail it demoralises me and I have no chance of getting back to it. It’s very hard not to feel guilty for not doing it though and the longer it goes on like this, the harder it’s going to be to get ‘back on the wagon’. I think I need to go back to square one, start small, baby steps and make a new plan…..hmmmmmmm………

Reasons That I Eat

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and I have narrowed it down to the following:

1. I’m bored
2. I’m watching TV – usually linked with number 1
3. I’m lonely – usually linked with numbers 1 and 2
4. I’m hungry
5. I’m celebrating
6. I’m commiserating/upset
7. An event – very much linked to numbers 4 and 5
8. I’m tempted by nice food or people with/without nice food – can be sometimes linked to numbers 5, 6 and 7
9. Other ‘unknown’ reasons

So what mind blowing, insightful, lightbulb moment conclusions can I come to from that?….I’M AN EMOTIONAL EATER!….yeah, no shit Sherlock! I know this. I have always known this, but that changes nothing. Knowing that you behave in a particular way and for a particular reason doesn’t suddenly mean you’re going to change that behaviour. Of all of those reasons, numbers 1 and 2 annoy me the most.

I love TV like you wouldn’t believe. I could literally sit on the sofa all day and not move if my imaginary, perfect day of TV viewing was scheduled (and yes, I have actually thought about what the perfect day of TV viewing would include!). This simple fact makes me also hate TV at the same time. So much of my life is spent staring at that black rectangle in the living room and I am pretty sure it is sapping my brain of intelligence. I know for a fact it’s a big factor in my increasing body mass as watching TV then often results in number 1 on the list so I end up eating; but it’s like a drug. I often get to a stage where watching the TV begins to annoy me or that I realise I am bored with watching but rather than switch it off, I channel surf in the hope of finding something different. This is stupid destructive behaviour and I know it is so why the hell can’t I stop?! I think a little part of me is scared that if I switch the TV off I won’t have anything to fill my time with. Now this is sort of true as I don’t feel I have many hobbies or activities at the moment that I could just ‘dip into’ when I am bored or have some free time. Ou! I can feel another list brewing……a list of things to do when bored. If anything, writing it will kill 20 minutes or so!
I have had three not so good days of eating the last few days, however I have religiously tracked them on MyFitnessPal and on one of those days I did at least do some exercise, although not enough to level out my calorific indulgences. I have also started some toning exercise in the form of Davina McCall’s Power of Three work out mixed in with the bedroom based elliptical trainer. The big news this week though is a total weight loss of 4lbs so far! Very chuffed that it’s all heading in the right direction. I have also fallen back in love with porridge these last few days. Especially good with chopped up banana or cinnamon apple and raisin cereal toppers from Tesco. Today I got back on track. Exercise this morning and good eating thus far. Maybe I’m on my way to stopping the cycle of diet -fall off wagon-don’t get back on wagon-put weight back on-put more weight on. I feel the last three days has been me not so much falling off the wagon but maybe sat at the back dangling my legs off the edge daring myself to jump completely. Well screw you wagon, I clambered back on!

Things I have Learnt Vol 1 – Log Calories First….Then Eat :-(

Today I discovered a new taste sensation. I absolutely love peanut butter and jam on toast but today I tried it with sliced banana on top for breakfast. Jesus, it was like the peanut butter and the banana were having sex in my mouth! Amazing! I was just revelling in those tender ‘post sex’ moments and simultaneously logging my amazing new creation into MyFitnessPal when BAM! There is was, my god like breakfast had cost me  777 calories. I shit you not. Now, I’m not stupid (well I don’t think I am anyway) and I am pretty well versed in calories, fat, nutrition and all that jazz but 369 calories for the peanut butter! Bloody hell. I mean, I knew it wasn’t going to be the lowest fat or calorie food in the world but I seriously didn’t think it would be this much. So I figure this leaves me with a number of future options:

1. Give up peanut butter. Not a cat in hells chance, I bloody love it.
2. Reduce the amount. I am quite fussy about the amount of peanut butter on the slice of toast so this is going to have to involve just one slice as opposed to reducing the amount of peanut over two slices. That’s a hard thing for me, as it is for any other big eater like myself. We all know that toast MUST under all circumstances come in pairs! Ok so maybe this isn’t strictly true and it is more likely that I am going to have to change a habit of a lifetime.
3. Find a low-fat/lower calorie alternative. This is definitely something I am going to get on to but I don’t think there is a peanut butter out there that will reduce it enough for me to afford this amount in my diet.
4. Deal with it and eat less on the other meals and exercise more. This is probably a good long term solution but poses the problem that if I eat this much then it means no other snacks or treats for the rest of the day.

For the immediate future i.e. today then I will be following option 4. For the long term future? Probably option 2 and 3 in combination are probably the best.

Other exciting (not really!) aspects of my life today have been seeing my school kiddies get their GCSE results. Some tears, happy and sad, were shed. I was so proud of them all and will dearly miss them all next year when they move into the sixth form and I move to my new job. Teaching makes me feel old. When I think that the children in their first year of school that I taught in my first year of teaching have left school this year, wow, old fart! Where has that five years gone. More to the point, what have I got to show for it? A failed nearly-marriage (engaged 7 years and then he left 4 months before we were due to be married), a move to the other side of the country to live with an amazing man who I love to bits, three new jobs, new friends, colleagues. Whilst I am happy with these things, laid out on the page like that it doesn’t seem much……..nothing special really, just life happening. Maybe next year I can look at this and have a real sense of achievement. Maybe a promotion, starting a family, run a 5K…..maybe something amazing, who knows!

Phew, this was meant to be a quickie! Anyway, the cross trainer is calling, must burn off the peanut butter!

Life Gets in the Way of Good Eating

Hmmmm. Two nights away in a tent in Norfolk has resulted in crappy eating surprise surprise! I kidded myself that the ridiculous amount of walking about in Norfolk that we did would cancel out the crisps, tunnocks tea cakes, rock, fish and chips, burger and chips, poppadoms, chutneys, lamb karhai curry and rice and garlic naan bread! It sort of goes back to the last post about having a significant other. You can’t just make a decision to eat x,y or z or when to eat. You first have to consider the other person, what do they want to do, what do they like etc. I am also hyper aware if my diet/lifestyle changes impacting on other people. I know that forward planning is the best key to this but then you remove the spontenaity of life. How do ‘naturally’ skinny people do this?!? By naturally skinny I mean those people who make good food choices etc on a seemingly subconscious level. How do they balance the spontenaity with staying a healthy weight. I wonder what it’s like to live a life without a constant argument, commentary or chitter chatter going on in your head!
Anyway, a night staying with relatives tomorrow back home in Manchester and a trip to the zoo tomorrow and that’s the holiday activities over. The other half goes back to work on Monday so that gives me two weeks to get back on track before the school holidays are over and I start my new job. Nervous does not even cover it!
Positives these last few days; I’ve been quite active, I enjoyed camping and I am getting better at not feeling the need to eat everything on my plate. I wouldn’t say I have mastered the art of stopping when I’m full but I’m making positive steps towards this by leaving food on my plate. All good stuff!