World War Z (film)

We watched World War Z last night and although it wasn't the best quality (it was a copy) I really enjoyed the film. It throws you straight into the action with the Lane family sitting in a seemingly innocent traffic jam when suddenly an explosion up ahead starts to pique Gerry Lane's interest/concern.  The main character, Gerry Lane (played superbly by Brad Pitt) is former CIA, realises something just isn't right and when a dustbin lorry plows through the traffic creating a pathway enabling them to escape he takes the opportunity and follows the truck as far as he can. They're then forced to abandon the car but not before Gerry witnesses a crazed man bite the driver of another car, a soundtrack of a child counting is played in the background and you realise this 'disease' takes hold in around 8 seconds.  I won't spoil the rest of the film for you and if you can ignore some of the more obvious plot holes (for example just why isn't there any security on top of the wall in Jerusalem?) then this is a great film.  It doesn't have an hour of build up leading to the inevitable escape from the city, in fact the Lane family escape from the city within the first 15 minutes, it takes you all over the world from the US, to Israel via Korea, then to Wales of all places. There are some amazing CGI pieces in this but whilst not a particularly scary film in itself one of the scarier parts is the speed that the zombies can move, having been brought up with Romero's shuffling zombie style to see these move that fast is more than slightly unnerving.  At least in Romero's films you could outrun and outsmart the zombies, however ever since Danny Boyle's film 28 Days Later the newer generation of zombies seem faster and smarter.

This review concerns the film version of World War Z rather than the book on which it's based, although I do hope to do a review of the book as well as it is apparently very different. Look out for that review soon!

Another shiny!

Wow its been a while since I updated my blog, so apologies for that, but on the bright side look what I got:

I'm really happy that I finally got this award as its been ages since my last one and I was beginning to lose all hope in getting these last few lbs lost to get the 3 and a half stone award! I did it with style too, I lost 3.5lbs this week which means I've actually lost 3 stone 7 and a half lbs in total so only 6 and a half lbs till my next award! Woohoo!

I've also been trying to work hard on my exercise regime as well this week, well for the next few weeks actually but I'll try one week at a time. Its been hard what with starting a new job and getting used to the new schedules plus the meetings I now have to go to as a parent governor, it can get tricky to fit everything in so my pledge is just do a little extra each day but on at least one day walk at least 5km or 3 miles in one go. Of course it doesn't help that the UK is currently undergoing a huge heatwave set to last at least another week, good for getting a suntan and having a BBQ but not so good for exercising! 

13.1miles my sore and aching ass!!

Yep, we did it! This is my friend Lesley and I having completed the Free Radio's Walk for kids on Sunday 2nd June 2013. It was supposed to be a 13.1 mile walk but according to my pedometer I walked just over 17.5miles before I got home and we suspect at least 17 miles of that was on the actual route! I have to say I'm thoroughly thrilled I managed to make it all the way to the end, there was one point where I thought I was going to pass out and had to sit with my head between my legs for several minutes and Lesley admitted to me later on she would have had no idea what to do as both of our phones had run out of battery by that point! (Note to self, need to buy emergency charger doodad if I ever consider a long event again!) But I didn't pass out or throw up and we made it to the end. The picture above is the official one taken by the photographer and as you can see there's not too many people left around by this stage as we did take quite a long time to do it, but at the end of the day we did it so I don't care! 

On an even better note - went to Slimming World last night, finally got given my 3 stone award which I achieved a few weeks ago and lost 4.5lbs! Hoping thats me back on the right track to losing weight now

Success Express

As I mentioned in my previous blog post I need to make some changes and even though its the week of the big half marathon I have decided to make the changes to my diet this week. As you know I'm following Slimming World which is in essence a healthy eating plan, encouraging lots of fresh fruit and vegetables whilst still getting in carbs, protein, fats and sugars as everyone should on a healthy, balanced diet. Well this is another section that they offer which is called Success Express, it still follows the same principles but encourages even more fruit and veg in your diet but suggesting that for every meal you make sure that 2/3 of your plate is filled with superfree foods (ie fruit and veg) whilst the other 1/3 is filled with free foods (things like pasta, meat, potatoes etc), if you need to snack between meals you should eat fruit or vegetables and there is an increase in the number of Healthy Extra A choices (ie your dairy products) and your Healthy Extra B choices (ie your fibre choices) Then you must remember to have your syns, between 5 and 15, a day - these are your 'naughty' things like sugars etc.

I'm coping well so far although I'm only on day 2 but having plenty of veg for my dinners, snacking on loads more fruit than I'd normally eat (I'm not a big fruit eater) so I'm hoping to really boost my weight loss this week as I've been really disheartened with the gains and losses and feel like I've really hit a wall. Its great to have a friend doing it with me too, one of the other members from my group is giving it a go and we've really been encouraging each other and keeping each other motivated which is a good thing for me to have. 

On a different note, work's been interesting, a lot different to what I'm used to, the customers are a lot nicer, the staff are so friendly and easy going and I don't have a million processes to learn and remember as I did in my previous role so its all good.

Changes

As I've gained weight yet again this week I obviously need to make some changes in my life, whether its the diet, the exercise or something else but first I've decided I want to acknowledge what has already changed since I started this journey on Jan 7th 2013.

• weight: 357.5lbs in Jan, 317lbs in May
• signed up for half marathon 
• can walk further than ever before 
• no longer need asthma inhaler for day to day activities
• can run up the stairs without getting out of breath
• can feel my waist!
• can feel muscles starting to develop in my legs particularly 

Things that I need to change:

• my diet - need to speak to my consultant about that
• my exercise regime - I have been concentrating too much on walking and not changing things up enough.
• my work/life balance - I need to work out when I'm working, when I'm working out and when I have time to spend time with the people I love 
• my head - I need to work out why I am so negative about things? why can't I accept things are changing for the better? why do I feel like I want to sabotage things all the time?

I have no idea how I'm going to do the last one but the rest should be fairly easy to sort out, they might not be easy to implement but as I'll be asking for people's help and advice (my weight loss consultant and my personal trainer) I hope I can get these in place fairly quickly. Of course I do have a big achievement this week - I will be completely my first half marathon at the weekend which I'm absolutely petrified about but hopefully with the support of the others doing the race I can dig in deep and get it finished even if I'm the last one on the course I WILL finish it!

They think it's all over......

And this time next week it will be! Yep, this time next week I *should* have completed my first ever half marathon which is quite a scary thought.  Did my last training walk yesterday consisting of a 6 mile hike around the reservoir where I broke in my new walking shoes and socks. I was a bit wary of the shoes as they aren't as bouncy as the trainers I'm used to but once you get used to them they're pretty decent considering they were only £20. Also on a recommendation of a friend I bought some 1000 mile socks which are dual layer, taking the moisture away from the feet and preventing blisters and they seemed to do just that yesterday which was fantastic considering the size of the blisters I had last week.

Also went to the gym on Thursday,  I think the women there were firstly shocked that I went back, secondly that I'm as fit as I am (which isn't that fit but certainly a hell of a lot fitter than I was 3 stone ago!) thirdly that I joined in the Zumba class and then most definitely that I did the whole class!  I had several of them come up to me during the class say they were surprised to still see me there,  but I tell you what I loved every blooming minute of it! I had no idea what I was doing in the Zumba class but it seemed to involve a lot of shaking your ass and was so much fun but I did come out of there sweating like a pig, although I suppose that is the general idea! I can't wait to get back there again next week to shake my tushie.

Loving yourself?

This is a post that's been hard for me to write which is why I've been quiet for a couple of weeks. Now I don't want you to think I'm after sympathy or attention or something like that, trust me I'm not, I'm simply after some help and advice. I was going to put this on my Facebook page but it kind of got away with itself and ended up being just too large so I put it here instead. 

I spend a lot of my time reading dieting websites, fitness websites and general health and wellbeing websites and most of them tend to all agree on one thing, you need to love yourself as you are before you can change yourself. If you don't love yourself just the way you are firstly how can anyone else love you and secondly if you don't love yourself as you are it could be a very long time before you ever do love yourself (if in fact you ever do!) 

I also have a lot of friends I've made whilst doing my page who all seem very at ease with themselves, very happy in their own skin, not bothered about how long things will take to change, they just go with the flow and get on with it. I can't, I'm not like that, I need results yesterday, I need to see things happen almost instantaneously, I'm very ill at ease with myself and lastly and I guess most importantly I do not love myself - how can I? I hate the way I look, I hate the way I feel, I can't look in a mirror without cringing, I hate having my photo taken, which by the way is why there are so few photos of me out there and that scares me! If I was to leave this world tomorrow there would be so few lasting images of me out there its just scary.

So my question is this - how do you learn to love yourself? Is it to do with weight or will I always feel like this even if I'm super duper skinny and super duper fit? Is it a self confidence issue? Was it because I was bullied endlessly at school? Am I just a whinger and a moaner??? These are genuine questions and I'm not after 'oh but you look so nice' or 'you've done so well' just because you think it might make me feel better - I'm not trawling for compliments (although lets be honest, they are kinda nice!) This is a genuine topic I need to get my head round. Also when I sabotage myself is it because I'm scared of what's happening? Of what might happen if I lose loads of weight, have I hidden behind my weight for so long and used it as an excuse for so long that I deliberately sabotage my weight loss so I don't have to face it??

How did you learn to love yourself? Have you always loved yourself? I really would love some feedback on this either on here or on my facebook page

So close!

Another weigh in last night and I lost 3lbs! That's awesome news I hear you shout but you don't seem happy? Oh of course I'm happy but just a little annoyed, in fact I swore at the scales for the first time ever mainly because I needed 3.5lbs to get to my 3 stone award and it couldn't have just given me that extra little half a lb could it? Nooooo of course not! So I'm currently sitting at a total loss of 2 stone 13.5lbs with just a measly half a lb needed to hit that 3 stone mark. Please don't think I'm ungrateful cos I am SO not, I honestly didn't think I'd even lost a lb last night so to lose 3 is amazing its just when you see yourself so close to your next goal its just a little bit like arrrgggghhh! 

Anyway I got yet another one of these last night - my 6th so far this year:

Again very happy with my performance last night and it means I WILL get my 3 stone shiny award next week which will be a huge milestone for me as I've never got this far before, might get a bit emotional on the scales.

On a very happy note my mum who had found a lump a few weeks a go got the all clear so I'm now very relieved as she is my rock and I don't know what I'd do without her.

What have I done?!

Yet another week has started and I've lost another 1.5lbs - in my birthday week as well!! But I have far more exciting news to tell you about, a friend of mine from my Slimming World class mentioned that she is doing a sponsored walk on June 2nd and has managed to convince me to join her, nothing too bad about that I hear you say - however you don't know the distance... its....

13.1 miles!!!

Yep you heard right 13 miles, its a half marathon *gulp* and considering I've never walked anything further than about 5 miles before (although I regularly walk 3 or so) I'm slightly concerned. I do walk around 5-10 miles every day according to my pedometer but obviously that's on and off during the whole day and not in one go but my friend has agreed to walk the whole way with me even though she might regret it on the day! I have a lot of training to do and not a lot of time to get it all in so I guess I'd best get off the pc, get off my butt and go train! 

Don't forget to like my new facebook page as well - Fat2fit

Did I? Or didn't I?

I know you're all dying to know if I made it or not, well......

Hopefully this answers your question? Hehe. Yep I did indeed get my Club 10 on Monday night, I needed to lose 1lb and lost 2lbs which is great! Makes a total of 2 st 9lbs or 37lbs but still got a long 'weigh' to go (sorry for the horrible pun!) 

Good day for me today, its my birthday! Yay, me! The old me would have already had half a tonne of chocolate, plus birthday cake and probably be going out tonight and eat ice cream and all sorts of junk like that - however the new me had an egg salad for lunch and although we're going out for dinner tonight I plan to stick to the Slimming World plan and have a steak or something similar. Then for pudding (which I've already sorted!) instead of having it at the pub we're going to, I will be coming home and having a whole tub of frozen yogurt which will 'cost' me 7 syns for the entire thing! Therefore I still have syns left over for the day, meaning I can have a glass or two of wine and not feel even slightly guilty about drinking them! I've also done my Wii workout today (I would have gone for a walk but the weather is really horrible, its blowing a force 10 gale out there and wind and my asthma just do not mix!) I'm at just over 9000 steps for the day so I will definitely get to 10k before the day is out. I'm feeling pretty proud of myself if I'm honest, plus I did my nerd fitness workout (push ups, squats, lunges etc) so keeping everything crossed for another couple of lbs off this Monday.

Another thing I've done over the last couple of days is start a Facebook page about my journey, I'm hoping it will help to keep me accountable as well as possible inspire others, although at the minute as I still weigh over 22stone I don't think I'm all that inspiring.

Don't forget to like my new Facebook page Fat2fit

Tonight's the night??

Let's keep everything crossed that tonight is in fact the night! My at home scales are looking encouraging but I don't use those numbers so I have to wait till tonight to see how I've done. 

You may remember I mentioned in a post the other day that I was taking part in the Biggest Loser online as part of a group set up on MyFitnessPal, well we've finished week one and I have been crowned the Purple Princess for this week, meaning that in my team (the purple team) I was the person with the highest number of points for the week - in weight loss and in the challenges that we did. Yay me! I wasn't the Biggest Loser this week, that honour went to someone on one of the other teams who managed to lose 12lbs! Wowzers! I was very happy with my contribution, especially as our team as a whole are this week's Biggest Losers as well. We've got some different challenges this week which include making sure we eat a minimum of 5 portions of fruit or veg a day, drinking 10 glasses of water and doing 30 mins of exercise 5 times a week, so it should be a good week. 

I've also found an amazing site called Nerd Fitness run by a bloke called Steve Kamb who admits to be a full on nerd (a bit like myself!) but on the site he takes it a whole lot further and talks about levelling up your life not just your games. So I am now following their beginner's body weight workout which after a warm up of some cardio (I went on the Wii this morning and did some Step to the Beat) there is a set of various different exercises which you can do anywhere using nothing more than your own body and some sort of weight (Steve used a large milk carton - I used a litre bottle of squash which I've since drunk) You're supposed to do them 3 times but I could only manage one set at the moment but the idea being that eventually I will be able to get up to 3 times and then eventually progress onto the more advanced workout which they also have on their website. 

I'm thinking maybe I should have a page which just has reviews and feedback of the various other websites I've used during my journey in case they are useful to anyone, that will have to go on my list of things to do though as I have a million and one things to do at the minute :(

Easter holidays

Ahhhh the Easter holidays - I remember them well! Spring was in the air, flowers were blooming, it was getting warmer and we got 2 weeks off school! So what the heck happened this time round?? My daughter still has 2 weeks off school so that part hasn't changed (she goes back next Monday) but where's Spring? Ok, so its a lot better this week than last week but I still have my heating on, and N still has snow at his house! Now the sun looks like its trying to make its way through the clouds today but not really succeeding too much at the minute, at least I've got no excuses though now I've got my game. Showed it to S this morning when she got back from her dad's and she likes it too although she gave up after about half a mile saying it was hard, wait till she sees me go for a couple of miles later on (although I expect she'll get bored of me doing it so I may have to wait till she's in bed) 

To the weigh in from Monday night, I'm sad to say I didn't quite get my 3.5lbs I needed to get my Club 10, but that's ok cos I did lose 2.5lbs which meant I got my 2 and a half stone award and it means I only need 1lb to get to that target this week for another shiny :) so I'm really happy about that. I've been doing a lot of walking and drinking a lot of water so I'm hoping this doesn't affect me too much this week but if I do get my Club 10 this week I should get my Silver Body Magic the following week so yet another shiny award for me - woohoo - I'm all about the shinies although I am running out of room on my fireplace for the certificates considering I have 5 Slimmer of the Week, 1 Body Magic and 5 Weight loss Awards (ie half stone, stone etc) I'll have to get some pics of them all - maybe next week once I've got my Club 10!

Exciting times?

Well a few things have happened since I last posted, the first being that I have been accepted onto The Biggest Loser..... well ok sort of! Not the TV version so I'm not going to be rich and famous and meet Bob and Jillian but this is a version we're doing in conjunction with MyFitnessPal* (mfp for short) I'm on the purple team (yay go purple!) and it's basically the same as the tv show in that we have weekly challenges, this weeks is to make sure we've tracked all the food we eat and that we've drunk at least 8 glasses of water per day, and we also track our weight loss (or gain obviously), the idea being that whoever has lost the most percentage of weight at the end of the 'show' which is 12 weeks long will be the Biggest Loser. Now I know last season's loser lost 17.5% of his starting weight which if he does something similar this season I will need to lose 57lbs to beat him in just 12 weeks! Obviously I'm not aiming for that, I've set my target at 21lbs which is a stone and a half and I think that's a very admirable target given that hopefully tonight I will hit my 10% target at group. 

The second exciting thing happened this morning! I Can't remember if I mentioned it or not but I ordered a Wii game which can utilise the Wii fit balance board or use a nunchuk along with the Wiimote. Its called Step to the Beat (or Walk it Out in America for some reason, no idea why it's got different names when its exactly the same game) and as the name suggests its a walking game. You start off with a little character who tracks your movement and 'walks' round a place called Rhythm Island in time with you. Whilst walking in time to the music you will gain coins but you must walk in time and some of the songs are a LOT faster than others, these coins can then be turned in to open up other parts of the island as well as buy bits and pieces to help build your island. I've only had a quick-ish go on it this morning and I will be honest I'm addicted already! I was only on there for maybe half an hour or so maybe slightly longer, but you honestly don't feel like you're exercising even though I was sweating like mad by the end, so its perfect for a fair weather walker like myself as now there's no excuses about not being able to go outside cos its cold or wet or snowing! Once I get to grips with it a bit more I'll take some pics and get them posted on here as well.

Its almost time for weigh in now so I guess I better go and face the music - fingers crossed its a good one, I need 2.5lbs to get to 2.5 stone lost and 3.5lbs to get to my Club 10 (10% of your starting weight lost), I hope it's good news as I've been extremely good for the past 2 weeks and I will be annoyed if I'm half a lb short or something.

*As an aside I will do a bit more of a detailed post regarding MyFitnessPal and all the other apps and things I use at another point.

Kent holiday

Sorry for not posting for a while but I've been staying at my parents in Kent, it was a lovely week but I'm very glad to be home! I have tried my hardest to stay on plan but it can be really hard when you have people constantly trying to feed you up as it were - even though they know full well you're dieting. For example on Sunday my brother and sister in law came to visit, its the first time we've seen them since they got married last August so it was nice to see them both and to 'honour' this occasion my mum made a lovely roast dinner. This is all good news as I'm allowed roast potatoes (which she'd done in frylight for me), loads of veg and some lovely lean lamb which I don't normally have as its quite expensive and chicken is a heck of a lot cheaper! So all good so far, all free foods except for a tiny smidge of gravy which I believe I calculated to be 1 syn....... then ....... dessert....... my mum KNOWS I'm on a diet, she KNOWS I'm working hard at it, she KNOWS I've been good yet she brings me out her home made chocolate mousse! Now considering the ingredients for this chocolate delicacy are chocolate, cream and eggs you'd think it'd be screaming to her well H can't eat this, but noooooo she offers me some then gets annoyed when I turn it down! *sigh* good job I can keep calm, I had a yogurt instead.

Anyway we're home now so it's all good, just need to see how we get on with the weigh in at group this week as I know its going to be an emotional one, one way or the other - if I don't get to my target this week (which you may remember is 3.5lbs to hit my Club 10) I'm going to be devastated and if I do get at least 3.5lbs I'm going to be ecstatically happy at getting there! Then I just need to race D to 4 stone (I would say 3 stone but considering last week she was only 1lb off and she's a weight loss machine, unless she only lost half a lb and I lost 9.5lbs I'll have to settle to chasing her to 4 stone lost!) 

DJ time

Some very exciting news, my boyfriend (who creates his own mixes on his decks at home) has been given his own guest spot on a local radio station! It's currently being aired as we speak and looks like its going well so we'll have to see what comes of it, how exciting! 
I've included the link to his soundcloud page just below here so you can have a listen if you like?

Crash2Desktop

In other news, I weighed in last night for the final time using my 1st countdown voucher (you can purchase 12 weeks worth of classes in one go for the price of 10, gives you an added incentive to go back I guess if you've already paid) and I lost another 2.5lbs for a grand total of 32.5lbs since I started in January. I also got my third slimmer of the week in a row but didn't manage to get slimmer of the month which I was a bit gutted about, but then there's still next month! I'm not going to class next week as I'll be down south visiting the folks with S so I've taken a week's holiday and will weigh in again on Monday 8th April when I hope I will have lost 3.5lbs at least so I can get my 2 and a half stone award AND my club 10 award (that's when I've lost 10% of my starting weight) 

As you may remember I also mentioned I was starting a challenge on Sunday which will run for 50 days where I have to run, walk or cycle at least 5km per day, every day for 50 days. I figured this was a good challenge for me as its around 3.1miles which is perfectly doable for me at my level of fitness (or lack thereof!) I will obviously be walking it as I don't want to set off any seismic sensors with running and I'm not sure a bike would take my weight right now! The challenge itself is for charity, Comic Relief in fact, and there was a donation style entrance fee, I could have chosen to try to get more donations but at this stage this one is just for me, maybe in the future when they run another one and I join in then I'll try to get some more sponsors but for now my initial donation will do. I've included the link below in case anyone wants to have a peek and maybe think about joining up themselves?

5x50 Challenge 2013

I'm dreaming of a white.... Easter??

It's officially Palm Sunday today, in other words its one week till Xmas and this is what I've had to contend with all weekend:

As you can see, quite a lot of snow has fallen here in the West Midlands, but weirdly enough not a lot has fallen in Wolverhampton but these pics are from Burntwood which is only about 12-15 miles away but obviously a lot higher up as its had way more snow! 

You may remember that I walk the dog at the weekends but even he wasn't too keen at walking in very cold wet stuff, he's a big dog but in places the snow was up to his belly. 

 Leo had great fun jumping about it and even eating it but as you can see my feet kinda sunk and I got snow in my shoes, socks and in my trousers!

Now I know what you're thinking, why on earth did you go walking in the snow with trainers on? Why not wear wellies or something? Well there is a simple answer, I was at N's house and don't have stuff like that there (although to be fair I haven't owned a pair of wellies since I was probably about 10) but the snow was way over the top of my socks and you can kinda see where it comes up to on my trousers so I spent most of the rest of the day trying to get warm!


The thing is the walk that we did would normally take around 15 minutes maybe on a good day, depending on how many other people/cats/dogs we happen to bump into and how long Leo spends jumping up at them, however yesterday it took me just over 45 minutes to make the same journey so I don't care what my fitibit said I'd walked and how many calories it said I'd burnt I KNOW I burnt more because it was such hard going trudging through that amount of snow.

On a positive note I'm now back in Wolverhampton so I'm hoping that the weather doesn't get any worse and I can get back out and start racking up the miles! I'm doing something called the 5x50 challenge starting next Sunday but I'll tell you more about that later in the week.

Wii fit plus

About 3 Xmas' ago my parents bought me a wii fit balance board with the intention I would start using it once I was under the higher limit for it which is 23 stone 8lbs. I'm kind of ashamed and happy at the same time, to say that I finally opened it today and used it for the first time. However according to the little guy on screen I'm obese (well I did know that), he made my little 'Mii' character (the avatar you use on the wii system) really fat and after administering some tests he decided that my wii fit age was 53 :(( (I'm 34 remember!) N has decided this is hysterically funny but as he's not here till tomorrow he might find he's laughing on the other side of his face when I make him do it too! 

It was weigh in time last night and I've lost another 3.5lbs making a total of 30lbs (or 2stone 2lbs) so I'm still doing well and once again I've set myself a target of 2lbs, but on top of this thanks to my little fitbit I am also targetting myself to get to at least 6k steps a day and climb the equivalent of 10 flights of stairs, still got a little bit of work to do today but I'm getting there. I'm also investigating some of the wii games that are designed to get you moving more - the one that keeps being recommended to me is called Step to the beat (or Walk it Out in the US) but unfortunately even though it was released a few years ago its really expensive so I'm hoping I can grab it off eBay. 

I'm hoping I'm not overdoing the exercise side of things, I don't want to get injured or burn out or anything like that - although I suspect that's just silly with the amount I'm doing! But I just feel really inspired at the minute and when the weather is ok (if a little chilly) I've got no excuses to go out and have a walk really. Plus now the wii fit board is set up I can walk in front of the telly playing a game so definitely no more excuses! 

Walking the dog

It's the weekend again and I'm at N's again (well as always) and thanks to walking the dog I'm already up to 5k steps and ive only been out of bed for about an hour or so! Aiming for at least 1.5 lbs this week to get my 2 stone award although I still need 3.5lbs to reach my target for the month which is 7lbs. The reason I've given myself a target of 7lbs a month is that if I can keep that up I will have lost 6 stone by the end of the year but I'm already ahead of that so hopefully I could have lost 7 or more stone.

Unfortunately N is not the greatest at planning meals so no idea what I'm having later, hoping it's got a few syns in though as I'm finding I lose better amounts of weight the more syns I eat, not going over 15 of course. Still there will be at least 2 more doggy walks later as I really want to hit 10k steps today and maybe tomorrow too.

Illness :(

Well Monday went far better than expected, I was realistically only expecting a small loss but lo and behold managed to lose another 2.5lbs! So only 1.5lbs till I hit the 2 stone marker which is fantastic, and only 10lbs to go in total till I get my Club 10 (10% of your starting weight lost) which I'm aiming for by my birthday on April 18th, there's only 5 more weigh in's till then though so I'd best get my skates on! 

So as the title says I'm not very well today, I don't like not being well - and who does right? Especially not me, I get very grumpy and a bit pathetic, its only a cold and not like I'm dying or anything but I just feel blah and totally not with it. In the olden days I would have flopped in front of the telly with a load of choccie or something and just pigged out, but I've got myself moving, gone for a walk and bought enough ingredients to make a lovely tikka masala for tea, all fresh and homemade and everything! If all goes to plan there may even be a pic on the blog for next time, and it may even appear in the recipes section - but the best thing about this is it's free, as in no syns, which means I can eat loads and not feel guilty! Yay! 

This is the tikka masala I made totally from scratch, am feeling very proud of myself right now as it was blooming lovely! I'm not the best of cooks but this came out really nice, had to add in a bit more spice than was advised as we like it quite hot but other than that really happy with it, and the best of it is - its syn free! Yep a curry that's syn free! How awesome is that?! The recipe will get added later on to the recipes page but I don't have time to do it just now as I've promised my daughter we'll have a mummy/daughter night and she wants to watch Bee Movie (bless) 

Another day, another lb?

Well I find myself at Monday once again and that means the dreaded weigh in tonight! I've been as good as I can be this week considering I've had 2 chinese takeouts! Done a fair bit of exercise over the weekend which is good, should get my first body magic award next Monday if I can do enough this week, so I'm hoping I get a decent loss - well any loss will be good as I'm slowly edging my way towards the 2 stone marker! 

Just read a post on a blog I follow by another Slimming World loser (and I can say that as she's lost over 6 stone following the plan and is now at her target weight) where she was talking about quick fix diets. We've all seen them and chances are we've all followed at least one of them, you know the ones - where you only eat a certain foodstuff or you only eat every other day of the week or something like that. Well the truth is you will lose weight doing that but unless you are planning on doing that diet for the rest of your life there's a good chance that once you come off it and start eating normally again you'll put some, if not all, of the weight back on. Now I'm not saying these diets don't work, they do for some, but never for me, but with Slimming World its more of a lesson in how to eat properly for life rather than a quick fix - as my fellow blogger said, we didn't go to bed a size 8 one night and wake up a size 28 the following morning, so why should we expect the same in reverse.

 My weight has been slowly adding up since I was young, usually around half a stone a year or so (although thankfully that does seem to have slowed somewhat in the past few years) so I can't expect it to fall off overnight. One other thing is you can't compare yourself to others, no matter if you're the same size, the same weight, the same height etc, we all lose weight at different rates, for some reason mine seems to come off very slowly (a lb or so at a time) then every once in a while I'll have a massive weight loss and lose 4 or 5 lbs in one week when I've done virtually the same thing and eaten virtually the same foods! 

As for my fitbit experiment, all is going well, I seem to average around 3-4k steps a day so my plan for this week is to get in at least 5k steps a day which is a lot harder than it seems believe it or not, the only problem I forsee today is its blooming freezing and I really don't wanna go for a walk! 

Weekend again

It's the weekend again and this weekend I've taken my daughter to my bfs with me as it's mother's day on Sunday so we can spend the weekend together plus his mum can spend some time with her too. They've made some cakes and had some fun whilst N and I took the dog back to the vets to get checked out after his operation last week to get him 'sorted'. Done plenty of walking today, might even reach my first 10k on the fitbit but the food hasn't been too good this week especially as due to various issues we ended up having to have Chinese takeaway on Thursday and Friday night,  I did try to eat fairly healthily but even so it was a takeout.  I'm not expecting a great loss this week but anything would be good.

Tiredness

How unusual for me to be posting about lack of sleep! Well I've learnt a couple of things today, firstly I should never do my food shopping whilst tired, it seems I can manage to do it whilst hungry but tired is another matter, all I wanted to do was grab junk and get home for a sleep. Secondly thanks to my little Fitbit One gizmo I now know I really do take ages to get to sleep and got woken up 13 times in the night, its an amazing bit of kit, I mean I know I probably wasn't actually awake but just roused enough to be tossing and turning and therefore not getting enough decent sleep, at one point this went of for nearly 20 minutes which obviously isn't good. Following my success yesterday with uploading pics I'll see if I can take a screenshot of the sleep info from the website later in the week when its got more on there.

As for dieting well I had my weigh in last night and lost another lb which is good, obviously I'd have like more but hey as that famous supermarket's saying goes 'Every little helps' it means I've now lost 24lbs in 2 months and I'm still on target for losing my 7lbs this month (6lbs to go) I was going to try to go for a walk every day this week but I'm not sure I'm awake enough to go today despite a 3 hour 'nap' after I got back from the shops. I might see how I feel later as I don't have S tonight, she's gone to her dad's, so I can go out later at night although I don't really like going out after dark. I've only done about 3k steps so far today, I did nearly 8k yesterday but this week is sort of a test week and then the idea is to increase it so I do 10k+ a day, which is certainly going to be interesting at weekends as I barely move!

Fitbit

Got my fitbit One today, was very excited about it arriving, possibly a little more excited than you should be about what is essentially a glorified pedometer! I'm going to include some pics so you can see what you get and do a mini tech review of it as it were, well I might as well attempt to be useful on the blog as well.

It's quite an expensive piece of kit, the one I have (called the Fitbit One) cost £80 but it does come with a lot of different gizmos on it and on the website as well. Now this might have to be a bit of an ongoing review as I find out more and learn how to use it a bit better but for now this is where I'm at.

 In the box you get the One (which is way smaller than it looked on the website, its teeny), a usb dongle as the One is a clever little gadget and syncs itself automatically whenever you're within about 20 feet of your dongle (or seemingly every 20 mins or so if you're sat at your desk right next to the thing). 

There is also a charger unit, again this is a usb device but you shouldn't need to use it that often as a full charge is supposed to last around 5-7 days and it comes with about a half charge on it so you can use it straight from the box.

There is also a black wristband which is a LOT bigger than I had expected but this is so you can slip the One into it at night and take advantage of the sleep function, I won't be looking at that until at least tomorrow when I've had a chance to use it for at least one night. There's also the little clip, mine happens to be burgundy, but you have a choice when you buy it of a black one or a burgundy one, but as everything I've bought recently seems to be a deep purple-y colour I figured I may as well colour coordinate! 









So now I'm feeling dead smug about working out how to insert images into my blog and get text next to them, I just hope it posts ok! No, its ok I'm not a total technophobe but this is my first time so be gentle ;) Anyway back to what we were talking about, the ONE, so what I'm going to do now is sign off as I have a sudden urge to go for a walk which is weird cos I never have those, must be the One.

Weekend lethargy

Currently at the boyfriends house and posting on my tablet which I treated myself to a few weeks ago. I took the dog out for a walk last night and cos he'd been in the house on his own for most of the day he was really jumpy and excitable which meant I practically ran all the way,  good for the diet though,  plenty of exercise, think I'm taking him out again in a few minutes once I've finished my blog entry. 

Found some wine which is 12 syns for the whole bottle, so I had half last night and will have the other half tonight which is a nice treat. Didn't have many syns yesterday other than the wine and probably won't have much more today so hopefully will get a decent loss on Monday although 2lbs would make me happy. 

Mixed bag

Today's a bit of a blah day for me, fridays always are but today more so than normal. On a Friday I go to the boyfriend's house which, although he only lives about 20-25 minutes away by car, takes me almost 3 hours and 3 buses to get to, so its a total pain in the behind! Also today S has the day off school (stupid inset days) which means she's knocking round the house being bored and stuff, the only saving grace is as she's quite independent she left us in bed this morning so I didn't get up til half ten! 

Still feeling super motivated food wise although I am kinda craving something naughty, we had home made burgers last night which was a little naughty I guess (even though they are free on Slimming World)but it's not like I had them with bacon and cheese or even a bun (yes, my burgers were naked!) I had them with a load of salad. I could seriously sink my teeth into a doughnut or a big slab of chocolate but then that's how I got this way in the first place so I'm trying NOT to do that. On the plus side I will get plenty of exercise at the weekend in the form of dog walking, my boyfriend has a massive one year old Staffie called Leo who is absolutely gorgeous but needs to be walked for a good half an hour at least 3 times a day and then at least one long walk a day, it's a shame I don't get over there every day, would be very good for the diet!

Also been looking at buying a Wii U in the past few days, we have an original Wii but we can't get any new games for it as its chipped or whatever and the new games won't work so I figured a new one might be nice. Guess I need to start saving! Maybe that'll be my treat for my Club 10 (when you lose 10% of your starting body weight) although I still need to lose another 13.5lbs to get to it.

Android app

So I thought I'd do a mega quick post just to try out the Android app for Blogger mainly to see if it works.  I'm not likely to be doing a lot of blogging from my phone but it's definitely a handy app to have.

Good news, bad news

Well I did say there might be another post tonight and here it is. We spoke to my daughter's teacher ('we' being my boyfriend and myself as my ex husband never has anything to do with school) and she mentioned it even before we did that she gets herself all in a tizz, upset over nothing and cries when she doesn't understand something straight away. We've agreed that we think she's putting too much pressure on herself to get it right first time but I really don't know where that comes from, I'm always chatting to her and telling that not everyone is good at everything all the time and sometimes it can take a while to understand things, some people pick things up quicker than others etc etc. Don't get me wrong she is an extremely bright kid, all her teachers have said so all the way through the school and we were told tonight that the subjects she's not already in the top group for she will be moved up to the top group within the next week or so - they test them once a term and move them up or down accordingly. I try not to pressure her into doing things she doesn't want to or doing things faster than necessary and I am by no means a perfectionist (you only have to see the state of my house to know that!) The thing is, and this is where I may be on dangerous ground, but her father is a perfectionist, his house is spotless at all times, he insists on things being a certain way and that can be a good thing at times but I'm wondering if she's picked up on this when she's there and is putting undue pressure on herself because of it, but I have no idea how to bring this up with him! But anyway the teacher is going to have a word with their 'learning mentor' which I think is a posh way of saying school counselor and see if she can come up with any techniques or things we can try with S to see if that might work. 

On a good note though she is doing very well in school, as I mentioned moving to the top groups across all subjects now, she listens well, responds well and is very well liked amongst peers and teachers as she is so well behaved. Now that is the sort of school report I like hearing.

Sleep deprived...

zzzzz...... huh? who said that?! Yep I'm sleep deprived this morning and feeling all the worse for it. The boyfriend arrived last night and cooked us a lovely meal but when it came to sleeping for some reason he seemed unable to, which of course meant lots of tossing and turning and huffing and puffing and me not getting a huge amount of sleep either. Which considering I have issues getting to sleep anyway mean I now have rather fetching dark circles under my eyes..... sexy... NOT! 

I have my daughter's parents evening tonight and I thought everything was going well until she burst into tears last night whilst doing some homework and a load of information came out about her not being able to concentrate at school, getting frustrated with the work and crying a lot. She's not mentioned any of this before and now I'm really worried, the thing is she's a really bright girl and in the top group for everything (I think - it gets confusing!) but I'm concerned that maybe I've put too much pressure on her to be good at everything, I mean I try not to, I tell her that not everyone is good at everything and we all have our strong points but I don't want her to feel like she's not doing me proud as she most certainly is! She's an amazing little girl, smart, funny, bright, bubbly but studious with it and I love her with all my heart and soul but I think she thinks I want more from her and I just don't know how to support her in this, so we'll chat to the teacher tonight and see what she says and go from there. Depending how it goes there might be a further post tonight .... watch this space... 

Sponsored slim

Yep, that's right as the title says we're doing a sponsored slim. It's part of Slimming World's Slim for good campaign, its a 6 week challenge and we just have to lose as much as possible! I don't know a huge amount of people so I asked my boyfriend's mum if she'd take it to church which she very kindly agreed to do and I have a lot of people now sponsoring me a few pounds just for losing weight which is great. In case you're wondering the money doesn't go to us or to Slimming World we have to choose a local charity to support and the money goes to them, we've chosen a charity called Promise Dream who are a little bit like the Make a Wish Foundation but they are on a smaller and more local scale. We're hoping to raise loads but to be honest even if we could get everyone in the group to just raise say a tenner we could end up sending hundreds of pounds to the charity which I know would help them loads. 

I'm writing this nice and early today as I've made it my mission to try to write an entry first thing whilst we're getting ready for school, the only days I won't do that is a weekend as I'm usually at the boyfriend's and we do tend to sleep late, but I'm going to get the blogger app for my phone or tablet so hopefully I can still update on there. I've also added a recipes page which so far only has one recipe for KFC done the SW way but I will add more as I make them, I'm also aiming to put photo's on there of the finished article too (if I remember) 

The rest of my life....

Ohhhh, nice dramatic title itsn't it?! Well I do mean it, you see I'm on a journey, a metaphorical journey I guess as I plan to transform from the fat chick sitting at the desk writing this to a nice, skinny, sexy and confident woman. I started Slimming World on 7th January this year and I've so far lost 23lbs which is great (that's 1stone 9lbs btw) but if I was to say I have around another 12 stone to lose you will see the gargantuan task ahead of me! I'm not posting any pics up yet, mainly because to be honest I'm too embarrassed of the way I currently look. I have some ready to post so that once I feel I've left the old me far enough behind I will post my 'old' pics and then hopefully fell confident enough to post newer pics as they are taken.

I've been big nearly all my life, even at primary school I was known as chubby although everyone would say its just puppy fat and will be gone before long but sadly that never happened and I've just slowly gained weight over the years until I stepped on the slimming world scales weighing in at 25 stone 7.5lbs. If I'm perfectly honest with you dear reader I was worried that the scales wouldn't go up high enough! I nearly didn't go as I thought I might break them! I also came up with a million other reasons as to why I shouldn't go but I'm certainly very glad I did!

I will try to post on here as much as I can, the plan is to try out new recipes and add them on here and maybe some pics too (of the food not me!) I'm by no means a great cook but I'm happy to try stuff out so we'll give it a go.