Friday 30 August 2013

I Am Obese... YAY!!!

Yes, I am cheering because I am obese. NOT because I am proud of my weight... but because I am no longer in that terrifying category of "morbidly obese". I shall celebrate with a bit of housework, and a caramel snack-a-jack :)

Wednesday 28 August 2013

Getting There...

Well, I dyed my hair last night - back to a more natural colour for me - and have just taken a photo to send to my mum. Looking at the picture, I realise that I am getting there... I look quite similar, in face shape, to as I was this time last year - and I'm still a stone away from then too. I'm pleased with my progress... I am really 'getting there'. :)

A New Way To Exercise...

Nine weeks ago, one of our cats had a trio of kittens... all male! All three have found wonderful new forever-homes... but one is still (temporarily) living with us. I swear this little white kitten just knows that I'm on a diet and is trying to help in his own little (painful) way. Captain Snowcone (as the kitten is called - NOT my choice) has, in his short nine weeks of life so far, devised a brilliant exercise for me...
It starts with me waking up rather groggy after being kept up until 3am by Captain and Baby (his mummy, our cat) racing around and over the bed like lunatics on speed! As I tentatively ease my feet out of bed, the little b****r tries to grab my toes for brekkie! Getting out of bed used to be so easy... I just placed my feet out of bed and onto the floor, stood up and walked to the door... Not any more.
Now I have to endure the added weight of a kitten hanging on (with pin-like claws) to my pyjama bottoms until he falls off, followed by a weird dance (by me) called "don't step on the kitty whilst he's trying to nip your toes" as I walk towards the door. Now comes the real test... getting down the stairs. With Baby now fully awoken by my squeals of pain, I have TWO kittes to contend with. At the top of the stairs, Captain Snowcone will dart inbetween my ankles, whilst Baby lays fully on the stair I need to step down to. I have to side step to avoid Captain Snowcone, whilst softly nudging Baby with one foot to make her move down a stair, as well as try to keep my balance and not tread on any kitty. I used to take dancing lessons, and this routine is harder than trying to do the quickstep with a broken toe!
It's a matter of two steps down, then back up one stair, turn a little, do a shimmy and a little leg lift followed by a squeal and a little swearing. The whole process of getting down the stairs takes a god 2-3 minutes. However... I'm sure that the whole palaver is burning of many an unwanted calorie - bless those furry little critters :)
Oh... and don't even get me started on how I try to get back UP the stairs ... lol...

Monday 26 August 2013

Breakthrough...

This seems so silly, but I had a kind of diet breakthrough that is so obvious...
Although I do find dieting very difficult (understatement of the decade!), what is harder in some ways is maintaining the goal weight when I reach it. I get to a point where I am so utterly terrified of putting weight back on that I still diet until I break... and that breaking point is when I suddenly stop caring about food as fuel and start eating normally. Bearing in mind that 'normal' for me has always been - eat until I'm almost sick and/or can't even get up, have whatever is in front of me, gorge, stuff, eat unneccessarily when not hungry, have at least five treats a day (a treat being 1000+ calories of fatty, sugary stodge), chocolate and crisps are one of my five-a-day.... see the problem? lol
I admit that I am an extreme dieter - which is why I can lose 4lbs a week with little or no exercise - but when I reach my goal weight this time, I am going on another diet. Yes... another diet. A maintaining diet. I know that at approximately 10 stone in weight (140 pounds) I need to eat round about 1500 calories a day to maintain that weight (with little or no exercise) and about 1200 calories to lose one pound a week.
So I am trying to memorise calories... and I always round it up to the nearest 50... and I'm getting pretty good at remembering all those numbers :) I want to get to the stage where it's natural for me to stop eating when I reach a certain amount of calories in a day... or if I go over, to even out the rest of the week so that I maintain my weight.
I cannot believe that I couldn't figure this easy and obvious strategy out before now. Of course... putting it to the test when I reach that magical 134 pounds will see how well this works out :)

Weigh-In

If I could turn my frustrations at Blogger into pounds and ounces, I'd be a skinny-minnie by now lol. For well over an hour, Google has been telling me that my e-mail account associated with this blog does not exist... grrrr!
Did I grab the huge bar of Galaxy chocolate that my daughter has stashed in the fridge and take the usual route of dissapating frustration by eating it all? No I didn't :) I sat here trying to sort it out, and then when I felt a bit peckish I grabbed a 33 calorie snack-a-jack.
Can you see that halo and smug smile I have right now? lol
Time for a weigh-in ...
This will be a big one because I am taking it from my weight two  weeks ago which was 242 lb s.
Just ran downstairs to jump on the scales and they read (drum roll, please)
16 stones and 1 pound.
Thats 225 pounds, and a drop of 17 pounds!
I am somewhat chuffed :)

Thursday 22 August 2013

Oh, Dear!

It's been a year since I last posted... and by now you'd probably expect me to have achieved my first goal of losing 100lbs. Um... No. In fact, I gave up and gained almost 50lbs!!!
I would love to have a good excuse - but there isn't one. I just lost willpower, focus, and confidence. So I have had to start all over again - more than start again, considering I gained another stone on top where I had started from originally. I did lose my beautiful black cat, Bella. She went missing at the end of August last year, and I haven't seen her since. I did get very down, and just used that hurt as an excuse to make unhealthy choices.
Every weekend over the past year, I ate everything unsuitable in HUGE quantities, telling myself that I was just emptying the cupboards so I could begin a strict diet regime on Monday morning... not even allowing the simple fact into my chocolate-and-cake-dependant-mind that ANY day of the week would have been a good time to start.
I restarted with supreme willpower on Monday, and with the reduced food intake of the previous week included, I have managed to make a sizeable dent in the extra weight I had gained... and then I remembered this little blog and how much it had helped me last year, and came back :)

I am not expecting to never slip up again... I am not expecting an easy ride... I am expecting this renewed journey to be hard and difficult.
Wishing myself luck :)