Fat is a post-holiday issue....

Weighing in!!!

That’s it! I need to pull out the big guns. I have just, and I mean only just, recovered from the shock that is my post-Christmas weight.

I casually popped myself on the scales two nights ago, as you do when you get out the bath. The scales were a bit dusty but I didn’t get the significance.

OMG!!!!

I had put on 3kg!

Nearly half a stone!

In three weeks!

Clearly my monitoring systems had failed in the excitement and, dare I say it, chaos that surrounds the holiday period and I had not been weighing myself as regularly as I thought. Looking back at my diary I realised I hadn’t weight myself since 7^th December! No wonder the scales were dusty!

There is one thing I have learnt when losing weight, once you have done it or take a break from losing it, you need to keep monitoring it or before you know it you’re back up to where you were - and some!

I am not as heavy as I was this time last year, which is some consolation, but I am still nowhere near my target weight of 58kg about 9 stone.

BUT

I just can’t believe I put on SO much in such a short time…I didn’t eat that much did I??? The occasional choccie four or five times a day, the occasional glass, sorry bottle of bubbly, just a handful of crisps in between sips….

Errmmmmmmm well to be truthful I didn’t exactly write down what I ate and in so doing I can’t really remember.

It doesn’t look good.

ACTION has to be taken.

However there’s no point in starving as that will only slow the old metabolism down and I won’t be able to keep it up and land up piling the pounds back on as soon as I stop and start to eat normally again and everyone knows that that is just too depressing for words. So off to www.myfitnesspal.com  to work out my minimum calorie intake level and to write down everylittle nibble so that I still lose weight reasonably fast and to help bolster my will–power the dulcet tones of Trevor Silvester of Thinking Slimmer Slimpod fame…

I’ll let you know how I get on!

Weight Watching....it's a bit of a struggle!

So I thought it would be a good idea to lose some weight.

An admirable thought.

I did it last year with Thinking Slimmer and it worked. I sort of stopped eating as much and stopped snacking. And then I got ill. Not through dieting I hasten to add, but because I got ill and couldn’t eat. I lost 7kg. Fab!

Now, however, I have gained the weight again not as much I was (73 kg) but enuogh to put me at 70 kg. That’s still a heck of a lot for a 5ft 3inch girl like me.

So this time I thought I’d be a tad more scientific. I would try to see if I could watch my weight and lose it through just cutting out snacks etc. Not dieting exactly just watching my weight.

Problem is I get SO hungry! Especially after I collect the boys from school.

So far I have not done the Thinking Slimmer thing because I cannot find where I put the CD player that works.But I will get it out so I can battle my cravings.

And I did join New Year New Body 2012 run by Liz Jarvis over at The Mum Blog. If I am out there saying I will lose weight I just might – and I am not promising anything here – I just might stick with it.

I also decided to write everything I ate down and calorie count. After three days I am under 2000 calories a day but not enough to really shift that weight. As for exercise? Well that’s out the window because I hate running about in the cold and wet. I could dance in the kitchen but I don’t want to scare the neighbours.

I also signed up to MyFitnessPal and it is here that I got a shock. While it is blissfully easy to use and I would highly recommend it; it is also brutally frank. So far if I continue the way I am going I will lose 0.2 kg in five weeks.

Not really the result I was looking for.

So I will have to rethink what I am eating to drive down that weight and I will have to big up my exercise routine too if I am to get anywhere near losing 3.5kg in three weeks!

As my Dad is fond of saying if you want to lose weight: eat less and exercise more!

I will keep you informed…

Retail therapy: don't knock it

OH. MY. GOD. I have a waist! It’s brilliant. I’ve not had a waist for years and now it’s there. I can’t tell you the joy. I can actually go shopping for clothes again. You know clothes that are pretty and dare I even say it frivolous!

For years I have dreaded shopping for clothes and avoided it at all costs because invariably I would come home in tears. Every time I’d go in a shop I would see beautiful things and then try them on only for huge disappointment; those beautiful things did not look beautiful on me. It got to the stage that I just didn’t bother with things like skirts or dresses. I avoided all clothes that were short in the body as these would never cover my fat tummy and I avoided low slung jeans. Not for me the straight leg or slim fit.  Not for me a crop top or even a jumper that was not deliberately baggy. I craftily covered up my shortcomings with gillets, big jumpers and long shirts.

I dreaded the warm weather when people started to uncover. My legs certainly never got to see the light of day and as for me wearing a T-shirt please with my body! I used to say I didn’t feel the heat and would have the air con in the car at full blast so none of the Mummies at school would have a clue.

I blended into the background all 11st and 5ft 3 inches of me ashamed, saddened and ever so slightly envious of all those leggy things.  Those Size 12s and Size 10s who all looked so happy and pretty and ever so stylish.

I started to notice  my turkey neck and all those grey hairs as I became more and more critical of my looks or lack of them. And I felt old so very very old. Probably whay I decided to try ThinkingSlimmer. It has worked on my weight but although I could see it coming off I couldn’t see any changes so to speak…

So on Friday I got dressed in crumpled clothes and hid it all under a coat for my trip down to London for a lunch with work colleagues, a rare treat for me. I arrived an hour early so decided to have a look round the shops, a glutton for punishment.

I trip trapped my way to Hobbs on Regent Street, as in the distant past before children and before living in the countryside had taken its toll, Hobbs had served me well.

My heart sank a bit on entering but just as I was about to make a hasty retreat I looked at myself in the mirror and realised with a sudden horror how awful I looked. There was no way I could possibly go out to lunch looking like that!

A dilemma.

Humiliate myself in front of yet another load of unspeakably glamorous shop assistants or humiliate myself in front of my work colleagues.

I chose the former reckoning that if I did humiliate myself at least I would never ever have to confront the shop assistants ever again because the likelihood of me even setting foot again in Hobbs let alone the Regent Street store would be exceedingly slim if not impossible.

I was approached by a softly spoken lady asking if she could help me and she said it so sincerely and was so gentle that I blurted out my fears and begged her to help me. An outfit for lunch; for today.

But no short skirts above the knee…

I glanced dubiously at the serried rows of impossibly chic clothing. Rack upon rack of it and nothing looked comfortable and none of it looked remotely as if it would suit me.

I tried to enter in to the spirit of things and was offered clothes that were silent in soft grey and navy blue. No shouting these. Understated one might call them safe may be another word. And then my eye was caught by a little animal print top and a heavenly green skirt. I was expecting disaster but when I was taken into the changing room something amazing happened. I had a waist. It was really there and I didn’t look half as bad as I feared. I tried on a few more tops, things that clung to me accentuating my long forgotten form.

I ummed and awed.

Then I was shown a dress, a wrap-around animal print dress. Surely a step too far!

It felt like a bit of heaven. I stepped out of the changing room and had a look at myself in the large mirror on the shop floor. I put my hands on my hips and turned this way and that and out of the corner of my eye I spotted a fabulous bright green scarf. Grabbing it I draped it over my shoulders and took another look in the mirror. The image looked back at me and smiled and well it was perfect. I looked good. Really good.

I left the store feeling a million dollars, a lightness in my step that I had not felt in years. And do you know what: Retail therapy: don’t knock it….

Review: ThinkingSlimmer – I can’t believe it!

Sounds bonkers: allow a bloke to chat to you as you drift off to sleep and you’ll lose weight. It was that easy.

I started off with a big dose of scepticism. Hypnotherapy is a load of old tosh isn’t it? I mean, it’s for weak willed, susceptible people not for hardened old hacks like me.

Well I was wrong it does work but only if you really want it to. That is the big proviso with ThinkingSlimmer. You must really want to lose weight and then it will work. I chose the Drop Two Dress Sizes programme and was sent a CD as I am no good with new tech and downloading it was beyond me. I was then sent a log book to download and affirmative e-mails every day to help me focus.

I will admit I have not been good at doing my log book but I have been religious in listening to my CD each night for the past 18 days.

I started off weighing in at 156lbs I now weigh as of this morning 149.9lbs. A whole half stone!!!! Now that is unbelievable isn’t it? As you can imagine I am thrilled though I still have a long way to go (13lbs) but the thing that is brilliant is that the support, the Hypnotherapy and the writing down of changes reinforces each other and helps me battle with my lack of will power so that I can achieve my goals.

I have not dieted, although I have changed my eating patterns. I am not snacking nor am I eating such big portions. I am aware of what I am eating and drinking and opting to go for the healthier alternative. I have no idea whether I will be able to go through Christmas as lightly but we shall see. This will be the big test and I feel Ok about it…

5 things not to do if you want the perfect Christmas...

1. Do not go into town to do your shopping on the second to last Saturday before Christmas - it's not clever and it's not funny and you''ll land up waiting in queues for ages in HMV and then the bundle you want will be sold out and on top of that they will not be able to second guess you when you say you are looking for the latest hit by the Allie girl. After what feels like two hours making them search everywhere for you you will realise it's not Allie but Lily Allen. You are then given a withering look and they promptly say that they don't have her most recent Album anyway...
2. Do not leave writing your Christmas cards adn Christmas letter to the last minute as it will cause undue pressure on your marraige cause your children to cry and force your dogs to seek sanctuary under the table. You will go to bed feeling very cross and have a rotten night's sleep...
3. Do not  agree to host a drinks part for all and sundry between Christmas and New Year because you have been lax on the socialising front. You know everyone will say yes just because you dont want them to and instead of the 20 you thought you were catering for you'll land up with 80 plus hangers on!
4. Do not take the sports car with you to do the Christmas shopping you will only get stopped by police on way home and have to explain that the reason that you cannot vacate you car is because if you open the door all your necessities will spill all over the road causing a hazard to other motorists...
5. Do not say it's Ok for your sister/parents/in-laws to stay over the Christmas /New Year season and bring their dogs when you already have seven to look after yourself...you just know that on Christmas morning you are the one who will tread on the proverbial before you have even had the chance for a nice cup of tea...

 PS: ThinkingSlimmer - ohmygod I've lost 2lbs!!!!!!!! It has been quite amazing I haven't stopped eating or changed what it is I do eat, I have just been so much more aware and boy has it made a difference...

Epilepsy - why is it SO exhausting!

For the last two years I have been querying the powers that be about The Boy and his treatment. At first it was a battle just to get them to agree that there was a problem. I was vindicated the ECG proved what I was saying. Then finally getting treatment I dared to quiz that, for two years.

I kept saying that wasn't the treatment meant to stop The Boy's seizures? I never got a straight answer. All I got was scepticism and a supercilious raised eyebrow.

Basically I was not believed. So I noted down and got his teachers to note down all his seizures. Now that in itself was difficult, for it was the blind leading the blind so to speak. I had to learn how to recognise these fleeting passes and then having to teach his teachers how to recognise them. We did it but not without some difficulty. Every one of the staff at the school had to keep watch over him and among a couple of hundred children that is a difficult even at the best of times.

To make matters worse we changed schools and I had to start with my teaching all over again. It was exhausting. Now finally the doctors are taking note especially when faced with all the notes and diaries I lug along with me to every appointment.

Yesterday we spent four hours in the hospital sorting The Boy out and now he's got new drugs to try out and all the note taking and diary keeping continues with me informing all and sundry what is going on. Asking them to look out for odd behaviour in a child that is already odd. To note down things they think might be adverse reactions to his new drugs such as increased irritability and excessive sleepiness and of course to keep an eye on everything else. They are saints and I feel so guilty about making them do this again. I keep saying only a few more weeks and we'll have it under control, I do hope it isn't wishful thinking!!!

The Boy is now taking Sodium Valproate in the form of Epilim Chrono and Ethosuximide in the form of Emeside in the hope that he can be weaned off the epilim once the emeside kicks in. It will take about two months all being well. And hopefully, cross fingers there won't be any seizures for the answer to my question is this: The medication is meant to STOP the seizures from happening at all.

PS ThinkingSlimmer - Not a good day today either I am really pushing the limits, very aware of how I am slipping. . However, still thinking about my food in terms of how much I am eating so hopefully I will count that as a good thing!