[ Christmas Challenge WI Results Week 4 ]

Week 4 has been a really tough week for me. To be honest, with everything that has been going on, i have not paid much attention to my exercise or my eating.

So lets see what has been going on this week and end of last.....

* I have had no heating

* I have had no hot water

* I had a gas leak Saturday morning, had to call the emergency national grid out who then proceeded to totally disconnect my gas supply to my flat which meant no cooker either

* We have had the first snow fall for the year

* I have been trying to get my refund paid by the local council for an overpayment that i made a few months back - like trying to get water out of a rock

* And to top it all off on Tuesday morning i was made redundant with effect immediately!

I have spent the past two days mopping around at home, feeling sorry for myself and eating myself out of house and home. Not such a good idea but at the moment i am picking my battles and food is just not one of them.

On a positive note though i do have an interview this morning for a temp to perm position which will start in one weeks time. That does mean a week with no money and then a week in hand but i will have to make a plan. If i do get this job then i will try to find a weeks work with Office Angels or something like that. Reception work, tea making, filling - i don't care....just something that will bring some money in.

I have also managed to do some painting these past few days. I am currently working on two canvass's and have almost finished my jewellery holder so I have some exciting photos to share soon.

Bearing all the above in mind, my Christmas Challenge WI Result for week 4 was a gain of 0.6lbs. Not bad at all considering how much i have eaten and the fact that i have not made it to the gym once this week or even last weekend.

Seeing as i feel i need to have some sort of pic to brighten things up, how about my little mushroom.

Ok, so its dead now but hey, that is so not the point!

[ Christmas Challenge WI Result - Week 3 ]

Week 3 of my Christmas challenge has been a good week for me.

This week i have lost a total of 2 lbs. I had hoped for a little more but i guess that is just being greedy. This brings my total for the Christmas Challenge to a total lose 4.6 lbs.

Overall i have now officially lost 28.6 lbs. I was so happy this morning i was jumping up and down acting like a crazy girl!

I am so proud to say that i have now lost 10% of my total body weight and i can really see and feel a difference. In honour of this great achievement i have awarded myself some bling for my blog.




I now begin the journey towards my next 10% but for today i am just going to focus on the 10% already lost. And of course nothing makes reaching a goal sweeter than getting to reward yourself with something oh so nice. Something that you have been holding off buying, waiting just for this moment in time.

I am going to be buying

for myself tonight!

Way to go ME!

[ A weight update ]

I guess I'm about due for an update on the whole weight lose journey. To be very honest I haven’t stepped on the scales for the last 5 weeks or so and in between then and now I have been away on holiday, moved my folks to a new place, packed and moved myself to a new flat, had a leaving due for my old job, celebrated my brothers birthday all while trying to be careful and only treating myself every now and again.

The results…… This morning I stepped on the scale and it read 259.2 lbs. Last time I was on the scale is said 266.1 lbs. That is a lose of 6.9lbs! I could not believe my eyes.

It looks like I have finally gotten over those pesky few pounds that just wouldn’t move. 250’s here I come!

[ The Joys of Food Journals ]

I have never been a fan of writing down what I eat but for the past few weeks I have been making myself do it. It has been one of my weekly/monthly goals so I have been making sure that it is being done.

Last night I realised just how important they are and that all my hard work with them had really paid off. Those of you who have been visiting my blog for a while know how much I have been battling with losing anything on a consistent basis so last night I sat down with my food journal and just had a look through it.

I realised something! Yes, I may be staying within my WW points most days but the food that I have been giving my body still hasn’t been very good food. Don’t get me wrong, there have been some good changes – like now I eat breakfast most days and I have been eating more salad and veg and less bread and rice but what I can see as an ongoing pattern is that I still “spend” a lot of my daily points on rubbish. I just somehow manage to work that rubbish into my food plan.

In one day I have been able to have a mini chocolate roll, a low fat chocolate ice cream, a sour cream dip to go with my carrots, a bag of low fat crisps and even still a small bag of peanuts! And this is on top of my cereal, lunch, dinner and yogurt snack. I understand that I may have a lot more points than smaller people due to my weight but still, I am sure that I should be filling those points with foods that are a lot more nutritious for my body.

During this week I came across this post by Scale Junkie and it really hit home when I realised what exactly I have been putting into my body …. Even if it is classed as low fat!

So today is the start of truly eating healthier, of paying attention to what I put into my body and to try something a little different.

[ Excuses no more ]

For the past few years, while my weight has been creeping up and up, I can not count the number of times that I scolded myself for carrying this extra weight and even more so for not doing anything about it. Even while I was telling myself off, telling myself how bad I was, how horrible and stupid and all the rest of it there has always been one excuse that has been at the for front of it all.

About 4 years ago I joined WW for the first time. I did really well on it, lost about 15 pounds (that was all that I needed to lose at the time) and then I hit a snag in my relationship with my ex and things went south quickly. I moved back to South Africa and spent a lovely 2 months there visiting with friends, catching up on old times and eating loads and loads of the food that I had been "missing out" on. LOL, now that I look back at it I think I might have been trying to make up for the years of missing out in the short 2 months that I was there. I ate, and ate and ate. Anyways, when I came back my friend very politely pointed out that in the two months that I had been back home I had gained back a lot of my weight. She was right of course but I could feel myself rebelling against my "used to be thinner" self.

Every time I went to pick up a chocolate bar or dessert, she would tell me how I shouldn't eat that, or when I had a lovely meal and wanted to go back for seconds she would remind me that that is not what thin girls do. She didn’t hesitate to point out that where I used to walk to work and back everyday I now did nothing more than what was absolutely necessary. Every time I would try on an item of clothing she would make a little comment about how much tighter it was getting or how I could no longer do the zip up without lying on the floor. Before I knew it, she was everywhere and my guilt and shame where growing as well.

I am not sure where she came from or why I let her stick around for so many years but just lately I have been hearing her more and more. Maybe it has been because the scale has not been moving for me and so I have been feeling very despondent with it all, maybe it is just because of everything else that I have had going on in my life lately. This afternoon I feel like I had one of those A-ha moments, as Oprah calls them. The voice, the disapproving tone and comments, the excuses - it seemed to all wash over me like a wave and I realised in that moment, that the reason that I had been giving my "thinner me" for staying fat and unhealthy was this…. "I didn’t want to have to count points for the rest of my life."

And then I realised it…..for the past few weeks I have been using Sparkpeople to help me keep track of what I have been eating and how much I have been exercising and I realised that keeping track of calories is not all that much different from writing down my daily points. It was just new, and interesting and different which is why it had appealed to me. So today I have decided to go back to WW points. It worked for me in the past and to some degree I have still been using it over the years. …..Isn't it weird how your brain just remembers that a chicken kebab with no mayo is 9 WW points and every time you do go to have one this figure pops up in your mind? Totally weird!

So, as of right now I am going to go back to my WW points. I wont be able to join a group at the moment but for now I am going to do it at home and I am going to make sure that I get more exercise.