Finally some results!
Weigh-in today: 2.5lbs off!
YES! Finally. Let’s hope I can keep it going.
Weigh-in today: 2.5lbs off!
YES! Finally. Let’s hope I can keep it going.
Yey! 1/2 lb lost this week. Not much, I know, but every little bit counts.
Have decided to stick with Core Plan this week but try and reduce the amount I’m eating somewhat. Because I’m sticking with Core Plan for I think, the 4th or 5th consecutive week, I have boxed up my remaining Weight Watchers chocolate bars and put them in a cupboard. Of course, you are allowed to spend points on them, but I would prefer them to be out of temptation’s way so that I can stick to actual core foods as much as possible.
Here’s hoping this week is another successful weight-loss week.
I think generally I have done very well this week. I have had a few naughty things but hopefully not too much. You can’t be perfect all the time.
On Friday I went out to the pub with Reagan, Dave and Damo. I opted for the usual Wetherspoons zebu sirloin steak (which may have been fried…it was Wetherspoons after all) [mmm zebu] but didn’t eat the fat. I accompanied it with a jacket potato with no butter, which turned out to be helpfully small, and a side salad. Sadly the salad had some dressing on but not too much. I still ate it. I also had one pint of Fosters. Following all of this I quickly felt very ill. I’d had a sore throat from the beginning of the day and I started to feel very cold indeed. I got James to pick me up and when I got home I was freezing, shivering with cold, but James said I had a high temperature. I felt really ill and had to go straight to bed.
I still felt a bit crappy the next day but by the afternoon I was feeling well enough to pop into town and have a coffee (cappuccino with skimmed milk and no chocolate). The rest of the weekend was ok diet-wise.
Then this evening I ate 3 squares of James’s M&S Rocky Road Bites. Bah! I’d done so well to resist buying anything for myself whilst in the shop purchasing them earlier this evening (James had to take a snack to Badminton Club to offer to the visiting team). I started to pick up some delicious looking cookies and then screamed (inwardly) “NOOOOOO!!!!” and ran away. Hopefully this erratic behaviour didn’t attract too much attention. I almost nearly bought a delicious looking peshwari naan but thankfully also resisted that.
We’ll just have to see what the results are tomorrow. Still need to get some exercise although I feel that Rob is probably doing enough exercise for about 10 people so I’ll just try and absorb the healthiness that radiates from him through osmosis.
Going ok so far this week.
Yesterday I went round to Reagan’s for tea. We had lean pork stir fry with bulgar wheat instead of rice. Twas lovely and even Dave B liked the bulgar wheat!
Definitely need to review the exercise situation soon.
Last night I went out after Weight Watchers with the other helpers for dinner. We went to the Beefeater down the road and they are notoriously difficult when it comes to choosing heathy options. Everything is either covered with butter or cheese. Despite this, I think I did really well with sticking to core foods as much as possible.
For starter I had a prawn cocktail. This was very small. Five of us ordered it and they probably didn’t have enough prepared because the portions were tiny. This worked in my favour though because the cocktail sauce was probably high in calories.
For mains I had a lean steak with wild rice and garden salad (instead of chips and fried mushroom). This was very nice although I forgot to ask for no dressing on the garden salad. It wasn’t drenched in it though so I still ate it.
Didn’t have a dessert. Just had coffee. They didn’t do skimmed milk so I opted for black coffee and it was actually really nice for a change.
So all in all, I think I did ok there. It was two courses for a tenner as well which is nice! Extra encouragement not to have that 3rd course!
Just a general note to my main blog to say that I have created a new Weight Watching section where I intend to document how I’m doing on my attempted path to thinness. I don’t want the blog to turn into a diet blog only so you have to actively click “Weight Watching” on the links at the side to view those posts, otherwise you won’t see them.
Well I just went and weighed in and was thankfully 1.5lbs lighter. This is very good news, not only because losing is always good news, but because I felt so sure that the Core Plan wasn’t working. For those who don’t know I shall explain the plans.
Most people think of counting up “points” when they think of Weight Watchers. It is true that this is one of the methods of losing weight that they offer, however they now offer an alternative plan called the Core Plan. The Core Plan involves eating only foods from a (very wide) list of healthy foods. You get 12 points per week to spend on things that don’t appear on the list, such as sweets, chocolate and alcohol (so you don’t really feel like you’re always missing out). To be perfectly honest, the Core Plan isn’t a restrictive diet. It’s supposed to be…how normal people eat - mostly healthily in moderate portions and the odd treat now and again.
It’s a course in not being a fat biffa for those of us who seem to have no clue how to manage their eating themselves. This isn’t the same as saying that I didn’t know what I was and wasn’t supposed to eat. I think you’d have to be quite a moron these days to not know what foods are fattening and which are good for you. Somehow, coping with managing this on my own is difficult and I think it’s probably hard for some people to imagine. I can’t understand how people can get addicted to smoking though - I never have. It’s a fact of life that everyone is different. I respect the people who recognise their faults and do something about it.
Core is obviously quite a bit more restrictive, say if you knew you were going to be going out for 3 meals in one week. If you knew you were having an Indian takeaway at the weekend, then you’d do points that week and save up the points to eat what you like for your Indian meal. You can’t do that really with Core because 12 points will never be enough to do that. I have spent 45 saved points on an Indian meal once, and yes, I still lost weight that week. That was pretty sweet. Anyway in theory this is how it works.
I’ve been doing the Core Plan for about 3 weeks now and so far I’ve quite enjoyed being on something different. It has focused my mind a bit more. For a change, it’s also quite nice to be able to actively say “No” when offered things. For a while I had slipped into saying “yes, I’ll have that cake / biscuit / chocolate, and then reduce the points value of my dinner tonight” and guess what, that never happened. You can see from my graph below that for pretty much a year now, I’ve remained at the same general level. I lost 2 stone and stalled.
Today I lost another 1.5lbs. I had said that if I gained or remained the same I was going to go back onto the Points Plan. I’m glad that I did lose, for obvious reasons, but also because I have been enjoying the Core Plan and I’m now going to stick with it. I do think I have been eating portions slightly too large however so this week I intend to reduce the portion sizes that I eat.
I wasn’t perfect all week. I tried my best. We went to Becky and Dave’s at the weekend and Becky and Rosie had cooked a delicious meal as a birthday surprise for me. It wasn’t totally core but Becky is wonderful whenever I visit - buying skimmed milk and thinking about which foods are Weight Watcher friendly. I know I have nothing to worry about whenever I visit her!
Let’s see how I can do this week.
I’ve decided that perhaps documenting my diet trials and tribulations may help me in my quest to lose more weight.
I’m off to Weight Watchers right now, so let’s see how I do!
Yes, the record is over.
Date: Wednesday 17th October 2007
Time: 12:30pm
Location: The flat, bedroom.
Time since last seizure: 382 days (I think)
Injuries incurred: None.
Notes: Remained conscious. Caused entirely by being confused about time-zones, tired and sleeping in with jetlag resulting in going 18 hrs without taking a tablet. This proved too long.
Damn it. Just shows how close to the edge you are all the time. I guess it proves that the tablets work!
I seem to have some major inability to remain well. I feel like I’m at the doctors every five flipping minutes.
Last week I had to make an appointment at the docs to have my bi-annual ‘review’ where they say “have you had any seizures?” and i go “yes/no” etc. They have to do this by law for anyone with a repeat prescription otherwise they can’t keep giving it to you. It’s basically to check you’re still ill and still need money spending on you.
The doc took my blood pressure. It’s high again, but this time too high. She ordered me in the next day to see the nurse and have it taken again because i pointed out that i had just raced over there from County Hall (about a mile and a half) because after leaving i realised i’d forgotten my diary and had to go back and get it resulting in being almost late for my appointment.
Went back the next day in my lunch hour and the nurse took blood for some hormone tests (unrelated to blood pressure) and took the BP again. Still high. She said to make another appointment with the doc.
Went to the doc yesterday and she said it was STILL high! James and I bought a home testing machine from Maplin last Friday and that’s been showing me as having ok blood pressure so i mentioned that and she said ok, but she wanted to be certain. [as a side note, the blood test revealed the suspected ovarian prob which isn’t particularly spiffing news. That all fits in with when i went into hospital in 2004 etc].
So this next couple of weeks i have to take my blood pressure on my monitor at least twice a day and keep a diary of it for the doc. Then I have to take my little monitor in with me when i next go so she can check to see whether it says the same as her monito. If it’s still all a bit dodgy, she said she’d make me do a day-long one where they strap something onto you for 24 hours.
I asked theoretically what happens if it’s still high, and she said we then go onto scanning kidneys and heart for scary things! Frickin marvelous huh?! I don’t think i’ll ever have a time where there isn’t anything wrong with me!
This weekend James and I travelled to London primarily to attend the Angioma Alliance UK first annual forum conference. Hopefully they won’t mind me quoting their leaflet because I know quite a few people reach my website when searching for information on cavernous angiomas / cavernomas / cerebral cavernous malformations (CCM) / cavernous haemangiomas (all names for the same condition).
Angioma Alliance UK is an organisation established by and for those affected with cavernous angiomas and their families. Their website www.angiomaalliance.org.uk provides information about cavernous angiomas, our current members and information on acquiring membership. Along with our parent organisation, Angioma Alliance based in Virginia, USA, we also provide updates on research.
If you would like more information about cavernomas I urge you to contact angioma alliance as they specialise in providing clear information about the illness and offer support to anyone affected by the illness.
It was a very informative day for James and me. We discovered lots of information that we didn’t have previously. A lot of the information on the web is contradictory and it was really good to hear from actual specialists who research the condition and treat it every day. There were talks on prognosis, standard surgery, genetics, gamma knife surgery and how a family should approach the issues related to a diagnosis.
It was all arranged by the Angioma Alliance UK Co-ordinator Ian Stuart and he has already announced the next annual Angioma Alliance UK forum in 2008. Here is a little pic of Ian doing his stuff.
In the evening after the forum we met up with Greg, Phoebe and Dudley for some dinner at Pizza Express. Afterward we went to Ed’s for some milkshakes. I had a peanut butter malt milkshake. It was nice but possibly a little bit too peanut buttery. The one James had was lovely - banana coffee.
We also saw some wonderful weather on the way to London. Here are a few pics of the weather and meeting people:
Put on another 2lbs. Blasted chocolate.
Sometimes making a resolution doesn’t work. Will try harder from now on.
New insentive introduced: no takeaway or eating out until I’ve lost 7lbs from my current weight. I reckon that’s do-able within a month of proper concentration.
The last 3 or 4 weeks I’ve been fairly slack with eating right and getting to the gym. It hasn’t been disastrous, especially when you consider having been away for the weekend twice but still, I now have to get back into things.
So far this week I have been to the gym twice and I hope to make it to the gym a third time tomorrow. I’m finding things slightly easier now since I changed gyms so I’m thinking I might try stepping it up a tiny bit. Not too much though!
The new gym is still surprising me with its excellence. Just a small thing, but is still signficant to me: A few weeks ago, I hung my towel on one of the hooks whilst I went for a shower and noticed it was really wobbly because one of the screws had come loose. Then on Thursday I had to use the same hook again because all the others were in use, but I noted it had been fixed! I was SO surprised. It’s only a little thing, but things like that didn’t happen at Fitness First, even when you told them about it. At Fitness First there were only 5 changing cubicles and the light over one of them was broken for over 3 months. I told them to fix it (if i’m honest I think it was just a dead lightbulb) but it took them a long time to do anything about it. I guess I just notice little things like that.
Anyway…a while back, before Christmas I made some insentives for myself to stick at the health regime. Now I’m looking as far ahead as October. I really want to be able to wear something really nice to Kourtney and Eric’s wedding and for so long it’s been “ages away”. Time slips away with these things though, so I need to get focused. Next weekend we are visiting my parents. I will try my best to get through that without stuffing my face!
I am doing ok this week so far with regard to general healthy eating however I haven’t done much exercise other than walk to and from work.
Today my right hip was giving me a bit of pain. I’ve had that a few times before. Not so much pain I suppose but more stiffness which makes walking a bit irritating and actually difficult at times. I wonder whether it is seizing up from not doing exercise for about a week. I took some cod liver oil when I got home today because it was almost so bad I thought I was going to have to stop on the way home. Perhaps the weather is affecting my joints. If it doesn’t go I might go to the chiropractor and ask him to do something with it. It’s probably just a bit stiff from general lugging around of my fatness. I think if it was anything serious it would be a different kind of pain. You know the sort. I think most people have had a stiff joint at one time or another. It might actually be the hip I bashed on the ground when I did my fall in the middle of the road that time. I can’t remember which it was.
Lent has now begun and it seems to be one of those times where people have an excuse to make some kind of resolution. I have decided that for Lent I will attempt to give up food at work (other than lunch). I will resist all biscuits in meetings (which to be honest I’m quite good at already because of my now weight loss ‘reputation’ I have to maintain), and resist all team related foods such as celebratory cakes.
Note this is not forever. One thing about my eating regime is to note that cakes and biscuits are not evil. You can work them in so long as you aren’t a prannock about it and continue to stuff your face repeatedly. This is just a ‘fun’ thing for Lent with a hopefully a small bonus on the scales each week. Let’s hope it works!
As we all know, Lent ends with Easter. Perhaps I will have an excuse to treat myself with a delicious Easter Egg if I do well.
I lost 4lbs at weight watchers, so totally undid the awfulness of last week! Woot :D
Yesterday I went shopping after work and bought a whole load of healthy foods such as nuts, seeds and dried fruit. I thought these could spice up my lunches at work a little whilst also being healthy. I was inspired by Becky’s range of wonderful items when we visited at the weekend.
I also bought some fresh fruit and vegetables because I’ve been really bad at getting even one portion a day recently, let alone five!
I put on 3lbs :(
Not unexpected. Now to progress with another week.
Going on a WW helpers social after the next meeting on Tuesday. Better wear something a bit less scruffy than i did this week!!
This week has been possibly the most nutritionally sinful of the history of…well quite a long time. I’m sure I must have been worse at some point. This time however, I feel quite annoyed at my lack of control.
I think that if i document my shame here in front of witnesses, then perhaps I will have the will power to not stoop so low in future.
Tonight is the Weight Watcher meeting. Therefore my weeks are mapped from Tuesday evening after the meeting to Tuesday evening before the meeting. Below is the timetable of shame:
The only counter-acting that I managed to do was the following:
Anyway, that was the full week of shame. I do intend to try better this week.
I think I ought to set an example now because as of last week, I have been a helper at Weight Watchers. I have offerred before but I was thrown in at the deep end rather last week when Val asked if I could go and weigh people. I was terrified for the first few people and did make a couple of mistakes, writing things in the wrong columns but by the end I must have done about 30 people and was getting quite good. There’s more to it than it looks because you have to talk to people about how they are feeling re. their successes or failures that week. I think it’s good however that people helping are not all people who have got to their goal. Some are but most are not. It’s easy to relate to people who are going through the same kind of problems and experiences.
That’s enough ramble for now. I still feel quite pants about this week but enid suggested that perhaps it will make me more motivated for the next few weeks - espcially since I have now documented my naughtiness above. Perhaps she is right. I think I was scuppered by several events falling within the same week whilst also suffering some lack of control in addition. We will see how bad it is tonight! If it’s super bad, I might not report back through shame so infer from future posts what you will. Haha!
Well, as previously noted, Fitness First was starting to really hack me off. It came to a head last Saturday when the presence of something rather gross in the changing rooms caused me to be disgusted beyond my limit. On Monday after work, I walked straight down to Riverside to check them out. They were just as bad (if not worse) for the same price so I wondered if maybe my standards were too high.
I then immediately walked to another gym that I had heard of…and my goodness, it is gym heaven!! I joined then and there and booked in for an induction for Wednesday night.
On Wednesday, the lovely fitness assistant lady took every measurement known to man! She first weighed me, measured my height and blood pressure. Then she took me into one of the treatment rooms and measured my body fat with those tong things that you see on the shows about fat kids on tv. She then took me out to the lounge area where we talked for quite a bit about my goals and what stuff I’d done before etc. I told her about how I’d been to Fitness First and didn’t really know what I was doing. I hadn’t done any of the weight machines down there because it was very scary and there were always big men waiting for you to get off the machine so they could quadruple the weight you were using and do 1000 repetitions. I mentioned how rowing machines were difficult and i didn’t like them etc. I said how i generally did 40 mins twice or three times a week so she said “well let’s raise it to 45 mins if you feel you can”. I figured, sure why not…tis a new start.
She then did one of those fitness tests on me. It’s where you go on either the treadmill or the bike and they monitor your heart rate on different levels of intensity. They do that on the shows with fat kids as well. She showed me the chart and there were 5 levels of ‘fitness’ - very bad, bad, satisfactory, good and very good. I was thrilled to hear that I was in the middle of satisfactory! The last year of doing rather inefficient gym stuff at least did something.
All of this took about an hour. The gym lady said she was going to devise a programme for me and then we could make another appointment to go through the programme and learn all the weight machines. I made an appointment for Saturday afternoon (yesterday). I then thought I’d go and try out the pool and jacuzzi. The changing rooms were spotless and the showers are superb…really great water pressure.
On Saturday I went through my programme with two gym ladies(!), learning the machines. So good that I had that because every machine has important stuff to know so you don’t hurt yourself. We noted down the right weights and settings for each one. I would have expected to pay quite a bit of money for all of this down at Fitness First, but this was all free and part of a new membership for anyone who wanted it! Just what I needed because frankly I had no clue about what the right exercises to do were and I knew I was getting to the point where I ought to be thinking about toning things as well as cardio weight shifting.
After trying out my programme, James met me and paid a guest fee and we went for a swim and jacuzzi. Then today I went in to try my programme on my own for the first time. I did most of it but missed out a couple of things, mostly by accident actually, but missed out a couple of things at the end also for time. Think I’m getting it though. Dave B came too as a guest and had a good go on lots of the cardio stuff. We then went for a swim and jacuzzi. He said the jacuzzi is worth the membership money on its own! Haha. It is nice after doing weights though, it’s true. I will try to make time for a quick jacuzzi after each workout, even if I don’t do any swimming. I will attempt to do a good go at swimming once a week I think. The gym lady also said that considering I’d been doing quite a bit of endurance cardio, I could try that every so often too so as to maintain that ability.
All very exciting. Fitness First was hacking me off but it was also becoming generally boring. A change is as good as a holiday in this case…the jacuzzi is a nice insentive too. Long live the jacuzzi.
Having complained rather about the gym I go to the other day I finally decided it was time to actually complain to them after my experiences last night!
I purposefully timed it so that I could go to the gym and watch a documentary on Channel 4 that I really wanted to watch. I usually start on the cross-trainer as I find that I too easily skip that machine due to feeling knackered if I leave it till later. I found last night however, that of the cross-training machines available, the audio system for the TVs either had such low quality sound that I couldn’t hear the talking properly, or didn’t work at all! I have found this previously and I think it has just got worse and worse. The whole system needs refurbishing. I will often experience the kind of crapness where you have to twiddle the headphone jack in order to get it to make contact inside and get any sound through. Even then, it is really crappy quality with loads of fuzz and it sounds like whatever output/input levels they are using are totally over-loading the system so it destorts. I hate that!
The point being, that it’s one of the reasons I thought the gym was worth the money - no excuse to not go to the gym even if there was a documentary that I really wanted to watch on TV, like last night.
Anyway, I decided to write a feedback card. The notice by the feedback box just said “please put your contact details on your feedback card so that we can contact you”. There were no feedback cards to be seen so I went to the desk and asked for one and a pen. They looked confused and asked a few other people what a feedback card was and did they have any. In the end they gave me a “with complements” slip and I wrote on that. I wrote about the media system being substandard and disappointing, and whilst I was on the job, I wrote about how I thought that the changing rooms could do with much better cleaning. Yesterday I noticed that they had switched MTV1 to another sports channel, so I also added a request for a better music channel than MTV1 because they never show music. It’s evident that no one else gives feedback so I didn’t want to be the one who is always complaining on lots of different feedback cards! I considered not giving my name but in the end I did and left my email address. I don’t really want them phoning me, especially if I’m at work.
After writing this, I went up to the changing rooms to get changed after my work-out and the place was simply filthy. There was mud, dirty tissues, rubbish, dust everywhere. I don’t doubt that this was probably just one day’s worth of muck, but considering it was still 2 hours to closing time, I think that it proves that it could do with checking every couple of hours and maybe just casually sweeping. I then went into the toilets before leaving and one of the toilet seats was actually propped up against the wall! No “out of order” sign and it was in full view. The underside of it had clearly been left unclean for a very long time! I think it has deteriorated particularly recently so perhaps they have some new cleaners who are not as effecient as the previous ones. Perhaps feedback is just what they needed so I will wait and see what happens. I didn’t mention the toilets and showers as previous experience has proven them to be cleaner than most areas. Certainly if that toilet is still the same when I go to the gym tonight, I will say something to the people at the desk.
Rant over. For now.
