13th December 2007 – Day 204 – 26th & 27th Weigh-in

Again, I’ve been very lax on the updating, it’s just been so busy and then when I wanted to do an update yesterday, the system at work was taken down so I couldn’t do it. It’s up and running again, don’t know how long for so thought I’d do a quick catch up and let you know how I’m getting on.

I’m finding it hard on the dieting still, but I seem to be managing my weight quite well. I will have things to eat, but now I sort of compromise and have smaller amounts or if I’ve had a naughty I won’t have a food pack. Whereas before LL I would have had the naughty and just carried on eating regardless of what I’d had previously and if I was hungry or not. Now, I find I don’t eat if I’m not hungry, which is what I did in the past and how I got to be so big in the first place.

Anyway, my previous weigh-in on the 4th December I lost 1.76lbs and the other night (11th December) I lost 2.2lbs, which I was so happy about. In total I’ve lost 90.8lbs and I’m 2lbs away from my 6½ stone loss. So, if I can be quite good this week I’ll hopefully, fingers crossed, get that at next weeks weigh-in.

Tomorrow I have my posh works Christmas meal, which I bought my dress for, which I’m really looking forward to. I’ll get some photos taken of my all dressed up and I will get them posted on here. This may have to be after Christmas (in-between Christmas & New Year) as it’s just so busy at weekends with getting Allan’s house ready for Christmas as this year we are hosting Christmas dinner as it was only going to be us and his Mum, but his cousin & girlfriend have invited themselves over so there’ll be 5 of us. That should be fun as we’ve never done the dinner before, but I think I’ve got everything ordered/ in control.

When I post my dressed up photos I’ll make sure I also put the Disneyland ones on too as my blog is seriously lacking in pictures at the moment.

The lump is to be going down, so the antibiotics seemed to have worked. It’s still there, but much, much smaller now, which is good news, but I’m still keeping an eye on it and if it doesn’t go completely I’ll be back to the doctors.

Tonight I’m off to the hairdressers to have my highlights put in. I think this year I’ll have some red put in again as I had this done a few years ago and loved it.

My sister and I put up our decorations last night too and this year our whole tree is decorated with Christmas ornaments which we’ve bought from whatever place we’ve travelled too. We started a tradition that wherever we’ve been, we buy a Christmas decoration, so the new ones this year are from New York and Disneyland Paris. We’ve also got a glass Santa on a gondolier from Venice, a beautiful bauble from Chicago, black bears tangled in Christmas lights from Canada and a snowman made out of clear dice from Las Vegas to name a few.

It’s a lovely tradition now as it brings so many memories back whenever we unwrap them.

Anyway, I hope your all doing well and again I’ll try & catch up on your blogs soon. I had a quick look at yours Lesley and your new bedroom looks fantastic.

28th November 2007 – Day 189 – 25th Weigh-In

Well, I went back to LL class last night for my weigh-in after my binge over the last week and I actually lost weight. I was amazed and again had to get back onto the scales to make sure I wasn’t seeing things.

I lost 1.54lbs (total 86.3lbs) which means I’ve lost 6 stone 2lbs in total. I can’t quite believe it, but I’ve only got about another stone and a half to go. Although, I may go into management if I lose another stone but I will only do this if I get totally fed up with LL and am very happy with how I look and weigh.

I feel much more in control now and not craving food like I was over the last couple of week, this has happened after I went to see the doctor last Monday. The reason for this was because I found a small lump in my breast, which to be honest I wasn’t worried about, but I think I must have been subconsciously, which brought out the binge eater in me as I was really craving cakes/ sweets, well anything really. Now I know I’ve had my picking over the weekends, but that was nothing compared to this.

Anyway, I went to the doctors and he doesn’t think it’s anything to be worried about and he’s put me on a 2 week course of antibiotics, which should sort it out, but if the lump is still there after the 2 weeks, then he’ll send me for a scan.

I feel much more in control of the diet now and I noticed yesterday that I wasn’t craving food again, I’m happy having my packs. It really shows how I cope with emotional/ stressful things with eating and it’s definitely something that needs to be kept an eye on in the future, especially when I do get back to eating properly.

Anyway, tomorrow Nich & I aren’t walking as we’re having a mini fashion show with our dresses for our Christmas parties. I need Nich’s advice about what jewellery/ shoes and little bolero jackets to wear with my dress and she’s going to do the same. Allan is hopeless at this sort of thing and I’m really looking forward to our girly night in.

Hope you’re all doing well.

26th November 2007 – Day 187

Hello, I’m back to blogging again.

I’ve been having a really tough time with sticking to LL lately and on more than one occasion, have come off completely. I’m nearly back on track now, fingers crossed. I was so bad the other week I didn’t even go to weigh-in, which I know doesn’t help, but it’s what I needed to do to try & get myself back on track again (strange I know, but I’m getting there). I seemed to have complete binges on a few occasions where I just carried on eating, even though I didn’t really want/ need it. I am definitely going to weigh-in tomorrow though, it might shock me into keeping on track!!!

I also know I should have carried on blogging as you are all such a great tower of strength for us dieters that are slipping, as we’ve all been there, so I’ll try and update my blog more frequently.

The only thing I’m having now, which is not on the diet and seems to be helping me through this tough spell I’m in at the mo is one or two of those little cappuccino sachets. It’s not ideal, but it’s helping me stay away from eating a prawn salad, two pieces of chicken and packet of 4 chocolate muffins in one go (and not mini ones at that)!!!!! It did make me feel a bit ill though after all that, so that serves me right.

Anyway, Disneyland Paris; Allan & I had a fabulous time and yes, I did eat and I enjoyed myself. The weather was great, for the first two days it was cold but the sky was a beautiful blue. The last day it was even colder & was grey but it was still great and at least it didn’t rain. Took loads and loads of pictures, which I’ll post some shortly and yes, had my photo taken with Mickey & Tigger (Tigger being my fave, which I was very excited about). We both loved travelling on Eurostar and want to go on the train, this time from the new Eurostar station as the company I work for now built the ceiling for it. Hopefully we’ll travel on it next year somewhere for a short break.

I did go to be weighed after my little break and I only put on 0.2lbs, which I was absolutely ecstatic about and had to get back on the scales to see if they were lying or not, which they weren’t….wayhay!!! Now you would have thought this would have kept me on track, which unfortunately it didn’t, but as I said, I’m getting there.

Anyway, this weekend I went dress shopping, which I was really, really excited about. I have a posh works Christmas do to go to, which I’ll certainly be eating at as the menu looks amazing and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to afford eating in place like this again (unless I win the lottery that is). So, I decided I wanted to wear a lovely dress, as before LL if I wanted to get something posh it would be a struggle to find something and you just made do with what you could get. I never bought dresses though as my boobs were so huge I had to buy a tent just to go over them.

Well, this time shopping, it was great (I still haven’t gone out to shop for new clothes yet, everything I wear at the moment has been given to me, apart from the odd couple of cheapy tops that I’ve bought).

It was certainly different this time, as everything I tried on looked nice and it was such a change to not have to search at the back of the clothes hanging up to find the largest size.

Anyway, I took into the changing room 5 different dresses in sizes 16 & 14 and every dress in size 14 fitted, I was gobsmacked.

The one that I bought is a simple black dress, which is fitted on the bodice, and sort of flares out a bit at the bottom (it’s not a long dress, but it’s below the knee) and it swishes lovely. The funny thing is though, it’s a puffball………now I never had a puff ball skirt when they first came out in the 80’s (had my ra-ra skirts), and I always thought I would never ever own a puffball as I thought they were just plain daft, well, how wrong was I, as I loved it.

The thing that swung me into buying it though (as all the dresses were nice) was when I stepped out of the cubicle, with my sparkly black heels on, to find Joan (Allan’s Mum) to see what she thought, were the ladies that were queuing up to try things on. Loads of them said to me “That looks stunning/ lovely on you” and things like that. Now I’ve never had strangers in a changing room say this to me before, and Al’s Mum said I looked amazing. Even when I was walking out of the changing room, one of the ladies still queuing stopped me to say it really did looked stunning on me. This boosted my confidence so much and I can’t wait until I get to goal or nearly at goal until I do my big clothes shop.

I also bought a little black, sparkly crochet bolero as the dress only has thin straps and I wanted to cover the tops of my arms, which I need to take back & change as for some reason I bought a size 16 instead of a 14. Think this may have something to do with trying it on with all my clothes on, plus the dress on the hanger hanging over my head and then the bolero over that, it felt fine then (if not a little strange), but with just the dress, it’s a bit big. I’ll post a picture of me all dolled up on the evening (14th December) so you can see what I’ve been enthusing about.

I have set myself another mini target of trying to lose another stone before Christmas, which is 4 weeks tomorrow, can’t believe it’s so close, so I hope that now I’m back to posting on my blog and I can keep myself in check, I can reach this target, or at least get very close to it.

Well, I suppose I’d better get on and do some work and I’ll try and catch up on all your blogs over the week.

Hope your all doing OK.

1st November 2007 – Day 162 – 23rd Weigh-In

I’ve been struggling lately with nibbling which you know about, admittedly only when I’m down at Allan’s for the weekend as I find I can be so much stricter with myself at work and home.

I was thinking about why I was doing this when I was driving back to my place Sunday night and also talked it over with Nich during our walk on Monday and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s because I’m actually liking the person I see in the mirror now. It’s no excuse I know, but at the moment it’s the only conclusion I can work out as to why I’m doing it.

I wrote this in an e-mail to Mum and have printed it out & highlighted it for me to keep to hand, but I thought I’d put it down here too.

“I think one of the reasons I’m nibbling is because I’m feeling so much better about myself and also I’m liking what I see in the mirror. When I started LL I really hated myself and the way I looked, so had that determination to change myself, but because I’m getting happy with how I’m looking I might be thinking that this little bit won’t hurt, which is wrong, because if I keep doing it, then I could get back to square one. Also all the comments I get now are how great I’m looking and you don’t need to lose much more weight do you?, which is nice, but doesn’t help with sticking to the diet”

I’ve decided to get Allan to scan one of my fat photos in to print off, so I can stick it somewhere in the kitchen with “If I nibble, I’ll end up like this again” or something like this written on it. I don’t actually have any of my fat photos at his place, so maybe it might do the trick or at least make me think about what I’m doing.

Saturday, I had my first proper bit of eating at a restaurant. We’d been out all day and Al was going to get a burger, but had no money on him & they didn’t accept credit cards, so we ended up at a Mexican restaurant. I then decided that I will have something, so spent ages poring over the menu to work out what would be best and decided on chicken fajitas as these were just chicken, onion, pepper and the wraps.

When they arrived I took my time, using a minimal amount of sour cream & salsa with the chicken & onions and then eating slowly, whilst sipping my water (which I didn’t even notice until half-way through that it had a slice of lemon in it, a no no in LL’s eyes). Anyway, I really enjoyed it and was listening to my body to see if it told me if I was full or not, which it didn’t seem to be telling my anything to be honest. I did just have 2 fajitas, although there was enough to make 4, and felt really happy with that. I could have easily finished off the other 2, but to be honest, I didn’t want to make a complete pig of myself and make myself feel really bloated, which I didn’t. I also didn’t feel hungry until at least 9pm when I made up a chocolate mouse out of my food pack.

Anyway, back to the weigh-in last Tuesday and I spent ages telling my LLC my deductions on my nibbling and also eating a meal. Then stepped on the scales quite expecting to put on or at least stayed the same. I was very surprised when I’d actually lost 3.08lbs (total 83.4lbs) and my BMI is now 29.25.

I won’t be getting weighed next week though as on Monday Allan & I are off to Disneyland Paris for 3 days, which I’m so looking forward to as it’s our only holiday of the year, so intend to make the most of it.

I will be taking my food packs with me, but have decided to eat a meal in the evening, although I have told Allan that it has to be in a proper restaurant, not a fast food place. He can eat where he likes in the day, but dinner has to be in a restaurant. I’ve also said to myself though, that if I do decide to have breakfast & lunch, I’m really not going to beat myself up about it as I’ve done far better than I thought I would on LL and it is my only holiday, so I’m going to enjoy myself. OK, I’m not going to go mad, I will make sensible choices, or at least I hope I can trust myself to make the right choice as, yes, I want to enjoy myself, but I don’t want to go mad and undo all the hard work I’ve done.

So, hope you’re all doing well and have a good weekend.

25th October 2007 - Part 2

I can't believe I forgot to say, I'm now no longer morbidly obese or obese, I am overweight, how fab is that.

Anyway, if I don't get on here tomorrow, hope you all have a good weekend.

25th October 2007 – Day 155 – 22nd Weigh-In

Well, had my weigh-in and YAY, I did lose. Thought I’d sabotaged it a bit what with the nibbling at the weekend and not drinking enough water due to changing jobs and getting out of my routine.

I seem to have a routine at work now regarding the water intake and can manage 4 litres while I’m there and then at least a litre in the evening. Work is still going well and I’m really enjoying it, although I have noticed that I’m not running up and down the stairs like I used to in my previous job. I am going out walking every lunch time though, so hopefully this’ll make up for the lack of up & down stairs walking!!

Anyway, I lost 2.42lbs (total 80.32lbs) and have reached my 5.5 stone loss, which I’m so happy about.

So, now only have 2 stone 1lb to go, unless I start to get skinny, as I want to still be curvy, all be it smaller curves, I don’t want to end up skinny. I’ve told Allan that if I start to look that way then to tell me, which I know he will.

Also, I got myself measured last week to hopefully cheer myself up as my first gain and also it had been a while since I’d last had it done.

So, the total inches I’ve lost so far are: -

10” from my chest

9¾” from my waist

11¼” from my hips

15th October 2007

Chest: 41½”

Waist: 34”

Hips: 42”

22nd August 2007

Chest: 43 ¾”

Waist: 36 ½”

Hips: 45 ¾”

18th July 2007

Chest: 47”

Waist: 39”

Hips: 48”

20th June 2007

Chest: 48”

Waist: 40 ½”

Hips: 50 ½”

23rd May 2007

Chest: 51 ½”

Waist: 43 ¾”

Hips: 53 ¼”

Hopefully this weekend I can combat the nibbling, repeating to myself a line from one of Mrs L’s posts “Don’t let a blip become a trend” as this seems to be happening at the moment. Fingers crossed it’ll work and make me think about what I’m doing.

22nd October 2007 – Day 152

Well, had my first full week at my new job, which has gone really well. There was a temp here to show me the ropes for most of the week, and I seem to pick things up very quickly. I am here on my own now and all is well. The guys here seem really lovely (yes, I work in a company full of blokes!!)

So, I’m now starting my second week……

Anyway, back to the diet, had my weigh-in last Tuesday, which didn’t go well as I had my first gain - yes, still the nibbling at weekends, still trying to combat them. I keep trying and actually took a bit of bread out of my mouth at the weekend (yes, I know it’s disgusting, but I suppose I didn’t swallow it!!) I did do a bit of nibbling this weekend, but hopefully not as bad as last weekend.

The gain was only about ¼ lb, but that’s not the point, it’s still a gain, so have to try and get myself on track. I think now I have to work a day at a time, especially at weekends and try to get through these without picking.

The other thing I’ve noticed, since I’ve started this job is that I haven’t been drinking enough water. I’ve been managing the 4 litres, but that’s about it. When I was working in my old job, I’d got into a routine and could easily manage 5.5 to 6 litres a day. I suppose I’ll get there with my routine again, but it’ll take time. I couldn’t even make it up the water drinking at the weekend as I rushed off on Friday leaving my flavourings at work. I was so annoyed at myself, but there was nothing I could do as I was already on the motorway before I realised. I did just about get the 4 litres in, but it was a real struggle.

I have however managed to do more walking as I make sure I walk every lunchtime for at least ½ to ¾ of an hour, plus I did walking Thursday evening with Nich.

This weekend was good, we took Barney swimming and then I was helping Allan with the deck, it’s still not finished but is getting there. He was cutting the curve over the pond and spent ages making up jigs & templates and then finally set to work cutting the deck. It looks great and we’re really pleased with it and now I can’t wait for him to put the little LED lights round the edge.

I did do some cooking, even though I swore I wasn’t going to this weekend end as I wanted to use up the apples, so made Apple Crump from the recipe from the show on ITV – Britain’s Best Dish. It was so easy to make and I did decide to try a taster and it was delish, Allan and his Mum loved it and said I can make this again anytime. If I do make it again, I will have to make sure I won’t have some as I’ve already tried it the once.

So, once again I’m hoping I haven’t ruined this week’s dieting with my nibbling and I wish I can get back to how determined I was at the start of LL. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still very, very determined, but I want to get back to not even trying/ tasting anything, so I can get to my goal as quickly as possible.

Nearly forgot, good news, the car seems to working again after being in the garage 3 times last week, they seem to have solved the problems.....eventually....YAY.

Anyway, I hope you all had a good weekend. I haven’t had a chance to catch up on your blogs yet as I was busy helping Al, but I’ll try throughout the week.