Slimming World

I'm now going to waffle on about dieting. I totally understand if you don't want to read it but I figured that some of you might like to know about how my weight loss is going.

I received my Yay-I've-Lost-A-Stone-And-A-Half! certificate and sticker at Slimming World last night. I was mighty chuffed. I've only been doing the diet for ten weeks and I've shed twenty-two pounds in total.

A few months ago I decided that I wanted to shift some weight. I was a size sixteen and I was feeling unhealthy. I got overly-hot and out of puff walking to the shop and back and doing housework proper knackered me out. I also didn't like the way my jeans were so very tight around my thighs (they looked like when you clingfilm biscuit dough into a sausage shape) and I felt big and sluggish and generally meh.

I've tried calorie counting in the past and I lost a bit of weight doing so, but I never kept it off. I also became fixated with adding up calories and numbers and it wasn't healthy and I got tired of it very quickly. I needed to do something that I would stick to and a couple of friends had lost weight successfully with Slimming World. So I bought a copy of the Slimming World magazine, read it, searched for my nearest group on the old internet and the following Monday I went along and enrolled. You can do the programme entirely online which was tempting but I felt that actually physically going to a group would work better for me

I was SO nervous about going. I had visions of Little Britain's 'Fat Fighters' in my mind but within ten minutes of being there I realised that Slimming World was going to be nothing like that.

"Dust?"

I lost four-and-a-half pounds in my first week. And I've lost weight every week since, sometimes only half a pound but still, I've not gained weight.

And you know what? I'm NEVER hungry. That's the joy of this diet. (I'm totally aware that I sound like an infomercial here.) You can eat as much of what Slimming World calls 'Free Food' as often as you like. The Free Food list includes rice, pasta and potatoes. And - get this - you can still eat crisps and chocolate! Obviously you can't yum eighteen Mars bars a day, but I have about three Curly Wurlys a week.

There's no calorie counting, next-to-no food weighing, no complex points systems and you can do the diet with minimum disruption to the rest of the family. The Slimming World recipes and cook books are wonderful. I can't say enough good words about the whole thing.

Weight loss aside, I actually enjoy going to Slimming World on Monday nights. I like seeing everyone. I like hearing how people are getting on. The place is full of lovelypeopleness.

And I FEEL better. I feel healthier. I don't get as hot and flustered walking about the place. I'm nearing a size twelve now and I've got to go and buy new clothes because nothing fits me properly anymore. I bloody hate clothes shopping but the fact I've GOT to go makes me smiley.

So yeah, in short, if you've ever considered joining a slimming club but have thought "Nope, I just can't do it!" then shush up and go do it. I've got about another stone to shed and then I'll be in healthy BMI territory. I'll see what I look like and how I feel when I reach my target and then I'll decide if I need to lose a bit more.

And American readers, if you're thinking "Why haven't WE got Slimming World?! It sounds AWESOME!" then you may be interested to know that Slimming World is now over there in Unitedstatesland and right now you can get four months' enrollment for just $40.00. Have a look right here for more details.

So that's that. Diet blog post done. I'm off for lunch now. The homemade pea and ham soup is calling me ...

I'm shrinking!

My dieting is going well.  I've been watching my weight and counting the calories for just over a fortnight now and I've lost five pounds!  I can actually see the weight disappearing and my thunder thighs are definitely not as thunderous as they were two weeks ago.

How have I been shrinking myself?  Just by eating less.  I'm not doing any particular diet plan.  For breakfast I eat a bowl of Special K with a handful of dried blueberries, cranberries and raisins sprinkled on top and then I have the same for lunch.  If I don't fancy the cereal lunch (because let's face it, it can get kind of boring) I'll have some scrambled eggs.  I don't have any morning snacks betwixt breakfast and lunch but if I get peckish in the afternoon I have some nuts or fruit from my Graze box.  For dinner I have a normal meal.  The worst thing about the diet is cutting out my puddings!  As you know, I'm a proper pudding monster and I'm finding myself craving desserts.  Last night I would have done anything for a bowl of warm apple crumble and custard.  Instead I had a couple of Thorntons chocolates so it wasn't all bad.

Bridget at the gym

In the evenings I do half an hour of exercise bike or hooping.  In fact, tonight I did forty five minutes of biking so I was pretty chuffed with myself even if I did look like a big red-faced sweaty heap at the end of it.  I felt like Bridget Jones in that scene at the gym except I didn't fall over as I climbed off the bike but my legs were pretty worn out!

I must say, I don't think I'd be making the progress I am if it wasn't for the MyFitnessPal app on my iPhone.  It's really motivational.  You enter your starting weight and tell it how much you want to lose and then it calculates how many calories you should be eating a day.  You fill in the food diary throughout the day and it tallies up your calories.  It has a vast range of foods in its database or you can enter your own meals and snacks.  You also tell it what exercise you've done - there's even a housework option so if you do an hour of hoovering, dusting and polishing you can log that too.  Then at the end of each day it will give you a little weight forecast based on all the information you've entered.  Nifty.

So yes, all is going well on the diet front but can I ask you to do me a favour?  Next time you have a pudding please have a spoonful for me!

Beads & Calories

So far January has been a complete whirlwind.  I can't believe we're almost halfway through the month.

I've been in the shed making bead orders like an absolute mad thing.  This afternoon I cycled to the post office with over 500 beads to send off to their new homes.  That's a lot of bead cleaning, stringing and packing!

In other news I am on a diet.  I would like to drop a dress size and I'm doing this by cutting right back on chocolate, biscuits, cakes and other food naughtiness.  I've got the MyFitnessPal app on my iPhone which is absolutely brill - very easy to use and the food diary part of it really makes me keep an eye on how much I'm eating.  Exercise-wise I am using Chris's exercise bike and I've also bought myself a weighted hula hoop.  When I used to use the Wii Fit I found the hula hoop games to be the most effective.  And fun.  Several people on Twitter suggested jogging or running but the thought of that bores me to tears.  Plus it would mean buying trainers - proper sporty trainers - and I haven't done that since I was about seventeen years old.  So yes, I have a hula hoop which was tricky to start with but I can keep it twirling for several minutes at a time now without it falling down.  It's flipping hard work and I have bruises on my waist but I was expecting this.  The Hooping book I purchased warned me about it but I tell you, hooping is a lot of fun.  I got my hoop from Handmade Hoops and it is excellent - very well made and you can choose your own colours.  Mine is purple, black and metallic red.  Groovy!

The diet is hard and the first week was like some kind of torture, especially with all the leftover Christmas food bits knocking about.  Last week I actually found myself sniffing the inside of an After Eights box trying to 'eat' the scent of the minty fondanty chocolate!

I've bought a copy of Cook Yourself Thin which has some really great recipes in it.  I made my first ever soup on Saturday from it - tomato, chilli and basil - and it was delicious!  I think I'll make a couple of batches of that this weekend and put some in the freezer.

So yeah, all in all so far 2011 has brought many many beads and much calorie-counting.

I have no picture to illustrate this post.  I did have all good intentions of getting Chris to photograph my new hats (I've knitted three since the last one I showed you) last weekend but I was making beads for most of it and by the time I remembered it was dark which isn't conducive to good photography.  I'll try and do the hat thing this weekend.

I promise I won't leave blogging so long next time ......

Love the lovely polka dots!

I'm a bit polka dot crazy at the moment. There's something quite soothing about making these beads. Must be the repetitive dot placement - I kind of get into a polka dot trance . . . . .

I went for a mooch around the shops in town on Saturday and a most excellent thing happened! The other week I had to buy new jeans because my old ones were too big. Yay! The no pudding thing is really paying off. So I had to buy one size smaller than I usually do. I thought that maybe that was a bit of a fluke and perhaps the size was wrong. But on Saturday I found a skirt that I really liked (yes, that might be shocking to you because you may know that I normally avoid dresses and skirts like the plague) and I instinctively picked up my normal size 14. I did have a quick look to see if there was a size 12, but no. I trotted off to the changing room and tried the skirt on . . . . . and it fell down! It just would not stay on my hips. I got changed and when the assistant said 'Any good?' I proudly replied 'No!' with a big grin on my face. I think she thought I was a bit loopy.

Could it actually be that after about a decade of size 14-ness I may actually be a size 12? It was a shame about the skirt because I liked it but to make it all better I bought new shoes instead!

Too hot for beadmaking! Too hot, I tell you!

My shed is like a sauna. I managed to make four beads yesterday and then I had to stop as I was wilting. It doesn't take a lot of heat to make me wilt - I'm a delicate flower, me! Ha! ;o) It's so warm today I didn't even attempt the making of the beads. Nicky came over this morning and gave me a copy of Step By Step Wire Jewelry which features her fantastic 'Round In Circles' bracelet tutorial. She used some of my beads in her design and it's really nice for me to see them in print. I took the step-by-step photographs for Nicky's tutorial and as a thank you she made me this wonderful silver pendant. Isn't it fab? I love it - it's very me. The magazine will be in the shops next week so if you get a chance to grab a copy, do. Nicky's tutorial is great! So it's been another bead-free weekend for me. Feels odd. I feel naughty for not being down the shed making stuff. Plus I'll be in Cambridge next weekend so that'll be three weekends off in a row! I've not been sat doing nothing, though. I've just done an hour of Yoga on the Wii Fit and no, I still can't master that balancing on one leg thing. I'm becoming quite fond of Dirk though as he's been much nicer to me lately. Today he told me I had 'beautiful form', bless him! My friends Helen and James came over for dinner last night and we spent the whole evening playing with Wii Fit. Annoyingly they have perfect BMIs, leaving me feeling like a fat hedge-pig. But I'm quite pleased with myself as I'm losing weight quite steadily. I want to drop a dress size and I'm getting there slowly through a combination of at least fifty minutes on Wii Fit every day and diet. Yes, the 'D' word. Can't believe it. I always swore to myself that I'd never do a diet of any kind and here I am being all Bridget Jones about my weight - counting naffing calories, not eating lovely puddings, abandoning my beloved chocolate, drinking two litres of uninteresting water a day, having one sugar in my tea instead of two and putting skimmed milk on my boring Shredded Wheat. I would kill for a slice of lemon meringue pie with a splodge of extra thick cream - apples and bananas just don't compare!