Excuse Me!

Not the best of weeks in my slinky journey, I’ve put 2 and a half pounds on (ouch) still what did make me feel better (in a really selfish way) was the fact that most people in my group seemed to have put weight on. In fact out of everyone that was there, there was a total loss of 20 pounds and a total gain of 20 ½ pounds – oops!

  Still it led to us having a discussion about excuses, most of us had approached the scales waving our excuses about like flags at the Queen’s Jubilee. There was everything from “it’s been my birthday” (me) “It’s been Katie’s birthday” (Lucy) “I’ve been on holiday”, “I’ve been to London”, “it’s hard when the kids are off” or my favourite “well I know where that’s come from”, with no further explanation. I wish I could be one of those people who never feels the need to explain anything. Just makes a statement and leaves it there.

  So what is about this time of year that has made most of my fellow weightwatchers put on weight? Is it the weather? With the recent sunny weather we’ve had, I know that me and Lucy have done more of taking Cyril for a walk and then calling off at our local for a quick drink, than we would normally do. It’s like we want to make the most of being able to sit outside and enjoy the sunshine, plus as we keep telling ourselves, the more we try and socialise Cyril with people, the less of a nightmare he’ll become…..

  I feel like I’ve reached a bit of a plateau, maybe I’ve allowed myself a treat too many, an extra point or two here and there. So it’s time to stop that nonsense and re-focus, because lets face it, if I screw up what I’m trying to achieve, this blog will be a joke!

  I’ve gone back to basics, and decided to do all the things I was doing when I first began my slinky mission. A thing that always works with me, is looking at photos of myself at my fattest and reminding myself I really don’t want to go back there.

  I’ve started wearing my pedometer again so that I can keep a track of how many steps I do a day and more importantly how many bonus points I earn. Even though a lot of my day is spent at my desk, I am quite active, I walk Cyril everyday and just generally running round after him trying to rescue various things he’s stolen, but I know I need to do more. 

  I joined my local gym last week and I have been very good in following the programme that has been set for me by the lovely Matt. Going to the gym isn’t an enjoyable thing for me, I normally find them quite intimidating, but this new one seems nice and the members less stuck up. It actually seems perfectly acceptable to sweat at this gym, at my last place, no one appeared to perspire, maybe they’d reached a super level of fitness, where they no longer sweated. I’m not a pretty exerciser (I’m not pretty full stop, but I’m less pretty with a bright red face and sweat drenched hair stuck to my forehead)

  My food has also gone back to basics, I know I do better with my weight loss when my food is interesting. I’m not a great cook, but I do like it. On Saturday I made beefburgers (from the weightwatchers book) and although they ended up less beefburger like and more griddled minced beef with onions and grated carrots they were nice. I made butternut squash chips and salad. So this week, I’m challenging myself to cook more, tonight it’s lasagne, but using aubergine and courgettes instead of pasta, I’ve never cooked with aubergine before so it could be an unmitigated disaster, but in for a penny right?

  Lucy had also put weight on this week and together, we’re a bit like the Bad Idea Bears from “Avenue Q”, we sometimes just get a bit carried away and have no "stop"button!

We’d stopped really planning our weekends, what we were doing, what we would be doing and what we’d be eating. So this week, we’ve gone back to that, Friday we’re having a night out, but we’ve already checked out the menu in the restaurant, Saturday night, it’s the cinema and despite me having a crazy sweet tooth, I can resist the array of pick n mix and ice cream on offer there (no really I can, it’s a case of buy ticket, head straight into the cinema, never looking left or right) then on Sunday we’re off to the Robin Hood Festival with our godchildren and the dog combining exercise and a fun day out!

  Finally as I was walking round the supermarket yesterday, I was reminded of my favourite food. As a child, I stopped eating these for a bit because “Snow White” scared me (I was a sensitive child) so I bought myself loads of these. 

I'm hoping my back to basics approach will work and I've set myself a mini target of losing 4 pounds over the next 2 weeks!