Do You Know What I Got for Christmas? Fat! I Got Fat!

Well that’s not strictly true, if I’m honest Christmas was just a really big flake on top of a VERY big ice cream! A few of my bad habits of been gradually creeping in, which has meant my weight has gradually gone up a bit. 

Bad habits or breakfast pastries as other people call them.

French Toast, which may or may not have been consumed over the Christmas period, by someone who may or may not have been me

There has been an odd flash of brilliance with a pound lost here and there, but (and I know this sounds like an excuse) in the run up to Christmas I’ve been so busy that I haven’t managed to make many weigh ins. I’ve been working crazy hours, which means I haven’t made the gym and getting in late has meant tea has generally been something on toast. It’s amazing what you can put on a bit of toast; I may actually write a cookbook entitled “KT Toast of the Town”.

  I know a lot of people don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions, but I think everyone needs a starting point, whether it’s the start of a New Year, a new week or even a new day, you just need a starting point!

  I took my opportunity as 1^st January, I say January 1^st, it was the bit after the bit where I stayed up until the early hours of the morning eating and drinking bad stuff. My January 1^st started about 10am!

  I planned for it though, I made sure, my fridge was full of healthy stuff that I liked and I also refreshed myself with the plan that DNA Fit put together for me. 

I’ve been combining their advice, but eating to my Weight Watchers points, which has been working. Basically my DNA dictates that I eat very little carbs (bang goes that toast cookbook) eat more fish and protein, bring on the cheese (although weighed and pointed portions) I’m OK with a glass of red (hurrah, I knew I liked dieting) and I can still drink coffee and eat chocolate occasionally (and occasionally doesn’t mean every couple of hours)

  I’ve needed to start to build up my fitness again, so over the weekend, Cyril was taken out for walks, which has the double bonus of earning me extra points and tiring him out, which if you’ve ever come across a beagle is a near impossible task!

Sleepy Cyril & his Moo-cow

  Tuesday morning I set my alarm and was at the gym for 6.30am, which apparently is the busiest place on earth at that time of morning, I had to distract an old lady with Alan Titchmarsh on the tele so I could get on a treadmill.

Ipod and water ready for the gym

Today, I’ve managed to plan my working day so that I could nip off for a couple of hours to go to Just Jhoom, which is my all time favourite ever exercise class. If you’ve never done it, it’s basically Bollywood style Zumba! Don’t let the warm up of moving your eyes left to right and up and down fool you into thinking it’s easy, it’s not! It’s hard and you sweat A LOT and then old ladies have to ask you if you’re alright (well they do with me!)

  So tonight is my first post Christmas weigh in and I know it wont be pretty, but as I strip off at the scales and I mean strip (I need every bit of help I can get) I know that I’ve put myself back on track, I’ve also set myself mini goals to keep me focused! The first one is to have lost 7 pounds by the time I go and see Matt Goss at the end of January, so wish me the best of British!

“You Can’t Go In There Unless You’re Going to Buy Something” My Gran and Other Tall Tales!

Firstly a massive thank you! On Monday morning, I woke up to this e-mail (well actually I saw it at 4.29am, but who can you share good news with at that time in a morning?)

  “Slinky By Tuesday” has made it to the shortlist in the Lifestyle category for the UK Blog Awards. As the first part of the process is being voted for by members of the public I am absolutely over the moon, I genuinely can’t thank the people who voted enough!

  It also means that we are off to a swanky award ceremony in London on the 25^th April and that means looking fabulous! It’s also given me a bit of a weight loss kick up the bottom. I’ve been struggling the last few weeks to shift my holiday weight; it’s been half a pound here, a pound there, but nothing that’s really been significant. However the arrival of the e-mail was just the boost I needed and even though it’s only Wednesday, I’ve already been to the gym twice this week and have worked out when I can go again, whilst still fitting in all the other things I need to! I think it’s called “planning”

  I’ve discovered that I like going to the gym first thing, mainly because it’s done for the day and it actually leaves me feeling smug! There’s something about taking 45 minutes out at the start of the day to do something for myself that seems to clear my mind and put me in a good mood. Although this video, looks more "Blair Witch" than Happy Katie!

  I noticed this morning, that rather than the usual mix of TOWIE-tanned muscle men lifting weights and grunting out of time to the music,  my gym is full of slightly older people. I reckon most of the people there were 60 plus. In fact I had a lovely conversation in the changing rom with two ladies in their 70’s who were off for their morning swim.

  I can’t tell you how much I admire this. It made me think about my Gran. My Grandma Mable was a weird contradiction, in many ways formidable and strong and in others afraid to try things, but ultimately she never did things by halves.

  She never went on an aeroplane until she was 56 and then she flew to Australia (as a passenger, she didn’t suddenly fulfil a lifelong ambition to become Amelia Earheart) She never had an operation until one day she fell and broke her hip, even then when the ambulance men came to fetch her she refused to sit in the wheelchair and she was carted off, with one of them saying “I bet you’re a rum old bugger Mable” Whilst she was in there, they discovered she had problems with her bowels and performed an emergency operation on Christmas Eve. We were told not to expect her to last the night (“Merry Christmas”) She did and lived another very happy 10 years complete with a Zimmer frame (or a zither as she called it), a dodgy heart and two colostomy bags! I always felt a lesser woman would have given up, but not her!

Gran and I, Christmas 2005

  For all her strength, she refused to try new things, and to get herself out of stuff, she would make up really weird excuses. Excuses so weird, that there was no way they couldn't be true, either that or maybe I was a REALLY gullible child! 

  For example, she would take Lucy and I on regular trips to Sutton. These trips would include getting the 345 bus, a visit to Fine Fare, fish and chips and a visit to the shops. If there was a shop Gran didn't want to go in, she would tell us that there were certain shops in the world, that you couldn't go in unless you bought something. Gran would tell us that they had people on the door making sure that you had a carrier bag with something in that you'd bought from there. We would stand outside the shop, hand on the doorknob and Gran would say "of course if you KNOW you want to buy something, then we'll go in, but I don't want you getting into trouble"  It never occurred to me and Lucy that these shops were mainly toy, sweet and pet shops! 

   She also never came swimming with us; I remember her telling me once that this was because people over 50 weren’t allowed to wear swimsuits. This scared me and as a result, I felt I should spend as much time in my swimsuit as possible! It made me  wonder what on earth happened to you if you did wear a swimsuit after the age of 50. Did you get sent to prison? Were you fined? How was it policed? Did David Hasselhoff roam the beaches of southern England demanding to see birth certificates and then carting off offenders to bared beach huts “to think about what they’ve done”

Gran and a weird blowy thing from a Christmas cracker!

  I think it’s because of this that whenever I see an older person taking part in an exercise class, pounding the treadmill or preparing for an early morning swim, it just makes me smile, because I think good on you! I also worry they’ll probably get arrested!

Gran, Grandpa, me as a baby and our dog Mitch

  

New Year, Same Me, but Slightly Improved (ish)

Happy New Year!

Today is my first day back at work after a 2 week holiday, a 2 week Christmas break that saw me rediscover the delights and joys of all the foods I’ve spent the last year avoiding.  What is it about Christmas that suddenly makes us think, “Lets eat as much food as we can until we feel sick?” After all it’s really just one day and it’s really just a Sunday dinner with a few more vegetables. Yet for some reason we get the urge to eat peanuts by the bucket load and a whole tin of chocolates before we’ve even brushed our hair (just me?)

  Our Christmases are slightly different now; after Mum died we decided that we didn’t want to spend Christmas at home. None of us could stand the thought of sitting round the dinner table with an empty seat and then watching the Christmas episode of “Eastenders”, where someone would get dumped, killed, have their house burnt down or something equally cheerful, all accompanied by shouts of “get out of my pub” We decided to get as far away as possible, so off we went to Cancun.

  We’d never spent or even contemplated Christmas in the sun, so we didn’t know what to expect. As it turns out we had an amazing time and it was the best thing we could have done and as a result we’ve done it the last 4 Christmases. Weirdly there's a group of people in the hotel, who just like us go every year. After 4 years we still don't really know anyone's names, but we smile and say hello and this year we actually took bets on when the others would arrive! These are our favourites;

• Boss Hog and Nigella - They're from Texas (we think) and they strut around as if they own the place, from the moment they arrive they dominate the staff, push in at the bar and generally strut around. To quote my Gran he walks in a fashion that suggests "here's my head, my arse is coming" and she looks a bit like an older Nigella Lawson and has a sun hat to match every swimsuit.
• Mr & Mrs Essex  - A lovely couple from Essex who have a son called Scott, who makes a guest appearance at some point during the holiday.
• Padre and Mrs Padre - We're not sure if this is his actual name or a nickname that he's universally known by, he may actually be a padre. He NEVER shuts up! And as a result his wife can be seen face down on a sun-bed with her headphones on letting him talk to other people. I think she probably has enough of him wittering on throughout the year. At approximately 3.50pm everyday, Padre tries to make everyone in the hotel gather for water volleyball. So far he's never managed to convince us, our excuses have ranged from "I'm recovering from wrist surgery" (me) to "maybe tomorrow" (Lucy) to "no" (Dad)

Yet this collection of weird and wonderful people are our Christmas companions and although I think we occasionally get a pang that our family Christmases are no longer the same, particularly when you see pictures of pressies under the tree ready for the children to open, but in our Pollyanna state of minds, the sunshine, cocktails and hot stone massage we had on Christmas day, soon helps us feel better. We just have a new normal now.

Merry Christmas from the Trinders!

  It’s this 2-week holiday that has led me to have “scales fear” next Tuesday. I think wherever you’ve spent Christmas, you probably started off with good intentions and then before you know it your paper hat is askew, you’re knee deep in Cadbury’s Heroes wrappers and developed a love of figs, which you must eat by the pound in any one sitting, despite not eating them at any other point in the year! 

  I too started off my holiday with good intentions, picking fruit and yogurt for breakfast and then a seafood salad at lunchtime. By the time a few cocktails had been consumed, I was saying stuff like “one desert wont hurt and then no more till Christmas Eve” This lasted all of a couple of days and before I knew it, rather than fruit I was having pain au chocolate and my salads were becoming laced with coleslaw and cheese and then I was just picking whatever I fancied off the menu as opposed to the healthiest option. The menus even had these little green apple symbols by the healthy options, so there was no excuse really. I started swimming everyday too, but then I got fed up of dodging the heavy petting couples in the pool, so eventually I just swam to the bar, rather than risk getting caught up in an inappropriate situation!

Me trying escargot, which really just taste of chewy nothingness

Hotel surf & turf burger, which are amazing!

  Since getting back I have avoided the scales and am dreading my first weigh in of 2014, but I guess if you do the crime, you should be prepared to do the time!

  I have however had a word with myself and today it’s back to normal and my normal is actually a healthy way of eating. I want to continue with my Slinky mission more than I want to eat chocolate (yes you did read that correctly!) So yesterday I organised myself, made sure I had plenty of fruit, salad and vegetables in the house, de-junked my fridge of the naughty New Year’s Eve buffet and prepared a healthy stew for tonight’s tea. I also met my friend Debbie for a game of badminton, which even after a break of 3 weeks we managed to not play too badly! So I’m hoping by the time next Tuesday comes I’ve undone some of the damage.

 Wish me luck and I hope 2014 is all you want it to be and a lot more besides!

Lucy and me, one of my favourite pics from the holiday

My Chocolate Wrap Sheet!

I’m really proud of myself for so far not falling foul of the “it’s Christmas, I deserve a treat” trap and today when I stepped on the scales I’d lost another pound! Every time those numbers go down I swear I could cry a little bit with joy! How I’ll fare over the actual Christmas period still waits to be seen, although last year I managed to lose 3 pounds, but that was down to a nasty bout of laryngitis, not quite sure I want to experience that again!

  Prepare for a smug comment….last night I finished my Christmas wrapping! Everything is bought and paid for, its now neatly wrapped and ready to be delivered and all my Christmas cards were sent last week!

 I also realised that  I’d achieved another Christmas miracle.

  Most years I end up buying somebody chocolate and I always buy Lucy a tube of Pringles. The reason for the Pringles is because of a crime known as “The Great Crisp Theft of 1997” Me and Mum were sat watching the footie together and Mum said “Lucy has some Pringles in the kitchen, why don’t you fetch them and we can snack on them” Now I hate to speak ill of the dead it wasn’t all her fault, I was a willing and easily led participant in this crime M’Lud. I should probably point out that during this misdemeanour Lucy was in her bedroom, a mere few doors away from the scene of the crime.

  Once the crisps had been scoffed and the tube discarded in the wheelie bin so as to avoid immediate detection, Mum and I thought little of what we had done. That is until a few hours later, when Lucy wandered in deciding she was ready to partake of a Pringle. To say she was angry when she discovered what we had done is an understatement, not helped by Mum and I giggling. Pringles were purchased the very next day to try and make amends and every Christmas since Mum and I always made sure there were two tubes of Pringles waiting for Lucy under the tree. A tradition, which I now continue.

  Anyway back to the point, as I say most years I end up buying not only the Pringles, but also someone else chocolate and I reckon every year I end up re-buying the aforementioned items because I’ve eaten the first lot!

  Sometimes it’s a case of I never even attempt to wrap them, I just eat them. In my lowest ebbs I’ve wrapped them, thinking that if they’re wrapped there’s NO WAY I’ll be tempted to eat them. WRONG! It’s like I can hear them…”Katie…..oh Katie….come and eat this finger of fudge that you don’t really like, but the fact there’s one in this selection box under the tree is driving you crazy” I have actually unwrapped presents just so I can stuff my face! I was never proud of myself afterwards, but you tell yourself, just this once, it won’t happen again and before you know it you’ve unwrapped the festive pack of Walnut Whips!

  This year however, I honestly haven’t done this! I have bought people chocolate as presents and I didn’t even wrap it immediately, it sat in plain full view in my fridge and I was never tempted!

  It may sound silly, but when you’ve made excuses just so you can sneak away to stuff your face, this is a big deal. When you’re meant to be on a diet and you’re not feeling it, you make all kinds of excuses “so and so will be offended if I don’t eat 5 of their birthday cakes they have bought in” “I skipped breakfast so 3 bags of crisps and a Biscuit Boost is really only the calorie equivalent of a couple of Weetabix” and “It’s only a beef sandwich” (for beef sandwich read McDonalds hamburger) Plus if you live on your own and no one sees you eat the food, doesn’t count right?

  So this year I have achieved something I didn’t even realised I was going to, until I’d done it! So well as being thinner, I’ve also saved myself money, which means I can treat myself to a new dress for Christmas!