Lovely Las Vegas

It’s been quite a few weeks; everything has been really busy, in some ways that’s been good and in others not so good. Either way my diet has suffered and I found myself slipping into old habits. In the run up to my holiday, unlike normal people who panic diet so they look great on holiday, something in my head thought “screw it, I’m still fat, I’ll still be fat on holiday, so I’ll worry about it when I get back!

  I went on holiday to Las Vegas, which is an amazing place and as it turns out, a place where actually anything does go. If you want to drink beer and gamble at 8 in the morning, you can drink beer and gamble at 8 in the morning and no one will judge you. If you want to dress like a female member of Kiss and stand in the street with your boobs out, apparently that is also acceptable. I’m not 100% sure I would get away with either of those things in Mansfield.

Grand Canyon selfie

  Las Vegas is very much a place of excess, which is actually no good if you’re on a diet and easily led. I am both of those things, so despite my best intentions, the first morning I ordered fruit and yogart for breakfast (yay me) the second the gloves were off and out came the pancakes and then the next morning the waffles and so on! I could offer an excuse as to why, but the truth is I like pancakes and I like waffles and I never eat them at home! 

  If you’ve read the Slinky blog before you’ll know that a few months ago I was hypnotised into believing that sugar tasted like poo and smelled like dirty toilets, which worked and I didn’t touch anything sweet for ages, even sitting in meetings with cakes right in front of me and going out for afternoon tea, where I only ate sandwiches and genuinely wasn’t tempted by the cakes, but in Vegas all bets were off and my sugar addiction came back in force.

  Pancakes and waffles for breakfast, chocolate puddings, ice cream, these really lovely little petit fours served in one of the best restaurants I’ve ever been in (Picasso in the Bellagio hotel) and then I even started eating the little hotel chocolates they leave on your pillow and they are always really horrible chocolate!

Chocolate pudding

Petit Fours from the Picasso restaurant

  So now I’ve been back a couple of weeks and by the time I set foot on English soil, despite having one of the best holidays ever and loving every square inch of Vegas, I felt so bloated and horrible, that I knew it was time to reignite the Slinky diva in me. Out came my DNA fitplan and for the first time ever I made a shopping list as opposed to wandering aimlessly round the supermarket looking for stuff I might like.

   Sugar has once again been knocked on the head and if I do get a craving I’ve started tapping. (Tapping is where you tap different pressure points on your body and it helps break the craving, it also works for my panic attacks) I’ve also reduced the carbs I eat, because according to my DNA I do not respond well to them, but I’ve decided if I want I can have carbs once a week.

  For my first weigh in, which was Tuesday, I’d lost a pound, not a huge amount, but at least it’s starting to come off again and I feel so much better and although there have been a few sugar cravings. Someone posted a picture of a Nutella cheesecake on Facebook the other day and I found myself trying to come up with legitimate reasons I could make one, but I soon snapped myself out of it. The carbs I haven’t really missed at all. Hopefully next week a few more pounds will have disappeared!

Free the Cheesecake One!

When I say this, it really isn’t an excuse, but the last few weeks have been really busy with work. We have a massive project on at the moment and I’ve spent a lot of time in meetings. Fortunately I've managed to stick to my diet and in meetings I’ve avoided biscuits, even the nice chocolate ones you normally only get at Christmas. I’ve made sensible choices if I’ve eaten out and any downtime that I have had, I’ve filled with exercise, so even though I didn’t make my meeting last week, on average I’ve been earning 41 bonus points. 

  This has been through a mixture of burlesque dancing, going to the gym and walking. I can now walk up the 199 steps in Whitby without thinking my heart is going to burst out of my chest! As a result this week a pound has magically disappeared. Well maybe not magically because I worked bloody hard for that!

The 199 Steps in Whitby

I’ve also been reinforcing my DNA Fit way of eating. A few months ago I was genetically tested to see what foods my body best responds to. Yes this is a thing and you can read about it in this blog. For me (and please keep in mind that this is exclusive to my DNA, yours will be different, even if we are related!) I need lots of protein and very little carbs. So despite my love of carbs, I now only eat them once a day.

  I also don’t eat chocolate, cakes, deserts or sweet things in general, because I've been hypnotised not to! Don’t I sound a hoot to be around! Sometimes I feel I’m morphing into Gwyneth Paltrow and before I know it, I’ll be on a macrobiotic diet, banning Cyril (my dog) from eating meat and saying things like “I don’t put anything that hasn’t been through an ancient refining process in my body” and spending 3 hours a day in a downward dog pose making humming noises. 

  As I had a little bit of time at home last night, I thought I’d experiment in the kitchen. If you read my Slinky blog regularly, you’ll know that the outcome of this is bound to be as happy as someone in a horror film going into a dark building, where the lights don’t work and there’s a serial killer on the lose.

  I love Pinterest and on there I’d found a recipe for a sugar free, carb free cheesecake, mmmmm sounds delicious (*may or may not be true) In my days as a sugar-aholic, the one thing I could make with serious aplomb was a cheesecake, my peanut butter creation had my neighbours begging me for the recipe and actually asking me to make it for EVERY gathering!

My Raspberry & peanut butter cheesecakes

  The sugar free / carb free recipe called for 4 ingredients

1. Cream cheese
2. Eggs
3. Bananas
4. Peanut butter (I used an organic almond one, my inner Gwyneth was proud)

The recipe said bung it in a bowl, mix it up, shove it in the oven….or words to that effect. I can’t help, but feel there’s a cooking programme lurking deep within my soul.

Looks promising at this stage, very American cheesecake!

  After an hour, I figured it was time to take it out of the oven, well the smoke alarm was going off and that’s a sign in the Trinder household that dinner is ready.

A bit burnt, but I can live with burnt if it tastes nice!

  Now granted it was a bit burnt, but I wasn’t going to let that put me off. I waited patiently for it to cool and down and waited to taste the creation that would make me a changed sugar free / carb-free loving person. As I cut myself a sensible slice and prepared to have my taste buds tickled, I realised that there’s a reason I had loved cheesecake so much and that was the carbs and sugar that was in it.

Sadly my cheesecake was not a pleasant experience, it just tasted like eggy cream cheese mixed with a bit of banana and peanut butter and then burnt in the oven! It just made me miss proper cheesecake!

  If you have any sugar free recipes that you’ve tried and actually tasted nice, then I’d love to hear about them!

You Are Feeling Very Sleepy!

The snow put paid to me getting to my weigh in this week, which I was really gutted about because I’ve had a god week. I have religiously been wearing my Fitbit and on Sunday managed 17,209, my personal best so far! 

And then I earned my marathon badge, which I’m not sure what that means but I got an encouraging message telling me I was doing brilliantly!

And despite not being able to do any driving yesterday (my car, a huge hill near where I live and the snow are not a great mix) Cyril and I went out for a snowy walk, which was lovely and so peaceful!

Cyril LOVES the snow!

  I’ve also now gone a whole week without any form of chocolate, biscuit, cake or desert! Not even a low fat slimming piece of chocolate has passed my lips! How have I achieved this? Is it my iron will? Have I been poorly? Have I not been able to make it to the shops? Am I trying to prove something?

  The answer is no to all the above! I’ve been bewitched, well hypnotised. I’ve had hypnotism in the past to help with nightmares. For years after I was stalked I suffered hideous nightmares and started to sleep walk, sleep talk and my personal favourite waving in my sleep! Sharing a room with anyone was a bit of a problem and very often if I’d been away with my sister, Lucy would say “what on earth where you on about last night?” “Or who were you waving to?” I think Lucy thought I’d gone all “6^th Sense” and was waving to dead people! The upshot was I very rarely got a good night’s sleep. My Mum suggested I tried hypnotism. I went for about 4 sessions in total and it really worked for me. It’s now very rare that I sleep walk /talk / wave, unless I’m massively stressed.

  This time it was my Dad, who suggested hypnotism. He’d seen something on the tele about a woman who’d been for it to help with weight loss and it worked. So last week off I went.

 The session started with us having a chat about what I liked to eat, what triggered me to over eat. I’m a comfort eater and so in times of stress (and I have had a bit of a difficult time recently) I turn to my friend Mr Cadbury. We also spoke about when I really started to put weight on, which was when I was being stalked and then that left me with al kinds of issues, of not wanting to have people in my personal space, not wanting people to look at me (which is weird because you get stared at a lot when you’re fat) or for people to see me as attractive. I think in my head I thought if I was fat and ugly I wouldn’t ever get stalked again. (I didn’t say it was a rational thought!)

  I felt a bit sorry for the hypnotist, because I figured by the time I’d told her about the stalking, the deaths of my Mum, Gran and friends, I thought she must be sorry she’d asked me why I over ate!

  Weirdly I think she’d probably seen people in a worse state than me, because she didn’t seem phased and was pretty sure she could help! We then started the actual hypnotism. If you’ve never been hypnotised it’s the nicest strangest feeling, you are very relaxed and aware of what is being said to you, but then also not aware at the same time. I was aware of her talking about how things with sugar smelled (like dirty toilets) and that a pile of sugar was basically a pile of maggots, which made me think about that bit from “The Lost Boys” when they’re eating rice “Maggots, Michael. You're eating maggots.”

  So at this moment in time I have no desire to incorporate maggots into my diet. So despite the snow meaning I couldn’t get to my weigh in, I feel slinkier and my clothes are starting to feel a bit loser and I’m making better food choices. So with a mixture of sticking to my Weight Watchers points and following my DNA fit eating plan I reckon next week’s weigh in should be pretty OK!

"Four!!"

The first weigh in after you’ve (re) started your diet is always the scariest. I'm starting to think I've had more comebacks than Frank Sinatra! Last week, I really gave it my all;  I have counted, pointed, tracked, exercised and followed my DNA Fit plan to the letter. As I approached the scales, I felt a little bit like Jack Bauer in “24”, (spoiler alert!) It felt like that bit when he sacrifices himself to the Russians in order to save Chloe. Maybe slightly over dramatic, as Lucy wast standing at the scales crying "don't Katie, you don't have to do this" and I at no point, whispered dramatically "Damn it Lucy" Still, it was pretty nerve wracking! 

  That first weigh-in can go one of two ways; either your body goes “finally some sensible eating” and responds and you lose weight. or it goes “seriously dude, where’s the 4 tonnes of chocolate you’ve been eating, help, panic, I’m starving, save yourself” and you either stay the same or maybe put half a pound on.

  Fortunately for me, my body was delighted to no longer be eating a vat of Nutella and doing stuff other than sitting on the sofa and exercising my remote changing finger. 

  Turns out it’s quite enjoyed a 6 mile dog walk and early morning trips to the gym, where I can get my freak on to Bruno Mars (by “freak on” I mean peddling furiously on an exercise bike and walking on a treadmill, that’s the definition of “freak on” when you’re 38!) 

I lost 4 pounds this week, and as a result was given 8 little pebbles, which my Weight Watchers leader, Helen gave me. Helen gives everyone a pebble for every half pound they loose, I enjoyed the sound of mine clanking into the bowl!

My 4 pound pebbles

  I’ve never considered myself competitive either, but my Dad and I have both treated ourselves to a FitBit. These are bands that you wear around your wrist and they monitor your activity throughout the day. I suggested to Dad, we wear them round our ankles, but as he pointed out, we'd just look like we were "on tag" They also sync with your Weight Watchers app, so they automatically count your points. The aim is to do 10,000 steps a day, which is harder than it sounds, particularly when you sit at a desk. I keep getting up and walking round the office and at night, there’s a lot of running up and down stairs!

My FitBit

  Without really saying, Dad and I are now competing to see who can do the most steps and earn the most bonus points! Dad was most upset when I got my 5,000 steps badge before him!

  Still with 4 pounds gone, I’m on track to meet my 7 pounds target before I head to London to see Matt Goss, next week!