Assumptions

It doesn’t matter how well I do during the week when it gets to weigh day and standing in the queue to get a weighed, a black mist descends on me and I go from REALLY REALLY confident to convinced that I’ve done REALLY REALLY badly! This week it was the former and it was a case of another pound gone! It’s going slowly, but it’s going!

  I’m still sticking to my DNA fit way of eating, but sticking to my Weight Watchers pro-points. I’ve cut down on my carb intake massively, which this week has been easier said than done. I’ve had a few meetings and been on the road a bit and it’s quite hard to get a salad on the road that either isn’t soaked in high fat salad dressing or contains eggs… I hate eggs! So there have been a couple more sandwich options than normal, but at least I’ve been able to work out the points and most nights I’ve cut the carbs out my evening meal. Most days…sometimes you just really need potatoes!

  I went to get my nails done this morning and I was chatting to the girl who was doing them and she mentioned that she’d missed going to Slimming World this week, because on weigh day she’d gone mental and gone to McDonalds and had a kebab! Now this girl is someone who has a really lovely figure and is very pretty and I found myself uttering the immortal words “well you don’t need to go to Slimming World” and she said “well I’ve lost 2 stone with them, so I go just to make sure that I don’t put it back on again”

pretty nails

  It occurred to me that because I hadn’t known her very long I had assumed she had always been slim and had never had a weight problem. Just like I reckon people who meet me now assume I’ve always been fat!

  When I first went to University, I did what every Uni student does and put weight on. Chips at lunchtime, cakes in the canteen, beer in the evening (sometime afternoon) and I put a couple of stone on. During my third year, my Mum and me joined Weight Watchers for the first time and I got to goal weight  by losing 2 and a half stone. So by the time I started my Post-Grad I was really slinky, so everyone I met there, only ever knew me as Slinky Katie.

Me, Mum and Lucy just after we joined Weight Watchers the first time!

Me (on the left) at goal weight, the first time!

  A few years after I’d left Uni and started work, I met up with an old friend. I hadn’t put a lot of weight on by any stretch of the imagination, but working early mornings (whatever people tell you, getting up at 3.30am every morning is unnatural!) so my eating pattern was a little erratic and I’d probably put a stone back on.

Me & my "belly" (on the right)

  I remember sitting on a sofa with my friend having a coffee and she reached over, prodded me in the tummy and said well you’re clearly content with life! I haven’t seen her recently, because I’m scared she’ll grab my tummy and tell me “never mind content, you must be over the f*****g moon”

  I know that sometimes I put off seeing people who knew me when I was thinner, because weirdly I think they’ll think badly of me for putting lots of weight on and assume I’ve just decided to let myself go, which really isn’t the case. My weight is purely down to comfort eating, I wish I was one of those people who found comfort in exercise or something that was good for me, but I’m not. I’ve worked really hard at re-educating myself and having met up with some friends I hadn’t seen in about 10 years recently, what I learnt is that they were just really pleased to see me!

  My aim for next week is to try and lose 2 pounds, before Christmas I want to be at least half a stone lighter, although if it's more I won't complain!

PS - if you could spare me the time to vote for me in the UK Blog Awards, that would be very lovely of you!

UK Blog Awards 2015 - Slinky By Tuesday Needs Your Votes

Earlier this year, Slinky By Tuesday was a finalist in the first ever UK Blog Awards, I didn't win, but I was thrilled to even be recognised and it meant a night out in London with Dad and Lucy.

This time round Slinky By Tuesday is featuring in two categories Lifestyle with Debenhams.

And Health

If you could possibly spare me the time to vote that would be great and I'd really appreciate it! Voting closes 1st December 2014.

Thank you!!

"I Look Like a Pregnant Andy Pandy"

There’s an episode of “Sex and the City”, where Carrie proclaims she doesn’t like Internet shopping, because shopping is her cardio. Now don’t get me wrong, I too love shopping, but the type of shopping I enjoy these days is wandering around gift shops buying stuff for my house that I don’t really need.

Everyone needs a candle holder that lights up to show their name right?

  As I lose weight, I’m starting to like clothes shopping a bit more too, particularly as communal dressing rooms seem to have been banished. Did anyone actually like getting changed in them? I reckon even Victoria’s Secret Model’s who are a rare breed of woman, would have crinkled their perfectly formed noses and squiged themselves into the corner of the room so no one could look at them.

I have a love / hate relationship with trying clothes on, and the main reason is the assistants who stand as guardians of the door. I’m sure it’s in my head, but as a curvaceous beauty when I try something on, even if it fits perfectly, but I don’t like it as I hand it back, I feel as though she’s saying “I could have told you that size would never have fit YOU fatty bum-bum” I’m sure she isn’t, she’d probably thinking “bugger, now I’ve got to walk across the shop and put it back”

  There are two stock phrases I utter as I hand back clothes.

1. “I don’t like it”
2. “I’ll leave it thanks” (thrusting the item at the assistant and offering no further explanation)

I never tell them it doesn’t fit; it’s not their business, even if I think they’ve probably heard me wailing in the changing room and can see I now resemble a member of KISS.

  I have a number of “do’s” coming up; the UK Blog Awards (have I mentioned recently that Slinky By Tuesday” is up for an award? We are, thank you) and my friend’s wedding in May. (No I haven’t left it till the last minute I have plenty of time to sort an outfit, hat, shoes and bag!)

  I decided to order myself a navy blue jumpsuit, because I had an idea that it would be sophisticated and elegant.

I prefer online shopping for items I have no idea whether they’ll fit me or not, it saves embarrassment. So getting my jumpsuit and in my head the perfect wedding outfit home, I tried it on. It fit! I could zip it up, which is always a bonus. Heading to the mirror, I was horrified to see that rather than a sophisticated elegant wedding guest, I looked like a pregnant Andy Pandy! (minus the hat)

  The outfit may have zipped over my bootylicious booty, but it stretched over my tummy like I was a celebrity in “OK” magazine doing the obligatory “I’m 3 months pregnant, so will cuddle my partner and smile smugly pose” Taking it off and shoving it back in the bag, I put on my pyjamas because they have an elasticated waist!

 However this tale of woe has a happy ending. The very next day, a pair of skinny jeans I had ordered arrived, I very nearly just left them in the bag and sent them back without trying them on, but I didn’t! These jeans are a size less than I have been wearing and fit perfectly! I’ve also found dresses for the awards and my friends wedding both a size less than normal and both fit perfectly!

Any Excuse for a Cheap Tossing Gag

Anyone who works or has ever worked in radio will tell you that Pancake Day is one of their favourite days of the year. Why? Is it because it’s an excuse to eat yummy pancakes live on air, when eating in the studio is normally banned in case you drop a crumb into an important bit of equipment? No it’s because legitimately you can say the word “tosser” repeatedly on air and even ask listeners if “they’ll be tossing tonight” and no one will phone OFCOM to complain!

  This blog will probably just prove that you can take the girl out of radio, but not radio out of the girl, so there’ll probably be a few cheap tossing gags!

  I really feel like I’m back on track now and even though I stayed the same this week, I am focused and really trying. I’ve been to the gym, walked miles with the dog and started wearing my pedometer everyday. Yesterday at work I earned 7 points just walking around a classroom!

  I’ve also been experimenting with different Weight Watchers recipes, because I felt I was getting into a bit of a food rut. I have inherited many good qualities from my Mum, however I also inherited her inability to cook! 

  At Christmas having seen a picture on Pinterest of a wreath made out of cupcakes, I felt inspired to give it a go. I didn’t intend to eat the cakes, Lucy was going to take them into work, but I felt a Sunday afternoon of baking would be fun and relaxing. Now the cupcakes themselves were perfectly edible, however cake decorating really isn’t a talent and my kitchen looked as though the Incredible Hulk had broken in and had an accident all over the work surface.

  Even 3 months on, this picture still makes me giggle!

mmmmm, yummy Christmas cupcakes, which are meant to resemble a wreath!

  Anyway undeterred this week I decided that rather than buying cooking sauces I would make them! They'd be delicious and point free! With the aid of chopped tomatoes, garlic and a herb rack that's sat unused in the corner of my kitchen for 10 months I got to work.  The sauce itself was successful and I left my dinner happily cooking in my slow cooker so that when I returned from the gym, it was a case of dishing  it up. It however turns out my slow cooker had other ideas.

R.I.P slow cooker

  Despite intensive research, I am yet to discover another person who has burnt off the bottom of their slow cooker!

  You’d think I would have given up, but not me! Every year I promise myself I’ll cook pancakes on Shrove Tuesday and every year I forget and decide I’ll do it next year! Not this year, this year I tossed with the rest of the population! We got off to a slightly shaky start because the Weight Watchers recipe specified blueberries and I had strawberries and I don’t own a frying pan so I had to use my wok. I like to consider myself a problem solver.

  My pancake got off to a winning start.

Looking good!

And then it didn’t.

Are they meant to look like this?

Making pancakes is hard, anyone says differently is a naughty little teller of fibs and warts will grow on their tongues

  Still you didn’t grow up in the Trinder household with chef Pamela without having a cast iron tummy so I ate them anyway and although they looked horrible, they tasted pretty good, but that could have been the strawberries and golden syrup.

It's normal to eat a pancake out of a bowl right?

  You’d think it would deter me from cooking altogether, but I’ve found that my dishes make me laugh so much that I actually enjoy cooking! But a word to the wise, just for now if I invite you round for dinner, suggest we go out instead!

  Oh and instead of giving something up for Lent, I’ve taken something up instead. For the next 40 days I’m doing my own version of the plank challenge, I did start this last year, but on day 20 I went on holiday and it fell by the wayside, so I’m trying again!

“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