Must gain focus

The last time I wrote on here I was trying out the low calorie diet. I managed to lose 13lbs in a month but I was so unhappy on it as I missed food.Since coming off of it I have completely lost my way and have put 6lbs back on :( Luckily I am still under 15 stone but only just! I am sat here feeling unwell and very unhappy with myself. I have my daughter's christening on Sunday and am just not feeling up to focussing today. I am going to do some walking this evening on the treadmill as I have a Moonwalk to get through in 2 weeks time! My decision is to start on Monday and to try my hardest to keep my focus. I will try to blog as much of my journey as I can with the hope of writing a book about my weight loss journey at the end of it. I would like to weigh 9 stone by the time I finish so really need to sort myself out.

Second week is harder

Well as the title suggests it is week 2 and I am finding it hard :( I am just feeling hungry and fed up. I lost 7lbs in my first week and I was hoping that would drive me to have a good second week but it is still hard. Every night I can smell my daughter's dinner and then later it's my hubby's dinner and glass of wine. It all smells so good lol! I know that it will be worth it in the end but even that seems so far away right now. Maybe it'll be easier when I can actually see a difference, I don't know. I have to keep going though as I just hate what I look like. I'm hoping that I'll be feeling a bit happier in a couple of days and that it's just hormones. Must persevere!
Time for another cup of tea I think :)

It's a mystery

I'm not entirely sure how the human body does it but I've been eating between 600 & 650 calories a day since Saturday and I'm not feeling hungry. If anything I actually feel a bit bloated after my dinner lol! At the end of Monday I had a massive burst of energy and felt like I could have run around the block a few times. And then yesterday I had the come down, I was exhausted lol! I am shattered today but that is not down to the diet, that's due to being woken up at 2.30am by my sodding cough!

I did have a peak on the scales this morning and I'm already 6lbs down! Have to admit even if I did feel hungry that would keep me going. I will properly weigh in on Sunday as that's my usual weigh in morning with my hubby so I will get an extra day this week ;) Can't wait to see what the scales say on Sunday morning.

Start of the very low calorie diet

I have decided to try a very low calorie diet for a few weeks to give my weight loss a big boost. I know this is going to be hard work but I really want to give it a good shot. I have been feeling very low, I hate what I see every time I look in the mirror. I hate what my body looks like and I don't really understand how my hubby can stand to look at it (luckily he can!) So I have decided I need to do something drastic.

So far today I have had a cup of tea, a Slim Fast milkshake, a multi vitamin and 500 ml of water. I have looked into it a lot and I need to drink 3 litres of water a day so plenty more water to be drunk today! Think I may be peeing a lot lol! Apparently the first week is the toughest part but then you break through a barrier and then you feel great, so here's hoping :)

Bad Week, but there's always a bright side!

It's not been the best week this week. I have felt rotten with constipation and a bad back. I've not eaten great because of it and I have done no exercise as it's been far too cold to go walking. A week of excuses really :( As a result I have lost no weight this week. But on the plus side I haven't gained any either.

For the next two weeks I am moving over to www.myfitnesspal.com to see how I get on. If I have two good weeks I'm going to cancel my WW online subscription. I have no problem with WW at all, I am very grateful for what I have lost through the programme, I am just looking at cutting some costs. My maternity pay runs out in a couple of months so I want to try to cut out any unnecessary costs now. So I will now be counting calories and seeing how that works. Wish me luck!

My other bright side for the week was I got a new tattoo yesterday :) It hurt more than I remember but luckily it was only small so it didn't take long to do. It is on the inside of my right wrist. As I am typing this I have just become aware that he did incorporate something we had tried that didn't work where I had wanted it lol! If you look at the rose, opposite the leaf is a swirl instead of another leaf. This is a small representation of my bungee rope :) I did a bungee July 2010 to prove to myself that I could do anything I wanted as long as I believed I could, this tattoo is a reminder to keep believing!

Weigh In

I'm quite happy with today's weigh in, I have somehow managed to lose a pound :) I had an up and down week so I can be happy with that. But this week I must do better!! I am challenging myself this week to not eat any of my weekly points or any of my activity points. If I stay focussed it should be quite easy for me, I only lose my way when I get distracted. I really must stay strong.

So this afternoon to start my week I am going for a 5.5 mile walk. In May I will be one of the 15,000 people doing the Moonwalk, uniting against breast cancer. I have so much more training to do, 26.2 miles is a very long way for someone like me. But I am determined that I will do it. So far my walking partner and I have walked 4 miles a few times, but today we are pushing ourselves to 5.5. I haven't actually told her yet, she thinks we're doing 5 lol! I'll tell her when we get home. Hopefully all this training will help burn some lbs off this body. If anyone would like to sponsor me or donate some money to the breast cancer crusade you can so here: http://www.walkthewalkfundraising.org/roxanne_sheppard

Thank you in advance xx

Been a bit slack

When the weekend comes I am useless! Everyone is at home so I don't get the same time I get when hubby's at work and my eldest is at preschool. During the week I get at least an hour a day to do exercise and shower while the baby's asleep but not at the weekend. Also there's something about the mentality of the weekend that stops me from wanting to do anything. After years of working I still find it hard to treat the weekend as normal days. It was always the time of the week when things slowed down and if I felt like a day or two of nothing then that was what I had. Now I am a Mum of 2 some things have changed. I still have to clean the house and ensure everyone is fed at the right times (that's 2 kids and 4 cats) so I guess I don't really stop working any more. However I do seem to want to stop everything else. With that said I have managed to get through the day with 6 ProPoints left over. 

It's my weigh in in the morning and I have to say I am not entirely hopeful. My hubby went away to Jersey in the week and I ended up having a very bad point day. I picked myself up the very next morning and have done quite a bit of exercise to make up for it but I'm not sure it'll be enough. I just need to remember whatever the scale says it is only this week's weigh in, there's always next week to do better.

Veggie Curry

Tonight's dinner was vegetable curry. This has now become one of our weekly dinners, it's yummy, full of veg and is only 2 ProPoints per serving :) This makes it very easy to have rice with it or (if you're like me) naan breads. This is my recipe but you can add whatever veg you like to it. If you add something yummy like sweet potato don't forget to recalculate the ProPoints. I have found that root veg works better than cauliflower or broccolli, but that's my tastes.

Ingredients
Butternut Squash, cubed
Swede, cubed
3/4 carrots, sliced
2 onions, diced
Chillies, chopped (as many as you want)
Garlic, crushed (as much as you want as well )
1 chicken or veg stock cube made up to 3/4 pint
1 can of chopped tomatoes
2 tablespoons curry powder
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoons tomato puree
Large handful coriander, chopped

1.  Fry the onion, garlic and chillies in the oil.
2.  Add stock and curry powder. Bring to the boil.
3.  Add in all veg, chopped tomatoes and tomato puree. Cover and simmer for 3/4 hours, stirring occassionally. Remove lid if too wet.
4.  Mash the soft veg if preferred.
5.  10 mins before serving add coriander and bring to boil.
6.  Eat :)

I managed to make tonight's dinner far too hot so I added 100g of natural yoghurt for 1 more ProPoint. So worth it otherwise I wouldn't have got dinner lol!

I enjoyed this with 2 Tesco Finest garlic and coriander naan breads at 4 ProPoints each. So my whole dinner was just 10 ProPoints. Yummy!

Believe

I originally started this blog when I was told I needed to lose weight to conceive as I was only ovulating from one side. In the end I never used it as I conceived that month lol! But now I have 115lbs to lose in total so time to try again, please bear with me :)

So I have decided to get myself a new tattoo. I want 'Believe' on my right wrist so that every time I start to doubt myself I can look to that for inspiration. This isn't just for my weight loss journey but for everything in my life. I suffer from a lot of self doubt (like so many others) but I know that when I do believe in myself it makes me a stronger person and I can achieve great things. About 6 years ago I became a gold member with WW, I lost 54lbs and got down to a UK size 10, I felt amazing! I had total confidence in myself then that I could do anything, I believed I could get to goal weight and therefore I did. Over the last 6 years I have got married and had 2 lovely little girls and I have put on a lot of weight. But I am now putting faith in myself that I can lose the weight again. I am going to believe in myself.

Since my youngest was born at the beginning of August I have lost 2 stone (28lbs) so I am on my way. I still have 87lbs to go but I am taking every day as it comes. I am trying to do a little bit of exercise every day and trying to stay within my WW points. I have days when I'm right on track and I have days when I slip but the main thing for me is that I am trying. I am hoping to use this blog as a place to confess when I sin and jump for joy when I behave. I'll probably add some photos in as well along the way. I like the idea of getting to my goal weight and having this to look back on.