Angry Day

I definitely have a temper and I also can wind myself up into a bit of an, "I hate everything," frenzy, like I'm a hormonal [maybe I'm a little hormonal right now...] fourteen year old. Cue phone support because my Internet isn't working properly and me stomping around muttering swear words under my breath afterwards.

Since recovering from my flu (although, I still have a lingering cough), I've got back to work. I am self-employed and my company is just me, it's pretty much my busiest time of year and being ill have thrown everything off - I've missed deadlines and have clients asking what's going on and then Christmas cut-offs to try to beat too. I am stress, stress, stressed! So, of course, little things that are minor inconveniences I wouldn't notice have blown up in my head into massive slights on me personally. So, I am angry today and I was angry yesterday and tomorrow, well, I may well still be angry.

The thing is, I find it really hard to relax, I often think one of the main reasons I overeat is that I don't actually know how to relax without food. And I have definitely run into this obstacle over the last few days, I have some chocolates stashed in my cupboard that I bought in Norway and I have definitely gone to town on those a bit more than I should have. Working from home means I'm always a few feet away from my work and sometimes I feel like the only way to be fully away from work/have "met time" is to be stuffing my face on the sofa in front of the TV. But, I am fighting back against myself, it's just more of an internal struggle than usual.

Oh and I don't think I'd realised that my flu was doing a great job of suppressing my appetite - now it's back with a vengeance and is screaming, "chocolate!"

The other thing I discovered today, was that I was grossly under-estimating how many calories I was eating for breakfast. Today I weighed my cereal and it turns out, including milk I've been eating over 600 calories for breakfast and tracking it at under 400. I am going to have to reel this in starting tomorrow and re-think my overly sugary, yummy breakfast choices. I should just eat Weetabix. After all, breakfast is the meal where I have the most resolve...!

Weigh In - Week 3

Happy Saturday!

I've lost 3.2lbs this week, which means I've lost 1 stone (14lbs) in the last 3 weeks! Whoop! Very happy about that, I am comfortably under the 20 stone mark, which feels really great as that number always kind of screamed "heart attack" to me. I'm also 6lbs away from my Where Are My Knees 1 stone by Christmas pledge! I imagine my weight loss might slow down a bit now - I am basing my calorie intake on losing 2lbs a week, so, the fact I've lost so much more the last few weeks is a bonus - I'd love to keep up this rate of weight loss, but, I am also being realistic and not putting all my hopes on it.

I went to Norway for two days and got back last night, then had to go off to work this morning. And I was definitely still ill. Every time the icy air hit my lungs it was agony. But, I do feel much better, even if I am exhausted and have a lingering cough. All this holiday-ing, weird sleeping hours and illness has played havoc with my eating - I've been averaging a super unhealthy, cheesy meal a day... But, now I'm feeling better and I actually have the energy to get into my car and drive to the supermarket, I should be back on track. Not to say I haven't been paying close attention to how much I've been eating. That I have been doing and faithfully tracking my food and calories, regardless of what poor food choices they may have been. I am actually really looking forward to eating fruit and vegetables again! Oh and exercising - I think that'll be a while longer as my lungs still hurt, but, looking forward to that too!

On the somewhat depressing side of going on holiday - both of my trips were on budget airlines (EasyJet and RyanAir) and a couple of days before, it suddenly occurred to me that it had been a year since I'd been on a plane (and that was a long haul flight and I feel like their seats would be bigger?), during which time I've put on probably about 2 stone and that I might not actually fit in the seats any more. It was actually pretty uncomfortable - I had a real struggle to do up the seat belts when they were fully extended - the plane on the way back yesterday in particular seemed to be smaller and I broke into a panicky sweat trying to squeeze it over me. I did manage, but, it wasn't particularly pleasant and I never want to be in that situation again. I was a fraction of an inch from having to ask for a belt extender and I think I'd rather run screaming off the plane that have to do that! To be fair, had I done that I'd have lost the weight to fit on the plane pretty fast because food in Norway is crazy expensive...

On the flu & exercise

Let's try stating an obvious fact - I hate being ill. Ugh. Not being able to sleep because of coughing fits and horrible fever dreams (about frozen corpses - lesson learnt, don't watch both Pushing Daisies boxsets back to back and expect your dreams not to be plagued by elaborate, brightly coloured deaths). Oh and my body just aches so much... But, what really bothers me is that this seems to happen a fair bit, I start off really well on a new regime and get chopped down by some stupid virus. I don't really feel like I'm floundering that much, while curling up on the sofa with a load of junk food does sound kind of comforting, I'm happy to calorie count and even make room for copious amouts on honey-ladden drinks and Lucozade (is it just me that feels like no virus can be beaten without Lucozade because it's always been my Mum's response to illness to bring home some "Luke-y"? Now I don't live at home any more she still came round with a big bottle of the orange stuff to make me feel better). Living off tins of soup and cereal probably isn't the healthiest though...

What's really annoying is that I can't exercise, I feel like air isn't even making it into my lungs and I might topple over if I move too quickly. So, that is a real shame as my calorie allowance is based on that exercise (well,  I will still lose weight without the exercise but not at the rate I'd like). In fact, I have been weighing myself and my weigh in did seem accurate!

Oh and I sucked it up and put my picture over there on the right in my profile. I kind of didn't want to because what if (dun dun dun) someone should find this and recognise me?! I did even avoid saying where I was going on holiday in case someone should figure it out, but, whatever, I am being silly! The only real concern is all my friends are itty-bitty and I imagine that finding out I weigh more than double them would blow their minds. But, it's really only the reality of the numbers that concern me because, well, I'm sure they know I'm big and can guess my clothes size, but, that massive number of the scales?! I don't know if it's even occurred to them that a human weighs that much...!

Weigh In - Week 2

So, I am back from my holiday and have super flu that, combined with the flight back, has left me pretty much deaf. Fantastic! The problem with working from home is that I am no longer used to being in enclosed spaces with a load of germ-ridden people (as opposed to when I commuted to work by train) and pair that with the gross recycled air of a plane, I was bound to get sick I suppose. Hmm. Anyway, it didn't properly take hold until I got off the plane, when I crashed and could barely move from sicky exhaustion (my boyfriend should get much credit for being the perfect nurse, forcing Lemsip down my throat and forcing me to eat when I really didn't want to) so it didn't negatively impact the holiday too much.

The holiday was lovely and on the weight loss front - I had imagined the amount of walking might off-set the food I was going to eat, but, really, I didn't eat all that badly. I averaged about 5 hours walking a day (coming in at over 2,000 additional calories burnt a day!) and, of course, being in Italy, I ate a fair amount of pizza and ice cream, but, I passed up the sugary drinks for water and was sure to eat some kind of fruit and veg! I wouldn't say I was eating with "dieting" in mind, but, making a note of what I was eating each day definitely kept it in the back of my mind.

I've lost 5.2lbs this week, taking me to a grand total of 10.8lbs in two weeks! That also takes me 9.2lbs away from my 1 stone target for Christmas! I am pretty happy with that as I really didn't anticipate any loss! Of course, I am taking that with a pinch of salt, as I weighed myself at around 4.30pm today and had only eaten a banana and had very little to drink all day due to illness, so, I think that the scales might be showing a bigger loss than it ought to.

If this makes no sense, blame it on the fever! x

Holiday!

I'm going on holiday tomorrow (very excited! And my first break from work since, well, last October!) so I'm not expecting a loss this week, but, I'll be doing lots of walking so hopefully I'll stay at the same weight. I'm also going to continue to track my food so that I am at least mindful of what I'm doing!

Anyway, I love Christmas and I happened up the Where Are My Knees? 10 week pledge and I'm all over that. I've set myself a goal of a stone for Christmas which I feel is more than doable. Little goals are a great help too when it's going to be such a long journey!

Have a great week guys while I sun myself somewhere beautiful (in clothes that only expose my head and hands, obviously, heh...) x

Beginnings

So I created this blog several months ago because I like accountability. Just the act of having to write down what I've been doing, of putting it out there in the public domain, is probably going to increase my chances of success. But then, of course, I didn't actually do anything about it for ages, looking for some kind of inspiration to get started... I think when you're always on the cusp of some kind of diet or weight-loss effort, actually making the plunge becomes something you don't want to do for fear that in several weeks you'll have failed miserably or completely forgotten about the two days you didn't eat chocolate...

But, I have made a rather promising start and lost 5lbs this week, so, I feel like that's a positive place to start my little blogging journey. Perhaps I'm alone in feeling like a weight loss effort should actually be a Big Thing or it's not "real" and I can just ignore it whenever? Anyway, consider this my statement of intent.

I'm in my mid-twenties and weigh just over 20 stone (283lbs). I have succeeded several times in my life at losing significant amounts of weight and getting to somewhere resembling "normal". You know...where you can wear skinny jeans and you don't have to get special boots with extra wide calves. But, I never got there in a particularly healthy or sustainable way. I think so many people with weight issues are all-or-nothing types. That's why one square of chocolate isn't enough - if you've started you want the whole family size bar, but, similarly, it's why a meal replacement diet, where you eat nothing solid, is also easy (relatively). It's fast results, with absolutely cast iron rules and no space for deviation.

But I'm not a student any more - I do a job which often involves 12+ hour days, including long drives and copious amounts of standing, squatting and physical activity that just isn't really possible when your head is always a bit fuzzy from eating 400 calories a day and surviving on water and your own fat and muscle. I also look at where my skin was before I lost 3.5 stone super fast (the first time) and then put it back on just as quickly to where I am now and I know that while there may be irreparable damage and I'm probably going to look like an ill-stuffed rag-doll naked for the rest of my life, another round with 8 stone to lose is definitely not going to help things. And the hair! My beautiful, thick hair, just falling out in clumps after those diets, waking up to find most of your hair stayed on the pillow or is creeping down your back when you're out, it's not nice, it's not necessary and it should probably highlight to you that what you're doing isn't right or normal. To be honest though, I am trying to justify myself out of it because whenever I think weight loss, I think the empty feeling in my stomach, the light-headedness, the smugness of being able to survive on nothing and the sparkly eyes that seem to come from basically starving yourself. And I could probably get to my goal weight in six months. But, that's not sensible, it's not sustainable, it's not livable for me as I am now.

So, my plan is pretty simple. I want to be back to 12 stone (168lbs - I've been this weight several times and it's about a size 12-14 for me, which being tall with a rather large chest is somewhere I'm happy and I can always go further if I want). I am doing this by exercising everyday and calorie counting. I am not radically cutting my calories at the moment, I mean, I'm huge - dropping down to 2,000 calories a day is still a large deficit for my size and I'm more about being mindful of what I eat at the moment. I am tracking everything with MyNetDiary on my iPhone and the act of programming all of those foods in and sometimes seeing the calorie bar shoot up alarmingly (chocolaty, sugary cereals have so many calories!) is a good learning process that will eventually inform better decisions and trade-offs.

Oh also - my other main thing I want (other than the clothes size and the number of the scales) is to be able to fit comfortably into theme park rides. I went to Universal Studios last year and I wasn't too worried until I got there, then I suddenly realised I actually might not fit onto the rides. I had to try myself out on those trial seats they put in front of the ride and that is just horrifically humiliating. And even worse - it was a tight squeeze on some of them, I had to sit on the ends which have the bigger seats on all the rides and on one it took two people to ram the bar down over me and I could barely breathe because it was crushing my chest. I want to go back this time next year and not have to even look at those trial seats, I want to enjoy having my photo taken on holiday rather than allowing my boyfriend to take the pictures then refusing to look at them.

Big essay over!