Back from holiday

Ops I promised myself that I would never go above 12 stone again, and guess what after 2 weeks of holiday I am now 12 stone yet again. How rubbish!

I can not blame anyone else, sadly my piggy ways have led to my downfall, too many big meals, glasses of wine and little treats. I will have to think hard about who I can pass the buck too, I wonder who I could dump the blame on for my fat arse.

I had hoped to quickly get back on track, but am still struggling, so watch this space for the return of my motivation.......

Easter and egg hunts

So far we have completed 7 Easter egg hunts, is this excessive?

We started off with a school hunt after their school day, this one was not too bad a temptation, they ran around the school finding clues and were then rewarded with a big cream egg. I do admit to one of two of the small cream eggs stumbling my way, did I ever say I was perfect, I don't think so.

Then we headed to the National trust for day 2 with a hunt at Hinton and Ampner, and also day 3 with two hunts, one at Studland beach and one at Corfe castle. The National Trust hunts were great, even better they gave away just a plain and boring Cadburys egg head, not a huge temptation in my eyes.

We then headed to the Naomi House charity hunt at Highclere castle ( better known as Downton Abbey). Now this may have been a big stumbling block for me but fortunately the weather was in my favour. The ice cold wind allowed the kids to do the hunt, but they quickly wanted to then go home. So thank you horrible weather for saving me from the lure of fudge, cotton candy and ice cream.

On Monday I ran a family egg hunt for the kids mates and their families. Everyone brings along some small eggs, we hide them, then the kids find them simple. This was not to bad until I accidentally opened a packet of small cream eggs assuming the contents would be individually wrapped, they were not. As we could not hide them it would just have been down right rude to not eat them, so I did just that, how morale am I.

Then on Tuesday I ran a small toddler hunt at my baby group. This had the potential to be bad bad bad from a dieting perspective. However luckily the three cakes we were selling for charity were soon paid for and consumed by eager families. I simply then did not have time to eat and of the biscuits of hunt rewards due to being rushed off my feet.

I have certainly not been an angel, but it could have been worse, we have another week of holidays left so its possible that it may get so bad that all hope may become lost.

Resisting those empty wine calories

Doing good avoiding the wine, but don't ask about the biscuits and chocolate.

This evening was one of those evenings when I really felt the need for a comforting and relaxing glass of wine once all the kids had settled to bed. You know that first moment of quiet and stillness after 12 or more hours of kid noise and chaos, that's when I like a glass to see me into the evening, but I resisted, how good am I.

I wish I could say the same about the other daily temptations of life, but if I sad anything positive I would be a big fat liar. I have eaten chocolate sheep, cream cakes, Jaffa cakes and biscuits today, I think the word diet is now too ashamed of me to any longer associate itself with my miserable efforts.

To be fair on myself after an egg hunt I ran on Tuesday I had 20 or so Chocolate aero sheep left over, now a few of those sheep have gone to the great stomach, well what else was I supposed to do with them release them into a field maybe!

Seem to have magically lost a few pounds, very odd

As you know I have been in a bit of a dieting funk and was a little down at still being a hefferlump for when we go away on holiday next month. I am not being obsessive about the weight thing, I just would like a little space to eat like a piggy while away and not come back at my original 12st 7 weight.

The Isle of Wight is a haven for lovely food, if you put me within a mile of a lovely seafood platter, dressed crab or pint o prawns I will sniff them out just like a blood hound, I am powerless to resist the call of the seafood. Knowing this does add a little pressure to shift some pounds over the next month.

With my new contract starting on Monday, a fully chicken poxed up baby and the Easter holidays here I have seriously got a fail on the dieting front. I think my diet over the last week has been about 80% chocolate, 10% yoghurt and 10% bananas, not exactly the NHS eatwell plate!

 

 

By some kind of miracle I have been still going in the right direction and am now at about 11st 8lb, now that is good news!

 



Ben and Jerry have a heck of a lot to answer for

Today I was no angel, but I was doing relatively ok. In fact I was starting to wonder if it was possible to get the diet back on track.

Then evil little Ben and Jerry snuck in under the wire, took a swipe at my knees and knocked me off my feet, leaving me defenceless against their temptation. I hate chocolate ice cream, I know its shocking I love chocolate but don't like it being messed with. However the Phish food ice cream is an exception to this rule, its bleeding lovely.

I had all 4 kids today, we had a car disaster and had to cough up nearly £200 for a new handbrake thing, last night I just couldn't sleep and somehow managed to knock out my fake tooth at some point in the middle of the night. So its no wonder that I struggled a little to get my work done this evening.

I got it done ( and all kids in bed/ all housework at a sub toxic level) so what is a girl to do with an evening stretching ahead of her. Well surely any normal girl would reach for a glass of wine, a half tub of ice cream and a action movie, yeah baby!

So morning 9 out of 10 for being the dieting queen, evening probably somewhere in the minus100 out of 10 region.

It wasn't me it was the ice cream it made me do it....

drat drat and double drat, back up to 11st 11lb

After an interesting week with the kids at home, birthday celebrations, and two nights out, the diet has died a death.

This is certainly not a surrender, its just a mixture of annoyance and a bit of frustration that things are not moving as they should be.

I am really going to start to try hard again next week, fingers crossed, other wise I may have to result to a crash diet out of desperation. Then good help anyone who is around me if I am eating just cabbage leaves.

Next week is going to be a challenge

I am on leave for a week and have the kids on holidays, so I have great fear in my heart that it is likely to be a bad week, a very very bad dieting week, I am doomed, doomed I tell you!

Firstly being off work, I have the attention span of a flea, and get very bored very quickly. In particular I get bored when in the house with nothing to keep me busy. Luckily working in the evenings generally keeps me away from the fridge the majority of the time. However this week I have 6 long evenings with no work ( one visit to Pizza Express and one visit to the local thai for my birthday booked in). So that's 2 evenings of pigging out full on, and 4 evening of boredom picking at anything that stays still, looks edible and is not mouldy.

Then we have the kids on holiday, I am sure we will be very active, but sadly there are also just too many pitfalls. Country park visits, and their evil cakes calling to me, don't even get me started on the bacon sarnies. After a long drive to get to a country park there is nothing like a cup of tea and a sarnie to give me the energy to face the kids. Cinema visits with their fizzy drinks, sweets and popcorn temptations. Trips to the local café to get out the house when I am at risk of throttling the kids. Then we have the kids friends coming over, they entertain my kids, so I get bored and guess what I eat. Finally we have the play park and the ice creams, ummm toffee crumbles my favourite.

Next weekend I am likely to be back up to 12 and a half stone!

I think I need less celebrations in my life

I clearly am never happy, if I am miserable I comfort eat, if I am happy I celebrate eat.

Last week I was sucking at the diet thing due to feeling sorry for myself. This week I have got a job ( in fact more hours than I can handle) doing something I love, its my birthday on Tuesday, and I am off work until next Sunday.

With all this happiness going around do I hit the diet thing big time?, nope its after 10:30pm and I have just had a second tea, the first one was healthy (ish), the second was a huge rump steak with onions. Now that's my idea of celebrating. In fact I went the whole hog, after nearly a wine free month, I have given into the demon drink, and partaken of a glass or two.

Anyway I am staying static at about 11st 10lb, so at least I am not heading back up, but the clock is now ticking till my holiday, come of next target.

Its like they are out to get me.

THEY ARE OUT TO GET ME !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

So Aidan, the girls and their dad have decided that they are master bakers. Obviously its great to see them all enjoying an activities together, really lovely. However why baking, why why why!

This week its been a lemon drizzle cake from Aidan, a almond and raspberry cake from Alex and jam tarts from Cat. I am a bit of a cake addict at the best of times, but fresh out of the oven cakes, who in their right mind could resist.

Luckily the lemon drizzle cake didn't work out to well, thank goodness, they managed to blow up my electric mixer, and to produce a very dodgy cake. I will sacrifice the mixer, a fair exchange for a cake that I can't be tempted by.

However the almond cake and the jam tarts were lush, so I have fallen and eaten way to much. I will have to strongly encourage them to take up a different calorie free hobby from next week.

I wish I had some will power, sadly I don't!

Not too bad, now at 11st 10lb

Now this is definitely progress in the right direction, despite my not being perfect at the dieting thing right now.

I think the big difference is just thinking before I eat, that step to stop and think about if and what I eat, rather than just stuffing it in makes a big difference.

Come on 10lb to go till the next goal is met, We are on holiday in May, so I hope in about 12 weeks to have shifted that 10 lb, fingers crossed.

Then I can put it all back on during the holiday, but oh well, holidays are for enjoying.

I am not perfect, its ok to slip....

So my huge stumbling block has always been that feeling of only being on a diet ( and it being worth continuing) if I was doing absolutely perfectly.

After a bad day or a pig out its much easier for me to just give up, instead opting for the try it another time option. Obviously with the "diet another time option" the same thing just happens again and again.

The new mantra is to accept less then perfect, I have days when I do great and I have days when I am the most rubbish excuse for a dieter. However the only way to make progress is just to keep slogging away, slog away I will....

BMI stuff - new goal of 11st

It may seem a bit ambitious, but what the heck. A BMI under 25 is considered to be a healthy weight, I would really like to get out of the overweight category, I would really really really like that.

So I have worked out that at 11st I would be able to just slip in under that line into the healthy weight range.

http://www.nhs.uk/Tools/Pages/Healthyweightcalculator.aspx

http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/treatments/healthy_living/your_weight/whatis_bmi.shtml

My official new goal is now 11 stones!

Its the toddlers, they made me do it

Ok to be fair, it was not really the toddlers, and they did not make me do it. However I do run a toddler group, and I brought biscuits for our weekly supplies. Is it my fault that some of these biscuits never quiet made it to the toddlers and their mummy and daddies.

I feel I have to defend myself here at least a little, today I took my kids and a friend to school, run a toddler group for 3 hours, completed an hour long redundancy interview, cleaned house, dealt with a screaming monster baby, took/ picked up kids from too many clubs to remember and did nearly 2 hours of work.

Surely a day from hell should justify a handful of biscuits, I find that carrots, celery, or cucumber does not quite hit that comfort button.

We seem to be eating better on the diet, than we did before

The Hairy Bikers healthy cook book is a god send and is really helping with this diet thing. I can cook the same for us all, and the kids scoff it without a word of moaning. While at the same time Ali and I really enjoy each and every meal, with none of the being tortured and eating lettuce and dust

The best so far has been their lamb hotpot, bleeding gorgeous. This one has slightly more calories, but at 450 per portion that's still not bad going. I do have to admit that we replaced the carrots for parsnips, so that was probably not good from a dieting point of view. I don't have a clue if carrots or parsnips are the lowest in calories, but I sure do love my parsnips.

You know that comfort food, when at the end of the day you want something hot, lovely and filling, this is certainly within that category.

I need a bit of a kick up the butt

I did well and reached that first goal, and now have hit a stumbling block and seem to be stuck on the 11st 13lb mark.

I am not pretending that some magic fairy has cursed me to stop the weight dropping off, I know I have been a bit rubbish at the diet thing, so only I am to blame.

How can I kick start that motivation again, at the moment I seem to need the sugar rushes to keep me awake, come on Tracey get on with it and cut the crap.

Right I need to shift some more, so I will go back to some of my basic ideas:

Drink lots ( of boring water sadly, not lovely wine)
Fish at least once or twice a week
Soup at least once or twice a week
Eat breakfast every day
Avoid those sweets and the late night trips to the shop.
Avoid too much potato, pasta and bread

I will get to that 11st 7lb mark, I will, I will, I will!

Who came up with the idea of all you can eat buffets

Now when I was a kid you went to a restaurant, where they proceeded to serve you up a nice but plain plate of food, which you then ate, leaving room for pudding without having to roll home. If we were really lucky we might get to go to a carvery, but having as much veg as you can eat is not that big a thrill to a child.

I am not moaning about the range of food now available, especially as my all time favourite is heading out to the local thai restaurant, yum yum mixed starter yes please. However there do now seem to be  a plague of all you can eat buffets places.

We should have some kind of loyalty card for the number of times we have visited the local Chinese buffet over the years. However today we took our lad to his Dyslexia appointment in Reading, after the assessment we offered him the choice of where to eat, kind of assuming that the lure of Macdonalds would be too much for him to resist. Macdonalds is bad enough, its certainly the enemy of my diet ( especially considering I don't even like their food, and just eat because the kids are).

Today he dragged us to the place that must be the arch enemy of my weight loss, the lunchtime Pizza Hut Buffet. You just have to order a bottomless fizzy drink, its the law, equally you just have to go for the buffet option, otherwise you seem just a little bit mental. An all you can eat buffet of hot and cold pasta, garlic bread, various pizzas, salad and more is not going to help anyone to reduce the size of their gut.

So after eating some salad ( good me), I still managed to eat a fair few slices of pizza. Here are the factors that I am counting in my favour ( to demonstrate that I am not a complete waste of space):

- some salad with no dressing
- only thin based pizza ( although this was because I don't actually like thick bases)
- no pepperoni topped pizzas
- no garlic bread
- hot chilli pizza ( I am sure hot food is meant to help your body speed up the digestion)
- ham and pineapple pizza, surely the pineapple must count as one of your 5 a day.

Will have to have some salad for tea to make me feel a little less like a hippo.

Snow, a keep fit aid

After growing up on a farm in the middle of no where I am certainly not a big fan of snow. Many were the times when I was a kid that we were completely cut off by huge snow falls. I can certainly recall trudging through huge snow drifts to get to the nearest town, bleeding freezing.

I am not a complete grumpy troll, Watching the kids play, hearing their squeals of joy and seeing their excitement at the "school closed" news are all great moments.

However maybe today it was a very good thing, walking for a while with all three kids ( the girls being pulled in their sledges and Elliot in the sling) must have used up at least a few calories.

I don't like not being able to use the car, and leaving the house being such a huge chaos of gloves, hats and wellies. However the exercise part of the snow has got to be a good thing for my diet.

Let me hear you say whoop whoop

Despite all my excuses and the snow triggering my hibernating/ eating instincts I have managed to actually lose weight over the last week, I know shocking.

The scales have tipped below the 12 stone mark for the first time in many years. I am now officially only 11 stone and 13lbs. I have been so focused on getting below that magically 12 stone mark, and it has seemed impossible for a very long time, so I am very excited to finally be making some slow progress.

I will now have to put some serious thought into how to set my next little goal. Obviously the 3 stone thing I started out with is a terrifying and daunting figure, which I would certainly give up before ever achieving with no small successes along the way. Maybe I will just set the next one at 11st 7lb, not sure if that's too big a target for now, will have to think about it.

Fat ward - great motivation

I know many of the people featured on this program have had issues in their lives that have caused their weight to spiral out of control over time.

However its easy to see how the weight gain can sneak up on any of us, so have a watch its a great documentary. I really liked that a huge part of it focuses on the emotions and fear that go alongside morbid obesity, makes for a much more interesting documentary than the more usual look at the fat people and judge them type.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2245958/Inside-Britains-FAT-ward-Where-clinically-obese-patients-weighing-47-stone-treated-reinforced-wheelchairs-industrial-weighing-scales.html

Here come the list of excuses, my top 6 reasons for dieting failure this week

I know it sounds just down right pathetic, but for this week I am going to build a big pile of excuses, and snuggle down to hide amongst them.

1 - Its that time of the month, so lots of sugar keeps my mood more level, and stops me falling asleep.

2 - Its birthday month for the girls, so having their party last Saturday has since involved having a huge stock pile of food sitting there looking at me.

3 - Elliot has not been sleeping great as usual, so the sleep deprivation has called for the usual sugar rush to keep me going.

4 - On Thursday my job went under threat of redundancy, so what better time is there to comfort eat.

5 - My lovely sister in law did a big cash and carry shop and dropped off a huge quantity ( and I mean huge) of sweets, how can I resist.

6 - Its freezing cold so I enter hibernating preparation mode of an evening. Shut the curtains, whack the heating up and eat.

I could just admit that my will power ( if I have any) has failed me miserable this week, but making excuses is so much more fun. I am desperate to get below the 12 stone mark, but I think that goal may have to wait a few extra weeks. Don't get me wrong I am still motivated, I am just trying to be more accepting of my failures, taking them to hard will just stop me in my tracks, and that's not going to help anyone.

One week in - 12st 1lb

I would love to be posting with news of some magic sudden weight loss, sadly during the week I have not discovered the cure to fat. Its still mostly sitting their occupying lots of space on my backside.

However I am seeing some slow progress, so lets keep it up, although I did fail like a miserable failure tonight. Never go shopping when hungry, if you do you end up with meals that include very large fat covered lamb chops, oh dear.

This morning I was 12st 1lb, lets hope the lamb chops have not done to much damage.

Macdonalds, shocking

In my opinion no one in their right mind thinks that Macdonalds is a healthy option, despite their attempt to seem healthy of late.

So just a few days into the diet I was not impressed when my youngest girl insisted that she wanted her birthday meal to be a Macdonalds, sadly she showed us this by drawing the big M logo in the air. Come back those days 10 years ago when, as new parents-to-be we insisted that no kid of ours would ever set foot in the above mentioned eating establishment.

Nearly a decade later I am ashamed to admit that there have even been a handful of days when one or more of the kids have had two Macdonalds meals in one day ( generally when they have been to a party or with other people, but none the less, how embarrassing.  Off we headed to Caitlin's chosen destination, and I immediately started to look at the calories of the various options to find one with a reasonably low count.

I was shocked to find that my other halves favourite, the Big Tasty was a monster on the piling on the pounds front. Don't quote me, but the burger alone was well over 800 calories, add chips and a fizzy drink to that, then you must be using up a huge chunk of the daily guidance.

I opted for a Big Mac and dumped the middle bit of bread. I don't expect myself to be perfect, at times I know that all I can aim for is going for the best of a bad bunch. I have to be fair and say, all credit to Maccy Ds that they do post the calorie count so very clearly, it really does help. But I wonder how they can possibly get so much fat into the Big Tasty. Do they roll the burger and bap in the stuff, then inject more fat, then add butter as the dressing, finally topped off by a brushing of ghee?

The big weigh in - 12 st 3lb

The last time I weighed ( a while ago), I was pushing the 12 and a half stone mark, but I knew that at least a little of that had shifted, thank goodness.

So there we are this morning after agreeing to weigh in every Saturday morning. Ali is putting me to shame and doing well already, so I had my fingers crossed that my starting point would not be higher than I had anticipated.

Anyway onto the scales I jumped and read the little digital display which told me that I was 12st 3lb, so that is certainly going in the right direction, phew.

Ali insisted that clothes make a big difference, but I am going by the clothes on weight to save having to strip off each week when I forget to weigh before getting dressed. I tend to ignore my husbands knowledge and wise words, after all he is a man, and they are not that bright ( although they think they are). My darling other half was insistent that clothes aid an extra 3 to 4lb, now to me that sounds like a heck of a lot.

Turns out he was right ( for a change), the scales do indeed read 12st when in the nudey, so that's 3lb of clothes weight. If I am having a bad week I will have to be sure that I wear very little on weigh in day, just to keep up the motivation and positive reduction in weight.

Those naughty little calories

Who knew how many calories were hiding away in certain little sneaky corners, the little ratbags. I am at the stage of wanting to make some long term changes alongside trying to lose a ton of weight, so its interesting to see where changes can be made.

When I was younger and started to put on a few pounds, I stopped having sugar in my tea, which worked well, I drink ALOT of tea everyday, in fact I am rarely found without a cuppa to hand, its my little comforter.

Then when I was about 26 I had a tumour which seriously messed with my tummy, leading me to quickly lose plenty of weight. I would highly recommend this from a weight loss perspective, but not from a stress and worry point of view.

After that I again gained a little, but decided to give up drinking coke completely. This worked a treat, for a while I really missed the addictive dark brown sugary gloop. Now it just tastes foul if I ever take a sip, odd how these things change.

Now after having a pregnancy and birth in 2002-2003, 2006-2007, 2007-2008, and then 2011 I have totally lost control of the weight thing. I tried to work it out the other day, but instead I opted for a conservative estimate, so I guess that over the last 10 years I have had roughly 7 years of being disturbed at night by screaming horrid little babies or children. I know there is evidence that poor sleep is partially linked to weight gain, and this is definitely partially to blame with me. To get over the tiredness I simply ate sugar, I think Lucozade was my main drink during my third pregnancy, this is highly not recommended for the health of ones teeth, mine are now paying the price.

Back to my point I now need to think about those little long term changes, but can't see any obvious things to completely give up. So instead of focusing on single elimination I am looking at those little changes.

I did not know that bananas had a lot more calories than most other fruit, I am a big fan of the lovely yellow fruit. I am a fan of most fruit, but I could merrily eat 3 or 4 bananas a day ( as long as they are on the lovely side of being slightly under ripe. At about 100 calories a banana, that's about 400 calories just gone on snacking on nanas. Simply replacing one banana with an apple will half the 100 calories to about 50, so that's an easy change to make. Don't get me wrong I still love nanas, but maybe not at a rate of 4 a day!

Then we have my favourite drink ( next to tea), I love lime cordial, ummm tasty. I can honestly say that I have never looked at the nutritional guidance on my bottles of cordial, so I was a little shocked to find each glass has about 60 calories, this may not sound a lot, but at 3 or so glasses a day that's nearly 200 calories wasted on drink.

I am not a fan of plain water straight from the tap, don't ask we all have our little odd ways. so I plan to replace the lime cordial with the occasional glass of water or cup of tea. Then I am going to dilute the cordial by about half the amount I currently have.

Those are a few starting baby steps, so watch this space to see how Ali and I do