100 Pounds Lighter

I've fallen off the wagon again. I was ill from mid-November to New Year and put on loads of weight over Christmas. I lost a stone in January, then managed to put it on again in February. Careless. March was a yo-yo month, and again I haven't been well. I have been feeling stressed and have turned to food. I thought I had conquered my emotional eating, sadly this is not the case. Yet.

I will not be beaten. I made this before and after image to remind me how far I had come. I'm no longer 100lbs lighter, but I am still a lot lighter than I was. I am still running, albeit slower than last year. I'm still on my journey, hanging in there by my fingernails, determined not to slide back to poor health.

I'm starting (again) today. In a year from now, I'll be glad I did. Will you join me?

If I have inspired you to lose weight or take up running, please consider nominating me for a Brilliance In Blogging award. There is an Inspire category.

Thank you.

100 Pounds Lighter

Taking Control

'Before' and 'During', there is no 'After' yet...

As I continue on my weight loss journey, I realise that my focus has changed.

When I first met Dawn a couple of years ago, I was morbidly obese and desperate to lose weight. This desperation didn't stop me eating cakes, chocolate, biscuits and ice cream though. What I really wanted was a magic wand.

There is no magic wand. In addition to Cognitive Hypnotherapy (disclosure, some of it has been provided  free of charge) I have been going to Slimming World for sixteen months. Sometimes I have struggled to stick to the healthy eating plan, mostly when I saw it as being on a 'diet'. How I hate that word. I have stuck at it though, as I feared that if I stopped going to my weekly group I would put all the weight back on and then some, as I have done in the past.

Then something changed. This is all down to Dawn. She whispered something to my subconscious and it stuck. Without being consciously aware that I was doing it, I started to become more active. I started walking more, enjoying being out in the fresh air. In September I decided to try to run, just to see if I could. And I could. Since then I've been running three times a week. I've joined a gym, for icy mornings when the paths are slippy and for when it's tipping down.

This morning, as I ran my fastest 5k to date (42.48 minutes, if you must know), I started wondering what it is that keeps me running. I love running, but it's not easy. Some days are easier than others, some days it's hard work. What kept me focused today was how strong my legs felt, how there is less fat to wobble than there used to be, and how this is getting me closer to my next half stone award at Slimming World. I am on the cusp of moving from a BMI that labels me 'obese', to one that just calls me 'overweight'. I felt powerful.

Now I know how good it feels to run, to get fit, to feel my body changing. I also cycle, row and use the cross trainer too, just for fun. I enjoy feeling my muscles getting toned on the machines at the gym. I feel in control of my body for the first time in my life. I enjoy eating healthily and am starting to see food as a fuel for my body, not as a treat, or comfort, or the enemy. I don't want to eat a load of sugary fatty rubbish. I will have that stuff occasionally, but I will eat well the rest of the time. I will eat like a 'normal' slim person. That is my plan to get to a healthy BMI - and to stay there.

I am taking control of my body and my life. I will be as fit and healthy as it is possible to be. I will see my children grow up.

Biscuits are not the boss of me.

I am taking control.


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Taking Control

Run, Fat Girl, Run

I hated cross country running at school. We used to shuffle out of sight of the school, sit in a field, and smoke, until we saw the fit girls heading back to school. We shuffled in after them, tucking our lighters in our knickers.

I'd always looked at runners as if they were from another planet. In my entire adult life I had never run for a bus. I had never run at all.

Then I met Dawn Walton, Cognitive Hypnotherapist.

Dawn has been helping me get my head in the right place, so that I could lose the excess weight I have carried all my life. It's working, I've lost 4 stone.

One entirely unexpected benefit of her Weight Loss Coaching is that I am far more active that ever before. I choose to walk over taking the car. I walk faster than ever before. I now run things up the stairs, instead of waiting until there's a huge pile of stuff to go up. I'm not scared of stairs. I no longer get out of breath running up them. I used to have to sit down to recover after any burst of activity.

Six weeks ago I thought I'd have a crack at the Couch to 5k training programme. I never expected to get past the first week, but I did. Every time I looked ahead on the app, to see what future weeks held, I thought I'd soon reach a point where I couldn't keep up.

Today I completed Week 5, Run 3.

Week 5, Run 3 is as follows:
Walk 5 mins
Run 20 mins
Walk 5 mins

Guess what? I did it. I ran for 20 minutes.

Unbelievable.

I think 20 minutes, non-stop, makes me a runner.

I get it now. I get why people love to run. There's something primal about it. It's just you and the path. I love the fresh air and I love the feeling of all those endorphins rushing around my body.

Three words I never thought I would write:

I love running.



Disclosure
Dawn let me try the Weight Loss Coaching programme for free, in exchange for a review on this blog. If I need Dawn now, I pay her. Just so we're clear.

Run, Fat Girl, Run

How's the weight loss going, Sandy?

Very well, thank you for asking.

That there is a Slimming World 4 stone award. I'm a whopping 4 stone lighter than I was last year.

My 5 year old son weighs slightly less than that and I can't carry him very far at all, but I used to carry that weight around all the time. No wonder stairs were a struggle. Not any more. I have spent the summer holidays this year chasing the boys around farms, zoos and theme parks.

As well as going to Slimming World I am also having Weight Loss Coaching with Dawn Walton. I'm 10 weeks into the 12 week programme and it's not an understatement to say that working with Dawn has changed my life.

This is my post from the start of the Weight Loss Coaching.
This is my post from 6 weeks into the Weight Loss Coaching.

I will update you in full at the end of the 12 weeks as I have so much to tell you.


Disclosure: Dawn is providing me with her Weight Loss Coaching services free of charge, in exchange for my honest feedback via Baby Baby.



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How's the weight loss going, Sandy?

Weight Loss Coaching - Six Weeks In

Six weeks ago I started a twelve week Weight Loss Coaching programme with Dawn Walton from Think It Change It Cognitive Hypnotherapy and Think Change Become Life Coaching. This is a review. I am not paying for the course, but I am taking as seriously as if I had parted with some cash.

So, how is it going?

My answer will depend on which day you ask me. Some days I would say it's going really well and I feel completely in control. Other days, not so well. Even on a bad day, where my eating seems out of control, I'm still able to write down three positive changes that I've noticed that day.

I have lost eleven pounds since I've been listening daily to my ten minute MP3.

I'm still not cured. I'm still worried I'll always go back to my fall-back position of emotional binge eating.

BUT

The changes I have noticed in my eating habits, in my relationship with food and in my feelings towards exercise are enormous.

I eat loads of fruit and vegetables. I enjoy eating. I no longer feel guilty if I eat a 'bad' food. I am putting less on my plate. When I eat I listen to my body and stop eating as soon as I feel full. Most of the time I save my dinner leftovers for my lunch the next day (I was bought up as a member of the Clean Plate Club and I hate to waste food).

I now walk everywhere. I run up stairs. I don't leave things at the bottom of the stairs to take up later, I run up with them there and then. I can run after my children. I've even shown them how to skip.

I feel great in my clothes. I'm buying smaller sizes, confident that I'll get in them. I'm feeling good about myself, taking care of my skin, painting my nails. I go out and don't worry that people are looking at me, feeling disgusted by my size. I've had my hair cut short because I no longer have a double chin to try to disguise.

I am still struggling with eating mindfully. Some days I can do it, other days I can't. I'm not beating myself up over it. I accept that it is hard and I'm pleased that I manage it some of the time. Eating mindfully is all about connecting your mind and body. You listen to your body, to what it needs. You can eat what you want when you want it, so long as you stop when you have had enough.

When I started eating mindfully I got terribly upset. After years of being told what not to eat, what to eat, when to eat it, you are free to eat anything and I found it unbelievably stressful. I wasn't sure I could do it. I didn't know which way was up for a while. My conscious mind could not cope with this freedom. When Dawn asked me to eat what I wanted for a week, I freaked out, but I tried it and managed it for two days.

I'm still not fully eating mindfully. I'm still going to Slimming World and pretty much following their eating plan. This is causing a conflict, but I don't yet feel confident enough to walk away from regular weigh-ins. I'm worried if I stop going I'll put back on all the weight I have lost, even though I know there is another way.

I expect to talk about this with Dawn the next time we Skype. In between these sessions Dawn is always available via email and she has been incredibly supportive.

Sorry I couldn't be clearer about how it's going. In summary I would say that the Weight Loss Coaching is going brilliantly well, but I don't feel cured yet.


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Weight Loss Coaching - Six Weeks In

Weight Loss Coaching

I've written before about my weight issues. It seems so obvious - if you haven't got an eating disorder - that to lose weight you should just eat less bad stuff, eat more good stuff, and be more active. If if were that simple I would be a size 10. If it were that simple no one would be overweight.

Dawn Walton is a Cognitive Hypnotherapist. She is also my friend and wants to help me become as healthy as she has become. In the last year or so Dawn has gone from a size 24 couch potato to a size 12 marathon runner. She is an amazing person who has dropped her emotional baggage along with the weight. You can read Dawn's story in her book, Nothing Needs to be the Way it has Always Been.

Dawn has recently developed a Weight Loss Coaching Programme and asked me if I would like to review it, free of charge. Of course I asked myself the question What have I got to lose? The answer would seem to be only weight. So I agreed. I am writing about my experience of this programme now, at the beginning. I will also give you updates throughout the twelve weeks.

It sounds simple, but it is not easy. Change is hard. Dawn explains more about the programme on her personal blog The Moiderer. When she suggested the idea to me I knew that she could help me. She helped me before when I had pneumonia. [Edited to add: Dawn had also helped me lose some weight last year when she was training to be a Cognitive Hypnotherapist, she also got me to the point where I was ready to join Slimming World where I lost a load more]. Then I got nervous. What if it didn't work? The worst that could happen is that I'll just carry on going to Slimming World and lose ten minutes per day listening to a recording. Then I got even more nervous. What if it did work? Could I really change my relationship with food that fundamentally that food becomes a fuel and nothing more?

What if I really could be slim, fit and healthy?

I would love to be a normal size. I would like to eat like a normal person. I would like to wear normal clothes. I said this to Dawn at our first Weight Loss Coaching Skype session and she asked what I mean by normal.  I surprised myself with my answer. I want to be unremarkable (a strange admission for a blogger). I don't want people to look at me and feel sorry for my children as they clearly have a fat and unhealthy mum - the biggest mum at the school gate. I hate it.

I've been following Dawn's programme for nearly two weeks now. I listen daily to a personal download that Dawn has recorded for me. This is simple, it's ten minutes of relaxing with my headphones in. I also write down three positive changes that I have noticed each day. This is easy as I am noticing so many changes. I am walking quicker and doing more. I am choosing - mostly - to eat healthy foods. When I eat 'bad' foods I'm not enjoying them. CURSES!

The part of the programme that I am find really difficult is eating mindfully. I am used to doing six things at once. To stop everything, to close the laptop, to move anything with writing on, and just eat is torture for me.  I'm finding I am eating less because I want to get back to doing other things. I know I still have a long way to go as when I'm eating a 'bad' food I forget to eat it mindfully. That's just taking away all the fun of the binge. I'm sure Dawn will have something to say about this at our weekly catch up...

I'll keep you posted.


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Weight Loss Coaching

Morphine for Breakfast

Pain is a strange thing. Once it's gone you can't remember it, although you know it was unbearable at the time. If I'm in pain now, I always compare it with the pain of being in labour. Is it worse than being in labour? It can't be. Surely labour pain set the bar at an all time high? The pain of pneumonia and pleurisy was pretty awful. Added to this I was holding so much tension in my shoulders that I had muscle spasms. I certainly couldn't sleep because of the pain.

In hospital I was given morphine in A&E, but once on the ward I must have been marked down as only give pain relief if required. With hindsight this was a mistake. Pretty soon I needed all the pain killers, one after another, until I was left sitting in bed just blinking. The pain was still there, but I was so out of it I had drifted away and been replaced by Zombie Sandy. I'd stopped screaming and crying anyway.

I saw doctors and an amazing physio. The physio reminded me to how to breathe using my diaphragm - not my shoulders. I was given regular pain killers and the option of morphine at night, when the pain was unmanageable. I took it. The early hours of the morning were worst.

After five days in hospital my blood test results showed an improvement in the sepsis and pneumonia. During the day I was fairly mobile, once I'd come round. The doctors dangled the carrot of going home, but only if I could manage without morphine. I was desperate to see my children. Then I remembered a pain management technique I had been taught. Mind over matter was worth a try.

This was the point I contacted Dawn from Think It Change It. I was her guinea pig when she was training to become a Cognitive Hypnotherapist last year. I asked for a reminder of the technique that she had taught me to help with my slipped disc. She dropped what she was doing and rang me. I spent the rest of the day practising. I repeated this mantra and used it throughout the night:
My muscles are completely relaxed. My back and my shoulder are as comfortably numb as my leg.
Mumbo jumbo you may say, but it got me through the night. It wasn't easy, but I managed the pain without morphine. I slept for three hours too. In the morning I was able to text Andy "Fruit & Fibre for breakfast" and he knew I would be coming home that day.

I can't thank Dawn, or recommend her services, highly enough. She has also helped me to remove the mental barriers that were preventing me from losing weight. At some point I'll do a ta daa post, as I am a fair bit smaller than I was last year. Dawn works from her therapy room in Dundee, but also offers downloads and online support. Check out her website to see if she can help you with phobias, pain, weight, smoking and more. She has also written a book about her personal transformation, again details are on her website. I'm proud to call her my friend.

Morphine for Breakfast