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

Back on the Treadmill

This is not a metaphor for the daily routine of work, school and the rest, I literally got back on the treadmill at the gym and I couldn't be happier.

I felt so at home, so relieved, to be back exercising again.

I got a cold in the middle of November, that lingered until the week before Christmas, then ho ho atchoo, I got another cold on Christmas Day. This was on top of a few months of an asthmatic chesty cough (that required an x-ray and CT scan to rule out the Big C - that was a scary few weeks).

So I haven't exercised for eight weeks. I'm still not feeling great, but I knew I had to get back to looking after myself.

Having the longest cold known to mankind left me feeling very sorry for myself. I'd been struggling at Slimming World too. I found that unless I stuck to the plan 100% for the whole week, I gained weight. One week I had just one evening off the plan and put on 4lbs. This was demoralising and I'd got into the old diet mentality of thinking that the diet was ruined and then having a few days off. Of course this meant weight gains, so I began yoyo-ing. By the beginning of December I was feeling pretty hopeless. I needed a break and decided to forget about eating healthily. Things would have been different had I still been out running four times a week, but I wasn't well enough. As is traditional with the emotional eater, I comforted myself with food. After all, it was Christmas.

Enough is enough. As of today I am back eating healthily, exercising and taking care of myself. It was a big and difficult step, but already I am feeling happier and lighter. I have the euphoria of having been for a run, albeit on the treadmill at the gym. Like anyone who lived on fancy biscuits, mince pies, cherry brandy, cheese and Gaviscon over the festive season I am now craving simple fresh food.

I'm also in training as I've signed up for the Comic Relief Danceathon at Wembley on 8th March, as part of the mighty Team Honk. That's six solid hours of dancing with the goddess that is Claudia Winkleman. I can't wait.

I'm a little annoyed with myself for putting on a bit a lot of weight over Christmas, but I understand why it happened. It may happen again from time to time, but the most important thing is that I know I can lose it again. It's also a relief to know that I'm still nowhere near the weight I was in October 2012 (when I started at Slimming World). In the meantime, thank goodness for forgiving leggings and Phase Eight over-sized knitwear.

Happy New Year, friends.



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Back on the Treadmill

Recipe: Slimming World Rice Pudding

Sometimes you just need a big bowl of the warm creamy comfort food that is rice pudding.

When you're trying to eat healthily and lose weight, you would think that rice pudding would be off the menu. Think again. If you make it yourself, from scratch, you can make it without sugar or even milk.

There is one rice pudding recipe doing the rounds at Slimming World where you cook pudding rice in diet cream soda to make a rice pudding. This used to be free on Slimming World, but it is now considered a "tweak".

There are lots of tweaks in Slimming World. People tweak the plan by combining free foods to make other foods. Eventually Slimming World catch on and allocate syn values to these foods (you can have between 5 and 15 Syns per day). Fair enough. You're only kidding yourself if you think you can lose weight if you eat your own body weight in - for instance - cooked lasagne sheets (free), coated in spray oil (also free) and baked in the oven. They're kind of like Doritos, but they're not a filling healthy meal. Tweaks are essentially free foods, but you're not eating them as intended, so they are given a Syn value. Pudding rice is a free food, but rice pudding (made with milk or diet drinks) is not.

I've made the cream soda rice pudding and it's okay. One day I realised I didn't have enough cream soda to make it, so I improvised and came up with a new method that is just as delicious and - most importantly - SYN FREE*.

*The small print. My recipe could be considered a tweak (although after a Google search I can't find an official statement by Slimming World about it), UNLESS you make it part of a food-optimised meal, i.e. one third of the meal is Super-Free. I'm yawning just typing this. In a nutshell - I think - if you have a plenty of veg on your plate for your dinner you can have this as a pudding if you serve it with fruit. Whatever. You don't really care about all that, you just want me to tell you how to make my rice pudding.


Sandy's Recipe for Slimming World Rice Pudding

Serves 4
Takes 20-30 minutes

Ingredients

• 6oz Pudding Rice (usually found in the baking aisle of the supermarket)
• 1 litre cold water
• Artificial Sweetener (to taste)
• Flavourings (we'll come to that later)

Method

1. Put the rice, water and sweetener in a large saucepan and stir
2. Bring to the boil
3. Cook for 20-25 minutes
4. Stir occasionally, gradually reducing the heat down to a gentle simmer 
5. The rice pudding is ready when almost all of the liquid is absorbed by the rice
6. You can serve it warm or cold

Flavourings

This is where you can be a little creative.

I sometimes add a few drops of custard, banana or buttery caramel flavouring to my rice pudding. I love Lakeland Natural Flavours (usually £3.99, but currently on offer - buy one, get one half price). I was just getting the link for you when I saw two new flavours: mulled wine and Christmas pudding. Oh my.

Lakeland Natural Flavours also work well mixed into that other Slimming World favourite, Quark.

If you like cinnamon in your rice pudding, add cinnamon. I can't think of anything more revolting, but it's your rice pudding.

I also like to stir through a teaspoon  - who am I kidding? -  a tablespoon of jam (2 Syns). Just like school dinners in the 1970's.

My other favourite is to add a heaped teaspoon of Options Belgian Chocolate powder to the cooked rice pudding while it's still in the pan (2 Syns-ish, that makes it approximately 1/2 a Syn per bowl).

Syn Free (probably) Slimming World Rice Pudding.

You're welcome.




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Recipe: Slimming World Rice Pudding

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

Slimming World Ice Cream

Ingredients
Fat free yogurt

Method
Put it in the freezer for a couple of hours


Okay, so it's not technically ice cream.

A little ice may form at the top, but underneath the frozen yogurt is creamy and tastes like ice cream.

It's syn free at Slimming World too.

You're welcome.



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Slimming World Ice Cream

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?

The Pity Party is Over

Cobblers.

Normal service is resumed.

I went back to Slimming World today, thanks to Polly for dragging me along. I could have easily just given up, but I'm not a happy fatty.

So, I put on fifteen pounds in three weeks. Whatever. Nobody died.

I'm back on the diet healthy eating plan.

I'm going to see Dawn to get my head straight.

I'm sorry about the self-loathing in my last post. I've stopped now.



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The Pity Party is Over

How to Gain Eleven Pounds in Seven Days

Want to know how to gain eleven pounds in seven days? The answer is to go on a diet.

There are not many things I really and truly hate, but I detest diets. I've either been on a diet or thinking I should be on a diet since I was nine years old. That's thirty four years of misery and guilt. Thirty four years of yo-yo dieting. Thirty four years of disappointment and self-loathing.

I was hoping to be able to write a ta daaaa! post, with before and after photographs, showing how much weight I had lost. But my latest attempt to become fitter, healthier - and smaller - has crashed and burned.

I'd spent a good few years saying that diets didn't work (if they did work, I'd be a size 10) and I was never going to diet again, but I was getting fatter and fatter. I had to do something. I'd tried Thinking Slimmer. Some of my behaviours surrounding food and exercise had changed, but I didn't lose any weight. I'd been seeing a Cognitive Hypnotherapist and she did help me to break through some of the mental barriers that I'd put up, the ones that I'd built up over the years, the ones that prevented me from losing weight. So then I was ready to lose weight. I joined Slimming World last October .

The first four months at Slimming World were great. I found that the eating plan suited me, as did the group support. As well as losing three stones, I lost the headaches and the heartburn of the binge eater.

Then I got ill with pneumonia, pleurisy and sepsis. After a few days of illness, a week in hospital, and a scary first few days at home, I'd lost another stone.

It was important to me to get back to Slimming World as quickly as I could, but more important to eat well after my health scare. I followed the plan, but my weight loss had stopped. I had reached the dreaded dieter's plateau. Despite eating healthily I stayed at the same weight for two months. I haven't been able to exercise at all, my recovery from serious illness is slow and I have to rest most of the time. Even so, I would have expected some small weight losses.

A few weeks ago I went for my weekly weigh-in to find that I had gained a pound and a half. I had followed the diet plan to the letter that week. The disappointment I felt prompted a week off the plan. Six months is a long time to stick to an eating plan, even one as simple as Slimming World. I didn't go crazy - we eat healthy, balanced meals as a family - although I did eat white toast with butter, chocolate and biscuits. I ate all the things I fancied, but hadn't really had for a while. Mmm, pizza.

I gained a whopping eleven pounds in that week off the plan.

I didn't think it was possible to gain that amount of weight in a week. I went straight back on the plan for five days but only lost a measly two pounds. Since then, for a week or so, I've been binge eating. Out of control. Eating everything in sight. I can't stop. I have continuous headaches and heartburn. I'm bloated. I haven't weighed myself. I daren't weigh myself. I hate myself.

Where do I go from here?

If I go back to Slimming World, I'll feel a big fat failure every week as I can't seem to control my eating right now.

If I stop dieting I'll end up bigger than I was before. I hate being the biggest mum at the school gates. I hate being an unhealthy, out of breath, lumbering, unfanciable lump. Fat cow. Lazy fat cow. Stupid fat cow.



As this was a rant of epic proportions, I've linked up with Mummy Barrow's Ranty Friday:




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How to Gain Eleven Pounds in Seven Days