Happy New Year!

So here we are, another year and all of that "New Year, New Me" propaganda is everywhere.

I had my first weigh of the year after a 2 week break at Christmas and was extremely surprised with a 3lb loss. Pretty amazing, all things considered.

The class had about 15 new members, which is not at all surprising given the time of the year, but I can't help wondering how many people feel the need to change themselves at the start of January and then give up after a few weeks or months.

I've always found weight loss hard, because quite simply, I don't care enough. I have always been happy with who I am and how I look but I had started to get to a stage where my weight was ever increasing and I was in danger of being out of control. I've lost over 2 stone now and I'm happy with the results, but I'd still like to drop more over the next few weeks before we head to Australia at the start of February. I imagine 3 weeks in Oz can do a fair bit of damage so I'd like a buffer before we go!

Matt is partaking in "Dry January" so that's definitely helping so far this year as no alcohol has passed my lips. After a couple of weeks of eating and drinking rubbish, it's really nice to be back to healthy foods again. I missed my own cooking.

Christmas and New Year were lovely but it's always pretty full on. I was looking forward to coming back to work for a break.....

However, Monday was a disaster:

1) My car wouldn't start
2) I discovered I didn't have "Home Start" on my AA policy
3) I had to pay £100 for the aforementioned Home Start
4) I then had to wait 3 hours for the nice man to come and fix my car to tell me I needed a new battery.
5) My bank card got cancelled by my bank whilst I was attempting to pay for the new battery
6) The upstairs neighbours decided to turn our kitchen light into a water feature causing the entire flat to trip and the temporary loss of electrics to the kitchen and bathroom.

It's enough to drive anyone to drink.... Thankfully the scales were kind to me otherwise I may well have drowned my sorrows in spectacular fashion!

Anyway, since then things have improved so let's hope that's all my bad luck out of the way for a while... I've a plan for food and drink this week so I am hoping for good things this week.

And finally, a few photos of the festive period.

Gong Bar @ Shangri-la @ The Shard

Amazing Meal @ Tim Raue in Berlin

Checkpoint Charlie

 German Markets

 Serve your own beer and awesome burgers @ The Pub

We fly out to Oz on the 6th Feb, so I've 4 weeks or so to make a difference. Watch this space...

Silence is not golden...

Oh wow, its been a while. Life has been absolutely hectic of late. Since I last blogged 6 weeks ago, I have been to Cornwall for a weekend with friends, Dubai for 5 days, San Fran for a week, Bath for a Hen weekend, The Cotswolds for a wedding & Birmingham  to visit Matt's family - I think that's about it.

As you can imagine, not ever being at home has not been conducive to dropping any pounds, I lost 1.5lbs before heading to Dubai and then after a 3 week hiatus, I hit the scales last week to see a 5lb gain. Not the end of the world given I have literally not stopped, but still not ideal. My February target is now an impossibility, so I just need to try and stay as focused as I can.

Should be easy given I've my Christmas party on Thursday, followed by a meal at Murano on Friday, weekend in London with the boy, my Dads 60th birthday dinner on Sunday and then Christmas, plus then we're off to Berlin for New Year..... Ahem.

Soooooo... what do I do? Try and be good when I can be and worry about it in January? I don't know really, I thought that's what I'd been doing the last few weeks but the scales tell me otherwise.

Anyway. I need to stop stressing, I am still over 2 stone down. I shouldn't do that much damage between now and Jan, should I?? I'm not hopeful for any kind of loss tonight since I had 2 Xmas lunches and a wedding last week, but we shall see.

I'll leave you with some photos of the last few weeks... I can't really complain about the weight loss as I've had an amazing time of late and that's what life is all about, surely?

St Mellion

Dubai

Dubai

Dubai

San Fran

AMAZING

Wedding guests

 

Posh wedding frock

 Work Christmas Jumper winner!!

Slow and steady

The past few weeks have been challenging from a social point of view, I need to stop making myself so busy! Every time I plan a quiet weekend at home, we end up making other plans and before I know it, my syns are out the window.

The past 2 weekends have seen big Sunday's - Food with Friends as part of the London restaurant festival and then Champagne Sunday Brunch at the Landmark hotel the following week. Couple that with a few girls nights out (wine tasting no less) and the odd pub trip, well losing weight seems like a flipping impossibility,

Anyway, despite this, I've dropped a pound each week the past 2 weeks, so that's 31 down now in 16 weeks. It's not ground breaking by any means, but I'll take it.

I'm starting to notice differences now, I'm wearing a size smaller in my favourite jeans, clothes all feel a bit looser, people are starting to ask me if I've lost weight (which I do find odd, I mean you'd not comment if you thought someone had put on, would you?).

Smaller jeans!

I'm now 4lbs away from my 10% goal with 2 weigh ins before I can't make class for 2 weeks. I've set myself a mini challenge to get there before we head to Dubai on the 12th November  as I suspect Dubai may be similar to Italy and see me come back with some form of monumental gain. Achievable if really focus.

And just because I can't write a post without numerous photos, here you go....

Angela Harnett, cooking my lunch.

 Sunday Brunch

When I haven't been out gallivanting, I have managed some pretty tasty Slimming World friendly food, now if only I could stop going out. 

Duck Noodles

Pulled Pork Pancakes (Amazeballs)

 

Chicken 'Biryani'

And I've even made the odd good choice whilst dining out.... 

So, 2lbs a week for the next 2 weeks? Let's be having you.

Eating out

Another pound down at the scales on Monday, it's not exactly stellar but I'll take it considering we spent the weekend in London dining at Story and Dinner by Heston. Neither of which are exactly Slimming World friendly, but bloody amazing!

One of the starters at Story - bread and dripping

Heston's Meat Fruit - amazing!

Bone in Rib with Mushroom Ketchup and triple cooked chips @ Dinner

Tipsy Cake (nearest) & brown bread ice cream @Dinner

My social life is not really conducive to weight loss, so that fact that I've now lost 29lbs in 14 weeks is not to be sniffed at. I have to keep telling myself this as I am having a lot of sulks at the slowness of it all, but that's utterly ridiculous. It took me 38 years to get this fat, I can't expect to lose it all over night.

I did, however, have a minor moment of realisation when I tried on a pair of leather trousers (yeah I am back in the 90's) that I bought back in April that were nowhere near to fitting me. I was able to wear them comfortably last week, so at least that's something. Other than that, I'm really struggling to notice any massive difference in myself, but it must be coming off somewhere.

The aforementioned leather trousers

This week has been ok food wise,shocking booze wise. Work has been all manner of stressful so I've had a few glasses of vino of an evening which is not the best use of syns, but hey ho. The scales are looking ok today, but I have the weekend to ruin that!

Tonight we're seeing friends for dinner but I'm driving so that helps and then on Sunday we're off to the Merchants tavern as part of the London Restaurant Festival. Sunday is not an ideal day to be dining out since it's the day before weigh in, but so be it. I can't sit around all day Sunday eating celery so the scales thank me on a Monday, plus I hate celery so that'd be pretty miserable.

London looking lovely from Butlers Wharf

Breakfast at Tea Pod

Looking at all that food, it's a bloody miracle I lost anything at all.... 

Rollercoaster

Last week I spat my dummy out in spectacular fashion. I gained a pound, no big deal really but I've been back and forth since coming back from holiday and not really making any progress. Anyway, this week was much better, 3.5lbs down. I finally got my 2 stone award which has been within reach for 4 weeks.

12 weeks in & 28 pounds lost. I'll take that.

This week has been pretty stellar on the food front, pretty abominable on the booze front. Work stress mainly which is beyond boring, but there is nothing like a nice G&T or cold glass of wine after a crap day at work to make you feel much better. I love food and I love booze. It's pretty difficult for me to limit both.

Not much else to report, we're off to Liverpool for the weekend to visit friends, so no doubt there will be much alcohol involved, but I'll just have to suck up whatever the scales show me on Monday. It's really not the end of the world if they don't do exactly what I want.

Here are some tasty morsels I've sampled this week. Exciting. huh?

Skinny Flat white (HEa)

Oat pancakes (HEb) with bacon and tomatoes

Beef, horseradish potato cakes with stir fried veg

Chicken 'kiev' with chips

Up and down

After a not particularly stellar week, I saw a drop of 9lbs on Monday night. Of course I am very happy with this, but somewhat frustrated all the same.

How on earth did I register an 11lb gain? Between Matt & my parents, who ate and drank with abandon, they managed a collective increase of 10lbs. Sulks. You ladies were right when you said about this post holiday bloat thing, I shall bear this in mind in future (and will probably still sulk).

Anyway, no point dwelling, it's almost back off and if I continue with a decent week, I can possibly get the last 2lbs off with another 0.5 on top to get to my 2 stone?

This weekend poses some challenges, tomorrow we have lunch at Helene Darroze, Saturday we're attending the Masterchef Pop up restaurant and Sunday we're off to Spurs to see West Brom, all of this whilst staying in London because we're too lazy to take the 25 minute train journey each way every day!!!.... None of this is particularly SW friendly so fingers crossed I don't blow it again. The scales this morning were promising, but I've plenty of time to bugger that up.

I'll leave you with some tasty morsels I've been consuming in an attempt to stay on track. Hopefully Monday will see me on my merry way to getting that 4 stone off by February.

 Mini 'quiches' & marmite on wholemeal toast

Extra light philly on toast, 

Amazing Beef Rendang

Gammon, Egg, beans and chips

 Bran flakes, blueberries and yoghurt

Tuna Salad

Southern 'Fried' Chicken, Parmesan potatoes, home-made coleslaw

Duck Noodles

The one after the holiday....

Well I had a plan. I honestly believed I'd done everything I could to mitigate a mammoth weight gain over my 10 days in Italy. How wrong can you be??

I was pretty pleased with myself as the seat belt on the plane did up for the first time in an age.... I should have known when I really struggled with it coming back that all had not gone according to plan.

I ate only twice a day. I stuck to Slimming World friendly foods for the most part. I ate pizza once (in Italy! once!) and had a delicious gorgonzola pasta dish on another evening, but other than that it was meat, fish, salads, pasta and tomato sauce. I ate my body weight in parma ham (carefully removing all traces of fat) and cherry tomatoes for breakfast with the odd bit of wholemeal bread. I walked 3 times as far on a daily basis as I do when I am at work (I have a step counter on my phone) and I limited my booze (no drinking before 6pm).

So, imagine my horror when I stepped on the scales on Monday night and I had gained back a whopping 11lbs..... This seems mostly unfair, but clearly I went wrong somewhere. Too much booze I suspect...

However, it's not all doom and gloom....  I had a really lovely time. I am still 16.5lbs lighter than I would have been had I not started on this journey and I can't imagine the damage I would have done if I hadn't attempted to be good.

I'm back at it (although my syns have been higher this week than I would have liked - post holiday come down I guess) so fingers crossed I can shift some of it this week.

I am, however, now wishing I'd consumed more pizza.

Anniversary dinner at our wedding hotel

 Marina Grande Sorrento

 Positano

Positano