April Target Hit!

I was a bit worried about this target, I was away for the weekend a week ago and I think I lost my tiny mind a little bit!


We go away with friends every now and again and I go with every good intention in the world of behaving myself and just drinking wine in the evenings and going out during the day and working some nice exercise calories up and sticking within my targets. Then everyone buys chocolates and cakes and crisps and leaves them open in front of me!


I swear, I'm like a crack addict set down in front of a mountain of top grade charlie!  I even brought back 2 hot cross buns that they don't sell where I live so that I could savour them!!


I am a sick puppy.


Malteasers are alright though right? Right??


Anyhoo.


Got home and back onto the wagon big style.  Got into Jillian Michaels 30 day shred again - finished level 2 and did day 1 of level 3. Ouch. Back to that tomorrow *shudder*.


Have had a nice swim (learning butterfly stroke at the minute! I know!), did some exercise biking and am in the process of (with dearly beloved) doing up an old bicycle in order to start learning to ride!! I am incredibly excited by this prospect :D  I know there's going to be a bit of falling down and some scraped knees and stuff, but I don't care, I *want* to be able to ride a bike. I *will* learn to ride a bike!!


So! Weighin!  I set a target of 12 stone 7 pounds for monday and when I stepped on the scales I was pleasantly surprised by:

12 Stone 5.25 Pounds

Which was very nice indeed.

So I'm hereby setting a new target for 30th April of 12 Stone 2 Pounds.  That will get me to the threshold of a new decade of lbs (170) just in time for my 31st birthday (yikes)!

Oh, also, my leisure centre membership has changed. Which means I'm going to be able to go to the fitness suite as well as the pool. This opens up the possibility of my starting jogging.....  Interesting developments abounds!


Till next time!!


xx

Breaking the Plateau

Hello!

It has been a while since I've had anything to say, but I can quite happily say that I think I have broken through the plateau!!

Thank goodness!!

My last post here was on the 30th January, and my graph was distinctly flatlining. It wasn't a terrible thing, I can honestly say that I am quite happy with my body the shape that it is now (apart from the bewbs, but that's a post for another day).  

I do want to be able to get to a healthy BMI though, so I decided to mix things up a little bit to see if I could bust through.

So! Using myfitnesspal.com settings I reset all my goals to change the way that I eat!!!

I've boosted the amount of protein I eat in a day and lowered my carbohydrates (note, I am still eating Carbs. Just not quite as many as before).  I'm still eating around 1750 calories (net) per day - a 250 calorie deficit - just in a different way!

So, I've been doing that for about a month now - some days more successful than others! (Protein is kinda hard to eat without being totally across every mouthful of food you eat all day - I really don't want to think about my food that much. Also I don't want to have to resort to bars and protein powder shakes). And it seems to be going ok!!

Before I give you the weighins though I also want to say that I've shaken my exercise routine up a little as well.

I had a week in the middle of February where I was so ill. I mean really, a flu the likes of which I hope I will not see again for a very long time.  Myself and dearly beloved were totally floored and in bed for 3 whole days (and not in a good way). When we finally emerged at the other end of it I can honestly say that my body felt as weak as a kitten. It's amazing how quickly you can lose your stamina if you don't stay on top of everything.  Having said that, I have been pleased at my recovery time, I think I am back on form now! I need to continue with my swimming endurance, but that is a post for another day too!


Anyhoo, to get myself back on track, I have finally given in and am having a go at Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred.  So many people have told me (on forums) how great this DVD is and after hearing a friend of mine tell me how good and convenient it is for a working person, plus how you really feel it even though you're only doing a 27 minute workout a day.  Well, let me tell you.  You really *really* feel it!  

There are 3 levels that you do for 10 days at a time. I'm on day 8 today of level 1. 

I upped the weight that I use for my bicep curls last night.  Ouch.

Anyhoo, I'm doing that on days that I'm at work (as long as dearly beloved doesn't mind doing the cooking - he's a wonderful man really, no matter what anyone says about him ;) )  and continuing with my swimming on days that I am off. 

TO THE WEIGHINS!!

• 30th January - 12 Stone 12.5 Pounds -   180.25lbs

• 6th February - 12 Stone 11.75 Pounds - 179.75lbs

• 13th February - 12 Stone 6.5 Pounds -   174.5lbs

• 20th February - 12 Stone 9 Pounds  -   177lbs

• 27th February - 12 Stone 8.75 Pounds - 176.75lbs

• 5th March - 12 Stone 7.75 Pounds -      175.5lbs

Aren't they lovely numbers? :)


So glad to be down around the 175/next half stone level! That 9 stone barrier is well and truly trampled! 

So for my next mini target, I'm hoping to get below and stay below 12 stone 7 by the start of April!


Looking forward to seeing the results of this 30 Day Shred DVD!

Damage Control

Mid way through 1200 fortnight January.


I've stumbled a few times, not quite kept the weekly total under what it should be, but to be honest with you, it's such a wrench from my normal eating that as long as I'm keeping it well below 1400 per day, I'm ok with it :)


I've started to play a little bit with vegetarian food.  Meat seems to be the one thing that adds an insane amount of calories to my meals. Don't get me wrong, I'm not turning vegetarian, I'm merely commenting on my lack of control when faced with an entire leg of lamb (mmmm leg of lamb) so I'm thinking it would be nice to be able to have a few meals a week/month where it's only veggies in the dinner.  Good for fibre intake and a massive calorie dip per meal! 


So I've bought Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's "Veg Everyday" cookbook and last night I made the Cauliflower and Chickpea curry from it for myself and dearly beloved.  Very very nice indeed!! Lot of experimenting required :)


Calorie deficit/surplus for the week were:
Monday : -586 - oops
Tuesday : 14
Wednesday : 62
Thursday : 111 
Friday : 148
Saturday : 16
Sunday : -149


Calories Burned for the week in exercise : 1265


Good to be back into it again :)


This week has started off well, I've got some new toys that I'm going to have a play with today and will tell you all about next time (can you say heart rate monitor?! wooooooo!)


Hopefully next week's weighin will show me back to pre christmas weight (am still a bit over that 12 stone 11.75 pounds, but not far!)


Hope 2012 is going well so far ;) 

Still swimming, weighin week 14/11/2011

Hello everyone!


Feeling a little bit pleased with myself at the moment. 


I decided to go and do my workout yesterday morning before I did my weighin, so I'm fairly certain that it was a bit of a fluke/cheat.  


I got up at a fairly reasonable time (no dragging this ass out of bed at 7am!) and went for a nice long swim.


Seriously. A *LONG* swim! I decided that I was going to do a whole hour! And I did! I started at 09:35 and I finished at 10:40!  I was so pleased with myself.  I can pretty much do the breast stroke now.  Still nowhere near it with the front crawl, but I can do a couple of full lengths of the (admittedly only 25m) pool now!  My stamina and endurance will only get better from here on in, but I tell you, I am so bloody proud of myself you would not believe!  The grin I had on my face when I first did an entire length of the pool, it actually hurt my face I was smiling so much! :D


So, weighin.  I did my lovely hour in the pool (stopping briefly to sign up to join the leisure center to try and save a bit of money for my multi visits) and got home and stepped on the scale.

13 Stone 1.75lbs

WOOO!!!


That's a loss of 2.25lbs in a week! I have *not* behaved well enough to deserve that. Especially after the big meal I ate on Saturday night (lot of beer, lot of food, lot of fun)


So, I'm pretty sure a lot of that was an empty tummy (I didn't eat before swimming in case of cramp) and dehydration - I get really thirsty after a swim!!   BUT, if I behave myself a fair bit this week I should be able to maintain it and stay on track for my target of the 5th December.


Very pleased :)

Weekly round up and weighin

Good morning my fellow party people!  It's review time.


This week I have exercised 4 days out of 7. Only one swimming session sadly, but a productive one anyway :)


I seem to have gotten back into the way of the exercise bike again.  I had gotten big into the DVD's for a while, poor old bikey had become a rather expensive clothes horse. This week though, I did a couple of go's on her while watching a couple of episodes of "Charmed".  Have you ever seen it? It's great! Means I can sit on the bike and pedal away at different resistance levels for at least an hour and burn a good 600 calories. It's smashing!!


Calorie deficits this week were:


Monday       - 813
Tuesday      - 54
Wednesday - 24
Thursday     - 960
Friday         - 281
Saturday     - 16
Sunday       - 56
Total          - 2217


Which added to the built in 3500 calorie deficit gives me a total deficit of : 5717 calories.


Not too bad really :)


I'm quite enjoying having all these new numbers to play with really. As you can possibly tell :)


Weighin this week gave me:

13 Stone 6.25 pounds

That's a loss of 1.5 lbs :) That will probably be the last of the big losses for a wee while I would say.  I'm off on a weeks holiday this weekend. I leave on Saturday so won't have a weighin for a fortnight sadly as I won't be back till the Tuesday after.  I will have to behave myself very well this week in order to not undo all this good work.

Here's to the week ahead!

The monthly blahs

So, you remember that guilt that I was feeling on Tuesday? 


That I wasn't going to have time to do any exercise?


See when Friday rolled around?  All that guilt was looooong gone.  


I did really very well on Thursday, I got up at stupid o'clock and I went and I had my half hour swim, followed by a less than relaxing sauna - There were two people in there talking about going to see the housing benefit people to talk about their change of address following their eviction from their previous address. (me thinks "oh god, how long do I sit here pretending not to listen to them before I can leave and not look rude!" - first world problems, anyway) 


When I got home I did my exercise bike for an hour while I was still in the mood for it, so burnt a pretty hefty number of calories. 


Friday on the other hand.  I felt like someone had stuffed my head full of smooshy big pillows. No amount of caffeine was going to fix it. So I forced myself through an hours worth of aerobics and toning. Blooooody awful.


I'm surprised I didn't pull a muscle in my shoulder/arms as I was using my little hand weights and my form was so poor!


However, I have made it through to Sunday, I drank half a bottle of wine last night and I'm feeling pretty good. I think I will go swimming tomorrow to see if I can push through this funk.


Ain't being a girl great?!

Rest Day Guilt

Seriously Brain! Leave me alone! 


Have you guys ever had this issue?? My brain is giving me grief for not doing any exercise today!!
I worked hard yesterday, I had a long day in work today. I have made allowances for the fact that I won't be doing anything today or tomorrow.


This blog is dedicated to my brain.


Dear Brain,


Calm the feck down! The big losses you've seen this past week will not continue, no matter how much you try to kill me! It will go back down to a pound/half pound a week. You will have to learn to deal with that!


I promise, one more day off then we'll have DVD's and swimming and all sorts of lovely exercise!


Love me.

weighin 26/09/2011

Good morning world! I gots me my 8 stone lost award this morning :D


Totally thrilled about it. Just hope it isn't a fluke or something that's going to kick me in the teeth next monday. 


(Stop it LRD, enjoy the success, don't try to cut your legs out from under yourself already)


Ok, ok, I'm sorry. So yeah! 8 stone gone forever!  

13 Stone 7.75 Pounds

2.25lbs this week, which is pretty darn funky.


Calorie deficits from tracking this week are:


Monday - 553
Tuesday - 26
Wednesday - 131
Thursday - 573
Friday - 334
Saturday - 45
Sunday - 173


Grand Total of - 1835


That's deficits below my goal of 1570 per day which is already a deficit of approx 500 per day, so if I tot that up over 7 days that's 3500 calories 


3500+1835 = 5335 weekly calorie deficit.


To be fair that doesn't add up to 2.25lbs as 1lb is 3500 calories. So I'm maybe burning more than I think I am or my body is still in overdrive from a few weeks holiday. Nonetheless I'm pretty sure it'll slow back down to a pound a week pretty soon. Fun to do the sums though right? :D


(Ain't myfitnesspal great? :D)


To the week ahead then. I have a couple of pretty good weeks coming up, I will be able to do some good exercise today, Thursday and Friday as well as Monday - Thursday all next week. So that's cool. Hope to get plenty of swimming practice in over those few days too.


I really hope the enthusiasm doesn't go off me. I just need to keep imagining myself swimming off the shores of Queensland! 


Next swimming lesson is tonight and sadly I haven't been able to get to the pool between then and now, so I will not have improved one iota. I don't like not getting some practice in-between lessons, but this was the only time that she could fit me in this week, so I'll have to make do with it.  Will make sure that there's plenty of practising between tonight and the next lesson. *shakes finger at self sternly*


Anyhoo, enough rambling.  Time to go and do a DVD. Or the exercise bike....I do have the last ever episode of the Gilmore Girls to watch.......

Enthusiasm

I honestly can't remember the last time I have felt this excited about anything.


Apart from Christmas.  I still feel like a 4 year old when Christmas comes round and we get to put the tree and the lights and the decorations up.  Best things ever.


I digress. 


I'm excited! 


Today I have my second swimming lesson!! It's so funny, but I can feel myself reverting back to how I was when I was taking my driving lessons, or indeed when I was learning something new back at Primary school.  The eagerness to impress my teacher at the new skills, the keenness to make my body do what my brain wants it to do at the right time rather than random flailing movements . It's so exciting!


You people who have swum your whole lives probably have no idea what I'm talking about here!


I've never learned any kind of physical activity where it was necessary to control *all* parts of your body at the same time (apart from learning to drive a manual car - working the gear stick at the same time as the brake and the clutch, the day you get that down is a wondrous day my friends!). The only things I have done are walking and the odd bit of aerobics. Aerobics is hard, but to be honest what I do is more like organised flailing of body parts to music!  Swimming is something where you actually have to be aware at all times of where each part of your body is and the control that you a) currently have of it and b) what you want it to be doing next.


I have honestly never, never done that before as a conscious and sentient human being.


I'm very excited about learning to swim :)


A little note to all the P.E. teachers with chubby kids in their class who forget to bring their kit a lot (i.e. me) *THIS* is the enthusiasm that you need to tap into. *THESE* are the feelings that you should be instilling into those kids.  Not shame at the fact that those kids weren't able to do these things before now for what reason or another </rant about unsympathetic and useless P.E. teachers>

Doing well, but not wanting to do more. Weighin time!

It's weigh in day and my entire being is rebelling against any sort of physical activity.


I weighed in at a very reasonable 14 stone 12 and a half pounds (under the 15 stone mark! Woohoo!!!!)  Which means I only have 5.75lbs (roughly) to go till I'm not obese anymore!


It's hilarious really, you work your bum off (literally) for a year just to become overweight. Reminds me of a comedy stand up routine I saw a guy do once where he said his body fat content was higher than that of a pig. So when someone called him a fat pig he could take it as a compliment "Thank you I've been working out!"


So yeah, very pleased with that.  Back to the not wanting to do more section of this post now.  


Today is my only day off this week. I am a bit tired. I know I'll feel better if I do actually do something today, but all I want to do is sit and listen to the radio and drink tea. 


I need to get my motivation back and get some work done, cause I have so many events to go to in the next few months and so many pretty dresses that don't *quite* fit right to get into. How do you get yourself motivated? How do you kick your brain into gear and get up when all you want to do is lie around and knit yourself a jumper!?


Still, nearly not obese! That's good!

Pilates Burn

I bought myself a pilates DVD before I went away on holiday and did it once - on the only day I had available to do it on.

It hurt. In a good way.

I'm a strange person, I really like the pain that I get after a workout. It's kind of a masochistic "Well I must be doing something right" kind of feeling I get.  I enjoy hunger pangs in the same way, the only sensation I ever had in a gastic capacity was overeating pain and lack of poops (TMI? Ok).

So then I went on holiday and that pain subsided, I got on with my walking and holidaying and didn't think about burn for a whole 3 weeks.

Friday I decided was time to do some more Pilates! "It'll be easy enough this time!" thought Cockybrain. "You've done it before, it's nice and gentle!"

So I put my gear on, popped the DVD on and got down to zipping and curling and relaxing and flexing and ow ow ow ow owowowowoww!

I actually felt pretty good that evening. Even thought to myself that I'd cracked it this time and it was stupid and a waste of an hour.

Then I woke up the next morning. 

Have you ever had the burn in your legs so much that you can't sit down on the loo without leaning on the sink for help? That.

I sound like I'm bitching and moaning about it from all that, but I'm really not! I really love this feeling in my muscles,  it's like I can feel them getting stronger and repairing themselves into brand new, white hot calorie burning metabolic fireballs! 

S'great :)

Might only do it once a week though for now.  I think if I tried to do it today I might die :)

Aftermath of exercise

Hello all! Well I'm feeling every one of those squats from that darn DVD today, the backs of my thighs feel really tight.  It's good. 

Today will involve a walk to the shopping centre of the town and a nice long walk round the shops.  Though currently I'm lolling on the sofa with a cup of coffee and listening to Lauren Laverne on 6Music.  If you have never listened to her show I highly recommend it.  Super DJ.

Anyway, hope everyone is doing good today! Big loves

Weigh Day and the importance of exercise.

If I keep this up (i definitely will be on twitter) you'll discover that monday is my #weighin day.

This morning I was delighted to see a 4 pound loss on my happy scale to take me down to 16 stone 9 and a half pounds.  I started on 21 stone 9 pounds, so I am just half a pound away from a total 5 stone loss!!! I can hardly believe it sometimes really :D

I'd like to take a few minutes to talk about the exercise i did today.

I try to do at least 30 minutes of activity every working day (4 days a week) which means i do a 30 minute walk at lunch time.  Even if that is just to the shop and back :)  On my days off shift I try to do more.

Today was the first day in a week that I've had a day off to be able to do my exercises.  THAT WAS DIFFICULT!! When I last did my DVD it felt like something that I had it sorted and that I could do it and enjoy it every single day.  Then I had a week with no shift day off with no access to anything more than my walk at lunch time.  Today I did 30 minutes aerobics and 30 minutes callisthenics and then 45 minutes of exercise bike and now I feel so good! It took a bit of effort to get going but I did it and I'm so glad I did!

It is so important to keep your activity levels up! your metabolism will thank you for it.  It really really will. Also it helps save you from too much excess skin and wobbly bits!

Hope you're all having a really good day today!  Here's to target day!