1 more sleep!

Official weigh in was a gain of 1.4lbs - not the 3 I feared but still not a good start to my holiday. Still, it's my slimmest holiday for an awful lot of years!

Had a lovely meal out this evening with my eldest son, his husband and 2 boys - which WAS a good start to the holiday. They're really good company and I love them loads. I got a text after we left them - apparently the boys were crying as though they were never going to see us again ... AH BLESS!!! ...

I've managed to stick to the 15kg luggage allowanace - with GREAT difficulty! We won't be able to bring anything back that weighs any more than the shower gel and shampoo we'll have used - although the dust & muck on the clothes we'll have worn sooo many times will probably have made up for that anyway!

Oh well - 6 hours until I have to get up so I guess I'd better get off to bed.

See you soon xx

4 more sleeps!

Well - only 4 more sleeps till Kefalonia ... YAY!

Feeling a bit down today ... scales showing a 3lb gain. It's my belief that this is fluid retention because I've had to give in to the arthritis in my thumb joints. It's been bugging me for some time but recently has been making my life a misery, and that's not being overly dramatic!

So I've been referred for steroid injections but in the meantime am on regular NSAIDs (Non steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs in case you don't know) one side effect of which can be fluid retention. While I have been 'picking' a little bit it certainly hasn't been enough to put 3lbs on so I'm assuming it's a side effect. And that's fine except I hope my packed clothes will still fit me!

It doesn't feel good to be starting off the holiday with a gain but there's nothing I can do about it except ensure that it ISN'T anything to do with being 'naughty' - which I will do for sure! (Official weigh in monday!)

Sad to hear that one of the planes that helps put out fires on Kef crashed in the village we'll be staying in. Understandably everyone there is in sombre mood. It crashed right next to an accommodation block and could have been a whole lot worse. The pilot lost his life sadly. Having been to the same place every September for about 5 years now we really feel as though we know it and feel for the people there.

I don't know how I'm going to be ready for this holiday I feel as though there's still so much to do .... I have to finish the packing and weigh the cases to make sure we're well within the new 15kg limit and sort it out if we're not ... though if I take any less I'll be walking round with no knickers on! I've got to sort out the house - darling daughter is staying while we're away to mind the dog. I've got to do a month's worth of tablets for my mother - renewal WOULD fall this weekend! I've got washing to do. We're supposed to be going to the Mathew Street Festival on Sunday and the Wirral Food Festival on Monday. I want to see my middle child & his family before we go. I haven't seen them for 4 weeks because they've been on holiday. All this and I STILL need to harvest crops, plough and tidy the fields, water the flowers, see to the animals and help out & send gifts to all my neighbours on FarmVille & Farm Town !!!!

A woman's work .........

See ya soon xx

Up to date ...

SO!!! To (hopefully) bring it all up to date .....

After all the, ultimately failed, attempts to remain at some sort of acceptable weight I am exactly where I started 33 years ago - but content at that and determined NOT to pile it all back on yet again.

I have to say that the acceptability is my own - nobody elses. I don't think anyone has ever actually criticised my size .... weeeeeel apart from the teasing and name calling at school. What I mean is, the people who matter to me have never even appeared to notice. I know some of them are probably just too polite to mention it but I genuinely believe that even to those who DID notice - it didn't matter. One thing I've learned over the years is that most of what we believe people are looking at, thinking, saying to others about us, is in our own heads. In truth people are too busy leading their own lives, navigating their own 'issues' and workloads to even care.

It's rather liberating to throw off the mantle of 'what people think' and decide that if YOU are the person on the beach who makes other people feel better about the way they look then 'what the hell'! Come on now - we've all been there haven't we!? Surrepticiously glancing around - head turned one way whilst behind the mirrored sunglasses our eyes are everywhere until we can establish that we're not the biggest, or at the very least not the ONLY landed whale there that day.

As I write I wonder if throwing off that particular mantle has led to me actually doing this for ME for the very first time. To it not being about anybody else or for any other reason than I wanted to.

I've never been a great fan of 'incentives' to be honest. Not in the form of events anyway. If you're slimming for a wedding or a holiday or Christmas or something, what happens when that's passed?

One incentive for me this time was to be able to wear my own rings again. For about 7 or 8 years I haven't been able to wear my wedding, engagement or eternity rings. I can wear them now but there's no room for 'improvement'. When I had them sized down in 2000 I was nearly 1&1/2st lighter than I am now but they do fit. There's an incentive that won't go away and won't be at all forgiving either! If that further 1&1/2st dropped off me I wouldn't complain (well not if I was still healthy!) but I'm not going to make the effort to get it off. I think that I was too light then and that was part of the reason for being unable to sustain it .... well that AND being a total pig of course ;o).

What got me started this time was the sheer stress of feeling so 'fat' and sluggish, I'd avoid going upstairs if I possibly could. I now have 5 grandsons and an ageing, disabled mother so I needed to be fitter. And - not to be too graphic but there was a time when my arm really wasn't long enough to be able to wipe myself properly - so much blubber was there to negotiate its' way round. At the same sort of time, I couldn't kneel down in the bath (come to think of it I probably couldn't have knelt down anywhere else for that matter but I never tried) there was so much fat on the back of my legs. I guess I'd just had enough.

I'm very grateful that family & friends accepted me just as I was. It made it easier to gain weight (is the only thing) because no-one seemed to notice. By the same token they didn't particularly notice as I lost it either - not quite so heartwarming - but understandable. When I sorted out some 'before' photos a little while ago - one of them being on here - my eldest son was quite shocked. Even though he's in the photo he doesn't remember that I looked like that. And I might add that I wasn't at my heaviest in that photo. I'd lost either a stone and a half or two stone, I can't quite remember.

So from 15st 9.5lbs at my heaviest I weighed in this week at 10st 3.8lbs. This after 10 weeks of maintenance but I don't kid myself I've 'cracked it' - not by a long chalk.

With just 5 more sleeps till my first 'thin' holiday for an awfully long time the only fly in that particular ointment is the new 15kg luggage allowance GRRRRRR!! I could have done sooo much more shopping!!??!! ;o)

Katelios, Kefalonia - next tuesday here we come!!!! :o))) xx

Next Installment ...

So .... to continue ....
I've been thinking since my last entry - about those slimming clubs and trying to remember the names of them. I mean there were the usual suspects .... That first one I joined was a 'Slimming Magazine' club. I was a member of one of those at least twice, probably more times. I did 'Slimmer', 'Slimming World' of course - this was a favourite. I even moved to a house in 1997 which had one of these going on three times a week on the other side of the road!! I should probably add that I didn't know this when we bought it but hey! .. It adds to the story ;o). There was 'WeightWatchers' of course - only the once for that one I think. I can't believe that's all there've been - it seems like more.
Then of course there were all the inbetweeners, those diets we read/hear about as being THE answer. Let's see how many I can remember .... Mao Clinic, Scarsdale, Plain old calorie counting, F Plan, Cabbage Soup, Negative Calorie, Low Fat, What were those biscuits you used to be able to buy in the chemists? Probably the very first meal replacement system - donkey's years ago ... hmmmm ...... with the help of Mr Google I've just 'remembered' they were called 'Limits'! Atkins, You Are What You Eat, Carol Vorderman, Nerys & India's Idiot Proof, Low GI/GL, FatLoss4Idiots, Cambridge, Food Doctor, Bikini (HAH!!), Carb Curfew, Diet Chef .... I KNOW there are more than this but it's a fair selection. If you can think of it - I've more than likely been on it, including total starvation - and most probably more than once.

I EVEN!! And I still can't believe I let myself fall for it .... paid £76 for some pink patch thingymajigs that I had to stick on myself every day. There were going to make all my fat magically disappear don't you know!! They didn't ..... funny that :o)

In my defense I feel compelled to add that these came with a money back guarantee. I carefully photocopied everything pertaining to that and kept it. When they (incredibly surprisingly!) didn't work I sent all this off claiming my refund AND!!??!! ........................................................ Sorry to disappoint you but I got it - refunded onto my credit card - no questions asked..... I still could have kicked myself for falling for the hype though!

So what got rid of the weight this time? ... Lipotrim.

Now I'm not here to extol the virtues of Lipotrim - or any other VLCD for that matter (Very Low Calorie Diet - in case you don't know, though I can't imagine if you're interested in reading this, that you don't already know that ;o) ) because there's one thing that all of these diets, regimes or whatever you want to call them have in common .... they work.

It's an undisputed fact that every single weight loss regime that's out there will work .... us yo-yo-ers are living proof of that after all, - we can lose weight - we're forever proving that. What we suck at (on the whole) is keeping the damn stuff off!!

And that's where I'm going to be different this time.

One thing a VLCD does do is gives you the complete break from food which gives you a rather unique opportunity to break certain ties/habits, whatever you want to call them, and to examine your relationship with food bringing into your conscious awareness areas which may need some 'work'.

You realise how often you would put something in your mouth out of pure habit. Taste everything you're preparing, scrape the last spoonful from the pan/dish/plate and eat it. TFR (Total Food Replacement) forces you to stop doing this because you can't have ANYTHING besides the allowed nutrition packs and permitted drinks.

I WOULD say though that being forced to stop it is great. Whilst NOT doing it you think you've cracked it and never need to do it again and you're right you don't NEED to. You will though ***sigh***. These 'habits' creep back in alarmingly quickly and it can be disappointing to realise that actually changing those things permanently is going to take incredible vigilance and a lot of hard work.

In actual fact TFR is the easiest part. I found it quite enjoyable. I didn't have to think about food for me, didn't have to spend any time preparing, cooking and had very few dishes to wash. My husband (God love him) lived on ready meals most of the time, though during the 15 weeks I did TFR I did cook several times. I had the whole family (and there's lots!) round for at least 2 meals that I can remember right now and had nothing myself. I had Mother's Day and my birthday in there and never broke the diet ONCE. We even went away for 5 days and I stuck to it. I always accompanied my huband for meals - I just didn't eat. I'd either just have black coffee or sparkling water or I'd take one of the flapjacks (fondly and more accurately renamed carpet tiles after tasting them) and have that. If questioned I would say that I had a medical condition (weeeell obesity IS a medical condition ;o) ) and that this was the only way I could take my nutrition at the moment. I have to say the Lipotrim packaging, unlike say - Cambridge for instance, lends itself to the belief that they wouldn't be consumed by choice.

I was never questioned further, well think about it - who is going to want to embarrass you - or themselves for that matter by digging for more information?

So I completed 15 weeks of TFR 2 weeks of re-feeding, where you gradually reintroduce food in a controlled way so's not to pile weight back on and I'm currently in my 11th week of maintenance. I'm not finding maintenance particularly easy which is one of the reasons why I thought this 'blogging' business might help.

Not that I can imagine anyone will be interested in reading it, but nevertheless if it keeps me accountable that's got to help.

I'm also a member of a weight loss support forum at http://www.minimins.co.uk/ which has kept me sane throughout my entire journey. I still keep a diary on there, again for accountability and also to let those still on TFR see that you CAN maintain. It might not necessarily be easy but it can be done. This is a fear many people have because we've all heard the horror stories of the weight piling back on after one of THESE diets.

****NEWSFLASH****
THE WEIGHT PILES BACK ON WHEN YOU STOP ANY DIET IF YOU GO BACK TO EATING THE WAY YOU WERE BEFORE!!!
****END OF NEWSFLASH****

I also subscibe to a fabulous inspirational newsletter which arrives in my inbox like clockwork every Saturday at http://www.nowillpowerequired.co.uk/ there is a full archive of all of Mike's previous newletters there too. Brilliant reading.

Well - even though I don't think anyone's reading this yet I don't want to make entries too long & put anyone off so I'm going to leave it there for now .....

See ya soon x

Here Goes ......!!

I guess it's time I started writing!! It seems like it's going to be such a mammoth task you see - covering 33 years of yo-yo-ing - that I've kept putting it off. But doing that is defeating the whole object so I'll just have to get on with it ;o).

I was your typical fat child - teased mercilessly at school, laughed at, picked last for any teams - when I could be dragged out of the toilets to join in with any of these horrendous ordeals that is. In fact I must have had more periods than any female in the history of civilisation and I managed to get about a year off PE after I had my appendix out when I was 14.

I've never really understood exactly why I was fat. Mum always had a weight 'problem'. My sister was overweight too (although memory tells me she lost all hers once and has kept it off ever since - B***H! ;o) - her recollection may be different but that's how it seemed to me). One of my mother's sisters watched her weight but I never remember her being HUGE, though now both of her daughters struggle as I have. Mum's other sister actually died of Anorexia before anybody knew what it was - in the 50's. So actually I guess that says a lot.

I've never been aware of anyone on my father's side having any particular weight issues.

I DO know that to be a 'good girl' I had to clear my plate. To have any afters I had to clear my plate. To not get the rest of this meal as a starter for the next one I had to clear my plate. To not be made to feel guilty about all those poor starving children in Africa I had to clear my plate .... catching the drift here?

I didn't realise it then but I think we had big portions too. I remember noticing how little we got if we ate at anyone else's house. One time in particular sticks in my mind when we all went home and had another meal thinking how mean our hostess had been with the food. Funny how that family were all slim though - and still are.

My mother still sees it as a mortal sin to put food in the bin and that has nothing to do with the cost - it's only about the 'waste'. I'm sure this is a throwback to the war and as such understandable but not particularly helpful to those of us who really want to learn to leave what we don't need with a sense of achievement, not guilt.

As I left school and started work my weight levelled off a bit. I have no idea what I actually weighed but I don't remember 'dieting'. I met my 1st husband when I was 17 and I know when I got married at 19 I was about 10st. For my 5'6" this wasn't too bad. However I've always been the victim (in my opinion) of a strange phenomenon. That is that my weight & height and the way I look don't tally with the actual size I am - never have. That wedding dress was a size 16. I know people now who are 5'2" 14st and in a size 10/12 .... I have NEVER been able to work that one out. Like lots of other things, it's taken me an awful of years to accept that's the way I am ... and what does it matter??

I'm currently still 5'6" (as far as I know) Around 10st 4lbs and generally in a 14.

I believe my slippery slope - the day I 'condemned myself' to the yo-yo was the day I first joined a slimming club. Not that I'm knocking slimming clubs per se - don't get me wrong. In fact I think they're great. No - what I'm knocking is my decision to join one THEN. It must have been a big deal for me because I can remember every single detail - even what I was wearing, and that was 33 years ago when I was 21.

I could really kick myself because if I'd only been able to see and accept then what I now believe, I could have saved all these years of heartache. If only I could have seen that actually the weight I was was reasonable for my height. I think I got hung up on the 'size' issue I mentioned earlier. Because when I joined that slimming club I was 10st 8lbs. It'd be laughable if it wasn't so sad. I'll be quite happy if I can maintain around that weight now ....... ****BIG SIGH****

Well that was the start for me. I won't bore you with all the details of the ups and downs. Suffice to say at one time or another in those 33 years I have belonged to EVERY slimming club known to man at least once, with the notable exception of Rosemary Conley and I bet you can guess why ..... they use the dreaded 'e' word .... exercise that is. Ooooo no - the thought of prancing around for part of the class was enough to put me off ever trying that particular regime.

I have belonged to gyms - even though I'm gymphobic. I've had several of the video/dvds which I've watched and even tried to follow now and again. I did have some success with one of them actually. They're just like diets - they all work, all you have to do is be focussed and determined and stick to them ..... simple :oP

I put on 2, 3 & 4 stones with each of my 3 children respectively - never quite getting it all off of course before adding to it with the next one.

I've been up as high as 15st 9.5lbs and down as low as 8st 9lbs - this with the Cambridge diet in 1986.

In March 2000 I gave up smoking - and you think I'm going to say put loads of weight on don't you?? Well I didn't - in fact I was attending Slimming World (again!) at the time and I continued to lose weight - mind you I was running as well which helped. I did the Race for Life in the June but then a few weeks later I got pain in my hip whilst running and had to stop. Despite seeing my GP and then a private physiotherapist it took sooo long to get right I'd gone off the idea - lost all my fitness and of course started to gain again.

I DID go through a stage when I felt I was banging my head against a brick wall. I felt I really was trying but getting nowhere. I think this was when menopause was setting in - I therefore needed less calories than I used to, so it would have been true that doing what once would have led to weight loss didn't have the same effect any more and I found that truly depressing.

I didn't know then that with each new decade we should eat less and exercise more as apparently we need less calories to survive and therefore maintain. Our 60s has the most marked drop they say - oh joy - I still have that to look forward to then :o{

There's more to come but that'll do for now. I'll bring us up to date next time. xx