Week in Review – Week 4

Posted January 30, 2017

Filed under My Progress

I can’t believe that tonight was my last weigh-in for January!

Despite not having the best week tracking-wise and having two social events, I’ve lost 0.5 lb and I’m happy with that all things considered. I’ve now got 1.5lb to go to reach my first mini-goal of 7lb. pakorn

The Good

I’ve had two social events this week. The first was a curry for my dad’s birthday on Thursday night. I didn’t feel like having a ‘healthier’ option dish so instead I had curry and split a portion of rice and a naan bread with Mr FFF. But I pointed (sort of – more about that later) what I had and didn’t finish it all. The result was that I went home feeling satisfied but not feeling as though I was about to burst. I also chose to drive rather than have a couple of drinks as I thought that this would be a good way of balancing out the food choices a little bit.

On Saturday, Mr FFF and I were at a property investment seminar all day. It was one of a series we have been going to and I know from previous experience that it is wall-to-wall buffet food. I prepared myself for this mentally in advance and told myself that I wasn’t going to deny myself all the good stuff but that I also didn’t want to come away feeling bloated and like I’d blown my chances at losing weight for the week. As a result, I did have a little of everything but just chose larger portions of the healthier salads and fruits and smaller portions of the less-healthy cakes and biscuits than I’d normally have.

Having had such a good time at Zumba last Sunday, and knowing that I’d got two social events coming up, I decided to go to another Zumba class on Friday night. I took my kit to work with me so I could go straight from there (note to self, don’t leave gym kit in boot during sub-zero temperatures). As the clock ticked towards 5pm, I didn’t feel much like going but I knew that once I got there and got started it wouldn’t be that bad. As it turned out, I enjoyed it even more than I had done on the Sunday and I’m planning on going again this week.

The Bad What I’ve learned

I’ve been continuing to work on developing my mindset this week and one of the ways I’ve done this is to listen to another podcast. This time the topic was about how focusing on the things we do do wrong or the ways in which we fail leaves us stuck in the rut we are trying to get out of rather than helping us to find a solution to our problems. You can listen to it here if you’re interested.

This really resonated with me. Often, in the past, I’ve become really hung up on all the things I’ve ‘failed at’ in regards to my weight loss: not tracking accurately; having a binge; not going to the gym etcetera, etcetera ad infinitum. The result is that I feel bad about myself, berate myself for my failings, feel even worse about myself and then decide that the only thing that can comfort me is diving mouth first at a large bar of chocolate.

But listening to this podcast, I realised that I’ve probably been going about this all wrong. So I’m trying to accept the blips in my weight loss journey in a non-judgemental way (hence the renaming of this section of the post).

Last week I said I was going to aim to track all week again. This went out of the window somewhere during mid-morning of day 1!! As I’ve said before, I’m currently finding staying on track to be a mental challenge. I think this week my mind was thinking, “I’ve got 2 social events coming up this week with loads of food involved so I can use them as my excuse not to track.” It was also my mind being a self-saboteur and doing it’s habitual ‘I can’t stay on track for more than a week at a time’ routine.

Previously I might have viewed this as a failure and given myself a hard time about this leading to a negative, self-sabotaging cycle (see above). But instead, I thought back to the message in this podcast, acknowledged that this was simply a habitual way of thinking and decided that I would still try to track the next time I put something in my mouth.

The result was that I physically tracked some things this week and I mentally tracked most things. It has also helped me learn that not tracking for one meal does not mean I have to throw in the towel completely for the week. It has also highlighted the fact that when I physically track rather than just tracking in my head, I have more chance of losing more weight. I’m going to try to remind myself of this as I go through this week.

Thanks for reading,

FFF

What ‘failures’ do you dwell on and how can you try to turn these into positives to learn from?

Week in Review – Week 3

Posted January 23, 2017

Filed under My Progress

Weigh-in number 3 tonight and after last week’s little blip, I’m pleased to report that I lost 2lb – thereby proving my theory that when you stick to the plan and track, it works.

That brings my total loss to 5lb now and leaves me only 2lb from achieving my mini-goal of losing 7lb. My aim is to reach that goal in the next two weeks. For this week, I’m just going to try sticking to the plan for another week to make it two weeks in a row.

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The Good

Last week I set myself the goal of tracking everything for 4 days. I’m pleased to be able to say that I did in fact track everything for the whole week! I feel really pleased with myself for that.

I went to my yoga class on Wednesday and found that it had been cancelled. I was really disappointed but rather than going home and flaking out on the sofa, I went home and put on an old Davina workout dvd and did 30 mins of pilates instead. It wasn’t as good as an hour of yoga but at least it was something.

After last weekend’s disrupted exercise plans, I decided to take charge of things again. I invited my sister to come and do some kind of exercise on Sunday as I haven’t seen her in a couple of weeks. I suggested Zumba or swimming but she wasn’t up for either of these options and suggested a walk instead. I checked the weather and it was forecast to be dry so we agreed to go nice and early. However, my sister unfortunately had a slight personal emergency (nothing serious and everything is fine now) so messaged me to say that she wouldn’t be able to go after all and suggested that I go to Zumba instead. So I did. It was hard, sweaty and I looked something like a baby giraffe throwing my somewhat gangly self around the exercise studio, but it was great fun and I plan on going back again next week.

Mr FFF took me to the cinema on Saturday night to see Split which was a great, if disturbing, film with a fantastic performance by James McAvoy. He decided to eat at the cinema but I’m not keen on their offerings in terms of the low ratio of food satisfaction and quality to Smart Points and nutritional values. So I ate at home before we went – tuna sandwich with red onions and peppers served with homemade potato wedges. We also decided to take our own popcorn with us as we always find the stuff on sale at the cinema tastes stale. This helped me to control my portion size as the bag we got was smaller than the box I would’ve had otherwise. And it was tastier. We also got some sweets (Mr FFF was a bad influence, although it didn’t take ~~much~~ any persuasion to lead me astray) but I let Mr FFF eat most of them and I pointed what I had.

The Bad

I feel bad about not having done any yoga this week – maybe I’ll look at some routines on youtube or something so that should my class be cancelled again in the future, I’ll be able to keep up my practise.

I didn’t get/make chance to plan my meals this week before going shopping. I decided I had 3 options:

Just get stuff for that day and the following day then go shopping a couple of other times in the week. I thought I probably wouldn’t have time to plan meals and go shopping during the week and that this option would lead to a reliance on takeaways.
Just get a load of ready meals. This would have been fine in terms of allowing a certain number of points per meal but I still want to steer clear of as much processed food as possible and I know that ready meals don’t really fill me up very much.
Plan in my head as I went round the supermarket. This was the option I went for. It was a little bit disorganised but I was able to use my knowledge of which foods to go for and which to avoid to help me plan simple meals that will see me through the week.

Although I wouldn’t want to shop this way every week, this showed me that it is possible to stay on plan even if I haven’t been able to plan ahead as I would like to.

I haven’t dedicated as much time to working on my mindset as I wanted to this week although I have done a little bit.

I’m going to keep the same targets for this coming week, but I’m going to up the tracking goal to tracking for the whole week.

Thanks for reading,

FFF

What do you do to help develop a positive mindset to making healthier choices when it comes to food?

Week in Review – Week 2

Posted January 16, 2017

Filed under My Progress

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at freedigitalphoto.net

Weigh-in number 2 tonight. I wasn’t expecting good things this week as, although I’d planned my meals carefully and followed my plan, I didn’t track snacks or extras so I have no idea whether I stayed in my overall budget or not. The result is, I’ve put on half a pound. It’s not the worst thing in the world, although I am pretty peeved with myself about it. But, I’m drawing a line under it and moving on.

The Good

I went to my yoga class again this week. I’d also arranged to play badminton on Sunday instead of going swimming. This wasn’t my idea but I enjoy badminton and thought it would be fun. I was astounded to find that I was extremely annoyed when the person whose idea it was cancelled it on Sunday morning. By that point it was too late for me to go swimming and I was annoyed that someone else had been able to ruin my exercise plans. Mr FFF suggested that we could do some circuits in the garden but a) it was persisting down with rain and b) I don’t enjoy circuits at the best of times. I must admit to feeling sorry for myself for about five minutes before deciding to go for a walk and to do some yoga at home. This turned out well in the end as I was able to listen to a motivational podcast whilst on my walk.

I’ve been eating plenty of freshly cooked foods with a good amount of fruits and vegetables and very limited amounts of processed foods.

I had a takeaway on Friday night that was unplanned but I convinced Mr FFF that we didn’t need to order enough for 4 people (as we usually do) and pointed what I had.

I replaced ~~some~~ one chocolate-based after-work snack with fruit. Ok it was only once, but that’s a small step towards developing a healthier lifestyle right there. Admittedly, a very small step, but still.

The Bad

As I mentioned earlier – I didn’t track my snacks and treats this week and I still had quite a bit of chocolate. Why did I do this? The simple answer is, I don’t know. I really do want to eat more healthily and lose weight. What went wrong?

As I sat down to write this post, I initially gave myself quite a hard time about this. I berated myself for the fact that I’m only on the second week of my renewed efforts to lose weight and yet I’ve already veered off track.

It was at this point that I got the phone call to say that my badminton session had been cancelled. So, I decided to take a break and go for that walk. The podcast I was listening to was titled Your Eating Habits: What They Are, How You Get Them, and How to Change Them and I thought I might be able to get something useful out of it.

Previously, I’ve always thought of habits to be based around actions (having a biscuit with a cup of tea; always putting grated cheese on pasta dishes etc) and I’ve done quite a bit to change several habits over the course of my weight loss journey so far. Interestingly, this podcast also talked about habitual thought patterns and I realised that this is exactly what applies to me in terms of my mindset to staying on track – it’s become a habit for me to think that I can’t keep up my motivation beyond the first week of an attempt to live more healthily.

This reflection made me realise that I have neglected my mindset development over the past couple of weeks so I’m resolving to make that a big focus this week.

The Plan for Next Week

I’m going to begin work on breaking my habit of thinking I can’t maintain the motivation needed to develop a more healthy lifestyle. I’ve set myself 2 small goals in relation to this:

to track EVERYTHING I eat for 4 days
to read something or listen to a podcast to develop a motivational mindset every day for 4 days

I’m still working on replacing some chocolate-based snacks and treats as well. As the idea of replacing chocolate with fruit last week wasn’t really doing it for me – there’s no comparison really is there! – I’m taking a different tack this week. My trigger times for chocolate, biscuits and other sweet treats are when I get in from work and in the evening after dinner.

When I get in from work, I’m going to try a totally different routine. I’ve examined this habit (as suggested in the podcast I mentioned earlier) and determined that the reason I eat chocolate then is to relax after a busy day. So, what I’m going to do instead is have a cup of fruit tea (I got some delicious ones for Christmas and they spoil the taste of chocolate and biscuits) and read for 20 minutes before I get on with making the dinner and other household chores.

With my evening trigger, I’m going to replace the chocolate and biscuits with yogurt, honey, granola and seeds. This is something I wouldn’t normally choose because of its high points value (no low fat yogurt for me!) but because of this it still seems like an indulgence but at least has a slightly higher nutritional value than chocolate.

Thanks for reading.

FFF

How have you successfully ditched bad habits and created new ones? – all advice gratefully received.

My New Year’s Promise

Posted January 10, 2016

Filed under All Things Weight Loss, My Progress

Happy New Year!

Image courtesy of Heavypong at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I’ve been away from blogging for quite a while now but it’s already starting to feel as though I’ve never been away.

As we are already half way through the second week in January, it feels a little bit weird to be saying ‘Happy New Year’ still but I think I’ll keep things a bit traditional for my first post of 2016.

The reason for the delay is that I’ve been given a LOT of thought about the theme of my first post. Last year, I spoke about not wanting to make resolutions because they’ve previously left me feeling like a failure. But clearly that didn’t have the intended effect and I sit here around the same weight as I was last year, if not a few ponds heavier, and I’m still unhappy with my body and fitness levels.

So what went wrong and what am I going to do differently?

Firstly, I let too many things get in the way of me achieving my goals last year. Some of these things I had control over and some I didn’t. To cut a long story short, last year was Hectic (and yes, that IS Hectic with a capital H) and looking after myself pushed off my priorities list.

So this year I’m making myself a couple of ‘promises’ as I think this sounds a little bit more positive than making some resolutions:

I promise to be kinder to myself
I promise to prioritise the things I actually want to spend time on rather than the things I think I should be spending time on

That’s it. Short and sweet.

This week, I was back to work after a two week break for Christmas. In order to keep my promises to myself, I made sure that I left work at a reasonable time each night. My plan was that I would go for a walk in the evenings to make sure that I clocked up 10,000 steps each day. I did this on every day except for Saturday (when I forgot due to it not being a work day and by the time I remembered, it was raining so heavily that I think I would have drowned if I’d gone out in it – note to self, check weather forecast in advance in future!) and I even found myself agreeing to restart the Couch to 5K training plan which I did on Thursday & this morning. I must admit I was a little bit nervous at first as I can’t remember the last time I ran, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought and I felt really good after doing it.

Although I was back to Weight Watchers for my first weigh in of the new year last Monday, I haven’t been very focused on my food this week. However, I have made up 6 batches of different soups to take to work for my lunch each day and my goal for this week is to be more focused on my food choices. I’m not going to promise myself that I’m going to stay on track 100% for the entire week but I’m going to aim for that. If I can track for 5 out of the 7 days I’ll be happy with that.

I’m looking forward to getting to grips with the new Smart Points plan too. I’m motivated by the way it seems tailored to encourage healthier food choices. To help me, I’m stealing an affirmation that I’ve just seen on an episode of Fat: The Fight of My Life (I find these programs massively inspirational):

“The purpose of food is to nourish my body and mind. I will not find comfort in food.”

I also aim to get my blogging mojo back this year. I really enjoy it and I find it really motivating – I just need to make sure I prioritise it.

Now, in the interests of being kinder to myself, I’m off to enjoy a lovely, relaxing bath.

Thanks for reading,

FFF

P.S. Have you made any ‘promises’ to yourself this year? I’d love to hear how you’re getting on with them so far.

Fresh Start Statistics

Posted September 9, 2015

Filed under All Things Weight Loss, My Progress

So, I braved the scales last night for my post-holiday (which was 2 weeks at a Gourmet Inclusive hotel) weigh-in and I was astounded to find that I’d only put on 1.5lbs! I nearly fell off the scales!

Whilst I’m not happy with having let my weight creep back up to its current reading, I’m not going to dwell on it – there’s no point: I can’t change the past. What I can do is learn from it and move forward.

So here are the starting statistics for the next leg of my weight loss journey:

Current weight: 13st 5lbs

Waist: 36in

Hips: 44in

Bust: 42in

Arms: 13in

Thighs: 25in

These are the targets I’ve set based on my current weight:

Goal	Amount to lose	Target Weight	Date to be achieved by
Mini-goal	4lbs	13st 1lb	05/10/15 (loss of 1lb/week for 4 weeks)
5% of current weight	9.5lbs	12st 9.5lbs	16/11/15 (loss of 1lb/week for 9 weeks)
10% of current weight	19lbs	11st 13.5lb	25/01/16 (loss of 1lb/week for 19 weeks)
Goal Weight	40lbs	10st 7lb	20/06/16 (loss of 1lb/week for 40 weeks)

I have based the dates for each of my targets on a weight loss of 1lb per week which falls well within the Weight Watchers plan’s recommendations of between 05-2lb per week. I’m sure there will be some weeks when I do better but I want my targets to be realistic and achievable.

As I achieve each of my small targets, I will be setting another one to help break my final goal down into more manageable chunks.

It was actually a bit disheartening to calculate how long it will take me to get to goal – 9 months!! However, I’m trying to view this in a positive way – I definitely don’t want it to take any longer than that so I need to stay focused. And who knows, if I stick to the plan, I might even get there a bit quicker. After all, I know from experience that when you stick to the plan, it works.

Here are my current pictures – taken on the last day of my holiday. I plan to update these and my measurements every month or two to help show my progress. Although in subsequent pictures, my skin is likely to be even pastier as, believe it or not, these show me with what is a pretty good tan for my Irish heritage, so apologies in advance for that!

Me, September 2015

Thanks for reading,

FFF

Happy New Year!

Posted September 6, 2015

Filed under All Things Weight Loss, My Progress

Happy New Year!

No, I’m not totally confused and neither have I been through some kind of time-warp. But I am celebrating the new school year.

I’m looking forward to starting the next chapter in my weight loss journey (in fact this book was actually filled with puddings so I was REALLY excited about starting it!)

One of the advantages of working in schools is that every September you get that ‘new year’ motivation that everyone else only gets in January. Remember when you were at school and you had new teachers, new classrooms, new books? You would vow to keep your books pristine and complete your homework diligently as soon as it was set. It was such an inspiring and motivational time. Well, even as an adult, I feel the same way at this time of year. So I’m going to use that positive feeling to focus on the next stage on my journey to goal.

For some people, losing weight is a simple, straight forward process: They decide they want to lose weight, change their diet and exercise habits and lose weight. However, for many people, it’s not that simple and straight forward. I fall into the latter category (see here, here, here and here if you’d like proof).

Ordinarily, I like to use the long summer holidays to refocus on healthy eating and exercise following a long and tiring school year. This year however, we ended up having to go on holiday at the end of the summer instead of the beginning when we normally go. This made it difficult for me to get motivated with my food and exercise as I felt like I’d just undo the hard work I’d put in when I went on holiday. I did try for damage limitation initially, but that didn’t last long as I kept telling myself that I wasn’t going to worry about my weight loss journey until I was back at school.

What I did do, however, was take the time to begin decluttering my life. I have a demanding job with long hours, various other commitments outside work and a large family to keep up to date with. The result is that I often feel as though I’m living at a million miles an hour and I find that my living space can easily become cluttered and chaotic (I’m astounded at how much ‘stuff’ I have amassed in the decade since I left home). I reasoned that by focusing on getting my house in order, I would feel calmer and would find it easier to focus on the other areas of my life that I want to improve, including my health and fitness goals.

I’m not completely decluttered yet – I’m about halfway through so far – but I’ve already started to see improvements such as not letting paperwork stack up. So I’m hopeful that the positivity I’m feeling from this will help me to focus on what I need to do to achieve my weight loss goals. I’ve spent today preparing my food for the week. I’ve made 2 batches of soup for my lunches (recipes to follow later in the week) and a thai beef curry for dinner one night. I’ve got the rest of my meals for the week planned and the ingredients are all bought. I’ve stocked up on some tasty fruit to snack on and I’ll be making some bircher muesli tonight ready for my breakfast tomorrow.

I’m really looking forward to tackling the next stage in my weight loss journey. I’m even actually looking forward to my weigh in tomorrow night to find out what my starting point is! Here’s hoping the motivation will carry through to tackling my workload for the term…

Thanks for reading.

FFF

PS – I’ve been following a process for decluttering after reading a book (The Life Changing Magic of Tidying by Marie Kondo if you’re interested). While I don’t agree with everything in it, I have found it to be a very useful tool so far. I’m hoping to be completely decluttered by Christmas, maybe sooner, and I’ll write a review of the process then.

WI Results – Damage Limitation Week 1

Posted July 28, 2015

Filed under My Progress

Weight loss: 1.5lb

Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Current weight: 13st 3.5lb

Weight loss since start: 1.5lb

Lbs to go to reach next target: 4lb

What’s gone well?

I’m really pleased with my weight loss this week. I’ve been exercising really hard using my new training app (more about that soon) and have found it pretty easy to stick to eating healthily.

Unbelieveably, I’ve managed to ‘run’ (more like a steady plod really) two 5km distances this week. I’m not loving the running aspect of the training so far but I know that I soon will once I get back into it properly.

Despite eating out a couple of times this week, including on a fantastic day out in London taking my mum to see The Lion King, I managed to make sensible choices and avoided the temptations of desert on boths occassions.

What’s been difficult?

I’m finding tracking difficult. I’m not sure why. I seem to have some kind of mental block. I did ok with it up until Friday and then it went out of the window. I still had the plan in the front of my mind but I just didn’t write anything down. I don’t really know why. I had time and I’m determined to eat healthily. It’s a puzzle.

The week ahead

I’m planning on sticking with my training programme this week as well as trying a new circuits class this evening. I’ve got to increase my run to 6km for one of the two this week and I’m quite looking forward to that. I’m going to add the extra 1km to the beginning part of the route so that in my head, I’m doing the extra before I get tired.

My biggest challenge this week is going to be spending a girls’ weekend in Liverpool. I’m really going to try hard to track so that it will hopefully help to keep me focused. I’m going to take my trainers and running gear with me too so that I can complete this weekend’s run along the waterfront.

I’ve also set myself a mini-target of losing another 4lb by the time I go on holiday which will take me back into the 12st bracket. I’m hoping that this small but achieveable target will help me to stay on track.

Wish me luck. And if you’ve got any idea about why I hit a block with tracking at the weekend, please let me know!

Thanks for reading,

FFF

Mission: Damage Limitation

Posted July 23, 2015

Filed under My Progress

Well, as you may or may not have noticed, I’ve been away from the blog for a LONG time. This is partly down to me getting a promotion and getting my head around my new role. But it’s largely down to the fact that I haven’t been prioritising my own health and fitness. The result is that my weight has gradually been creeping up for the last few months.

I can’t wait to be back here!

I have felt really annoyed at myself but I’m choosing not dwell on it as that’s not going to get me anywhere.

I’m now on holiday from work for 7 weeks (just over 6 left) and so my plan is to get my fitness and diet kicked back into shape.

Well, that was my plan but, as we all know, the only sure thing in life is change:

Originally, we’d planned to go to Tunisia for 10 days in the middle of the holidays. I felt that I’d have enough time to get my prep for September done before going then have a couple of weeks when we got back to get back on track.

So, we’re now not allowed to go to Tunisia so are instead going to Mexico at the end of the holidays. It gives me only a few full days to get back on track between coming home and going back to work. AND where we are going is a Gourmet Inclusive hotel. We’ve been before and the food and cocktails are absolutely to die for. Now, we’ve paid a lot of money for this holiday so I don’t want to feel like I’m missing out BUT I also don’t want to have to pay for an extra seat to accomodate my backside on the return flight!

So, I’ve come up with a new damage limitation plan: I’m working really hard to eat really well and exercise daily to enable me to be in as good a position as possible when I go on holiday. We’re going to make use of the gym facilities at the hotel (if my sister is reading this, “Ssshh! It’s my holiday, I’ll do what I want!”). I’m going to do some energetic swimming whenever I need to cool off (this really helped when I was in Turkey a couple of years ago and worrying about not fitting into my wedding dress) and I also really wnat to try the yoga classes that are available at the hotel. I’m going to enjoy the food on offer but will make sure I make sensible choices and don’t go overboard. When I get back, I’m getting straight back on track.

Sorry for the long post but it feels good to be back! I’ll write a couple of shorter posts over the next couple of days with more info on my exercise plan etc.

If anyone’s got any suggestions for how to keep focused on making sensible food choices and how to motivate themselves to exercise on holiday, please share!

Thanks for reading

FFF

Back to Blogging

Posted January 2, 2015

Filed under My Progress, Uncategorized

Wow! I can’t believe it’s been nearly 6 months since my last blog post!! There are many reasons why but I won’t bore you with them. Suffice to say that while I’ve been away from the blog, I’ve

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

been on a fabulous holiday and landed myself an exciting promotion. And my weight and body issues have remained about the same.

My weight has been up and down over the past 6 months and is currently up. I’ll post my stats after the dreaded post-holiday WI on Monday but as I was 12st 7.5lb before Christmas, I’ll just be happy if I haven’t tipped into the 13st bracket.

As with most people at this time of year, I’ve been reflecting on my progress (or lack thereof) towards the goals I set for myself last year. I’ve read some interesting articles on some of the reasons why people tend to fail at their New Year’s Resolutions and so I’m using these ideas to come up with a plan to help me to achieve my goals in 2015. More on that in the next couple of days – I promise it won’t take me 6 months to come up with them 😉

Happy New Year

You Never Fail Until You Stop Trying

Posted June 17, 2014

Filed under All Things Weight Loss, My Progress

Women sifting peanut shells to make a living in The Gambia – image copyright Hayley Shortt 2014

Last night I had my first weigh-in following my latest bout of not focusing on my weight loss. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it as I’d not been completely ‘back on track’ due to another busy week and weekend (Good Food Show and Father’s Day). I had considered this when I wrote my last post pledging to get back on track. I did think that I could wait until this week to begin but I knew the chances were that doing that would lead to another 1-2lb creeping back on. So I recommitted knowing that I’d have a week where it would be difficult to focus on healthy eating.

I stepped onto the scales expecting to have stayed the same or put on 1/2-1lb. Imagine my delight when I found that I’d actually lost 1/2lb!!

I’m so glad I decided to refocus on my weight-loss despite knowing that it would be a challenging week to do so. Although I didn’t completely stick to the plan it helped to have my weight-loss goal in mind as I made decisions about what to eat and drink throughout the week.

It reminded me of a motivational poster that I saw years ago which said “Putting off something easy makes it difficulty. Putting off something difficult makes it impossible“. This really resonates with me when it comes to my weight-loss and sticking to the Weight Watcher’s plan: I know it works when I stick to it and sticking to it is pretty easy when I get back on track.

So I’m going to be seizing the proverbial bull by its horns this week and getting my WW mojo back on track.

I must admit that I’d thought about giving up on this blog as I feel pretty foolish for having to write about getting back on track again for what feels like the umpteenth time this year! But then I thought about the words of the late, great Albert Einstein who once said “You never fail until you stop trying.”

So, with that in mind, I’m setting the following two small goals:

Weekly goal – to stay on track this week leading to a loss at the scales next Monday

Medium-term goal – to lose 5lb in the next 5 weeks, at the end of which I’m off on holiday.

Thanks for reading.

PS For those of you short on time but eager to cook tasty, healthy food, look out for a review of a fresh food delivery service that I’m trialling next week…