Weight loss journey - month 3

So I was now appraoching my third month on the plan.  I was still cutting down houmous, walnuts and dates. Only having the nuts and dates as part of my syns of the day.  My weight was still going down.  But then came Easter.  I had treats.  I like the dark choc coated bananas from Holland and Barratts and my mum had bought me two bags of those.  Yummy.  But not good for the weight loss, though.  Having had those I went back to eating lots of nuts and dates again, and my weight went up and down.  But there was one good thing about having lost lots of weight already - I tried on a couple of party tops that had been too tight before and...they now fit snugly on me and I wasn't too tight in them.  Result.   One other thing I noticed about losing weight was that my rings kept twirling round my fingers, so the jewel on them stuck between fingers, and it hurt. But hey, I had lost 9 lbs by then.  Hurrah.  April came and went and in came May.  And...I was down to my target weight of 9 3.  Yay.  I had done it.  I had reached my ideal weight.  Ideal because I remembered that was the weight I had been shortly before being made redundant.

I set myself a new target of 9 2.  I have still a bit of a way to go, as my weight now fluctuates between 9 3 and 9 4.  I have to go back to the Plan now for the nice weather coming up.

Oh yes.  I will shortly be appearing on the Slimming World website as one of their successes.  Hurrah.  Success all around, me thinks.

Weight loss - second month

So I was in my second month of doing the Slimming World Plan, and losing weight for the first time in ages. How was I doing it?  I made a few slight changes to my diet.  I started to have raspberries (thawed frozen ones) with my porridge, and banana with another porridge.  But the banana didn't last that long as it started to disagree with me.  I had cut out spread on my ryvitas at lunch, kept an eye on my level of houmous intake, and had cut down the number of crackers I had for supper.  Plus cutting out and down the amount of walnuts and dates I had been having.  I found it is the little things that add the calories, such as the spread and houmous.  I kept this up for the month of February to March, and the results?

At the start of week 8 (12th March) I weighed 9 61/2.  So a loss of 61/2 over two months.  I was well pleased.  By then I had received two certificates.  One for reaching my target weight, and one for losing half a stone.  I also got a certificate for Silver Fitness.  You have to do 120 minutes of exercise a week.  I found this quite easy.  15 mins walk here, 15 mins of hoovering there, and 30 mins of shopping elsewhere.  This is what is keeping me motivating.  That I have to enter my weight each week, and enter my exercises too.  Knowing that I am keeping a tab of what exercise I am doing, I ensure that I do it.  I asked my mum once if she thought my attitude to exercise had changed, in that when she asked me if I wanted to walk over the road to the garden centre, I used to say no and now I say yes (to get the exercise in), and she said yes.   Result!

So, if you need motivating to lose weight or keep exercising my suggestion is: keep a diary of it somewhere.  As well as on the Slimming World website, I enter my weight weekly on the kitchen calendar.  You could do the same.  So have you any other tips to keep yourself motivated when losing weight or wanting to exercise?  Let me know.

Get Your House in Order

This was a great TV programme which aired recently.  It showed people who collected things madly that it took over their houses so they couldn't move properly.  What they did was to get a dealer and an interior designer to help the person.  They put all the collections in a warehouse and got the person to get rid of most of it, where the dealer then helped the person to sell the stuff to raise money to get the designer to redecorate key rooms of the house.  The idea was to redecorate the house so the person wouldn't want to clutter the house up again.  It was a really good way of doing it, and got me thinking what I might have in the house that I either haven't used or worn in ages.  The answer was two pairs of trousers that I used to wear to work and were now too tight, some books and other things.  Most of these things have gone to a charity shop.  I feel there is still probably a lot that I have that I don't use or wear or want that I can give away.  I want to go through a box of writing magazines in my cupboard upstairs, so I can then replace it with a full one from downstairs.  That way I save money on box files, by emptying one to reuse when I need it.  Although I have decided I do want to buy another concertina file to put my Angel work in, and the folder I now use for it will house all my factual publications eg my reader letters as a portfolio.

So, have you got anything in your house that you either haven't worn or used for ages, that you think could be chucked out?  Let me know.  Let's get our houses in order!