Slight slip up....

Morning all! Happy Monday and all that! So, straight to the point, I was bad last week! Not bad in the sense that I went over my points allowance, but bad in the fact that I did no exercise and didn't drink enough water! This has lead to putting 2lbs back on! Disappointed? Yes. Surprised? No.

So, the week was going well, but I had a stomach upset on Tuesday, which meant that yoga was out of the question. Helen went and I stayed at home with my flatulence! The week didn't get any better, I totally lacked motivation and the only exercise I did all week, was a long walk on Saturday and gardening yesterday. The gardening was hard work, cutting back brambles in the garden, as they are taking over and it was scorching! I've also ended up with many scratches up my forearms, that look like I've been attacked by a cat... However, the garden looks a bit better, 4 square metres done, only about another 400 square metres to go.

I've resolved to be much better this week. I've contacted the local gym about membership, as it is literally on my way home, I have to drive past it! I'm also on a no alcohol week. I'm going to get out the Wii tonight when I get home & do 30 minutes of My Fitness Coach. Yoga tomorrow, but Wednesday is going to be a no exercise day, as I'm in London in the evening with work and Thursday I'm going for a drink with an old school friend. Having to drive is going stop me from drinking at least! From Friday, we have a month-long challenge at work, it's World Cycling Week, so I've signed up to cycle in at least 3 days a week. As I've said before, it's only 3 miles each way, so no excuses! Even if it's raining...

I've also started taking Alli, which despite the controversy, is ok. If you continue to eat too much fat, or more than 15g in any one meal, then there are nasty side-effects, but I've only done that once and it wasn't too bad. I've yet to see if they work, as I only started taking them on Friday afternoon. I'll let you know if they start working, well, we'll be able to see when I weigh in next week.

That's it for now, I'll try to blog later this week, to update if I've actually done the commit on the exercise!

Ciao, Weeza xx

On top form!!

I am here! LOL! I've been busy with enjoying the weather :) Hasn't it been great in the UK? I weighed in yesterday and pleased to report that I've kept the 2lbs off, so the second successive week of weight loss, chuffed to pieces!

I've bought a new game for the Wii, My Fitness Coach, which is looking good as a training program. Oddly enough, the game is written by the guys in the building next door to where I work, you may know them if you're a gamer, they're called Ubisoft! I'm quite impressed with it so far, it asks for your height, weight and sex, the usual stuff, but then it goes a bit more indepth, you input your measurements for your chest, hips, thighs, waist and arms,then you have to take your resting heart rate, then do 2 minutes of star jumps (or jumping jacks as they call it), which I couldn't do, and then retake your heart rate and enter it in. It measures your abilities with other exercises, such as the number of crunches you can do, the number of kneeling push ups and how far forward you can stretch. Then you say how often you plan on training, days of the week and the amount of time you're allocating each day. I've not done the training yet, I hurt too much from the assessment on Sunday to attempt it yesterday!

So, yoga tonight, really enjoying the yoga and from the beginning of May, I'm going to start doing some stuff at home as well. I need to be a little more confident with my posture during poses. At the moment the instructor corrects me if I'm not doing it right, so I don't hurt myself! The running hasn't happened, I'm not ready to release that kind of activity into the public yet! I'll stick with the indoors workouts for the moment!! Nick next door has lent me a copy of Davina's workout, which Patsy Palmer recommends, so I'm going to give that a whirl too!

Right, I'm off now, will check back in over the next couple of days, just to say how much I hurt really ;)

Love to you all
Weeza xxx

Hoping that this blog actually posts.....

I tried to post earlier today, however, for some stupid reason, the 10 minutes that I was told that blogger would be down, turned into over an hour, so I gave up!!

Firstly, I got the haircut and am really pleased with it. Photo here doesn't really do it justice, but gone are the roots, the white hairs and the matted mass at the back of my head!!

I sneakily stood on the scales today, which isn't good mid-week, but I had to see if the really healthy eating, no wine and exercise was paying off. I sometimes feel that my clothes feel a little looser, but when I get on the scales, I'm the same or more. However, today I got on and found that I'd actually lost 2lbs! This is going by the scales in the bathroom and not the WiiFit. I've been told that the WiiFit scales are unreliable if you're using them on a carpet, which I am! So, 2lbs I'm happy with, but far from becoming complacent, I shall be trying even harder! No exercise for the last couple of days, I needed a bit of a rest! My legs are killing me from running and yoga!

I've also signed up for twitter as they kept going on about it on Radio 1, so I thought that I'd give it a go! I have 3 followers so far, one I know and the other 2 are completely random, I haven't a clue who they are!! If you want to follow me on twitter, then it's www.twitter.com/louisamaskell.

We had a little house guest last night, Arnold, an 11 month old Visler, who's a miniture Munkee but is like a coiled spring! There was a bit of a scuffle over a bone made of hide, but other than that, it was relatively peaceful, provided we restrained Arnold from pestering Munkee all of the time!! Picture of them in a more quiet moment about 6 months ago, Arnold's a bit bigger now, but still a lot smaller than Munkee!!

I'm off for now, take care all and see you soon xxx

Easter... No eggs!

Evening all! Well, for those of you that know me on Facebook, you'll know that I didn't end up going away this weekend. Long story, but the short version is that as soon as we went to pull away with the caravan hitched to the back of the car, the dog started to freak out. Got to the Fleet services on the M3 and decided that if we went any further, that the dog would have a heart attack from panting so much and hyperventilating! I made the decision that we should unhitch the caravan and David should take Mungo back to the house and then come and get me! As he had to go up to the Hook turn off and then all the way back down the M3 to home and then back again after settling the dog, it took about an hour and a half to come to get me... Thursday wasn't the warmest day and I was sat in the doorway of the caravan, reading my book (Slumdog Millionaire - see the film before you read the book!) and looking like I'd set up camp. One caravan, no car!! Got some rather odd looks to say the least!

Anyway, we've kept ourselves busy over the weekend regardless, catching up on some long overdue jobs! Plus, it means that I can go to yoga tomorrow as we're not away! Also long overdue is getting the Wii Fit back up and running. I did step yesterday and today I've done running, step and yoga. I tried one of the muscle workouts and OMG!!! It was agony!

The weigh in happened this morning and according to the bathroom scales, I'm the same, according to the Wii Fit scales I'm 13st 2lb. As I'm going to be using the Wii Fit more than anything else, I'm going with this figure. There's a difference of 10lbs, but at my next doctor's appointment, I'll note the correct weight in kilos and convert into stones and pounds.

Pleased to say that I didn't eat any Easter eggs, mainly because I don't really like chocolate!! HAHA! We went shopping today and only healthy meats and veg went into the trolley, no rubbish or processed foods. We had a great Thai meal tonight, all freshly cooked, Turkey Fried Noodles (the noodles are simply tossed in with everything else at the end) and stir fried mixed veg in black bean. All cooked from scratch, other than the black bean, which is in a jar from Wing Yip...

So, I'm off work for the next couple of days still, so looking forward to walking and running plus yoga tomorrow. Also getting some baking done so I have some muffins for work. Oh, and I'm getting a new haircut on Wednesday morning, which I'm very excited about, something of a COMPLETE change! ;-)

Laters Weeza xxx

Always read the label....

Well, a quick post, as I had a particularly bad experience yesterday with the diet...

I'd done so really well all day, muffin for breakfast, healthy prawn sandwich from Tesco for lunch, a couple of Special K snacks and very little caffeine. However, when I got home, the other half had bought some ready to eat meatballs and I popped one in my mouth and they were delicious. In retrospect, I should have read the label first, and worked out the points value. I had about 6 in total.

This morning, I go online and log my evening's food consumption only to be horrified that just one meatball was 4 points! That's the same points value as the prawn sandwich I had for lunch! Eating 6 meant that I'd exceeded my total day's allowance by 2 points! So, I didn't bank anything yesterday and I'm minus 23.5 points for the week so far.

Going away today, so I'm going to make sure that I do plenty of exercise with the dog and try to bank the maximum 8 points a day (4 from eating under my points allowance & 4 from exercise) until Sunday to get back the points! Should give me 32 additional points, plus a bit of room to manouvre!

So signing off for now, if the mobile broadband works down on the south coast I'll update the blog again. See's ya all! xxx

Mortified....

Well, as yesterday the scales were missing from the bathroom, I weighed in this morning and was horrified to see that I'd gained 1.75lbs! Three quarters of a kilo! I shouldn't have been that surprised as last week wasn't my best, no real exercise and drank loads of wine. No alcohol last night and was relatively good all day yesterday with eating. Didn't manage to get to walk the dog but managed 10 minutes of step on the patio. However, as I had all the leftover stuff in the fridge, including a WW quiche at lunch, I managed to go over my points by 2.5 points, redeemed 1.5 points with the step on the patio, so -1 point for the start of the week!

I've got an hour and a half of yoga/pilates tonight, so that will give me 4 bonus points and I need to stick with the plan for food, I should be on for banking 7 points, taking my bank to 6 points... I'm also going to start the "walking to running" plan from WeightWatchers tomorrow night, if I don't start it now, I'll drag it out for ages! Should then be able to run for 30 minutes by the beginning of June.

Anyway, enough for now, back soon! xx

First blog on blogger....

Hi there, so, this is my first blogger post, I've been sporadically blogging on myspace, but this seems to be the way forward :) If you want to see previous posts (cos I can't import it for some reason) click here - http://www.myspace.com/weezas_blog.

So, the objective is to lose weight, hence the name of the blog, LOL. You'll see from the picture above, that I'm bigger than I should be! The photo was taken in Thailand, when I was on hols for Christmas/New Year. When I came back, I weighed over 14 stone (196lbs or 90ish kgs). I've managed to drop to 13st 10lbs since I came back mid January. My ideal weight is around 10 and half stone (147lbs or 67kgs), so I have quite a bit to shift; 3st 3lbs (45lbs or 20.5kgs). I'm looking to do it for the August bank holiday weekend (last weekend of August), which is a good steady weight loss.

I'm following the WeightWatchers Discover Plan, which uses a points system, at my current weight I have a 22 point allowance for the day. I had two crumpets for breakfast, with nothing on them, which are 2.5 points. Things like lettuce have zero points and things like a chicken breast grilled without skin on is also 2.5 points, but a Big Mac is 9.5 points, so you kind of get the picture. It's based around the calorie and saturated fat content, which gives it a points value. The idea is to spread the points around 3 main meals and 3 snacks a day, plus drinking plenty of water and getting your 5 portions of fruit and veg a day. There's also a milk target, to promote healthy bones etc. Also it's geared towards filling foods, so that you feel fuller quicker and for longer and I've got to say that it actually works! I've also found out that drinking a bottle of rose wine is around 9 points and it's not really a good idea to cut out/down foods, so that you can have a bottle of wine in the evening, so totally abstination is the only way forward. I stopped drinking last night and the open bottle of wine in the fridge will be used for cooking!

My last part of the weight loss plan is to get more exercise, this is an area which I really let myself down in. I find it hard to get motivated. As the sun's come out in the recent weeks and over the last week or so, it's started to warm up, I'm feeling a little more active and have been out walking the dog with my other half. Once a day, but it's 20-30 minutes a day. I'm also starting yoga this week, with my next door neighbour and my job role has changed from April 1st, so I'm now office based, therefore I can cycle to work (3 miles each way). Also, Weightwatchers have a walking to running plan, so that over the course of 8 weeks, you build up to being able to run comfortably for 30 minutes and this is something that I really want to achieve, running has always been my nemesis!! Think Forrest Gump with splints, you'll get the general picture!

Monday's are my weigh-in day, but I couldn't this morning, as my other half had used the scales to weigh a package and they were still in the garage. I'll weigh myself tomorrow morning instead! I'm not expecting to have lost any weight, due to being bad last week, mostly with the wine :(

I'll check back in tomorrow so I can log my weight.

Take care, Weeza xxx