I’m on a Dechox!

March is here, spring will pop up, it’s Hen Do month for one of my best friends and I have officially started my Dechox today!

Dechox is a brilliant idea from the British Heart Foundation which is getting people to give up chocolate for the month. Whilst Dry January etc is a great idea for some people, for me, it’s not a particular vice. I don’t drink very much at all so it really wouldn’t be worth it. This however, is a major challenge! Add to the equation a husband who is equally as addicted to chocolate as I am who is also giving it up and you get potentially dangerous living arrangements for the next month!

The Dechox covers the whole of March and any donations and sponsorship for the Dechox should see me though and I fully intend to make it to the end! So here’s my fundraising page and I would love it if you would be able to donate even just a little bit. My text donation code is MVST99 to 70070 and that will automatically donate £3 to my page for you!

We’d both love it if you could share a few pennies to support us through and to help out a really great charity!

Weekly weigh in #7

I’ve made a few changes in my world this week which I’m hoping will help me out for the few weeks. I’ve been really enjoying reading everyone else’s posts where we’re clubbing together and supporting each other with our health and fitness goals over the last 7 weeks and it’s great to see the progress that some people are making.  As you might know if you’ve been keeping up with me, I’ve been down and then up and then back down a bit to even out and be back to the same weight as just after Christmas! I felt like I’d lost my way a bit.

I’ve done 2 things to hopefully make a difference to me this week.

Firstly, after reading about how Mummy Melton is going I decided to investigate and then get started using Thinking Slimmer. Using this, I listen to a Slimpod every evening and I love the way it approaches weight loss without talking about inches and lbs but just by talking about how I want to look and feel.  I’m only 3 days in but I have noticed that I’m less likely to snack in the evenings after dinner already.  I listened to a hypnobirthing relaxation script when I was pregnant and that really helped to calm me down about the birth and this works in a similar way by talking to my subconscious so we’ll just have to wait and see the impact over the next few weeks.

Secondly, I’ve signed up to something crazy! Hubby and I are both terrible secret chocolate eaters. We both know that we do it, we both know that we aren’t truthful to the other one about how much chocolate we eat and we both eat it in secret from each other. So we had toyed with the idea of giving up chocolate for lent when I saw the British Heart Foundations Dechox advertised. The Dechox covers the whole of March so whilst lent starts tomorrow, the donations and sponsorship for the Dechox should see me though March and I fully intend to make it to the end! So here’s my fundraising page and I would love it if you would be able to donate even just a little bit.  My text donation code is MVST99 to 70070 and that will automatically donate £3 to my page for you!

I think this week the big change has been that I haven’t been obsessing over step counts or what food I’m eating but I have relaxed a bit. Now just to see if that makes a difference at the scales; I think I would honestly be fairly happy if I maintained this week.

…. the results are in and … I’ve put on 1/2 lb which I’m actually fine with. I know I’ve been less active but I just feel so much better in myself this week. Bring on a big loss next week!

New year… new start, right?

New Year… new start, right?! We’re all at it now, how can we be better people in 2015? How long can we stop drinking/smoking/eating chocolate for? How much weight can we lose?

On our honeymoon in 2012, only 3 months before getting preggers, and at my smallest in years!

I’m definitely in the last camp.  For years I have maintained a reasonably healthy weight after I gain and then lost a significant amount at university. When I was pregnant, I didn’t go silly but equally I did enjoy the odd bit of cake, the extra helping of desert at family meals, or the chicken drumsticks WITH the skin left on!

After Sprog arrived, I lost 65% of the weight gained fairly easily and last Christmas I rejoined Slimming World to help to lose the remainder.  And I’ll start this post with a great big positive –I did it.  I lost just over a stone and I reached pre-Sprog weight! However, that did mainly happen in the first 6 months of the year and since then I’ve been faffing around loosing and gaining the same 3 lbs continuously and I am bored of this now.  At the bottom of this weight range I am happy, at the top, I am not as that’s where my clothes are all too tight.  I’m still not close to being back into my pre-Sprog ‘normal’ clothes as the weight is distributed a little differently now.

So, New Year… new start right?! I’m determined that it is time for real change now.

A new approach is needed I feel.  I have previously tried to hold myself accountable on here but failed miserably…I obviously wasn’t mentally ready and Friday’s weren’t a good day for me. I’m going to try a new plan.  Tuesday is my weigh in day and unfortunately, because work is so busy, I’ve been unable to stay for the group after the weigh in a lot of the time since September. So my pledge to myself is to stay for group for at least the whole of January to kick me kick start my journey. It may well have a negative impact on my work and marking load but I have to begin to draw a line and make sure that I am important too, I bit fed up of feeling like the fat friend, in my mind, having had a child is really not a good enough excuse to still look and feel this uncomfortable in my own skin.

2015 is the year of one of my best friends’ wedding, and hen do, and as a bridesmaid I have no way of avoiding pictures of myself being taken. After that, I will be starting a new job in September so I want to feel confident for that. It may also be a funny logic but I don’t intend to have another baby yet so my body is not going to be put through that change again for a while and I don’t want to look back on my life feeling that my late twenties were a time where I forgot about myself and put everyone else first, I want Sprog to see a healthy lifestyle from both of us and at the moment, my eating habits are probably not ones that I want to be passing to him.

So as I’ve written this, I munched through the last of the Christmas chocolates and any biscuits left at the end of the day will be going somewhere far away from me. It’s weigh in tomorrow evening and a completely fresh start, I think I’m going to set a new and lower target, and a non-food related reward for when I get there.  I’ll decide on that treat in time for next week’s post. Weekly weigh in posts will now happen and be completely honest… because it’s a new year, so a new start right?!

A Christmas adventure in Wonderland

This weekend saw the second of Sprog’s adventures to London and was a big contrast to the last one.  This time it was cold, super cold and we therefore required many more layers and therefore many more bags.

Bright and early we caught the train (9.00am, I’m telling you there was some super organisation to get us out at that time!) and straightaway Sprog was fascinated by 2 things; the view out of the window and the people behind/next to us. Luckily for us, he is pretty darn cute so when he hangs his head between the seats the people behind are generally not displeased or grumpy to see his grinning face!

When we eventually arrived at our destination, Sprog ate a little lunch, was amazed by my friends Christmas tree and had a failed attempt at a nap. We’d been thwarted on our journey up as he had closed his eyes as we pulled into the station!

Our primary aim for the day had been to do the annual trip to do Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park, which I had missed last year as Sprog was too little still. This is a quick snap of him needing a run around before we went into Hyde Park.

Mulled cider…enough said!

This was one of the highlights of my day…melted milk chocolate on a warm Belgian waffle, it was truly divine and hit the spot of mid afternoon hunger.

At one stage, I looked down at my hands to see Iggle Piggle. How he got there, I don’t remember. How long I’d been holding him, I don’t remember. But I do know that I didn’t feel like a complete tit when I realised and it just struck me instead that my life was just incredibly different since the last time I’d visited Wonderland.

Not a Wonderland snap but Sprog was a superstar all day (apart from the small amount of screaming when he’d got so tired that he’d couldn’t handle it!) and to cap it all off, he ate properly! Not normally a big deal but for the last couple of weeks he’s been pretty fussy where he’s not felt 100% and he ate his pasta and…the mince! Cause for a small celebration!