A change of tactics

I am momentarily and temporarily done with Slimming World.

It’s nothing to do with the plan.  I love the plan.

It’s to do with my head space.  I’m done with feeling like my success or failure is determined by a number on the scale.

Last week, I wrote about feeling so happy with how my week had gone. I got weighed in and somehow put on a pound… before anyone suggests muscle, it just cannot have possibly been. When I have a bad weigh in, it throws me off for at least a couple of days.

There is no need for this because I had been feeling great leading up to that weigh in.

If this were the first time, it would be manageable, but I’m constantly feeling knocked down and not good enough.

So the change is this… just listening to my Slimpod, using my FitBit to track my activity and eating reasonably.

I will be measuring my waist with a piece of ribbon, that’s it.  No more feeling good or bad about myself dependent on a number on a scale… hopefully!

So here’s my weekly “ribbon in” photo!

Weekly weigh in #2

*I drafted this post earlier today and as it is weigh in day thought I would still post it. However, I did not go to weigh in this evening due to a family event that arose. I wanted to post the draft anyway as it’s important to me that this year I hold myself accountable for my weight*

The week my jeans got a bit more comfortable!!! O yeah! So I don’t take measurements, maybe I should, but I rely upon my clothes to give me their honest opinion as to whether I’ve lost weight a lot of the time. And this week my jeans got more comfy! Whoop whoop!

I don’t know about you but I have varying levels of jeans in my wardrobe. Even from before Sprog there were different types – I’ve got my ‘skinny’ jeans which are both skinny in style and in requirements from me! I have the ‘normal’ jeans, for when I am a ‘normal’ size and feeling ‘normal’. Then I have ‘fat’ jeans. Slightly bigger for the days when I’m not feeling quite so slender. Then there were the Holy Grail… the ‘maternity’ jeans. Amazingly comfortable, bump band attached, whole body and stomach support but sadly only appropriate when preggers. Something that I left behind nearly 18 months ago.

So since Sprog, I rocked the maternity jeans until he was probably 3 or 4 months and then the roundness of my flabby belly was sadly lacking and didn’t hold up the band anymore. It was a sad day for me when I retired these bad boys to the attic until next time. Particularly as I still hadn’t made it down to the ‘fat’ jeans yet. Cue a mad shopping spree, Mother in tow to find anything that would fit, and a purchase of some lovely but quite bright, green jeggings!

Since Sprog was about a year I have been able to get into the ‘fat’ jeans although they’ve never really felt 100% comfortable, especially when sat down. The redistribution of flabby tum seems to get in the way. But this week… hope is on the horizon. Last time I tried on my ‘normal’ jeans they just about squeezed past my knees. Thighs were highly unlikely, as was my bum. I vaguely tempted to try them on but I think that might have to wait until next week, I’m not that hopeful yet.

This has been a pretty good week for me. I have eaten a vast amount of free foods. These lovely bliters help you to loose weight at the same time as making you feel satsified and more full. It basically means a lot of fruit and veg. And I have been better at snacking on them too rather than still turning to the crisps and biscuits for snacks.

*As I said, I didn’t make to weigh in, I may make it on Thursday. If not, my next update will be next Tuesday*

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?!