Fixated On Shaping Up

I'm back, sorry. Life got a bit hectic during the exams, and holidays and stuff.   I posted this on my instagram earlier this week. ' Time for a  #reboot . I've got complacent it is time to  #refocus . I should be miles further down the road on my  #slimmingworldjourney  than I am. I should have smashed my  #holidaygain  but I haven't. Not starting again because that would negate all the effort I've put in so far. But I'm going to sit down, reread my book,  #focus  on  #foodoptimising  and get my arse in gear.' I've hit a plateau.  I lost over 8 stone before my holiday.  I'll talk about that later on, but since we got back I have massively not been able to focus.  I found myself doing what a lot of people seem to do, start 'guesstimating'portion sizes and syn values. I've always worked on the basis that because I get more syns, I'm male and fat, I will always be under, but when I think about it properly,...

This weeks post isn't really about me, and my 'journey'.  So this week I hit 95lbs total loss, which I'm pretty proud of, not at the goal yet, but pretty solidly on the way.  This week I want to talk about my wife, and the battle/journey she has undertaken.  Around the same time as I joined Slimming World, my lovely wife Caroline was diagnosed with PCOS, or Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome.  She will hate me talking about her here, but it is a big part of our lives, and I wanted to acknowledge it.  For the layman, PCOS affects the way your body processes insulin, how it burns fat and how it produces eggs.  I'm obviously not an expert but that is a very simplified version of it. It means that it is harder for her to lose weight, but much easier for her to put it on. So, this week I was ruddy delighted to be crowned as Couple Of The Year at my Slimming World group.  I may have lost 95lbs but Caroline has fought her way to 36lbs lost in the same tim...

So, I hit a few bumps in the road of my Slimming World journey. I was back on it, still am, but then a lovely friend came to stay with us, and we ended up getting pizza delivered.  Although we got vegetable, meaning at least a touch of speed food, I still ate four big slices of pizza! I only ate 4 slices!  That week I had been utterly on plan, finished the week on plan, went to weigh in, lost 1lb.  Although I'm pleased with a loss, for some reason this utterly bummed me out, way more than my Maintain.  Not really sure why, although it probably had something to do with helping out with the weigh in, and weeing where I ranked on the list for Slimmer Of The Month, the system shows you total weight loss that month, and mine was only 4lb for November. Considering how well I had been doing, only having a 4lb month properly affected me. Well, the picture above kind of tells you what happened next! I left the meeting to head to work, stopped at the shop and picked ...

It seems to have been ages since I wrote this, so, my apologies to the three of you who give a crap! Life got kind of complicated.  I have been run off my feet with the doubling of my workload, I think I wrote about that previously.  Basically I now have to manage four schools instead of two, which doesn't leave me an awful lot of time, particularly when one of them is near Sunderland, one is near Middlesbrough and I don't drive. Yeah, makes life a bit more complicated, and eating properly is pretty hard. Eating on the run!  So, since I last wrote this, I have had a few Slimming World milestones fall. My weight loss has definitely slowed down, but I am still committed to it. I hit my 3 stone award, my Club 10 and most excitingly I was nominated for Mr Sleek for my group. So yeah, pretty busy. In fact, I was voted Mr. Sleek, and much as I don't need/like/want the attention that comes with such a thing, it was nice to hear some of the conversations while we voted...

Well, I seem to have foolishly to agreed to double my workload in my day job.  This is mostly fine, I'm good at my job, and I mostly enjoy it so once I get my head round the ins and outs, hopefully life will settle down a bit! My week. Over the last couple of weeks I seem to have never been at home, and have only seen my wife while she was asleep, and vice versa.  I've had to cover shifts for my staff, plus taking on the admin for two other schools, not to mention going to visit the schools, one of them near Middlesbrough and one of them near Sunderland. Yup, super practical! It has not helped my food life... I started last week badly, with a KFC. I enjoyed it, I earned it, I don't regret it.  The rest of the week however, sort of collapsed around me. Another week where I wasn't particularly bad, KFC aside, but because of the way that it unravelled means I couldn't make the best choices, couldn't optimise as well as I wanted. We went to the Theatre to...