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,...

After the giddiness of being half of the Couple Of The Year last week, I was brought down to earth with a bump as I gained 3.5lbs at weigh in.  I'm very much not a happy bunny this week. What I thought was a pretty good week, turned out to not be the case.  We had our lovely in-laws down to visit for most of the week, and it is always nice to see them, but it has thrown off my food patterns this week.  I have found myself picking up a meal deal sandwich a few times, and I have definitely eaten too many carbs this week.  I'm pretty annoyed with myself. You know when you are pretty sure you have had a good week, but then it turns out that although you didn't join in with the Chinese takeaway, or even eat anything really bad, you still ate too much? Yep, that was me this week. What a knob! So I pouted a bit, had a bit of a sulk, made one of my favourite pre-Slimming World dinners and pretty much got over it, in theory.  I had my signature sand...

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...

Hey folks, so, yeah, I've been terrible at updating this recently. Sadly, work exploded in December and I'm just now getting life a bit more back to normal. So, in the time I was gone, I've pretty much stayed on plan and I'm currently sitting at 6st 3.5lbs down. I can't really complain, but my weight loss has slowed right down over the last month or so. My own fault, I've been not drinking enough water, and not having enough speed food. Don't get me wrong, I'm still doing a hell of a lot better that when I was this size... I've got a bit complacent I think, so this is my kick up the bum. All the water, more speed food.  I've found myself snacking more, in part because I get bored working from home so a snack is a nice distraction. That being said, my snacks are usually fruits and cereal/hifi bars so it could be worse. In the old days, not that long ago, I'd have scarfed most of a 2 litre bottle of Coke and a packet of biscuits witho...

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...

I weigh in on a Tuesday evening at 5pm, and I spent all weekend thinking I hadn't done well at all.  I stepped up the speed on Saturday, after a supermarket shop after work, and was really strict with myself Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.  I set myself a target of 4.5lbs this week, which would bring my 2.5 stone award, but I went into the meeting resigned to not getting that, but vaguely confident I would do a pound or two.  I had to double check the readout on the scales when it said I lost 5lbs!  I've been talking for a few weeks now about being unfocused, about me not doing anything bad, but feeling like I wasn't truly living up to the Slimming World mantra of 'food optimising'.  I rarely get anywhere near my total allowed syns for the day, but still feel like I could do better.  The main problem for me is that I'm inherently lazy.  That's how I got fat in the first place, I'd always rather have a sandwich than make a proper meal....

As you might have guessed by the title of this weeks entry into this blog, I have had a fairly stressful week. Work has been pretty intense over the last couple of weeks, and I don't seem to have switched off. This is not that unusual for me, I tend not to switch off much anyway, I'm one of those people I'm afraid. My problem is, I care about my job. I like it and I want it to be successful, so I'm always 'on'. The downside is that it means my eating schedule tends to be a touch erratic.  I don't feel like this week I did particularly badly, I didn't come 'off plan' but I probably didn't optimise as well as I could. I definitely didn't drink as much water as I should. Had a few nights where I ended up having to have a Mugshot and a yoghurt for my evening meal. Not terrible, but not nearly as much speed as I should be having.  Hopefully I can get back on it this week.  I have set a fairly high target this week of 4.5lbs, that would...