Bit of a guesstimate (Emily Sue)

I didn't go to my Weight Watchers meeting this morning, in favour of staying in bed until I felt like waking up (rather than when the alarm went off). Ahhhh, it was delightful.

Oh yes, and the other reason has something to do with being bloated and crampy and hormonal and eating everything that's not tied down. Ahem. However, I did weigh myself this morning on my less-than-accurate scales.

Last week: 71.3kg
Today: 71kg
Difference: 300g
Running total: 6kg

Now, I know for a fact that my scales differ from WW scales by a range of 200-800g (don't ask me to explain why it differs so much) so I suspect if I'd gone to the meeting today it would have shown either a zero loss or a small gain. Which, given the 8 cream biscuits I had yesterday and the way I polished off the bag of choc chips when I got home, wouldn't have been totally out of line. So I've had a small reprieve and I now have a week to get myself back on track before the next weigh in.
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Good enough for fiction (HJ)

The young woman hesitated for a moment before she stepped onto the scales in the privacy of her own bathroom. The hesitation was born of a few weeks of inattention to such mundane matters as exercise and trying to eat moderate amounts of healthy food. Born of the mother of all assignments then the post-stress-point lassisitude that had marked her undergraduate career.

Nevertheless, at some point in time she would have to return to the discipline of the weekly weigh-in, the morning wake-up call to row, the avoidance of take-away and baked goods, the pleading eyes of her little black dog asking for a daily walk.

Some time she was going to have to confront reality. Expose her vulnerability to her peers and excite comparisons with her mother who was being particularly good this week. She hoped beyond hope that she had not put on any extra weight during the weeks since she last weighed-in. She couldn't bear the thought that the scales would have bad news... but she deserved it.

She'd told herself that this was the day. Friday. Day off. Sleep-in, then row. Take it easy. Make certain to weigh-in, regardless of what horrors might be in store from the heavy weight of reality, borne out in cold, inflexible numbers.

She gasped in surprise as...








Tune in next week for the outcome...













Okay, I'm not that cruel, but very surprised.

I've lost half a kilo. 500 grams. In three weeks, I've missed two weigh-ins, done hardly any exercise, had some really bad meals and lost 500 grams.

You know how they say muscle weighs more than fat? It is possible this could have worked in my favour?

Weigh in (Loony Lace Lady)

Well I have achieved the first week of dieting. I don't know if I should give numbers or excuses first. I decided to go onto a very low carbohydrate diet, I know this works for me but I'm not sure how good it is for the body. So I bit the bullet and started with this. The plan is to be on this for 2 weeks then add more carbs which will slow loss down, but give me a better balanced diet. So I thought if I could loose 2kg in 2 weeks I would be doing well.

This is the result:

start 70.1kg

today 68.6kg

loss 1.5kg

I am pleased with this although I know a lot of others get better results than this.

On the exercise front I increased my rowing to 4 mins (big deal) and did it 5 times and this week plan on 5 mins, and I walked twice. So I have started.

Come on all you skinny cowgirls out there please join me in doing at least 5 mins of intentional exercise per day. If I can so can you and 5 mins out of 24 hrs isn't a great deal.

Another week and I will be interested to see my results, then the really hard slog starts.

Weigh in (Emily Sue)

This morning Manda and I met early at my place to exercise. I worked out on the treadmill (45 minutes) while she did an exercise DVD. It was great and I think we're both allowed to be smug all day now. :) And then I went to my weigh in...

Last week: 71.9kg
Today: 71.3kg
Difference: 600g
Running total: 5.7kg

Oh yeah. I'm happy.

Help wanted (Loony Lace Lady)

Hi all, this is my first try at this. HJ gave me a 2nd lesson so now it should work.

As most of you already know about 7 months ago I was bitten by a dog and that put a very quick stop to my weight loss/get fit program. I had at that time lost 1kg.

My leg is still sore but very slowly recovering, my doctor wasn't encouraging when telling me that that sort of injury you never get over. Well I have news for her. However, it is still sore, so I have to be careful what exercise I do.

I am now in the headspace to want to loose more (More than 1) weight. In the past couple of weeks I started at 70.4kg and one day I saw 69.6kg and that I liked. Today I weighed at 70.1kg. I am taking that as a downward trend. You see at my age bodies don't like loosing weight and they fight hard to keep every gram. I know that when the down starts my weight will bounce all over the place, but generally in a downwards direction. So all that considered I am saying the the down has started.

Now I have to keep it going. I am planning on loosing 5kg to start, I need to loose 15kg. I will then try to plateau for a bit then go down again. I have started rowing, but only with my arms and body just yet. I do use my legs for 1 minute just to try to build up muscle. When my leg can cope I will increase that and also my total time of 3 mins just yet. I realise that exercise also builds muscle which increases weight, so in time I will be successful.

Please, some encouragement along the way will be good. It is great to be with you all instead of just lurking.

Darn (Givinya)

Tonight I let myself have three squares of Nestle Club - my favourite chocolate.  I rarely eat any other type of chocolate because I've been spoiled by Nestle Club.

Three squares.  That's so restrained and self-controlled, isn't it?  So health-conscious.  So ... "good".

Turns out, that's 18% of your RDI of saturated fats.

Darn.

I feel like a bowl of corn chips to commiserate.

(But I won't.)

Weigh in (Emily Sue)

This week I had three days where I didn't count points at all. I didn't count them because I didn't want to see a number that was significantly higher than my daily points allowance. Yes, denial makes it all better.

Today I had planned to skip my Weight Watchers meeting, due to the afore-mentioned non-counting and the expected weight gain that accompanies such activities. However, when I got up this morning and weighed myself I thought I might JUST get away with it. Maybe. So I dressed in my very lightest clothes and off I went. When I got there I removed every item of clothing I could whilst still remaining decent, and stepped on the scales. The result...

Last week: 71.9kg
Today: 71.9kg
Difference: zero

Phew!! Okay, no weight loss but I didn't gain, and after the week I've had, that's a win.

You'd Have to be Kidding (HJ)

As if I'm weighing in today! Assignment finished at the expense of daily rowing; Been eating too much naughty food because I haven't had time to shop or cook properly; and I've had all the naughties from last week's Spring Fair to eat; and only made it to one Zumba session.

Not going near the scales, I don't want to know.

On a very, very sad note: My Zumba lady is no longer doing Zumba classes here in town. A combination of falling numbers and the offer of full-time work in her day job. I could go out to the little town 20 mins from here a couple of evenings a week where she still has the numbers to make the hire of the hall acceptable. I'm thinking about it. On the other hand there are other places in town that do Zumba, but I'd have to join a gym (or pay a small fortune per session) I will get back into rowing tomorrow, but I've been enjoying Zumba. This is opposed to rowing that I do because it gets me where I want to be.

Very, very sad.

I want to be just like Hip-Jen (Emily Sue)

Once again, I'm following in Jen's footsteps (not the scary Zumba footsteps, just the weight-loss ones).

Last week: 72kg
Today: 71.9kg
Difference: 100g loss
Running total: 5.1kg

I've had a cold all week, complete with nasty cough, and so I haven't been able to exercise at all. I still stuck to my WW points, but I think this proves that exercise DOES make a big difference.

Damn it.
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Mixed Results (HJ)

This week I seem to have inadvertantly tested a theory.

The theory is based on personal experience. There are two times in my life that I've been slender without worrying about it.

One was all through high school when I used to ride my bike 5km each way four days a week (Mum would give us a lift on Band practice days, because my brother couldn't take his trumpet on his bike - and despite the fact that my flute would fit in my school bag, there was NO WAY I was missing out on a lift to school!!!).

This experience lead me to consider the following equation:

CE = EWYW

That is, Concerted Exercise = Eat Whatever You Want.

I wasn't trying to test my theory, but there was chocolate fudge in the house. This, I conjecture, fits the criterion Eat Whatever You Want.

However, I rowed for 40 minutes 6 mornings this week, with 2 Zumba sessions, and some dog walking. That, I believe, fill the requirement for Concerted Exercise.

I believe the following results do support my theory, although I do wonder how much more I could have lost if the fudge didn't exist.

I lost some weight-
100 gms.
That's a total of 3.2kg overall.

I lost some centimetres around my waist.
Let's count them... one.
That's a total of 5.5cm overall. (which is a whole clothing size in men's clothes)

Two people have commented on the fact I seem to have lost some weight, one was the most back-handed (rude) compliment ever. Apparently I really needed to do something about my weight, so it's good that I've lost a bit.

Regardless, I can't believe they've noticed when I've only lost 3.2kg - and that over 2 months. That's hardly in the territory of noticeable change.

But I think I am trimming down (and 5.5cm off the waist would indicate I might be right). This might be noticeable. And I don't care about the scales, as long as I trim down to fit some of my favourite clothes and get stronger physically.

On the other hand, went to get clothes for the Spring Fair fashion parade. They are all small sizes in that shop, I'm certain. The size 16s are very, very snug. Depressing. And for the first year ever, she hasn't made me wear black. This should be a good thing, but does it mean that either;
a) She has done a course on what colours suit people
b) I'm no longer young-looking enough to have to wear black (because of course all young women look good in black).

How can I be so depressed about the fact I don't have to wear black, which I don't like anyway?

Weigh in (Emily Sue)

Last week: 72.9kg
Today: 72.0kg
Difference: 900g
Running total: 5kg (!!!) (Ha - "running" total. No pun intended.)

Finally! I've been on the treadmill every day so I'm very happy to be seeing results. VERY happy. :)

I'm also feeling fitter. I am still totally stuffed when I run on the treadmill but I'm now getting stuffed after a longer time - instead of having jogging blocks of 2 and 3 minutes I'm doing blocks of 4, 5 and (on two occasions) 6 minutes. More importantly, I'm feeling the difference in other ways. I've been sleeping a lot better - it's still broken sleep but not nearly as much as it used to be. There were two nights there where I didn't wake up AT ALL. That's like a miracle for me. I'm getting to sleep earlier, too, and waking up feeling refreshed and ready to exercise. Well, okay, I feel willing to exercise. I'm still not really enthused about it but I'm always happy when I've done it.

And generally, my anxiety levels are way down. Still higher than a 'normal' person but really great for ME, particularly with other stuff I've had going on.

So... maybe "they" have been right all along, and there really ARE benefits to regular exercise??
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Now THAT'S more like it (HJ)

I've been pretty good this week.

When I say "pretty good" I don't mean that I've been eating nothing bad, I mean that I have had bad things, but not every time I could have had bad things. I have said "no" to food, whilst having a tiny slice of chocolate Bavarian at church Sunday night, a Lime thickshake at a girls' morning tea on Tuesday, a slice of a sponge roll at Minister's Association on Tuesday (aren't I glad I didn't have a cakey thing at morning tea?), a moderate slice of carrot cake at another meeting on Wednesday, and a Gaiety chocky biscuit at a pastoral visit yesterday. That's many "yes"es, and I'm not listing all the "no"s for you, but there were times when takeaway would have been easy and I cooked instead.

I enjoyed all the naughties I ate, and that is fine, because I need to look on weightloss as a whole of lifestyle change forever, so I will have occasional naughties (and I didn't realise I'd had so many this week until I was listing them here).

I also branched out into some fruit and veg that are on the suspect list, and am paying the price with a belly full of itchy-spots (and when I say itchy, I mean it!). I'd better scale back, but I enjoyed having a little capsicum in my salad or stirfry. And the super-scrambled eggs with mushrooms was very enjoyable. They wouldn't have made me stack on weight, though.

The most important factor was probably exercise. I've done 30mins on the rowing machine 5 days this week (not Sunday and Thursday). I've been to 2 Zumba sessions, one followed up with 20mins of aerobics because our instructor needs to record some for assessment. I've also been walking the dog more.


These are all good things. And the results?
(Drumroll please)

Loss of 1.5kg this week.
Total loss of 3.1 kg

Waist loss of 1.5 cm
Total loss 4.5 cm


I think the exercise is doing what it's supposed to do. That is, letting me eat some naughties and still be on the downward track.

This gets me to a lovely number, leaving me 10 kg to go to be back in my healthy weight range, and 1.9kgs to my first reward weight.

It also only leaves me 300 gms heavier than my Beloved.

It will be a good day when I am lighter than my Beloved.

Now to keep everything under control at the lolly-making working bee tomorrow.

The hip-hop look (Emily Sue)

It was quite chilly here in Melbourne today, so I wore a long sleeved thermal top under my clothes. All day it's been bugging me - I feel like I've had to tuck in back in about 50 times. I've been cursing the cheap make and the fact that it's shrunk in the wash and become shorter and less elasticised than it was when new.

Then it occurred to me that I've also been hitching my jeans up all day, because they keep creeping down and giving me the teenage boy hip-hop look.

Could it be...? Could it be that I have actually (*gasp*) lost some millimeters? I don't know for sure because I didn't measure myself before starting Weight Watchers but the evidence is starting to point that way. And the most exciting thing about it is that these jeans are the ones I bought - reluctantly - in the next size up from where I was because I could no longer comfortably squeeze myself into the others.

Please please please let it be true...

Encouraging, but unofficial (HJ)

I only weigh myself once a week.

More frequently than that is only going to end in heartbreak with the little blips (or blimps?) that occur. I want to see the trend that is heading downwards. Monthly would probably be better, but there's no way I have the patience and motivation to sustain a healthy life for a month with no feedback.

But this morning I couldn't help myself. Partially frustration after last Friday's non-event, partially because this morning I was going to morning tea and needed to know precisely how much I could afford to eat, partially because I've been rowing each day and refusing food and that should be making a difference, surely???

900 grams. Gone. Yaaaaaaaay!

Now to hold onto it until Friday's official weigh-in.

And as if that wasn't enough (HJ)

I caught sight of the scales as my Beloved weighed himself this morning.

He is just over 6 feet tall.

He does manual work (so has lots of heavy muscle).

He eats lots.

And he weighs 1.8 kilos less than me.

Bathroom Scales: Givinya d'Huge Fright

This week has been GREAT according to me, but it's been pretty dismal for my weight.

My husband directed a secondary schools camp so we all went to the Sunshine Coast with 77 teenagers where we combined with another similar camp.  150ish teenagers, mostly skinny, eating total crap.  Humph.

I sometimes wonder about the TV show "How to look good naked."  What's that all about?  I should try to find out - a quick trip to Wikipedia or IMDb would sort it out for me, but for now I'm content to wonder.  Because due to the configuration of the bathroom in our ensuite cabin, one could catch sight of the top 75% of oneself naked and from that humiliating position, one could quite clearly see that one looks positively AWFUL naked, and one wonders whose body she is inhabiting.  One also wonders how one's husband puts up with it.

During the week, I ate like a... like a... like a woman who is having nice food cooked for her and who doesn't have to wash up.  My meals were awesome, and so were the leftovers belonging to all three of my children.  And the extra bread and butter I purloined "for the children" etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.  And the celebratory McDonalds after camp. Etcetera.

My comfy Size 12 bootleg jeans started feeling tight across the girth.  Here comes the post-baby blimp-up.

And to add insult to serious body-image injury, this morning I stepped on my scales a few times and after working out a quick average (for my scales are cantankerous at best) it appeared that I was 5 kilograms heavier than I was before the week began.


Say what?

I know I ate a lot, but I don't think I even CONSUMED 5 kilos of food during the week.

I wanted to say WTF, but I didn't as I'm reliably told that WTF stands for Wow That's Funny and I'm telling you that a 5 kg gain in a week is not funny.  More like WTHHIGOH.  (The lesser-known Internet acronym for "What The Holy Heck Is Going On Here?")

Well.  It turns out that if you step on the scales to switch them on, then step off to let them 'zero', they go to 0.0kg, then they flutter around, finally settling on a figure that's sometimes around 3.5kg, sometimes around 4kg, and sometimes around 5kg.

Phew.  Scales not zeroed.  Weight not exponentially ballooning in a medically concerning fashion.

Time for new scales.

Also time for:

• coming back to Skinny Cow
• drinking more water before meals so I don't eat so much
• doing appetite-suppressing things between meals so I don't snack, e.g., brushing my teeth, getting out of the kitchen, keeping busy, and drinking water instead.  You thought I was going to say 'take up smoking.'  I am not going to take up smoking.  Anything.
• getting back on the bread policy - two slices of that thick yummy grainy stuff a day and thinking outside the breadbox (ha!) for the rest of the day.

My weight, while not where it would be if I didn't have this flabby tummy problem, is not high on my list of priorities so following menu plans, counting points and hiring babysitters so I can walk with the dog would fly out the window at this stage of my life.  Seriously.  I WANT to do all those things, I think they're great, but I just know that at 11am on any given day I'd say to myself, "Shoot.  I've forgotten to [insert weight loss strategy] ... since last Thursday."  And then where would I be?

Just as heavy and twice as depressed.

So I'm back at OSC now, I'm drinking water today, not eating between meals tomorrow, and starting the bread thing on Monday.

Dammit, I'm not ballooning up 5 legitimate kilos before I blink, not this time!

Weigh-in (Emily Sue)

I've had a great week. I've been getting up early (6am-ish) and working out on the treadmill - today was my seventh day in a row of getting red-faced, sweaty and exhausted. Plus, I've been sticking faithfully to my Weight Watchers points. Awesome.

So imagine my surprise when today's weigh-in revealed a 300g GAIN. I mean, I do get that the last time I weighed in I was stressed and not eating, so the 1.8kg I lost was partly due to temporary fasting, but still... it's very discouraging to see a gain, albeit a tiny one, after all those early mornings and all that sweating and sore muscles. Hmph.

I am a Winner! (HJ)

Well, I'm certainly not losing, so I must be winning. Surely?

I've put on 1.1 kilos over two weeks. It seems last week's odd reading was truth, and this week I've not managed to get rid of any of it. This is despite three Zumba sessions and two rows, and sundry slow walks with a recuperating puppy. I have indulged in some desserts and the odd chocolate, though.

I'm trying not to go with the old line, "I'm gaining muscle, which weighs more than fat." Mainly because my waist measurement has also gone up. Zumba seems to be sculpting me from the view of my front elevation, but not in profile. I need to do more rowing, me thinks. And maybe fewer desserts.

Definitely fewer desserts.

But I am feeling stronger, more oxygenated, and more flexible. All of these are good things.

No weigh here either (Emily Sue)

Yesterday I had plans to attend the Melbourne Show with a friend so I decided to skip Weight Watchers in case we wanted an early start. As it turns out we didn't want an early start but I decided to sleep late anyway, and still missed my weigh-in. I did weigh myself at home and according to my scales I'm the same as last week. I'm conveniently ignoring the fact that last week I weighed myself wearing clothes and shoes and yesterday it was done without either, which indicates I've probably gained. Hm. In truth I was expecting a gain since my last weight loss was partly attributable to anxiety - on weigh in day I had barely eaten for four days. I finally started eating relatively normally yesterday (first time in 11 days) so I am back on track now with Weight Watchers... and we'll see what next week brings...

I am back on track with exercise too, now that I'm eating enough to stop me passing out when I exert myself. I just did a 20 minute walk/run on the treadmill, which is not as much as I normally do but given that I haven't exercised at all in nearly a fortnight I reckon it's not bad. Onward and upward!
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No weigh (HJ)

This week has been a bit bad from an eating perspective. There was a luncheon AND a church dinner in a week that I had already had a few food incidents.

The weekend and beginning of the week weren't good from an exercise perspective either.

So when my scales gave me two different readings, I chose not to believe either of them, and shall allow the week to disappear into the ether without recording anything.

I shall also be a little better with the exercise and eating in this coming week.

It should be easier with no assignment looming.

Then again, I could record the 1.2kg loss I made in 5mins. That was pretty impressive.