Just to let everyone know:

I've moved FGs to FATGIRLslim.org, which is available through Livejournal's syndication here.

:)

Hope to see y'all there.

Argh.

±0lbs

Mum said to me on the phone, "Don't worry; the exercise you've done will probably show up next week."

It damn buggering fucking well better. I didn't work that hard for NOTHING.

Let me tell you:

When I said I wasn't going gung-ho about this, "losing 2lbs this week" thing?

I LIED. I LIED LIKE A RUG.

I walked into work again this morning. I did not get passed by people on bikes until I got to the roundabout after Tesco, and even then, it was a wee schoolboy. I kept on passing and then being passed by a mother and child. I stopped to get a stone out of my trainer, they passed me by. They stopped to talk to somebody they knew, I passed them by. I didn't see them after I crossed onto The Green. I stayed ahead of them!

There is, however, a female (who loves herself, clearly) power walker on that route who passed me yesterday morning. I didn't see her when I crossed the road outside of my estate; she just kind of passed when I got up to Raith Eoian or however you spell that. Damnable Irish language. No fear of vowel shortages, then?

ANYWAY.

I wonder if any other walkers get this: sometimes, when I'm out walking and my arms are by my sides (I don't walk like a Walker yet; I walk like I'm strolling, because otherwise I just look ridiculous), then my fingers get swollen and tingly. Not sure if it's because of actual blood flow reaching those sausages or what, but it's kind of odd. Wears off after ten minutes or so.

---

Good news time! A month or two ago, I bought a Joe Brown denim jacket from the catalogue, and it was too tight on me; I could get it closed, but I had no movement, and it felt like wearing a corset.

This morning, I put the jacket on, and, not only can I get it buttoned up... I can get it buttoned up comfortably!

SUCCESS!

I mean, come ON, I know I'm losing weight and it's got to come off of somewhere, but I see myself every day. I can't really see the weightloss.

But I can feel it.

And that's really a great indicator of what I can see on the scales.

I've got 2lbs to lose to hit the 4st mark. I'm not exactly gung-ho about it - I spent the weekend eating cheese, basically. Or, well, I spent the weekend eating meals that involved cheese. Mum made the Weight Watchers Carbonara on Friday night, and she made her home made garlic bread as a treat.

Then she made something else - oh! Lasagne, which was my choice, really, but I forgot it contained cheese. And then rhubarb crumble. Now, in her defense, she did actually use the sweetener in place of the sugar, but it was still flour and butter and low-fat custard and mmmmm it was delicious. :D

So, this morning, I walked into work - I've literally been sitting down for five minutes while Theresa, the cleaner, cleans around me - and my nerves are all jangly and twitchy and they're pulsing inside my jeans. It's odd.

By the time I got to the Gaelscoil (about halfway) I had gotten a piece of grit in my eye, I'd been passed by little old ladies on bikes, by little dogs, and by children who weigh about an eighth of me and who are half my height.

(Now, in my defense, of course people on bikes are going to pass me by. And the dog was walking in the opposite direction. And the kids were skinny and fit and obviously so much faster than me, but dude.)

And I felt bad, because when I got to the crossing the roundabout, there was another Fat Girl there, coming up from the opposite direction. She and I got to the crossing at the same time; she was probably 5' 3" or so (I'm 5' 10") and weighed the same as I did, if not a little more.

I overtook her. I used my big, long, 33" inside legs and I strode ahead of her, even overtaking the little boys who were an-eighth-of-my-weight-and-half-my-height. I purposely overtook her to show myself, "LOOK. There is somebody fatter than you and slower than you! Huzzah!"

I really did feel bad about it.

Until I realised that I wasn't doing it to make HER feel bad, I was doing it to make sure that I could.

Because once you've been to that point in your life where you can't walk 250 feet without stopping to lean against a wall or sit down to give your hip a rest, you never want to go back there again.

---

Today is day 1 of my 21-days-without-junk cycle. May it be longer lived than my last attempt.

I know that I'd had a good week this week, without even stepping on the scales.

I fitted into a pair of jeans that I bought last September, expecting to fit into them come my holiday to Florida in January.

I couldn't fit into them in January, and they've sat at the bottom of my clothes box since, gathering oose and fluff and bits of my clothes.

ANYWAY.

I fit into them this week - yesterday, in fact. I went into town (and bought a new camera) to get a new suitcase for my upcoming holiday to Florida in June (I'm calling it, in my personal LJ, my June Floriday, so I'll call it that here, too!) and I decided to try them on. Previous to yesterday, I'd tried them on, but I couldn't even get them up over my arse.

Yesterday, not only did I get the up over my arse, but I got the zip and the button done, too, and they KEPT ON FALLING OFF MY ARSE ALL DAY.

Mum said I've lost a lot of weight off the top of my backside, and I think she's right. My jeans aren't falling off my stomach, for example, but many of them are falling down at the back. I'm suddenly glad that my tracksuit bottoms have got elasticated waists and that they don't fall down.

Otherwise I'd have NO TROUSERS THAT STAY UP.

Now, I'm not getting too excited about the jeans thing, because they're the same size as all my other jeans; they're just a different cut. I've still not gone down a dress size, but damnit, I'm getting close to moving down to a 30. :)

---

Patricia was back this week! She looked fabulous; she'd chosen a kind of nautical theme for her clothes, whether or not she realised it. She was all tan and faboo 'cause she's just back from 3 weeks in Florida, too! She said she'd gained 4lbs while she was gone, because she'd gone to Outback a lot and eaten the Onion Bloomer thing and lots of onion rings.

I, personally, don't blame her. :)

So, anyway! Mum came to weigh-in with me today, and she lost 5lbs (she got her Silver 7™ this week, too - she's lost more than 1.5st now, way to go, Mum!) and then I stepped on the scale.

Now, two things flashed up, the first of which I'd totally forgotten about:

50

and then

7!

... and then

-5.5lbs

Total weight loss so far: 3st 12lbs (which leaves me at 2lbs until my next Silver 7™. Holy cow.)

I'm 1.5lbs away from weighing 26st. The last time I weighed 26st was in April or May of 2004.

I'm so excited for this, you guys.

SO EXCITED.

My goal for next week is just 2lbs. Why aim higher? I'm happy with 2lbs next week. :)

---

As a bit of a bonus this week, I've taken pictures of my weigh-in cards since 2006 - I couldn't find my stuff from 2004, because we moved house in the middle, and the only things I could find was what I nicknamed The Bible (the old equivalent of Eat Wisely [not Eat Widely, as I just typed... *d'oh!*] which was The Handbook) and the four or five monthly magazines we used to get from our meetings, which seem to have disappeared altogether....

So, here you go!:

( 4 weigh-in cards )

Oh, my GOD the weather outside. I swear, it's hotter outside than it was in Florida when I was there in January/February. Which is insane. It should never be hotter in Ireland than it is in Florida.

(I say that, but I don't think it's hotter than it was when we were at Disney. It was proper warm, beating sun, getting sunburned kind of hot when we were in Disney. So that doesn't count. Everything else, today, outside, is hotter than Florida when I was there.)

That said, I'm all full of my own sense of self-importance, because I walked into work again.

But not only did I walk into work, I walked into work and it took me 5 minutes less than it did last time.

I'm convinced that my MBTs are actually a hindrance when it comes to walking. I will probably, then, sell them on.

Once I've cleaned the mud from the soles.

I'm rather annoyed, because they are very nice, although very black (when we were testing for shoes, we were checking Men's sizes, because I'm a ladies' UK10 [BIG FEET] and when we found out that I actually take an 8.5 in MBTs, we continued checking the Men's shoes, for some reason. I could have had a nice pair of light blue and white shoes, but noooooooo. I got black with a hint of black. Typical; I stopped being an outward Goth a long time ago, but people still insist on clothing me in black.

To combat that, I wore my navy blue tracksuit bottoms to walk into work, and my red-and-white gingham gypsy top, and changed my tracksuit bottoms for my white flower skirt when I got in.

Who says fat chicks can't do colour?

(This icon has never been so appropriate; I only wish I owned a bicycle!

In time, my preciouses. In time.)

I thought I was so over this whole "having my period" thing. BAH.

That said, I was having a blast today, doing my Dance Mat exercise - I really can't abide yoga, I've found, when I'm on the rag. Too uncomfortable, too much stretching, too much of, "ZOMG MY BELLY IS GOING TO SLAP ME IN THE FACE IF IT GETS ANY MORE BLOATED."

I've felt like such a slob these past 9 days. With the exception of walking home from weigh-in on Thursday, I don't think I've really done any exercise.

So, that's gotta change, hence me dragging out the exercise mat today.

Unfortunately, I was having a blast, as I said, with the dance mat and my normal work-out CD (one of these days, I will actually have a good enough connection to upload aforementioned workout playlist, but for the moment... sigh.) and the mat suddenly stopped working, halfway through Flip & Fill's Discoland!

I know that I'm a big girl and all, but godDAMNIT it doesn't have a weight limit! What it does have is little itty bitty sensor things inside that are NOT TETHERED DOWN. THEY ARE FREE TO ROAM AROUND.

What a crap design! At least if the directional arrows had full-size "pads" underneath, just sheets of sensor stuff, BOLTED IN PLACE, then it would work all the time!

As is, it's looking like I might have to get a new dance mat. ): If they even sell them anymore.

(I am having A Thought. I wonder if they sell really really real DDR for the XBOX 360 here.

*fifteen minutes later*

Yup, they do! Wonder, however, if they sell it in GameStop in town, as GameStop is, occasionally, cheaper than Amazon.co.uk, even with Amazon's Wonder Discounts.)

The plan for the remainder of this week (my weeks runs concurrently from Thursday-Thursday and Wednesday-Wednesday, due to WW week and Work Week) is to just take things easy - exercise-wise, not food-wise. Food-wise, it's Core Plan all the way, same as usual these past two months.

And just hope that I'm no longer bloated like a 3-month dead whale stuck on a beach somewhere when I go for weigh-in on Thursday.

That said, I'm also going to try and stick mostly with the drinking of water this week, once I finish the Coke Zero that Mum bought for me yesterday.

(Update on the Amazon.co.uk DDR Mat situation: they do not ship to Ireland WTF. I just sent them an email asking why there was a stupid shipping restriction on PC & Video Games, since there is not an Amazon.ie, there is no way for us, really, to order our games online.

GAH.)

Let me first say: I think I may well be bleeding to death. Also, that I'm retaining water like a dam holds water back or something and my ankles and feet are swollen beyond elephantine proportions.

Owwwwww.

---

Class was nice this morning, except that Cate focuses on POINTS. A lot. Like. She never talks about Core. Ever.

And since I am, in fact, doing Core, this is kind of... woeful. Because I like Cate! She's a good leader, and has an accent that I like and could listen to for hours, unlike a lot of Irish accents. So that's a plus, right?

I digress, already. Weigh-in. Period week. I've had my period since last. Friday. and it is showing no signs whatsoever of abating. So I haven't much hope this morning.

That said, I step up on the scales anyway, in my casual-and-light tracksuit bottoms, my favourite (SIZE 26 AND IT FITS ME) gold tank top vest thing that I bought in New Look Liffey Valley last summer and it's one of my most-worn items of clothing and it's still holding up SO WELL, and my bought-in-Florida-and-hardly-weigh-anything trainers-that-I-wore-to-Disney-World.

And trust me when I say that I'm not disappointed about the result, due to aforementioned water retention and ankle swelling and generally crap-feeling self:

±0lbs

I breathe a sigh of relief, I sit down and listen to my iPod for a half an hour, and Cate starts her talk.

Now, she was talking about Snack Attacks, and how they sneak up on the best of us (and they do!), but she said something that made a lot of sense, and so I repeat it here:

Sometimes, you question if you're hungry or not. If you say to yourself, "am I hungry enough to eat an apple or a carrot?", then you're genuinely hungry. If you say, "I could murder a bag of chips," then you are craving. I've never really known how to distinguish between the two, mostly because I'm crap with hunger as-is. I've gotten better while in work, because I can't just walk out of work to buy a Snickers bar, so I'll sit and drink my water and it'll either dissipate or it'll stay, if it's true hunger.

I'm not so good when I'm at home; if I think I'm hungry, I'll generally go and have something to eat, which is a terrible thing to admit, because this is one of my major flaws when it comes to dieting - I can't say no!

I should probably learn how to, but let's face it: I love food. I love tastes and textures and flavours and colours and smells and I just. I love it! I have a very good relationship with food - except that I don't like yellow peppers, or broccoli or any of that kind of... flowery green vegetable crap. I don't like Iceberg Lettuces because they taste like green. I'll only eat fresh, crunchy asparagus, because I tried asparagus-from-a-tin before and it made me want to vomit. I really dislike certain kinds of potatoes, like the wee New potatoes, but I'll eat them in a potato salad made with low fat yogurt or crème frâiche and chives and spring onion. I don't like most fish, but I'm happy as a pig in shit when I eat really. good. sushi.

I know my own relationship with food, and it very very rarely involves the word, "no".

I suppose that's something to work on. :)

---

Anyway, like I was saying, I wasn't disappointed by holding my own this week - I'm in a lot/have been in a lot of pain since last Friday afternoon, so I'm not at all worried by the lack of weight loss. Stick to Core this week, and hopefully I'll have a really good weight loss next week.

(Interesting point of fact: if I had the best week I've ever had, and I lost 7.5lbs in the next week, I'd get 2 Silver 7™s in one week. HAHAHAHAHA. It'd probably be, like, a record or something.

Except that, my first week in 2007 when I joined Weight Watchers At Home while I was living in Swords, I lost 15lbs in one week. I still have the "stone" in my purse. It comes pretty much everywhere with me.

I lost 15lbs in one. week.)

But beyond all that, when I was through with class, I passed Jesus and the Cathedral, walked across the bridge and headed to Tesco, planning on going in, finding out whether Dad was still doing the shopping, and getting a ride home.

Instead, I went to Tesco's Garage, bought a bottle of water and walked home. (Lately, btw, I've been very fond of my italics tags. They're so pretty!)

I actually walked home.

And, d'you know something? It wasn't as bad as the first time I walked to work, a few weeks ago - then, I was wearing my MBTs.

Trust me when I say I won't be making that mistake again. No MBTs allowed on 2-mile walks when I weigh more than 20st. The walk would have been counted as Nice if it hadn't been cold when the wind blew. But the sun was shining most of the time, and it didn't hurt, and it was exhilarating. I even jogged the little bit of street into the cul-de-sac to get to the house, like Lorna and I used to do when we went on our wee walks around the estate.

But, lemme just show you:



That was my walk! I started from the red arrow on the right, and walked home to the green arrow on the left. If I'm walking to work, then I'll follow the green arrow to the red arrow-ish, except to the black dots, because that's where work is, but it's the same distance.

According to Google Maps, it's 2.1 miles.

And to think that, last January, I couldn't even walk the 300 feet to work without my hip/spine/back killing me.

To say that I'm kind of proud of myself is such a fucking understatement.

But, as the new icon shows, I have quite a long way to go, still.

Urgh. Remind me to never eat donner kebabs while sober. That's a food that should be contained until you're off-your-face-drunk and unable to taste anything because of the amount of alcohol that's been consumed in a relatively short space of time.

So! In addition to my having my period, my sister has her period too, and now my Mum has the cold/flu. All three girls in the house are dying from one affliction or another, which means that - not that Lorna cooks anyway - none of us wanted to cook. Mum got a BBQ chicken burger thing from Buddy Caddilac's, Dad got potato wedges and a kebab and I got a kebab, too. Urgh. Over-cooked meat, chewy meat, and worse still, they only poured the sauce in on top of the meat, so the bottom half was completely dry in the pitta bread.

The pitta was nicely done, though. Very fresh.

That said, it means that I've gone 7 Points above my Core-allocated 21 points this week, and I haven't done a lick of exercise because of aforementioned Time-Of-The-Month and the fact that it's my first proper period probably since I went off to college in 2004 - I've had spotty ones before, but this is one of those constant, painful crampy kind of periods where you just want to curl up in bed and DIE but you CAN'T because you have a JOB and need to WORK and sit in front of a computer ALL DAY LONG and then DIE SOME MORE.

I can't wait for it to be over. I suddenly remembered why I liked NOT HAVING MY PERIOD so much.

---

Tomorrow is weigh-in day, too. I still think that my weight last week might have been confused because of period-related bloating or something. I'm hoping at least to have lost 1/2 pound this week, because that would give me my Silver 7™ - if I lose more than 1/2 pound, then I've hit the 50lb mark and that's a rather big deal for me.

I honestly can't believe I'm this close to having lost such a huge amount of weight. It's not that much in the grand scheme of things, but trust me when I say: better off than on.

---

I bought a couple halterneck tops for summer from my online catalogue. In a size 32. Out of pure habit, and the fact that most of the stuff I buy from the catalogue is too small for me, whether I buy the right size for me or not.

But these halternecks were at least a size too big around the middle - it was flapping around my back like a sail. So, I have to send them back and buy a smaller size! I'm actually going one size smaller, and buying a 28 - they're a stretchy material, and I'd rather it clings a little bit than flaps around. I'll slim down into it, but I'm never going to gain back enough weight for that size to fit me, you can betchyourass on that one.

---

I'm currently devouring The Amazing Adventures Of Dietgirl!

Seriously, I cannot plug this book enough; I can relate so much... except for the rate she's losing weight at! I'm up to week 30 or so and she's lost about double what I have in more than a year. :D So jealous.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I know I'll get there. I just wish I was getting there faster.

---

In a moment of complete randomness, I wish I had more icons - plenty of iconspace, that's not the problem - and a weight-loss mood theme.

Hmm. I smell a project!

So, FAT Girl slim and The Amazing Adventures of DietGirl! arrived today while I was at work! :D So excited about this, I can't wait to get stuck into them.

---

I hate rooster potatoes. They taste like yellow and ruined my dinner. ):

I did a bad thing on Friday night. Never mind the half bag of Doritos that I ate on Thursday afternoon. There was something worse to come on Friday night (and I blame it all on Mum!) that I couldn't have forseen.

I could have not done it, but man. I did do it and damn. Oops?

Mum bought a 6-pack of Cornetto ice creams. Mum did not Point the Cornettos before she bought them. Mum Pointed the Cornettos after she bought them.

A Cornetto costs you 6. Points.

Ouch.

So, sitting with Lorna on Friday night (period cramps, chocolate cravings, X-Files and forgetting to take my St. John's Wort = recipe for disaster) I took a craving for Cornetto. And so I gave into my craving for Cornetto. 6. Whole. Points.

OUCH. D'you know, I'm going to have to walk to work Monday and Tuesday just to cover the extra points I've used this weekend?

I mean. It's the first time I've had a period - a proper period, not one of those fake fuckers - in almost a year. I'm sure I got one last Summer, and had to buy the heat pads and the painkillers and what-have-you during the day because it was just so bad. I hate my period. I really wish it disappeared forever.

Alas, alack, but I am not so fortuitous! I got my period on Friday. I reckon this goes a long way to explaining why I didn't lose as much weight as I thought I was going to lose (I was expecting to lose at least 5lbs, because it was KickStart. I can lose 3.5lbs on normal Core Plan weeks WITHOUT cutting out my extra points, yanno?) and it also explains the mega super chocolate/sweet craving I've had since Wednesday.

So, 21-days-without-crap will resume once Aunt Flow has gone away. I honestly cannot live during a period without some form of sweet stuff.

I'm also considering buying myself some skim milk and taking my sweetener into work and just making myself cups of coffee in work instead of buying myself cups of coffee - the temptation's too great when I walk into Spar. Buying my water in the morning's a different matter, because the water's at the front door with the fruit and the cans of Red Bull and crap. So long as I turn my back on the coffee-pastry-danish-donuts stand opposite the registers, I'm all fine, see. It's when I'm buying a cup of coffee that things goes tits-up.

SO. I'mma take the mug that my darling daddio, aigulamgine, bought me (it is this quote, but red-yellow-green-blue text on black) into work and use it rather than having it sitting in its box because I'm scared to smash it - I'm really, really terrible with mugs, I break them a lot, and this mug is from his trip to see Samuel for the first time (I think!) and is from a wee gay bookstore and I love it and adore it and I NEED TO USE IT and also the coffee in work tastes so much better than the coffee in Spar, although it tastes burnt without sugar, where I can drink the cappuccino from Spar without sugar, but then it's got full fat milk in it, so which one is worse I ask?!

Anyway. Yes. Coffee in work at tea break, take my sweetener in (big jar of, 1 [one]), buy skim milk (wee carton of, 1 [one]) use fabulous mug, stop wasting calories on milk.

Actually, a funny(?) story: I went to take painkillers tonight (killer cramp), and picked up the semi-skimmed milk to take a swig, and after I'd done that, my immediate thought was, "OHGODHOWDIDIUSEDTODRINKTHISSTUFFIT'SSOTHICK." That's the exact way the thought formed in my brain. To wit: Oh, my God, semi-skimmed milk is so thick it was like drinking creamy white paint. I haven't had milk to drink in such a long time. (I'm trying to get my calcium from low-fat yogurt, low-fat cream cheese and leafy green veg, but I'm not so good at the leafy green veg, so. Low-fat cream cheese is probably accounting for 50% of my calcium intake, and that's, uh. Not good.)

It's interesting. I never thought I'd give up drinking milk - I still use it in my cereal, but damn, I used to drink it with my dinner, used to randomly take drinks from the carton. In fact, when I was living in Swords, I used to go through 2 big cartons (I think 4 pints?) by myself in 5 days, just by drowning my cereal in FULL FAT MILK (guess why, along with the 3-4 cartons of ice cream and all the take-away I ate every week, I managed to put on 4 or 5 stone in a matter of 5 months) and drinking the sweetened milk that was leftover at the end of it.

Thinking about it now, that's really really disgusting.

---

Thought! I meant to mention: Mum said, a month or so ago, that she could see the weight coming off me (I still can't, not really, but I still haven't dropped a dress size yet, so.) and that it was coming off of my backside - that it was nowhere near as bubblebutt-y as it used to be. I think she's right.

I bought a pair of blue denim leggings when I was in Florida - you can see me wearing them in the Disney pictures - and I wore them into work on Friday, for some reason unbeknownst to me. The whole day, they kept on falling down, off my backside, and pulling my knickers down at the same time. I was affronted to walk through town yanking my pants - BOTH OF THEM - up to my waist again. I think I might crop them to above the knee, so I have a pair of short denim legging shorts instead of ankle-length denim leggings. They won't fall down so much if they're not pulled down because the folds get caught in the fat between my legs - that sounds worse than it is, but you know if you've got fat legs, they rub together in between? Trousers and things tend to get pulled down just by the motion of you walking, so. Short denims for summer? I think so!

---

In a completely random note, I cooked Mum, Dad and I a Sunday Roast Chicken today, from Cook Yourself Thin - absolutely beautiful. I think that, if I was only to eat one set of vegetables for the rest of my life, it'd be roasted garlic, red onion and butternut squash.

Beautiful. I love how butternut squash caramelises itself. Stunning food.

---

ANYWAY I believe need to post a few things for farscapeone. She was so close to Goal, and now she's so bloody busy with one thing and another that she can't make her meetings and so.

Here you go, Linda! Some recipes to keep you going while you can't make your meetings, and to stop you regaining the weight you've lost. :P I know you love your Chinese and all.

Unfortunately, they don't have recipes for low-fat, low-cal, good-tasting WW friendly beer. So you'll just have to make do with the below recipes...

(pee ess, while some of them are non-veggie recipes, I think things like the Tikka can be used with Quorn pieces as substitute. It is seriously some of the nicest Chicken Tikka you'll ever eat on a diet.

Also, you're a lucky bitch and can actually buy 0% Greek Yogurt. Cow.)

( 3 'Cook Yourself Thin' recipes )

( 2 WeightWatchers non-veggie recipes )

( 6 WeightWatchers Vegetarian Recipes )

I'm going to be posting some recipes once I'm through with this, but for the moment, it was Weigh-In time! WOOHOO.

The weather's been totally bipolar lately; sunny in the morning, raining by noon. Or, sunny during the day, raining by 7pm. Insane. I went to weigh-in today dressed for summer, because it was BEAUTIFUL and WARM today; the sun was shining! I could feel its heat!

The door was open for class and everything. Sunny, bright, warm, 16,000 Babyweight Watchers sitting in the front row, another 16,000 scattered around the class. Most of the babies themselves were well-behaved, with the exception of two who spent the whole time through Cate (Patricia's off on holiday this week and next week as well as last week, and will be back on the 8th May) doing her talk wailing like bansidhe.

It's not really the babies I'm irate about; it's their mothers, who spend the whole time cooing and talking amongst themselves. I know that we're all there to give support to one another, but there's almost an HOUR before the Leader starts her talk that we're free to talk amongst ourselves, but no. They spend that time AND the time during the half hour we're supposed to be listening to our Leader talking amongst themselves. It's ignorant and it pisses me off.

I swear, when I'm a Leader, I'm going to have a No Babies Allowed class, like the Curves half hour. No babies there! HOW DIFFICULT CAN IT BE.

Anyway. Got weighed after Mum (who lost 5.5lbs this week! Well done, Mum!) and the scales told me the following:

-3.5lbs

Which leaves me exactly where I was 3 weeks ago! HAHAHA. 0.5lb away from 3 1/2 st lost - which means that I've lost almost 50lbs this past year and 2 months.

And d'you know something? It could be so much better than that. But I'm not complaining, I'm not kicking myself over it, because it could as easily have been +50lbs, rather than -50lbs.

The difference is staggering. I'm almost at the weight I was when I stopped going to Weight Watchers in 2004. Which means that I should start going down dress sizes soon.

(And if anybody's interested in that attempt at WeightWatchers, I uploaded the original FATGIRLslim website for your amusement)

I'll tell you, though, I might not have dropped a dress size, yet, but I'm not busting out of my 32s anymore, either. The terror I felt when I was at my heaviest (and my heaviest was something in the region of almost 450lbs) and I had to buy a pair of size 34 15% elastane pants so that I was COMFORTABLE was incredible. And it was still 3 months after that I joined Weight Watchers for the second time.

This time is my third time. And it's not so much 3rd-time-lucky as 3rd-time-paying-attention-and-doing-what-I-should-be-doing. There's no way in HELL I'm going to give up this time.

I'd quite like a life before I hit 30.

(I have a whole 'nother post in mind about how much weight loss has affected me, how much I'm not 25 years old, and I'm going to revert to being 18 when I lose all my weight, because I never got to be 18 years old when I was 18. I've never had friends, really, in Ireland. Never been to the Spanish Islands to go clubbing. Never had a serious relationship [other than Danii, but that's... no longer considered a relationship, really.] and never really... well, I've never really had a life. And I'm kind of looking forward to that!)

---

D'you, this whole 21-day-to-break-a-habit thing? I wonder if it only takes 21 days to break the habits of a feckin' lifetime.

I went into Subway after weigh-in today with Mum, because it's been open for a couple weeks now and we still haven't gone in. So we said, "screw it!" and went in today. Without even thinking, I ordered the meal (foot-long, NOT 6-inch, 11 points for my sub!) and took DORITOS WITH IT.

Augh. HAHAHAHA! I can't believe it - for 15 minutes while I sat and ate my 6-inch half-sandwich (the other half and my Doritos went home with me) I completely forgot about Not Eating Crap.

When I got home, I inhaled the rest of my sandwich and ate half a pack of Doritos. Now, admittedly, it's only, like, 2 or 2.5 points for the Doritos that I did eat, but the point of this was not to eat any processed sweets, crisps, pastries, etc! Le sigh.

I'm still not going to kick myself in the teeth over it. Damage done. Looking forward to next week!

D'you how, most of the time, my biggest worry is about splurging on food; cakes and crisps and sweet, sweet chocolate?

I think I should, somehow, be more worried about how much money I spend on books.

Now, I'll admit straight off that I've been very good lately about my spending, because I was saving up for my flight to Florida in June to visit iolites and to go and see Eddie Izzard at the Tampa Theatre on June 11th, but I paid for my tickets last Friday (finally!) and so I decided to spoil myself a little.

Just a little, mind you.

(Yeah, right! :D)

So, what I bought was:

"Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook" by Weight Watchers; $14.71

"Megayoga" by Megan Garcia; $10.20 (this to accompany the "Just My Size" yoga DVD that I copied from Lorna)

"Half-Assed: A Weight-Loss Memoir" by Jennette "Pasta Queen" Fulda; $10.85

"The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl" by Shauna Reid; £5.00

and "Fat Girl Slim" by Ruth Watson; £6.49

[Edit]: I feel like I should point this out: I've been using the name "fatgirlslim" since February 2004. That's when I first joined Weight Watchers. I first saw the above book, "Fat Girl Slim" by Ruth Watson when I was in my second year at college, in 2005. I thought it was kind of cool. I'd forgotten all about it until about 2 months ago!)

I was tempted by Passing For Thin: Losing Half My Weight And Finding Myself, but everything added up to enough already. Maybe once I've lost more than half my weight, I'll write my own book?

Actually, that would be a pretty short book:

I was fat. I joined Weight Watchers. I quit Weight Watchers for college. I re-joined Weight Watchers. I quit Weight Watchers for my job. I re-joined Weight Watchers. I finally lost weight.

Just kidding. I've kept FatGirlSlim as a blog for so much longer than just this Livejournal's been around; I've got more of a story to tell than, "finally started eating well; started to lose weight!"

To be honest, I'm actually kind of... I don't know how to put it. I suppose, I'm finding it more interesting to be talking about inspiration and my daily life in regards to my weightloss than I find it to talk about just my daily life and my job.

And it's ten times more interesting to be talking about my daily life than just to be talking about how much weight I lost or gained, one day a week, and how guilt weighs so heavy when I know that I've had a bad week.

I might just keep this up.

First things first: while I managed yet another day without sweets/sweet stuff, I kind of bollocksed my Kick Start up the backside.

I had Weetabix (with skim milk and sweetener) for my breakfast this morning and hopped off to work without another thought. But come tea break (11am), I was rather ravenous. And also knackered. I feel like I haven't slept in a week! It's shocking, and all because I had a sleepless night on Sunday night through Monday morning. Amazing how one thing like that can screw you up for a day or two.

ANYWAY, knackered, ravenous, sleepy. I headed to Spar for a cup of coffee, and ended up buying a sandwich, too. *sigh* I was too hungry to now buy something, and, as I only have 10 minutes to run out to the shop and buy something and get back to work, it's not like I can hum and haw and take my time to wait for the girls at the smoothie counter to fix me up something healthy. So I picked up a sandwich - chicken/bacon caesar baguette-y thing. Something like 450 calories for the whole thing.

I thought, "that's not so bad."

When I'd finished eating it, I re-checked the label, thinking, "I'll work out the points on this later and see if I can't figure out some way to burn off the Points worth," and got to the saturated fat content.

Or, well, I got to the fat content. Which was 30g of fat. No saturated fat marked, and Patricia told us it's pretty much safe to half the fat content in those cases and use that to calculate the Points. You're almost always going to play it on the safe side; it's very rare that the saturated fat content of any food is more than half of the total fat content (dairy foods notwithstanding, apparently).

So, I worked out the Points value of this "quick fix" sandwich.

10 Points.

*10 POINTS*

I used to eat this things without thinking about it in a couple of bites before I went on WeightWatchers!! 10 FUCKING POINTS!

Gah. I'll just have to keep my fingers crossed that it doesn't make too huge a dent in my KickStart.

---

In case anybody's reading this doesn't know, I work in a small local newspaper in my town, doing page layout and minor graphic design. Last year, there was the Simply Be Curvy Girl (Ireland) competition. A girl, Leonie Maher, who comes from the town I live in just now, won the competition; she's a size 16, blonde, adorable.

Turns out that she's a good friend of one of our reporters, so there's an interview with her in this week's Topic. There was also a lovely picture (see below)!

I was talking to Olga, the one who's friends with Leonie, about the fact that I was thinking of entering the competition this year, and she said something along the lines of, "Well, Leonie never thought she'd win it in a million years, and she's all bubbly and cheerful."

I said, "I know what you mean. Some people look like the 'funny fat girl', but she actually looks happy."

"Well, I'll tell you: the judges asked her, during the competition, 'And are you happy with your size?' She said, 'Well, everybody always wants to be a few pounds lighter, don't they? But I'm comfortable and happy where I am right now, yeah."

This, people, is Leonie Maher:


Cover girl of Simply Be catalog, Mullingar girl, Leonie Maher

Yeah. I'll be happy and comfortable once I get to looking that stunning, too. :)




Face of Simply Be Leonie Maher talks about her year as a cover girl

By Olga Aughey

With the search for the new face of Simply Be already underway, the first face and Mullingar winner of Simply Be Curvy 2008, Leonie Maher talked to Topic this week about the whirlwind last few months that has been an exciting adventure as the cover girl of a fashion magazine.

From the minute Simply Be announced Leonie Maher's name as the winner of Simply Be Curvy 2008, "things went a bit crazy," says Leonie.

Busy with interviews and tv appearances, photo shoots and fashion shows, it has been a world apart from her day job of free-lance drama teacher.

Each day, Leonie travels to various locals schools, teaching the kids to build self-confidence and social skills, allowing them to have fun with the arts. She is also taking a Masters in Drama Therapy.
Winning Simply Be Curvy 2008 was an unexpected bonus to her, something she never dreamed might happen.

Looking back on the finals, Leonie says she wasn't particularly nervous: "I actually didn't think I stood a chance in a million years of winning so I was really relaxed. I remember walking down the platform, and the audience were looking at me. The music was on and Celia Holman-Lee was speaking over the microphone. I just thought 'Im going to enjoy myself.' I was just so chuffed that I got narrowed down to 21 finalists, it didn't matter whether I won or not."

STUNNING LOCATION

In October '07, Leonie was flown to a stunning location in Mexico, for the photo shoot that would later appear on the front cover of this year's Simply Be catalog. When asked how she felt about being a cover girl, Leonie says she is glad to represent what is the average size for women in Ireland:

"When I see myself on the front of the catalog I don't get overwhelmed by it. I look at it and think to myself, "that's really nice," because my looks and my size are appreciated and I'm a size 16. I'm really happy that I am representing the average dress size in Ireland, which is a 16."

DREAM

The last few months have been hectic for Leonie, trying to balance the day job, college and modelling. It has been a dream come true and sometimes she cannot almost believe that it's real.

"Sometimes I still cant believe I got this far. I wake up in the morning sometimes and I think 'Oh God, I've got an interview today or I'm booked for a photo shoot,' it's so far away from what I actually do on a day-to-day basis, I can't nearly believe it."

The highlight of Leonie's year was in Mexico.

"I was standing by the side of a crossroads in a lovely Simply Be outfit. Cars were stopped and waiting to continue on, and people were just staring at me. I laughed to myself, thinking, "is it me they are looking at or is there something behind me? It was a very surreal but happy moment for me," she says.

NEW FACE

The 2008 catalog is now out and Simply Be have started the search for the new face of Simply Be '09.
"They are encouraging any women that might be size 14 plus, to come forward. They don't have to have any modelling experience. I never did, I was never on a catwalk and I thought I'd never be, but I enjoyed every minute of it," says Leonie.

Leonie has a number of months left to enjoy as the cover girl of Simply Be, but admits she will miss it when the year ends.

"I will miss the chatter about it because every day I've had someone come up to me, be it in a supermarket, a filling station or in my workplace, and chat about it.

Also, because I was the first face of Simply Be, it is going to be unusual looking at somebody else now. But I am looking forward to being there for all of the heats and for the final, when I had over the sash to the new winner. They are going to enjoy it so much and I wish them well," she says.

(text, technically © Topic Newspapers Ltd, Ireland. Reproduced without permission)

I have to say, today was difficult - not this morning; I went into Spar and bought a breakfast smoothie (can't remember which one I picked; it tasted like banana. I like smoothies. But when you include banana in something with berries in it, all you can taste is the damned banana) and a cup of joe, headed into work, read my book.

Tea break, read my book.

Lunchtime, headed into Sambodino's and asked for a baked potato, only to be told that they were all out.

WHAT.

I was distraught. I ended up having a salad bowl instead (couscous, onions, chicken and ham - altogether, it was very nummy, but there was very little to it, and it barely filled me up) so I was ravenous by the time dinnertime came around. Mum made the chicken-sweetcorn pie from the Fast and Fabulous WeightWatchers recipe book (I'll scan/blog about this recipe eventually - it's stupendous) but she used different potatoes than usual and so I didn't eat a lot of the potatoes, and that left me hungry when I came home, so I'm currently sitting eating my bacon-low fat philadelphia-dutch crispbakes combo that I like so much. Mum said I should worry about my cholesterol because I'm eating bacon so often, but really, I don't think I should worry. The last time I got a full check up, I literally came away from being told, "Other than being morbidly obese, you're healthy as a horse."

Anyway. Still no sweets to be heard of, and I haven't been hit by sugar cravings yet. I'm waiting and waiting for them to hit, but I'm just sort of hoping that the rest of my diet's good enough to counteract the need for sugar!

... I didn't post yesterday, did I.

Ah well, I said I wouldn't kick myself over it - it's not been 21 days yet, and besides, I got a new gaming console and spent most of the day playing Devil May Cry 4. I think I'll forgive myself. :)

According to my Tracker, I had bacon and low fat philadelphia with chives on Tesco's Dutch Crispbakes, Tuna Pasta Salad for lunch, Cook Yourself Thin's Chicken Tikka Masala with fragrant rice, and I actually some sorbet while watching X-Files, and, as it's only 1/2 point, I'll just do the extra exercise to cover it, as well as the 1/2 point of brie we had on Friday.

Y'all probably don't want to know exactly what I had to eat, but feh. I find that it helps.

So far today, I've had more bacon, l/f philadephia on the dutch crispbakes (a guilty pleasure; the bacon melts the philly a little and it's NUMMY) and some mixed fruit in grape juice with "cheesecake" (light Philadephia mixed with a little l/f yogurt and sweetener - thick and creamy and sweet and delicious). No exercise so far, but it'll probably have to wait until Tuesday night or Wednesday during the day. I have work to do on farscapeone's new website, and that's gonna take me the better part of what's left of the day, since I spent the last few hours setting my XBOX 360 up for wireless connection through my laptop.

*sigh*

Ah well, here's to tomorrow!

So, day 1 of 21 days to break a habit. No refined sugar, insofar as I'm aware, and I'm generally very aware. Mum and I tend not to use refined sugar in our foods anyway - if we must, we must, but I have plenty of sweetener on my shelf that I can use as an alternative. That said, the sweeteners all contain aspartame, and that's really not any better for you than sugar, but alas. Beggars, choosers, etcetera...

I ate pretty healthily today, actually. A half tin of peach slices and a HUGE (roughly 500ml) cup of Pure Fruit Smoothie for breakfast; chicken and sundried tomatoes on a baked potato (this is fast becoming a favourite; Sambodino's, the sandwich shop in town, do their baked potatoes to perfection. If I want a change from this, I'll go to Ilia and buy an Italian Salad with a baked potato. Considering my working hours, something filling on top of a salad is an excellent idea.) and Mum made a cheesy ham potato bake tonight, which doesn't really contain much in the way of cheese: it's got a little brie on top, but I'll work the calories for that off later, but it's made with Light Philadelphia instead. I'd give you the recipe, farscapeone, but I doubt it'd taste the same without the ham in it.

Had a couple slices of maple cure streaky bacon on a cracker as a snack - as filling as dinner was, the potato bake thing was just one meal, and we ate relatively early at 5.30pm, just after I'd gotten home, so it's 3.5 hours later and I'm a little peckish still. XD;;;

I'll content myself with drinking my H20H for the rest of the night, and eat fruit if I really have to have something beyond that.

+2.5lbs

I didn't expect it to be that bad! Holy God. I mean, if you think about that, you need to eat 3,500 extra calories to gain 1lb. That's 8,750 calories excess. That's insane.

Mum said, and I agree with her, that maybe the exercise I did won't show up until next week.

So. KickStart. Here we go.

***

Fiona, the new Leader who was doing Patricia's class this week, was very nervous - it was one of her first ever meetings as a leader. It didn't help that the Babyweight Watchers were sitting talking amongst themselves all class, or cooing at their screaming babies - but she did well.

She talked about "spring cleaning" our bad habits - like eating chocolate and other stuff when we're down, like not drinking our water, like not doing our exercise because we "haven't the time" even although we spend so long in front of a computer every day.

So, she said that we were to come home and examine our consciences and to take 21 days - how long it takes to make or break a habit - and decide to change one of our bad habits for the better.

With the KickStart in mind, I'm going to take 21 days, and I'm not going to eat any processed sweets in that time. I'm allowed to make WeightWatchers desserts - CorePlan safe desserts, of course - and that's fine. But I'm not allowed crisps or cakes or ice cream or maple pecan plaits or any of the junk that helped me to gain 2.5lbs this week.

I'm also going to attempt to blog here for the next 21 days. I'm not going to kick myself if I don't, but I'm going to attempt it. :)

Wish me luck?

Mostly, I think I'm just writing about my exercise endeavours so that I can use this icon. :) I use this icon and I can feel the sun streaming down onto my bare arms!

Anyway, it's Thursday again (barely! but still...) so I'm going to get weighed after I've slept and woken up again. Which means it's a moment of truth today, as to whether I really have eaten as much junk as I think I have this week.

I really need to keep my tracker better - especially at work. I have this bad habit of eating things at my tea break and then forgetting that I've ever had them. Must remedy that.

That said, I've also done a fair amount of exercise this week, for me. I did the yoga and the DDR on Sunday, and then, last night, I did another 30 minutes of Yoga, the same DVD. Lorna, my little sister, joined me in that, and while it wasn't as soothing as the other session, it had the same effects - actually, it had the effect of soothing the muscle pain I was having from Monday and Tuesday, sitting down a lot during work after the exercise on Sunday afternoon.

So I was glad of that, to say the least.

It's probably not enough to counteract the junk food, but we'll see about that when I step on the scales, I suppose.

***

Mum and I are thinking about doing another week of Kick Start this week - I think it's a good idea. Go Cold Turkey on the whole sugar-craving thing. See if I can kick off another 5lbs or so. Patricia's off on holiday this week, to Florida, for 3 weeks, and I'd love to tell her I got the Silver 7™ when she gets back. I'd love love love to tell her that I got two, but she is only gone for 3 weeks, and I don't want to put unrealistic pressure on myself. :)

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see whether we go through with the idea of this week as another Kick Start week - I hated the week we did it before, but the results were impressive. So maybe, even if Mum doesn't stick it with me, I'll go it alone.

***

I think that's it for now. Bed, sleep, weigh, home, and start crying or celebrating, depending on the result. :) We'll see. It's going to be an interesting weigh-in, I can tell you that much.

So, let me tell you about my "exercise" plan: it doesn't exist! It's not shocking or anything; I exercise when I feel like it. Except for when I was a member of Curves, when I was exercise 30 minutes, 2 or 3 times a week, depending on their opening hours.

Which changed.

Which is why I no longer go to Curves.

So my exercise pretty much consists of walking (sometimes it's only for 5 or 10 minutes, not last week but the week before I walked 2 miles to work first thing in the morning. It was incredibly exhausting) and DDR with my PS2. I have the dance mat, the game, and a CD of music that I've danced to since I first got the damned thing and realised I'd need to make a playlist for it. :) It's almost an hour long, so I'm literally moving the whole time.

Time was I wasn't able to stand up for the whole thing. Now I do it, start to finish, without ever stopping moving. That, to me, is a real milestone. I remember living up in Swords and barely being able to walk to work (and it was a 3-minute walk that would take me 7 minutes, I kid you not) and to go from that to being able to walk 2 miles, to being able to "dance" for 52 minutes non-stop, in just over a year...

If I ever ask myself, "why am I doing this?", then that has to be right up near the top, if not on the top, of the list.

I was going to walk to work this morning, but I managed 30 minutes of Yoga and then my 52 minute DDR session last night, and my legs are pretty much useless this morning. :) I think I'll survive.

At least my ankle doesn't hurt as much as it was hurting this past week. Hopefully it'll make a full recovery by the end of this week.