Sunday, June 12, 2011

1st weigh in

Well the first week was quite good, although I have been a bit bad on the weekend. I managed to stay within my points every day and save a little so that we could be a bit more adventurous on the weekend.
Brenda and I went in and weighed ourselves at Gym this morning and we have both lost.
Me: - 4.2/9.2lbs (132.4kg/20.9stone)
Brenda: - 0.8 (66kg/10.5 stone)

Hopefully next week will be as productive! I have not done any exercise since I have been sick, but Brenda has done her normal school sports and walked the dogs on the other days.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

New start

Once again, I have fallen totally off the rails. Not entirely my fault, since all sorts of things have happened which I will explain shortly.
The last post I made I set myself some goals which I will go over now.

1. Do all 4 UNISA assignments which are due between now and the end of April
2. Book UNISA practical week and confirmed by UNISA
3. Go to gym at least once a week (got to start somewhere) -oops, but have been a couple of times
4 Make lunch every day for work instead of doing take aways - have been much better but still not doing it every day
5. Make April birthday cards (4) - made 1
6. Make at least 5 cards for the Cards for prisoners charity I heard about from a friend. You make a card for them to send to a family member. - oops
7. Each day think of at least one thing that I am greatful for. - oops
8. Pack Brendas clothes by Thursday

So I made about a third of my goals. What has been happening to deflect my attention, well where do I start? April wasn't too bad, although I did have a few slip ups. May was a disaster. It startedd off where we had no electricity for nearly a week at the start of May. There my eating and saving went out of the window. Being unable to cook or store food, we ended up getting a lot of take-aways. I then was studying for exams which of course means that firstly I am hungry all the time and secondly I haven't got as much time to prepare food properly. Just towards the end of exams I then got flu and have not fully recovered from that. I eventually went to the doctor on Monday and am now on antibiotics, which seems to be sorting it out. So, needless to say those are my excuses. However, I know that that is just what they are, excuses!
Last week Brenda and I had a discussion about one of her friends who has lost a lot of weight recently and she said that she wanted to lose some weight too. Now she is a big girl, but not hugely overweight. She is 13 and a half and wears size 15-16 clothes but can actually fit into 13-14. However, she has picked up recently since this year she has not done as much sport as normal. I of course mentioned to her that she would have to start eating some vegetables and fruit, to which she replied that "But I do, I eat plums!" Considering those are the only fruit she will agree to eat, and they are out of season we may have some difficulty on that score!
So, since Monday, Brenda and I have been doing Weight Watchers. I was not sure what to give her points wise, but gave her the mens points for her weight. For me it has been going fine, but for her I feel she is eating too much carbs. Last night I did get her to agree to at least try veggies since she has now realised that those will save her points and allow her to eat more! So we will have to see how that goes, lol. She was also horrified when she saw the amount of milk I was allocating her since she typically drinks at least 2 glasses a day.
In the interests of full disclosure, here are my before pictures. I hope to take pictures at least once a week, but will probably only post monthly.




I have not as yet, had a chance to do any measurements, but plan on doing that as soon as possible.
Starting weight (5 June 2011) - 136.6 kgs. (21.5 stone)

I will go with 5kgs as my first goal which I would like to have lost by the end of July. However, I would ideally like to have lost at least 20 kgs by my birthday! So, as we say at work my target will be to be 116,6 by 6 December, stretch target 110kg by 6 December!

Monday, March 28, 2011

Goals for the coming month.

At the beginning of the year I set myself a word for 2011 which was change. I aimed to change my life in a few ways - my weight, my finances and my attitude ie to be more positive.

Things got along well for the first month, and then started to go a bit pear shaped. On the finances side it is not too bad, I have been paying off my accounts and learning to stay within my budget and not spend more on account.
The weight and attitude change is the problem. Weight wise I am actually being relatively good with my eating and have given up coke for Lent. I still am not losing though, and think I need to do some exercise. Attitude wise it is really a day by day struggle, their is so much going on at work and so many changes that it is very hard to remain positive. Their has also been a lot going on at home, so it has been difficult, and at the moment I am feeling a bit overwhelmed. So, in an attempt to get things back to normal I have set some goals from now till the end of April
1. Do all 4 UNISA assignments which are due between now and the end of April
2. Book UNISA practical week
3. Go to gym at least once a week (got to start somewhere)
4 Make lunch every day for work instead of doing take aways
5. Make April birthday cards (4)
6. Make at least 5 cards for the Cards for prisoners charity I heard about from a friend. You make a card for them to send to a family member.
7. Each day think of at least one thing that I am greatful for.
8. Pack Brendas clothes by Thursday

Okay, so those are my goals for April, lets hope that I can keep to them.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Weight loss, week 1.

Okay, okay I know I have not posted about this and to be honest have not really done much at all. Last week I was very good and managed to control myself totally. Was supposed to weigh in on Monday  but it started raining on Sunday and was like a cyclone for Monday - Wednesday, so couldnt face running into gym in the rain. Not only that but I started with a sore throat on Monday and have felt like death warmed up since then. I eventually gave in and went to the doctor on Friday. Since most doctors here charge upfront and you have to clam back from medical aid, and since I am always broke I never actually go to the doctor if I can help it. Anyway, this time I was not improving at all so was forced to go and get antibiotics. I feel much better today on day 3 of the antibiotics, so I know I did the right thing. I have not been eating properly and when I have it has been things like ice-cream and custard, but even that was just a few spoonfuls. Unfortunately, despite starving myself I have not managed to lose weight, grrr. At least I havent picked up though. I will re-weigh in tomorrow and be back on the wagon for this week.

On another note, I bought a little piggybank for the money I put in when I have lost. I wanted a pretty pink one, but I made the mistake of taking Brenda with me and she liked the gold. It says on the side "One day I will be rich"  The reflection was entirely an error, but if I ever have to do another selfportrait I know how to get reflections now lol.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Weight loss

Ok, yesterday was the big day. I weighed myself and started on my diet. Since I need to wait until payday to really get the new food, my aims for this week are not to drink coke, try to eat reasonable healthy and to drink water. Hopefully that will be enough to show a little bit of a loss at least. Especially since I have been drinking gallons of coke lately. My aim is to weigh in each Monday. I will have a Friday as my day to slip if I feel like anything naughty - Fat Friday as they used to call it at Brendas school. For each kg that I lose I plan on putting R5 into a money box and then at the end I will have a bit of money to treat myself. If I dont lose, then I will have to forgo my Fat Friday for that week.
So, in the interests of transparency I have to admit here that I weigh 134.4kgs! (shock, horror) I cannot believe that I have left myself to get so fat! OH well, hopefully this is the last time I weigh this much!

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Talisman

One of the things Mel has done with my little word is to make a talisman to remind you of your word. Not being very creative on the beading/jewellery side I never really thought of doing this. Not only that I am not that creative, but I dont really wear jewellery that much and dont see the point in buying a lot of equipment that I will hardly use. Until today, that is. Brenda had a mosaicing class at our local craft shop, so I went early to browse accidentally arrived a few minutes early to fetch her. I happened to be down the beading and findings aisle and noticed that they sell ready made necklaces that you can add your own charms to. They also have a huge selection of charms/findings and I just couldn't resist. I debated for a long time on what to add to my talisman, but I am quite happy with the final selection.

The big love heart in the middle is actually for attitude, to remind me to love myself and other people more. Then there is a knife, fork and spoon, which is to remind me about eating healthily. The handbag is actually to remind me to save money. This was as close as I could find to money. The cross is to remind me to thank God for everything he has given me, to count my blessings and concentrate on the important things in life. You can't really see it, but there is also a leaf which is to remind me that I must turn over a new leaf this year. I really don't wear jewellery much, but I hope to remember to wear this.


When Brenda saw it she was trying to guess what the pieces were for. She got the heart and the cutlery, but when she saw the bag her reaction was: "oh, you're going to buy a smaller handbag!" Who says my bag is too big, lol.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

One little word 2011

I did this last year and although I did fall off the wagon a bit in the middle of the year I think I am much more organised than I was at the start of last year. Basically the concept with this is that you take one little word to symbolise how you will be living your life this year. There are a lot of places around who are doing this but I will be following on Mel's blog. I have been following Mel for a few years and hers is one of my favourite blogs.
Choosing a word was quite difficult. Firstly I thought of Friends, with all the stress that has happened in my life the last few years I have been very bad at keeping up with my friends. Both due to time and sometimes I just havent actually felt like it. Then I thought of healthy because once again I really need to lose weight. Then I thought of positive because I feel like I have been in a bit of a negative spiral lately, and need to change that. Then that brought me on to my final word that I have chosen and that is.....................






                                                            CHANGE






I think that can encompass all 3, so what I want to change is the following






my attitude: this will encompass being positive and being more in contact with my friends, also continuing to be more organised and just getting my life in order


my weight: obviously lose and be more active


my finances: I need to make a serious dent in my debt repayments over the next year.


I have infact put a few things in place over the last few months on the finance side which will definitely continue over the next few months. But I need to start working on the others. I will hopefully be posting on here at least weekly to update on my progress.