Oh dear...

I lost absolutely nothing this week... In spite of my own scales showing 2 lbs loss, Mary's showed only a few grams!! Eeek.
This should be the kick up the bahooki that I need - I hope. I'm still struggling with cravings for food, it's very difficult. Trying to work out why isn't easy. There are several different factors that might be influencing me, but some too personal to go into here.
Since our "milk week", I've carried on having milk in my tea and coffee and that might not be helping. It also means I'm consuming more caffeine and that can affect weight loss and cravings... So I'm going to try to get off it. I don't feel too hopeful about it at the moment.
My abstinence from earlier in the week lasted only til day 3... though I've had nothing other than food packs since.
How to get back into the successful mindset I do not know... I guess I just have to "walk the walk"! One of our counsellors tips was to list all the things that the weight loss goal means to us, the things that we want to do when we've reached it, how it'll affect our lives, etc. And to keep going back to it to remind ourselves. So I might just do that here soon.

Over halfway now!

I was able to make it for a weigh in after all this last Thursday, on my way to the airport to fly to Coventry. I had to pop in for my food packs and Mary had time to weigh me. I'd lost 7.5 lbs over the previous 2 weeks, which means I'm now over halfway to my goal! :-) I expect the rest to come off more slowly than the first half but am hoping I'll be down to my goal weight by Christmas at the latest.

I had a fantastic few days in Coventry, staying with the organiser of UK Ravelry Day and staffing a stall for Stitches on the Bridge. The overall flavour of the event was not at all unlike big belly dance events I've been to and/or organised myself - a huge number of women with a passion and all the extremes of opinions and feelings that go with it! The hero-worship of the knitting gurus was very familiar to the adoration of the belly dance stars too! It was a very interesting and eye-opening experience altogether! And I don't deny that I got a little caught up in the fandom, though I like to think I'm a bit older, wiser and less impressionable than I was when I was immersed in the belly dance scene... All that said I was very taken with the unassuming charm of Jared Flood and Meg Swansen. I also had my first exposure to the utter delight of a live-on-dvd Elizabeth Zimmerman, the now-deceased mother of Meg Swansen. What a joy! I'm now a big fan of all 3 of them. Ruth aka Woolly Wormhead was also very nice and fun to meet and share a meal with. Jo, the organiser, and her husband Doug were great hosts and really made us feel at home, along with Doug's mum, Christina, and their young children, Robbie, 6, and Zoe, 4. All very off topic for this blog but well worth a mention!

One reason I mention it all is to confess yet again to succumbing to the craving to eat! I had found myself thinking about steak pies last week, and then found myself in a pub restaurant selling just that on Friday in Coventry...! In fact the steak pie in question had the addition of stilton cheese which just made it far too irresistible... I admit it really was delicious and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The downside was that I really struggled not to eat for the rest of the day - and failed. I also felt physically uncomfortable, too full. My stomach has shrunk and no longer has the capacity for a full meal. Clearly the slow introduction to real food over the 12 weeks of the Road to Management programme is there for a reason. It was "interesting" (I guess!) to note just how much more difficult it got to resist the craving to eat as the day went on. I was prowling the kitchen in the late evening, desperate to eat something delicious before the self-imposed deadline of a new day prevented me having anything else. It was not good, not comfortable and not healthy.

As a result, as I sat on the return journey plane yesterday, I resolved to aim for 100 days of "abstinence", following the example of the twelve steps, which aims for 90 days. I'm only too aware that I've been sponsored to do this, not to mention that the longer it takes me to reach my goal, the more it's going to cost me and those who are supporting me with the programme costs. My weight loss will slow down as it is, so I can't expect to lose the second half in as short a time anyway. I don't want to go on not being able to eat normal food for any longer than I need to, so the quicker the weight comes off the better.

So my mindset, when faced with food I'd really like to taste (like the many delicious looking home-made cakes at yesterday's UK Ravelry Day!), is back to "This time next year".

On the positive side, here's a wee list of things I'm very happy about:

- I can fit into airline and train seats with no problem at all and perhaps even a little leeway! Last time I flew (in 2007), I had to have an extension to the seatbelt.

- I can just about walk down the isle of the plane and the train without having to move sideways. Emphasis on just about!

- When sitting, I no longer have a big tummy to rest my hands on and can very comfortably sit with my hands in my lap.

- I no longer have to embarrassingly hide a large cleavage when I bend over.

- I can feel all sorts of bone under my skin that I forgot I had!

- I can wear an amethyst bracelet which was a self-chosen present from Laurie in 2003 and to which I used to have to add an extension.

- Today my scales showed 16 stone 6 1/2 lbs.

- The plantar fasciitis in my right foot is a lot less painful than it used to be - a LOT less!

- I can now comfortably cross my legs (how many of you realised that fat people have a problem with that, I wonder).

- Although I'm still quite big, I no longer feel like a fat person!

A note...

... to anyone who does follow this blog(!) that I wasn't able to go to the Lighter Life meeting this week (away in Thurso for work) and will be away for next week's meeting too (in Coventry for UK Ravelry Day with Stitches on the Bridge), so I'll miss two weigh-ins. My next weigh-in will show 3 weeks weight loss, which should be interesting!

Yesterday I was YummyMummyFaerie at Rag Tag n Textile's Faerie Homecoming:

Musselburgh dancers top up to £1,000!!

Thanks to Elspeth Alexandra and her Musselburgh dance students, my projected raised figure has just topped £1000!!

A huge

THANK YOU

to all of you for supporting me! I am really touched...

Almost halfway!

I've finally updated my weight loss and funds raised figures. It's great to see that I'm almost halfway to my target!! Who knows, I might not go quite so far as 11 stone, as that is based on what I weigh at the LL sessions, not on what I weigh on my scales...

The week before last, I lost 3 lbs; this past week I lost 2.5 lbs. That's 5 st 3 lbs now. :-D

What I haven't written about is the shopping trip I made the week before last. I had some vouchers to spend in the Arcadia group of shops - Wallis, Dorothy Perkins, Top Shop, Evans. The vouchers were earned doing consumer research and I chose Arcadia because I'm so used to shopping in Evans. Before the trip, I measured myself and realised I was now somewhere in the region of size 20-22 on the top, and size 24-26 on the bottom. I was amazed to discover that Wallis and Dorothy Perkins both cater for larger sizes. I had no idea so many shops now do bigger sizes. I even found out that Matalan and Marks & Spencer (two ends of the spectrum!) do too!

As a result I shopped in Outfit in Inverness, which has sections of Wallis, DP and Top Shop in it, and in Evans. And I was thrilled to bits to discover that I can actually get into size 18s!!! All the tops I bought that day (I didn't manage to get any trousers) were size 18s. Evans size 18 is more generous than Wallis, to be sure, but I still got two lovely cardis from the latter. There was a 20% sale on all goods that day, so my money went a little further! Gosh I was chuffed. It took me hours, though, to decide!!

Even better was being able to get into a couple of lovely size 18 tops in Next! Only to discover that my vouchers didn't cover Next...!! Oops!

On the down side, I've been finding it very difficult to resist cravings for real food and have succumbed a couple of times recently. I have still lost weight though and, in some ways, that doesn't help. If I didn't lose weight when I lapse then it might drive it home a bit better that it's not a good choice to be making. It definitely makes it harder to stick to the food packs whenever I eat. And I'm aware the cravings can be aggravated most of all by tiredness, or when I feel fed up. I have to say that I think now is the time I'm going to be learning most about my food addiction, as I try to resist the desire to eat...

Projected sponsorship updated

I've updated the sponsorship projection to include losing up to 11 stone, rather than stick with the 3 stone ceiling, which I'm now well past. £946 looks a lot better!

I may not have raised £2000 by April but perhaps there's still a chance I might raise £2000 by the end of this year (if I lose all 11 stone, which I fully intend to do!).

Some of the sponsors have put a limit on how much they want to sponsor me for, which explains why the projected figure is not just a simple multiplication of the sponsorship per stone figure x 11 stone.

Confused? You will be...! You'll have to trust me!

Another 7 lbs lost this week...

...I can't quite believe it. I really got a shock when she told me... I knew I'd lost something as my trousers are so much bigger and even one of my group said she noticed a difference since she last saw me 9 days ago. It did feel as if I'm going through another "weight falling off me" phase. I thought I'd be happy if it was 3 lbs, chuffed to bits if it was 5 lbs, but I honestly did not expect it to be 7!

Today was the first week of Development and 5 of us joined an already established group 9 weeks into Development, who've all been together through Foundation (I assume). There were around 8 others in the room with us, so it took the best part of an hour for us all to be weighed. It was quite strange, to be honest, to be with others. They're a much vocal group than we were, especially during the exercises. Perhaps we'd have all got to that stage in another 9 weeks but we all seem to be a bit hesitant!

Our counsellor worked with us on problem solving tonight. It seems that Development will be more of the same; there doesn't seem to be a new book to take us through it, but we did notice that the already established Developers had a large orange spiral bound book with "scrapbook" on it. There was no mention of us being given one and none of us remembered to ask!

I also forgot to ask our counsellor to take my end of Foundation photos, which were taken the week I was in the Uists. She needs an "official" record for her files, I think. I'll remind her next week, it completely went out my head with the surprise of how much weight I've lost!

I think that's all I've got to report... I had another slip on Monday - or, to rephrase that, I chose to eat, mainly out of just feeling pretty rubbish at the time. Tiredness is definitely my Achilles Heel, which is unfortunate for someone recovering from ME...! But I still lost 7 lbs... Blimey!

End of Foundation phase - 60.5 lbs lighter!

I was weighed this afternoon at the last session of the Foundation phase and, over the past 2 weeks, I've lost another 5.5 lbs.

Today's session was spent looking back, moving forward and saying goodbye to each other - even though all of us except my friend / colleague Donna are moving onto Development, where we simply keep on with the food packs until we've reached our desired weight. Donna's moving onto Route to Management, where she'll start reintroducing food next week - lucky thing!

It's been very heartening for me to compare the following photos:

(I included the blurry one because it's got a neater profile and makes me look just that little bit slimmer!)

It's the weirdest thing to look at the January photo of me and wonder who that person is. I was dismayed at the time how my face looked. Even weirder is to realise that I'm beginning to recognise myself again in photos. Oh, I remember her!

I seem to be back on the wagon / back on track / making better choices about my food plan. I was / am still having such a hankering for real food... but today's session was very encouraging, remembering how far I've come (especially when I see those photos) and how well I was doing before I fell off the wagon. Coming off the food plan only once makes it so much easier to do it again AND harder to stay back on it. I kind of knew that would happen and that's why I was determined not to do it for so long. I intend to get back to that solid mindset, it's kind of confusing how it slipped, I couldn't tell you precisely why...

It's a bit disheartening to see how little I've managed to raise for the charities. So much for £2000 by the end of April! Oh well... I'm grateful for all the donations and sponsorship that have come in. I'll be sending out an email in the next few days, to see if people want to pay me now or continue with sponsorship til I've reached my goal.

I'm especially grateful to all of you who have donated money for the costs of Lighter Life, I genuinely couldn't have done it without you. I'm earning a little bit more money now with extra work through Rag Tag n Textile, but I'm still penny pinching like mad! Donna and I will be going through to the Black Isle for our different Lighter Life sessions on different days now so we won't be sharing the cost of transport anymore either. There are plans afoot for more work for me but it's always a slow process to raise the necessary funding. In the meantime I have little spare time to work out other ways to make money!

Onwards and upwards!

Next week I start on the Development phase, on Thursday afternoons now. If my Gaelic class resumes on Thursday evenings (it's undecided at the moment) I'll have to change my LL day to Wednesday evening, which will be kind of tough, travelling through after work and driving home late in the evening, especially after the summer when it gets dark again... On a positive note, we drove back tonight in full daylight and I have months of that to look forward to - fantastic!

Development will be interesting as they'll be building on the tools we've learned in Foundation. It'll be a totally different group of people, though 4 of us from my Foundation group will be there. We're used to about 6 or 7 of us but the Development group can be as big as 20! So it's all change and will be interesting to see how different it is. I'm looking forward to playing blaring music while I drive back and forth on my own!

Another 2.5 lbs, milk week and bad choices

I'm very late with this report. Can't remember why now! Last week I was away in Uist so missed the weekly session. The week before that - 14 April - I lost another 2.5 lbs, bringing me (frustratingly!) up to 1 lb short of 4 stones weight loss. As a fortnight will have passed by the next weigh in, I'm bound to be over 4 stone this week.

This past week has been our 13th and higher calorie week. NICE guidelines recommend only 12 weeks on very low calorie diets (VLCD) so we are upping our calories to 1000 a day this week by adding milk (or soya milk) to our packs. It's been nice to be able to drink tea and coffee again, as I don't like either black. I've actually been finding it hard to get through the 400 mls of semi skimmed milk each day. I've also felt unusually stiff and wonder if this could possibly be the effect of reintroducing milk to my diet... so I'm using soya milk for the packs and ordinary milk for my yummy cups - nay, pots! - of tea.

This coming Tuesday is the last day of Foundation and I'll move onto Development during the following week. I'm still unsure of what day to choose - Wednesday at 7.30 pm or Thursday at 4.30 pm - until I know if my Gaelic class, block 2 of which ends this week, is going to continue on Thursdays.

Last weekend (17 - 19 April) I was lucky enough to be invited by my friend Sandy to go to the Knoydart's 10 Music Festival with her and her son Tim. We were camping and I didn't envisage any difficulties with the diet over that weekend. In the end, though, with the prospect of a weekend of only sweet shakes and bars, I succumbed to the temptation of a venison burger (Bad Choice No 1). My ill-thought-out logic dictated that at least it was protein, shouldn't knock me out of ketosis (fat burning) and wouldn't make that much difference. Of course it's a big increase in calories so that will have made a difference. I didn't intend to eat any of the "bap" (I usually call it a roll but this was most definitely a cottonwool-like bap!) but ended up nibbling on half of it. Worse than that though, I requested one chocolate finger biscuit from Tim and then later binged on about 10 of them, they were so more-ish (Bad Choice No 2). Ho hum...

This past week I spent 2 nights in Lochmaddy, North Uist, and this time succumbed to local seaweed-fed lamb steak at the Lochmaddy Hotel... (Bad Choice No 3) again with the logic of it being protein and therefore not knocking me out of ketosis. I asked for none of the onion rings, fried mushrooms and chips that came with it and for a green salad instead. It was in fact served with the green salad - and the onion rings, mushrooms and chips!! I gave up then and crumbled (Bad Choice No 4)!! I ate the 3 onion rings, the several mushrooms, half of the chips (with mayonnaise - eek!) and only half of the lamb.

My body wasn't too happy with that venison burger. It might have been that I'd barely slept the night before but, after I'd eaten it, I immediately had to go and have a nap! I was also only able to eat half of the lamb. My stomach will have shrunk, of course - in the past I'd have eaten the whole lot without thinking.

Neither time was the food worth it. The burger was - ok. The lamb was - ok (nothing like as great as I expected). Mostly I enjoyed the chips! Oh and the chocolate fingers. Carbs and sugar are my trigger foods, to be sure.

Since then I've struggled with wanting to eat more, to eat conventional food again. I discovered a LL banoffee pie recipe and made it up for the 2nd time this week. A quarter is the equivalent of one food pack and, because it contains 2 bars, only a half can be eaten in one day. On Friday and Saturday nights just past, I ate an extra quarter each night - meaning I've eaten the equivalent of 5 packs each day. I always feared that breaking the diet - choosing to eat outside of my food plan, rather - would be a slippery slope and it looks like I might just have been right. Today I've managed to get back on the wagon and am determined to stay there from now on. It's definitely harder to stay on it when you've already fallen off once...

The weight loss is a lot slower than it was - can't tell yet how the bad choices have affected it - and it's definitely much less exciting that way! While I'm really delighted with the amount I've lost, I'm very aware that I have a long way to go. I'm about to embark on another 13 week period and am very likely to have another one to go after that too. I'm very aware that my "diet buddy", Donna, is about to reintroduce conventional food as she embarks on the Road to Management phase, and I wish it was me! I look at photos of myself and see I'm still really big. They don't match the idea I have of myself in my head, knowing that I can get into old clothes and even feel my hip bones through my skin now! I can't say I'm exactly discouraged but it feels like a very long haul right now...

Another 2 lbs lost this week

This is a late report because my internet service went down last Sunday and I only got it back up again tonight. I've been a bit lost without it!

Only 2 lbs lost this week but that's fine as I lost so much over the past 3 weeks that I was finding it a bit hard to come to terms with! More on that another time.

So I didn't make it to 4 stone this week - only 3 st 10.5 lbs - but maybe next week.