First week of 5:2

My second fast day is drawing to a close and I'm feeling quite optimistic about this one.

The first fast day I didn't plan. I just found myself at work, not having had breakfast, looking at diet yoghurt and thought "why not?". So the first day was surprisingly easy. I even went to pilates. I did feel hungry and a bit headachy but nothing major.

Today had a bit more planning. I worked out my dinner and then filled in the rest of the calories. I actually went slightly over but I'm not going to stress about that.

I haven't had that moment that the 5:2 people talk about whereby you don't feel like eating loads on the other 5 days. I still want junk, but it has only been a week.

Here are my first few food diaries:

Thursday 6th November

• Squares bar - 119
• Aldi greek yoghurt - 70
• 50g Tilda lemon rice - 70
• 300g large mushrooms - 48
• large egg - 100
• salad tomato - 13
• WW caramel wafer bar - 78

Total calories = 498

Sunday 9th November

• Half tin chopped tomatoes - 37
• 170g courgette - 30
• 85g onion - 20
• 5g easy garlic - 5
• 5g easy ginger - 10
• 100g king prawns - 55
• 8g chillie pepper - 2
• chicken stock cube - 16
• 50g Tilda lemon rice - 70
• 20g almonds - 58
• salad tomato - 13
• 40g soda bread - 82
• 20g light Philadelphia - 31
• Aldi greek yogurt - 70

Total calories - 499 

Plus add an extra few for diet coke and 1cal cooking spray but I'm not going to go crazy about those.

Back once again...

Well, September and October happened and while I didn't post that's not to say nothing changed.

For a start, I've decided to stop Slimming World, at least for now. I know it works and it has been brilliant for me in the past, but I was finding it too hard to keep motivated on it and my failure to stick to the plan was just making me feel lower and lower. The negativity was not something I coped very well with and may possibly have contributed to this particular meltdown.

I have also joined a gym again, having got the go ahead from the various doctors and such. I rather impressed myself with my ability to jog a little (as opposed to not at all which was what I was expecting), embarressed myself by feeling sick and having to leave a return to fitness class full of old people, I'm still struggling with weight training - turns out I still find it massively boring and there is always someone who seems to be glued to the machine I want to use. But the best thing about this gym is that it has a pool. I quite like a swim but maybe only half an hour once or twice a week, which makes it expensive to go to the local baths, but included in a gym package I can just have a quick swim and not worry that it's costing me the best part of a fiver.

I've probably put on weight. Actually no probably about it. But I've decided to stop stressing about it and I''m not going to weigh myself until after Christmas. I don't want to know and to be honest, I care more about which clothes I fit into anyway.

I've decided to try the 5:2 diet and today is my first fast day. I know people who have done really well with this plan and it acutally kind of sounds like the way I eat when I loose weight anyway, so hopefully I'll take to it. It feels a bit fiddly but I''m sure I'll get used to us.

Onward!

My opinion: what body acceptance isn't

Today I wrote a post for one of my other blogs, but I thought I'd post a link here because there is a degree of crossover.

My opinion: what body acceptance isn't

The road is never straight

I have had a lot of ups and downs over the last few weeks, which has meant I haven't posted for a while. I  haven't really done SW because I've been unwell in a way that kind of meant I couldn't. I've also not been sleeping very well so the routine of posting has gone out the window. But I'm still here and I've not forgotten what I supposed to be doing.

I had a motivational boost (if you want to be positive about it) in the form of the Ice Bucket Challenge this week. Looking at the video I can barely stand the sight of myself. Granted, I was dressed in clothes from the washing basket and I was on a time limit - it would have been nice to get dressed up in a ball gown and do a bit of a Neil Gaiman thing but alas my oompa-lumpa took over. I will post it later so you can see what I mean.

Three pictures of me looking a bit like a serial killer

Okay, so here are three photos from during the week. I'm looking like a serial killer in two of them, which sucks. I just haven't got the hang of doing a selfie and smiling at the same time yet!

Is this a thing?

 
Something weird happened this week that I haven't really noticed before and I don't know if I liked it.

Basically, I took a picture of myself to update my photo diary and when I looked at it later I had a moment of actually kind of liking what I saw. Weird. I originally put it down to loosing nearly a stone, so I pulled up the original before picture from a few months ago expecting to see a clear difference between the two.

This is my confused face.

No. That's not what happened. I looked at the original photo and ended up wondering what the hell I was on about calling myself an oompa-lumpa. It seemed fine. I thought I looked okay in both of them.

So what was going on? The only thing I can think of was that I'd had some really nice, positive male attention that left me feeling that perhaps I'm not the physical carcrash I normally think I am.

A few days after that, I'm looking at both the pictures again and I'm back to my original oompa-lumpa assessment. Clearly the pictures are the same but I have changed.

Now in theory, of course I know that perception can change depending on your mood and other factors. Looking in the mirror from one day to the next and seeing a better/worse reflection of me does make sense - I've said before about the way photos and the mirror seem to be different to me. But surely photos are fixed and I never expected them to actually LOOK so perceptively different to me.

But they did and that leaves me with one major head-fuck. What's real?

Is it the oompa-lumpa or is it the okayish girl? Perhaps it's neither. And how do I know?

The other thing that really freaked me out was this: I though I was better looking when a man treated me like I was.

I consider myself to be an intelligent woman and pretty reasonable but somehow my brain is working against me. What am I supposed to do with this knowledge? Flirt (ha!) with men to try and get attention so I feel positive about my body? Because, it was kind of nice while it lasted. The thing was it didn't last so it's not a great long term plan even if I didn't have an issue with basing self-esteem on other people's opinions.

Also, I feel as though I've somehow betrayed myself. I honestly never thought I was that person. I don't want to be that person.

Bloody hell!

Weigh in - 16st 8.5lbs

Sorry, this is an update for 19th August. Maintained, which is fine. At least I haven't backslid. That half pound is eluding me!

Weigh in - 16st 8.5lbs

Lost 1.5lbs. Yay! That was over two weeks but fair enough. I think it accurately reflects the effort I put in and, after contorting myself into what I hope looked like interested yoga balances on my scales this morning in order to try and get them to say something other than around the 16st 12lbs mark, I'm please that SW scales are my side today.

Half a pound and I'll have lost a stone. There's some motivation. Plus the sticker. Who doesn't love a sticker?

Food Diary

Breakfast - Babybels x 2 (A), Almonds x 20 (B), yoghurt, 2 satumas

Lunch - Tesco butternut and feta salad - 10.5 syns, grapes

Dinner -Scrambled eggs with tomatoes and onions
Snacks/Other -left over prawn and courgette pasta
Total syns - 10.5

My salad from tesco was really nice. I was good and checked the syns before I bought it so big tick. The scrambled eggs were a gone-wrong omlette but it tasted okay.

Weighed myself at home this morning on the scales that you can only really take a guess at the actual weight it's showing and it looks as though I put on. Might have been the pasta last night. Tomorrow... we shall see.

Body Positivity

It may seem that because I'm trying to loose weight that I disapprove of fatness and I just thought I'd take a moment to explain that's not the case.

I've mentioned before the health problems I've had in the past, my worries about arthritis and joint problems and how that's motivation and part of the reason for me loosing weight. But I'd be lying if I said that if all of that wasn't a consideration, I'd be happy with my weight.

There are lot of things I don't like about my body and my size is one of those things. That said, I am working on being more positive and I really admire anyone who is comfortable in their own skin. Check out my Pinterest board for my role models on body positivity.