Week 42 WI

I am completely gobsmacked at this week's result. As I explained in yesterday's post, I didn't track my points last week, but I did try to eat sensibly and didn't snack. Neverthesless, I was fully expecting to stay the same or even put on a few grams. So I am absolutely elated to report I lost 0.8 kg / 1.8 lbs this week!

This is my biggest loss since the end of July, and although I don't understand how it happened I am really happy with it.

Also... drum rolls... I have just squeezed under the 200 lbs mark. I am now 199.6 lbs. And I need to lose another half kilo to reach the 90 kg mark. Some great milestones :-)

Here are my updates results:
Loss this week: - 0.8 kg / - 1.8 lbs
Total loss: - 15.5 kg / - 34.2 lbs
BMI: 32.1

I'm not sure I'm going to just "carry on doing what I did", cause I still think I need to track to have a realistic view on what I'm eating, and also the mojitos and crisps on Friday night and red wine and chocolate cake on Saturday just don't feel like an acceptable part of a diet. But I am going to enjoy this loss :-)

Hope everyone else has a great week. I look forward to reading all your results.

Food obsession

I didn't point all week. Which doesn't mean I went completely over the top, I was actually quite reasonable all week - until yesterday night when the red wine and chocolate cake got the better of me.
But I tried to stick to 3 reasonable meals a day and no snacking, and really didn't do too bad.

Which made me think back to 9 months ago and remember how I would fantasise about food all day long.
I remember going to bed at night dreaming about the next day's breakfast, or finishing lunch and already fantasising about everything in the cupboards, doing a mental inventory of the fridge and obsessing about any chocolate bar or biscuit I knew was sitting in the kitchen waiting for me. The worst moment of the day was after dinner, when the food sirens would call to me and I would make regular trips from the couch to the kitchen to nible at anything and everything, hoping my husband didn't notice. Total obsession. I would estimate I spent about 6 hours a day just thinking about food, feeling taunted by it, anticipating eating it, battling with myself about whether or not to eat it, eating it, feeling guilty about eating it...

I realised at the time that I was completely obsessed and knew it wasn't normal or healthy, but I couldn't imagine it ever changing, I thought that was just the way I was kinked and would have to battle my food thoughts for the rest of my life.

9 months on and I hardly ever think about food (I'm not kidding, I really rarely think about it anymore), I can go 6 or 7 hours without eating and suddenly realise it's dinner time because I feel hungry (yes, HUNGRY!). I think "so this is how normal people feel about food?" and have a hard time imagining I was so obsessed about it in the first place.

Of course, I still have issues or I'd already be a size 10. Stress sees me making unhealthier choices (not eating more, just less healthy) and social situations are triggers for going off track (alcohol and snacks, my two worst enemies).

Last night I sat at a dinner table with 2 friends. One naturally skinny and one a constant dieter - she's at a healthy weight now but often yoyos up and down by 10 kilos or so. On the table, a bottle of red wine and a chocolate cake. This was after a relatively healthy and filling dinner of chicken and vegetable curry.
It struck me that whereas naturally skinny friend could leave a half-eaten slice of cake on her plate and half a glass of red wine in front of her for half an hour without touching it, dieter friend and me were constantly sipping and nibbling, cutting away small bits of cake and topping up our glasses of wine regularly. I'd estimate that by the end of the evening we'd had about 3 times more cake than skinny friend and double the amount of wine.

So, still some issues to deal with before I am 100% freed from the food demons, but I do think I can get there eventually.

My dream is to become a naturally healthy person, able to stay at a steady weight for long periods of time without much effort, auto-regulating any excesses without even thinking about it, with an inate sense of balance. I wonder if that's possible or if the overeater in me will always be lurking in the shadows, ready to send me soaring back into obesity?

Week 41 WI

I had a week off last week. Well, not on purpose, but that's the way it turned out.

I had just a little bit too much to eat every day and couldn't be bothered enough to point it. 3 days in a row eating out, plus mad hours at work meant I wasn't as strict with myself as I am most of the time - at least in a good week.

Having said that, I made decent choices and indulged in a controlled way, so I was quite pleased to see a 0.1 kg / 0.2 lbs loss on the scale today. Not much, but not a gain after a week of potentially explosive situations. Yay me!

Back on track this week and no alcohol for a week - still amazing how tired I am the next day even after just 2 glasses of wine...

Week 40 WI

40 weeks in, wow. I'm not sure I ever believed I'd keep at it for this long when I started. Pretty proud of that actually.

Last week was another one of those "well, I stuck to points but nothing happened" weeks, with a minuscule loss of 0.2 kg / 0.4 lbs (and to be completely honest the scales were hesitating between 0.1 and 0.2 kg, but I decided to be optimistic about it and take the greater loss).

Still not going quite as quick and steady as I'd like, but what a turn-around I've made in my eating habits. I feel so much healthier, so much more in control, so much less dependent on food. So I guess fast or slow doesn't matter, what matters is I've made a change for life and I'll get there eventually.

Results to date:
Loss this week: - 0.2 kg / - 0.4 lbs
Total loss: - 14.6 kg / - 32.2 lbs
BMI: 32.4

Also, I went down another size in clothes this past month and can now fit into quite a few old pairs of trousers, so it feels like I have a new wardrobe, lol!

Exercise was virtually non-existent last week, except for an hour and a half of yoga, which I LOVE and will be doing every Tuesday from now on. But work was intense, I was busy till 8 or 9 most evenings, so not much time for anything else. I'm hoping to get back to badminton this weekend though. On top of the exercise, it's a nice activity with my man and a good way to spend time together.

Hope everyone else is feeling good and progressing. Good vibes to all my WW blogger buddies :-)

My mother-in-law

... is a real sweetheart. I mean, she's rather loud and very much set in her ways, not very adventurous or worldly, and we don't always understand each other - her language being my third language and she speaks it with a heavy accent - but as far as supporting me during my diet goes, she's gold.

We go to see them once every 3 weeks on a Sunday - in itself a very reasonable amount of in-law time ;-) - and have dinner with them. She is also quite heavy-set and has followed WW herself in the past, so knows what I can and can't eat and actually prepares special dishes for me when she makes anything that's not 100% good for me. So while evryone else was eating cheese croquettes for starters and fries with the main course, I got parma ham and melon, and boiled potatoes. Probably saving me about 12 points! What an angel :-)

On a more freaky note, she was telling me today how much she noticed I'd already lossed (bless her!), then told me not to lose too much or I wouldn't have any breasts left, adding "don't take my son's toys away!". Eeeeuw! Okay, so he's an only son and she is obviously extremely attached to him, but that was just one step too far for me.

But, moving swiftly on... today she made "paling in't groen", a traditional Belgian dish of eel in a green sauce made with spinach, celery, parsley, onions, etc. I was a bit squirmish at the idea of eating eel, but really it tastes just like any other fish, isn't slimy at all like I thought it would be and it went down really well :-)

Baby talk

Well, I went to my ob-gyn yesterday to get the results of my blood test and everything is looking good: no risk of trisomy, good blood sugar levels and my kidneys and liver are "working perfectly" (not sure that would have been the case 9 months ago, so thank goodness for my new diet). So we got the go ahead to make babies :)

The only negative is that I'm not protected agains CMV or toxoplasmosis, so will have to take some precautions when pregnant, but I can live with that.

We also discussed weight issues and the doctor is supportive of me trying to not put any on weight during pregnancy. He says it's all up to me and as long as I'm eating a healthy, balanced diet he doesn't see why I couldn't keep the weight I have now (meaning I'm actually losing weight as the baby grows). I'm going to look into it some more as I read somewhere that the toxins released when you burn fat weren't good for the baby (?), but for now that's the plan.

And then because of our trip to NZ at the end of the year we won't be trying till November so we're back here on time for the (apparently) all-important 13 week scan. So for now we're still doing practice rounds ;-)

In the meantime I'm going to try and lose a couple more kg to get into the 80's. I am still unsure about starting a pregnancy at this weight, but at the same time I think if my body can't handle it, chances are it just won't happen.

So, I'm off to find some more pregnancy blogs and forums to read and get as much information as I can to prepare for the whole experience (yes, I'm a control freak). How exciting!!

Week 39 WI

And the weirdest thing happened: despite my pizza pig out on Saturday, I lost 0.6 kg / 1.3 lbs.
Well, Saturday night, after posting about my disgusting meal of pizza, garlic bread and red wine, I actually had indigestion all night, so perhaps nothing got absorbed. And yesterday I only had 13 out of my 23 points, both in an attempt to limit the damage and, well, because I couldn't actually stomach much.
So, amazingly, the results this week are:

Loss this week: - 0.6 kg / - 1.3 lbs
Total loss so far: - 14.4 kg / - 31.8 lbs

My BMI is now 32.5. Just over 7 kg to go to get me below 30. My goal is to be there before xmas, with an average loss of 0.5 kg a week. Slower than I'd hoped, but I have to be realistic, and it would mean I've managed to lose 21 kg in a year, which I'll be pretty chuffed about.

Good luck to all with your weigh ins this week!

Everything I shouldn't have eaten today but did...

It's been a very long time since I've had a day like today. I was helping a friend move into her new apartment, and she made spaghetti for lunch and got delivery pizza for dinner. The only thing I can hope is that all the lifting and carrying and running up and down stairs used up some calories, because I am going to need all the help I can get to counter the damage:

Breakfast (3.5 pts):
2 Weetabix + semi-skimmed milk

Snack (4 pts):
1 Balisto
1 Prince biscuit

Lunch (12.5 pts):
1/4 bag Doritos nacho cheese
Spaghetti bolognaise
Grated cheese

Dinner (18.5 pts):
1 Pizza Hut garlic bread
3 slices ham & mushroom Italian pizza
2 glasses red wine

And to top things off, the 3 large glasses of Pepsi Max I had may have actually been regular Pepsi.
I feel slightly sick. Ugh.

I have no hopes whatsoever for weigh in this week. I fully expect a gain and am really diappointed.