In the Zone

I'm so happy to say that I've finally found that place (temporary though it may be) where everything is coming quite effortlessly with regards to my eating habits. My daily food intake looks something like this:

- breakfast: blueberries with yoghurt [especially when berries are 2 for 1!]

- snack: glass of skimmed milk

- lunch: soup with bread

- snack: clementines, pears, dates etc

- dinner: sandwich/ a meal out with mates etc

The best outcome is that I feel so good - really healthy, full of energy and starting to love my body because I feel that way. It really must be the amount of fruit and vegetables that I'm eating and the fact that I'm not eating absolute rubbish.

I've never been one of those people that really hates the way that they look. I don't really care enough about my appearance for that but I am sometimes attacked by self loathing about the size of my thighs/ stomach and frequently notice how hideously large I am compared with my friends/ colleagues/ people on the tube.

Since I've been on my health kick however, yes, I'm still bigger than most people around me but I feel so healthy and energetic and, most importantly of all, I know that I only look like this for a limited time. I'm on track with regards to weight loss - I'm aiming for a steady 2lb loss every week (I don't know how realistic this is but that's what they always advise as the maximum) so I'm losing weight all the time. This is based on a detailed account of what I eat/ drink mind you, I'm not weighing myself so this could be a false impression. I didn't want to get caught up with jumping on the scales every day and feeling ecstatic/ depressed by the result so I'm going to stick with a reckoning of total calories lost to date for now and see how I feel later on.

One thing I'm yet to crack though is the exercise. All I seem to be able to do is to walk around London. So, if I finish work at 6.30pm but don't have to meet my friends until 7.30pm, I walk as far as I can in the direction that I need to go before jumping on the bus/ tube to take me the rest of the way so I can arrive in time. Walking is great - I'm loving being in the fresh air, feeling my leg muscles shift as I stride down the road and listening to music or chatting on the phone as I go. Walking 30 minutes or more every day is probably enough for exercise (I think that it is in fact what doctors recommend for daily exercise).

However I really feel it's not enough. I want to do hardcore exercise where I end the session drenched in sweat having worked through the barrier during the time. I want to be able to run quickly down the street, move effortlessly to the music and hit those balls cleanly.

I'm starting going to the gym tomorrow - New Year's Goal Number 3 is to be able to run 5 miles without any problem by the end of the year. Next week, I'm popping along to an open day at Danceworks, a dance studio in central London when you can try out classes for free. If I do decide to join, it'll be expensive though - £8.99 direct debit + £5 per class. I really wish dance classes were cheaper than this! I'm not sure I can afford it on top of my gym fees.

Long may the time of positivity and kick ass energy continue!

My 2009 Manifesto

I don't believe in New Year's Resolutions although I like the opportunity to reassess my life and come up with things that I want to do in the future. Rather than vague ideas such as 'lose weight,' 'drink less alcohol' etc - for the first time, I'm going to write down concrete achievable and measurable goals that I will enjoy doing and, in some cases, have wanted to do for a very long time. 2009 is the year!

1) Walk the Coast to Coast
This walk covers 250 miles, three national parks and some of England's finest scenery, taking you from the Irish Sea to the east coast of England through the Lake District, the Pennines and the North York Moors. While I was growing up, I spent many weekends walking in the Pennines, the North York Moors, the Cheviot Hills and the Lake District and at various times, have walked parts of the Coast to Coast highway. For the last 10 years, I've wanted to do the whole hog in one go. One of my life's ambitions is to walk across a country (random, I know) - where better to start than England? This is also mean lots of walking practice built into my daily routine for training for this.

2) Build up my swimming so I can swim a mile with ease
Back in my younger swimmer days when I used to be in the pool training 6 days a week, a mile would be what I swam every practice. It's been over 7 years (!) since I swam regularly and I would probably just about manage to swim 20 lengths these days.

3) Build up my running so I can run 5 miles without problem
Back in the glory days, I also used to run 5 miles more or less every day. [I was a very fit teenager!] I'm going to go back to being 16 and love swimming and running again.

4) Take dance classes
I love dancing but have only sporadically taken dance classes. This year, I'm going to dance tango regularly and probably also salsa. I love rhythm and I love music. When I'm dancing, it doesn't feel like I'm exercising to lose weight. It just feels like I'm dancing for the pure joy of it. More pure joy and less exercise is needed.

The aim is not to lose weight but to be fit - to go back to the days where I used to run, swim and hike, when I used to have huge lung capacity and very slow heart-rate, when I used to have strong legs and strong arms, could lift anything and run everywhere. If I manage to go down a couple of dress sizes on the way, it's a bonus.

On and off the wagon

So, I was doing wonderfully, swimmingly well. I had stuck to my plans of action: was eating (just enough) food that was both healthy and delicious and taking long walks around London. I lost 5lb or over 2kg in less than a week - and this was on not much conscious exercise.

And then, I went on holiday. A week of that saw the reversal of the weight loss. I probably weigh now what I weighed right at the start of December. It's my own fault. I just can't resist all you can eat breakfast buffets! My only consolation is that, although I may have eaten a lot of food, it was all very healthy food - lots of salads, fruit and various Middle Eastern dips.

So now, to start all over again.

Except that it's Christmas and I'm going home in a couple of days' time to my mum's scrumptious food (so much better than my own pathetic efforts!). I do want to take full advantage of each and every opportunity to have proper food. I'm very tempted to say that I'll write off the next 10 days and start in earnest in the New Year. However, apart from the fact that aiming to lose weight in January is such a cliche (!), if I do unlimited eating with no exercise until 1st January, how much weight am I going to gain and how disgusting will I feel? Plus, I lost weight before when I was living at home - mind you, then home cooking wasn't such a temptation!

I'm going to have to just suck it up and restrain myself as much as possible. The trick (or so I hear) is to be satisfied with small quantities of delicious food rather than feeling you have to scoff the whole lot in one. Bit hard though...

My Initial Plan of Action

1) Reduce alcohol to 5 drinks a week

That's 5 drinks not 5 nights of drinking! I could cut out alcohol altogether. It wouldn't be too difficult from a personal point of view and it does give the so-called empty calories. However, try living in the UK and being known to drink and all of a sudden not drinking! I spent the whole month of October completely alcohol free - the number of people who would ask in a very concerned way. I think they thought I was in some way alcoholic and trying to wean myself off the dreaded booze. Plus, I like a glass of wine/ gin & tonic/ pint of beer now and again. Also, this is not about putting in place habits until I lose weight and abandoning them all afterwards but rather about making gradual change that will hopefully last long-term.

Perhaps 5 drinks a week seems like a lot. As I see it, it comes to 5 glasses of red over 5 nights or 3 pints on Tuesday and 2 glasses of rum and coke on Saturday or a whole bottle of red Friday night. For me, that's realistic.

2) No food after 12am

I have this terrible habit of going out with friends and not eating dinner at all and coming back home at 1am starving and making pasta. Encourages bad practices when it comes to spacing of meals/ going to sleep full etc.

Yes, it's late to be eating even at 11pm and I know that some people have the whole no carbs after 9pm rule. Again for me, right now, 12am is realistic. Perhaps in a month or so, this will change and I can keep bringing it forward until it gets to 10pm, which I see as a good cut-off point.

3) No eating after dinner

Another dreadful habit of mine is to eat dinner with friends at 7pm and then come home around midnight and have a couple of slices of toast with cheese. Completely pointless. I just eat for the sake of eating. Has to stop.

4) When hungry eat fruit and/or vegetables

Having a stock of readily available fruit and veg in the office and at home has really helped this week. I'm going to try and keep both my kitchen at home and the cupboards at work stocked in the future.

5) When hungry drink water

Apparently your body sometimes gets the thirst and hunger functions mixed up so when you feel thirsty you actually need food and vice versa. I drink a lot of water anyway but in future, whenever I feel hungry I'm going to head to the kitchen, fill up a glass of water and grab an orange. That should keep me going until the next meal. If not, I'll have another orange/ apple/ pear. I'm not going to put any limit on the amount of fruit and vegetables I eat.

6) Ignore the better buy

Sometimes I want chocolate/ cake/ biscuits. Fair enough as long as it's not every day. But I have to stop going for the 3 for 2 offers and the big bars of Cadbury's for 99p, which invariably end up with me sitting on my bed scoffing the whole lot in one night. If I want chocolate, I'll buy a small bar. I know myself and I really can't be trusted with anything larger than that. If it's in the house, I'm going to eat it.

7) Reduce cheese and bread

Argh! This is going to be hard. I love cheese. I can easily have lashings of cheese with every meal. Case in point: I just changed 'no cheese' to 'reduce cheese.' I think I'm going to have to do a slow withdrawal with this one. It's in everything I eat - sandwiches, pasta... And bread. Gorgeous toast. Melted cheese sandwiches. Bread and scrambled eggs. Mmmmmm....... I have a lot of bread too. Some nights I have been known to have 4 slices of toast with cheese and pesto for dinner.

I think the problem is also that when you're in a rush or have finished work and on the way to meet a friend at 8pm when you're completely starving, often the only food you can have is a sandwich. This is not ideal. A cheese ploughman sandwich from the Coop (Wednesday night's dinner) does not a proper meal make but if I say I'm not going to eat bread from now on, lots of nights, I'm not going to eat anything in the evening. Either that, or I'm going to break and end up at 2am boiling water for pasta.

OK, I have it. From now on, I'm not going to buy cheese or loaves of bread to have in the house. Making chapatis and buying pita bread/ tortilla wraps is fine but the only cheese that I'll have is that in food when I go out to eat and only bread shall be in sandwiches that I buy outside. Too many sandwiches are boring anyway. I'd much rather make a quick meal when I'm at home.

I know that some people if they read this would be shocked at how little I'm planning and what this says about what I eat at the moment: "What does she mean, she has a whole 500g bar of chocolate in one night?" etc. I think everything I've written above is something that I should be able to do fairly easily. Once I've started doing all this and it becomes second nature, I can start being a little better.

I'm not going to think about exercise for the time being. I'll start with getting the eating habits sorted first. Come January I'll put my exercise plan of action into motion. At the moment, I'm thinking a combination of the gym for discipline and progress and dance classes for fun and socialising.

Good Intentions

I realise that I started this blog almost 3 weeks ago and haven't posted a single entry since that day. That's because I suck and have no willpower.

Ever since that day I wake up at 6.30am with my alarm and what do I do? Reset it for an hour later. Obviously this gives me no time to go to the gym before work. So then I take my gym clothes with me to go to the gym after work instead. The nights that I don't already have plans with friends, I walk straight past the gym without going inside.

I started thinking last week that this gym membership is a waste of time and perhaps I should start off slowly with regulating my eating (and drinking!) habits and focusing the exercise on dancing, which I love, rather than going to the gym, which I do not.

Then on Saturday night, one of my friends called me and we started talking. S went up from a size 12 to a size 18 because she couldn't be bothered doing anything to stop this happening. She was the one with whom I used to do the Tesco lunchtime run when we were revising and who would tempt me into buying doughnuts (I have this tendency to compare my eating with that of my friends/ family - if she/he is eating it, then it must be OK). She decided in May that things have to change - she spends about 6 hours in the gym a week, hasn't eaten bread since May and continues to lose weight.

She really inspired me. I'm still not going to the gym. That's OK though. I go on holiday this week and am only in London for about 6 days between now and the New Year. However, the major change I have made in my life is in my eating habits. Before, I wanted to lose weight so would vaguely watch what I ate. Now, I've started a spreadsheet detailing what I eat, the food group and the number of calories and take away the number of calories I burn.

I seem to have settled into quite a nice rhythm.

- for breakfast, I have berries and yoghurt

- soup for dinner

- oranges/ cherries/ cherry tomatoes for snacks

- and a bit more latitude for tea, depending on whether I go out with friends or am cooking at home

The main reason for the change seems to be that I've now started to keep my breakfast and lunch food at work, meaning I don't just grab whatever is easiest in the morning on my way out the door, that I don't just end up in the queue at Gregg's in my lunch break and that I don't go on chocolate runs if I feel a bit peckish come 11am/ 4pm. I have fruit and yoghurt for breakfast; vegetable soup for lunch and my snacks are oranges, cherries and tomatoes that I just munch on whenever I feel like it and which seems to fill me up quite nicely.

It's all about the planning really. Luckily, when it comes to food, my willpower seems to be sticking at the moment (much more so than when it comes to waking up in the morning to go to the gym!).

The Beginning

This blog is about losing weight. Which I need to do. I weigh 100 (!) kg - argh, not sure I should publish that! In certain outfits and at certain angles I look pregnant. I take up more than my allotted seat on the bus/ tube. I have high blood pressure. High pulse rate. Ridiculous body fat percentage (surely that goes without saying?). I am only happy wearing about 5 outfits because all the others make me look fat. Which I blatantly am.

What's strange about this state of affairs is that less than 10 years ago, I used to run 5 miles and swim for 2 hours - every single day (more or less - I wasn't annoying; I did have my lazy days). I was never skinny but I had the highest lung capacity in my class, blood pressure that was so low it wasn't within the normal range and ditto for my pulse rate. I was a UK size 14. Of course, at the time, I felt fat (probably because my school was peopled with slinky girls who were all size 8 - and were considered fat if they were size 10). In fact, I was within striking distance of the normal BMI - and remember that all that running and swimming plus the weights had left me with fabulous muscles, which, as we all know, weigh more than fat. So, 10 years ago, I was wondrously healthy.

So, I sit here wondering where it all went wrong. How 10s of kilograms and 3? 4? stone have crept up on me during the years - and I didn't pay it any attention. How ridiculously, pathetically stupid am I?

This really really has to change. I'm 25 for heaven's sake. This should be when I swan around with divinely gorgeous men [a rugby playing PhD researcher would do just fine, ta muchly], have a wonderful wardrobe with unique dresses/ skirts/ tops/ coats/ trousers that I pick up for 50p at the local charity shop, run marathons (ha, not bloody likely), lie on the beach in tiny swimming cossies and be generally all round fabulous.

Man, don't I seem superficial? I'm really not. I only care a little about gorgeous clothes and the gorgeous men (although, if they're giving out the body of Strictly's Ola Jordan or gorgeous Mr. Jackman/ Clooney, I'm first in the queue). But I do care about the fact that I feel like I'm due a heart attack in about 5 years, that I'm likely to be diagnosed diabetic if I'm not careful (runs in the family) and that I will kill myself because I can't be bothered to go to the gym and yes, I will hoover up that 8 pack of mini chocolate cakes (but it was bought on sale!).

So, with that in mind, I spent tonight writing down what I plan to eat this coming week and making a shopping list of food to buy tomorrow night. Plus, first thing tomorrow before work, I shall be hitting that gym which I've frequented once since I joined 3 weeks ago.

Food and exercise, that's all it takes right? ;)