Louisa's Weight Loss Blog

You may have noticed that today is Wednesday. Well done for that, I noticed it too. What you may also have noticed is that I should have weighed myself on Monday night and I haven’t posted my results yet. Why did I neglect to impart this information?

When using bathroom scales, your weight can vary between different sets

Because I haven’t weighed myself this week! Why would I do such a thing? I’m on a diet, surely I should be charting my progress?

Yes, that is absolutely correct, I should be charting my weight loss progress (using the slimming aid Proactol), but when weighing yourself there are things to take into consideration. If you follow these rules, you should not be disheartened

• Always weigh yourself with the same set of scales. Remember when Phoebe in Friends said “Maybe all the rulers are wrong…” she wasn’t far wrong! All weighing scales are calibrated, meaning that you pay more for your scales to be calibrated more ‘accurately’. It doesn’t matter if your scales cost £5 or £500, stick to the results on the one that you use because your weight will appear to differ. This is not particularly encouraging when you spend the week working really hard to lose weight so don’t open yourself up to the trauma of weighing yourself at your mate’s house. I’ve seen myself scales that vary between 1-7lbs but I saw one girl post in a forum that her scales were a whole 15lbs out compared to the weighing scales at her doctor’s surgery. That is a massive difference! This is why I have been using my wii fit and my wii fit ONLY.
• Always weigh yourself at the same time of day. If you weigh yourself first thing in the morning after going to the toilet and before a sip of water passes your lips, of course you will weigh less than you will do at night after three meals and 2 litres of water have (hopefully!) gone through your body that day. Typically, people weigh 3-4lbs more at the end of the day. If you choose to weigh yourself in the evening, that’s your choice but don’t be upset if you weigh yourself in the morning and the next time you weigh yourself you appear to have lost nothing.
• Weigh yourself naked. Add jeans, jewellery and a thick jumper and you’ve added a whole lb in weight. Stop torturing yourself! I don’t weigh myself naked because so far Jonny has been filming me do it for this website… I’m hoping he’ll sort out the videos soon.

Total Chunk Top Tip: Always weigh yourself with the same set of scales. All scales are calibrated differently so results could very wildly from scale to scale. Don’t torture yourself by weighing yourself on lots of different sets of weighing scales.

When I get a spare moment (and lately these spare moments have been rather frequent), I like to read the news online. This is because I am unemployed and can’t afford newspapers. Secondly, tree huggers will say it’s more environmentally friendly as trees will not be felled to makes the paper the news is printed on. Then, the carbon emissions are lower as there will be no physical travel in bringing the news to my computer. To be perfectly honest, the first reason is the most important to me right now.

So I was looking around on the BBC News website and saw this article about how children are exercising less. The information included in the article was provided by the British Heart Foundation. According to the BHF, only one in eight children are getting the recommended 60 minutes of exercise they need everyday to avoid obesity. What is laughable is that 20% of the children surveyed thought you only needed to do exercise if you were fat. When I was a child, my sister and I ran everywhere! We were incredibly active and we were skinny minnies until we reached our teens but even then, we used to cycle a lot, walk around with friends etc

I'm the one on the right!

so neither of us really were starting to gain weight until we began exams for our GCSEs and then it all went tits up as I went up to 157lbs!

What surprises me is that the active childhood that my sister and I had is not a normal upbringing for all children these days. One of the links on the side of the BHF story on the BBC website was to another story about childhood obesity that confirmed what I was already thinking. Responsibility lies entirely with the parents. The second story was published a year ago but this study suggested that parents thought it was NORMAL for their children to be chubby and are less receptive to suggestions that their little darlings could be suffering from childhood obesity. Parents are less likely to accept that their children ARE overweight and are hostile to the suggestion that their spawn are in fact, fat.

What could this mean to a generation of children suffering from their parent’s ignorance or delusions of perfection? Overweight children are more likely to become overweight adults and children with obese parents are more likely to grow up to be obese themselves. There is an overwhelming attitude amongst people who think that their weight problems are ‘hormonal’ or ‘glandular’. This is actually, much rarer than you may think and hoards of people have the potential to lose weight and become healthy and inspire their children to also lose weight and become healthy. There is simply a lack of inclination to do it.

Nobody wants their children to look like this

If you are a parent reading this, take an unbiased look at your child and ask yourself if they could benefit from losing weight. As long as a child is eating enough calories then they could run around like mad things all day and not suffer for it. Obesity charities blame the food companies aiming fatty and sugary products at children. Bright and lively cartoon characters advertising a naughty snack just makes children want it and the government are very aware of this but were very slow to react. Parents give in to ‘pester power’ and kids know it because they’re hooked on the sugar rush.

Ultimately, parents should be in charge but regularly, when visiting the supermarket, I see scores of children who have the upper hand over their parents. If parents are to reclaim control and help their children live slim and healthy lives then they cannot give in to demands for crisps, sweets, chocolate and fizzy drinks. Put treats out of their reach or better still, don’t keep goodies in the house. Don’t give them money for sweets and ask relatives to help you reinforce this rule. There is nothing wrong with being the bad guy in your children’s eyes when it comes to their health. They will thank you for it when they are slim teenager who don’t struggle in PE lessons. If you give your children the tools to live a healthy lifestyle they are less likely as adults to become obese and suffer from all the possible illnesses related to obesity.

When you spend time with them, make the activities you do centred around exercise. For example, it doesn’t cost anything to go down to the park and play tag, musical chairs or kick a ball around. Obesity can be prevented, you don’t have to view it as a problem that doesn’t apply to you until your thighs rub together and you have to put talcum powder in the folds of your stomach fat. As they say, prevention is better than the cure and you can stop your children from enduring a fat future by being stronger and denying them sugary processed food as regular snacks and encouraging them to keep active. In the process, you’ll eat better and keep more active too and everyone will be in a better position to enjoy a good life with good health.

Food has always been there for you, it sits in the cupboard waiting for you, no human has ever been so freely available when you need them. There is food sitting in the supermarket, the pharmacy, the petrol station and even the places you would not expect to see it for sale. There is food for all budgets, there is food for all moods and purposes, there is food for sharing and food to eat whilst weeping alone. Eating itself is not a habit, the rubbish you eat is!

I am cat sitting this week

So many people have been emotionally dependent on food from day 1 because ‘it is always there’. In the morning, in the middle of the night and throughout the day. What else is a hungry girl to do other than eat if she is hungry? But are you really hungry or is it just emotional hunger? Too often, people plug gaps in their life with food when they really just want to be loved. It’s not pathetic, it is more common than you think!

Jonny and I are cat sitting this week and even though I’ve only been sat here with Manwell the kitten for a couple of hours, I haven’t felt lonely and I’ve not been so bored. He’s been hilarious jumping after a few feathers attached to a string on a stick. He practically back flips when I wiggle the feathers in front of his nose! I’m madly in love with the little dude and he is currently sleeping on my lap. I will join him for a nap when I finish this post.

Anyway, I got round to thinking, if people substitute love for food, what can food be substituted for? Then it hit me, can animals really help their owners lose weight? It sounds a bit mad but give me a moment to explain myself…

People often gain weight because they have low self confidence. Animals love their owners because they feed them and spend time with them. People who have pets always seem happier to me because animals give unconditional love no matter what you look like and how mean you have to appear at work just to get stuff done.

I would be really interested to hear if you believe the love of your furry, four-legged friend has pulled you from the brink of obesity and helped you to lose weight. I googled all kinds of phrases trying to find out if there are any studies that show that pet owners are more likely to lose weight and keep it off and I’ve not found anything. Is my searching wrong or is there really no studies on this? Please comment below with your stories, I’d love to hear them!

Cor! Get a load of that!

Roast Dinner

This is a typical Sunday roast. Very rarely are they not yummy if your mummy has made it! It is eaten in homes across the country and is seen as quintessentially British. Traditionally, the roast dinner was the Sunday treat and the rest of the joint of meat (or a chicken) would be used over the forthcoming week. Bones could be used for stock, giblets can be used for… well, use your imagination and do your own research, I’m starting to feel queasy!

The calories in a roast dinner will obviously vary depending on the trimmings you have with them. Green veggies are good for you and don’t have many calories in so we can discount them comfortably. The problem comes in with your potatoes, parsnips, yorkshire pudding, gravy, sauces (e.g. bread, horseradish, cranberry), stuffing, crackling etc. Then of course, there is dessert which might typically be bread and butter pudding, lemon meringue or a warm apple crumble with ice cream. In food heaven just thinking about it aren’t you? We need to snap out of it! I make my bread and butter pudding with Bailey’s Irish Cream and it is incredible! It’s moist, alcoholic and I could happily munch on it now at 9.38am!

How many calories do you think there are in a roast dinner? Sit down because I would hate you to faint with shock… roast dinners can vary from around 750 calories to 1500 calories! Have you got the shakes? I have! You could be consuming over half of your daily allotted calories before dessert! Then factor in a glass of wine if you’re being social with the family around the dinner table… It is a dieter’s nightmare!

How can you get around the calories in a roast dinner?

First of all, if you’re only eating a roast dinner once a week and being ‘good’ for the rest of the week then don’t get too upset about it, you are allowed some normality! You should not forgo eating with your family because of your diet. How many times do I have to tell you? Dieting is meant to enhance your life, not limit it. There are steps you can take to make your Sunday roast more diet friendly.

• Avoid sauces or don’t pile sauce on your plate. Do you really need a tablespoon of Bernaise or Hollandaise when a teaspoon will suffice?
• Depending on how you make it, gravy isn’t too awful for dieters but do try and cut down as home made gravy can contain up to 162 calories per serving. Onion gravy is better for dieter than say, a meaty gravy but it is all down to preference. I don’t even eat gravy with a roast and most people find that rather strange.
• A Sunday roast dinner could be made up of almost 3/4 carbohydrates! Try and limit your potatoes, parsnips and yorkshire pudding and fill up on your steamed green veggies.
• Be social as you eat. Talk to your fellow diners and savour your food. If you put your knife and fork down between mouthfuls and chew your food properly you will probably feel full before you actually finish what is on your plate. Too often I feel uncomfortably full after eating a roast dinner and that is usually because I have eaten too quickly and didn’t recognise that I was becoming full.

Nobody cooks a big roast dinner just for themselves. A Sunday dinner is usually a social family event and should remain as one. If you are conscious about being on a diet and feel guilty for eating a roast, encourage your family to do something active after dinner. If you need a half hour nap after eating, have your nap and then as a family do something active like go for a long walk, go for a bike ride or play a ball game down at your local park. Family time doesn’t just have to revolve around food, you can all spend time together being active, bowling, go-karting, skiing or just paddling in the sea is great!

Now for Sunday’s food diary:

Breakfast: None – woke up too late

Lunch: Bread, pate and hummus. Roast lamb chop, carrot (raw) and mashed potato. Apple pie, warm strawberries and single cream followed by black coffee. (I had a glass of red wine with my meal)

Dinner: A slice of toast and I picked at Sunday roast leftovers so a little bit of chicken, a parsnip, cooked carrot, broccoli and a roast potato. Then a medium sized slice of coconut cake.

Proactol: Only 2, I forgot to bring the packet with me to dinner.

Exercise: None, I was resting after a very busy Saturday!

I wasn’t able to write my blog post yesterday because I had such a busy day.

I temped at an event in Nottingham, working as a steward for the most popular bit of the event – the luminarium. It was pretty cool, the kids loved it but as it was free, people queued for about an hour and a half just to go in to the sculpture! It was getting really annoying though, people kept trying to jump the queue and others tried to get in after it was closed. For the record, I couldn’t care less how far you’ve come just to see this thing, if you pitch up at 3.45pm when the event closes at 4pm and expect to walk straight in just cos you look at me like a kicked spaniel, you want your bumps read.

I lugged a few metal traffic barriers around and now have a bruised shoulder. After over 9 hours of work and only 30 mins break, I had to walk for half an hour home. Luckily, Jonny was an absolute babe and had got up early to deliver me safely to the event which was really helpful otherwise I would have been shattered on arrival.

When I finally got home, Jonny was about to put a pizza in the oven but I was so hungry I asked him to rethink the strategy. He mad a tuna and pasta bake instead… not the best we’d ever had but it was food and I was starving. I then had to get ready and rush out because we were off to see Michael MacIntyre at the ice arena. It’s just a few moments from my house and it was fab! He was so funny! He said that someone had told him that he walks like a toddler who has done twosies in his nappy and later on in his performance, I thought, IT’S TRUE! In the second half my cheeks were so very badly aching. This is good but I did start to worry I’d get wrinkles… I love humourous observations about people’s relationships, mainly because they are echoed in ALL relationships. A couple of times I said to Jonny “It’s funny cos it’s true!” For the record, I don’t care about his morning breath, it’s a fact of life and I have a strong stomach. He has less of a strong stomach but he is learning to cope when I have coffee breath in the morning. Well, I assume he is learning to cope, he pulls that horrible face much less…

We were going to go out with his work mates after but they flaked on us. Jonny didn’t want to end the evening so we went off to a casino. He lost £24 odd on a bonus slots game by trying to double it. He won a bit more back but still made a loss on the evening. That’s the nature of gambling my friends, you don’t always win big like we did back over Easter!

Saturday’s food diary:

Breakfast: Two shredded wheat with skimmed milk

Lunch:Two hot ring doughnuts and a couple of chips

Dinner: Tuna and pasta bake

Snack: Turkey breast sub on hearty italian bread with olives, tomatoes, cucumber and sweetcorn. No sauce.

Proactol: 4

Exercise: 1 hour of walking and a physical day of work!

I don’t know about everyone else, but time seems to be flying by at the moment. Even though I’ve been spending a huge amount of time on my own, my own company isn’t beginning to make me as crazy as I thought. I just need to stop referring to myself as ‘we’ before I start pickling vegetables for entertainment and calling any passing cat ‘my baby’. *shudders*

Today was another odd day. I had to have a late breakfast as I had forgotten to buy milk and I had a job interview at 10am. It seemed to go well, they made all the right noises but I have been to so many job interviews over the last few months that I thought it went well but I couldn’t even begin to speculate on my actual chances of getting it! Will keep you lovely people all up to date though. We need to get me working again before I become an agoraphobic.

This weird start meant that my daily meal structure was messed up for the whole day.It was due to bad meal planning on my part and I accept that.

Breakfast: Large slice of coconut cake

Lunch: Shredded wheat with skimmed milk

Snack: Small bowl of pasta and pesto

Dinner: Steak and ale pie with potatoes, carrots, courgettes and runner beans fried up in olive oil and dessert was a big slice of coconut cake

Proactol: Four

Exercise: None

Tomorrow I am working at the castle for this big event, stewarding is always fun… unless you’re wanting to go on all the fun things but can’t! This means an early night for me apparently… she says writing this at 23.57pm. Doh.

I’ve not done one of my top tips for a couple of days now, apologies for my neglect! I should make it a good one. Now let me see…

Ah yes, stomach crunches! I have fallen victim to this problem. So many women who are trying to lose weight through diet and exercise complain that it doesn’t matter how many stomach crunches they do, they still don’t have a gorgeous washboard tummy. WHY OH WHY OH WHY?!

As a teenager, I bought one of those roll cage dooberries that help you to do sit ups. I must have done thousands but all I succeeded in doing was getting some hard muscle under my flab and the lower part of my stomach remained blobby to say the least. I so desperately wanted to be thin enough to get my belly button pierced but alas, it wasn’t to be. Last year I got a tattoo of a butterfly on my tummy because I figured a tattoo would look better and not get infected. You can see a picture of it on my twitter page, it was taken in April before I put on another 7lbs!

Sit ups are great... but they must be combined with a cardio workout

What was I doing wrong?

Sit ups are fantastic for working the muscles in your upper abdomen and that it. If you want to get that blobby bit under your belly button to catch up and also get toned, you need to do leg lifts and weights. The best place you can do this is at the gym because people have been over-ambitious and given themselves hernias! You can also hurt your back doing sit ups so please do take care.

The reason why I had killer abs under fat was because I wasn’t obeying the most basic of exercise rules: if you’re trying to tone an area as stubborn as your stomach, muscle exercises must be combined with aerobic exercise. So if you want to fix your stomach, go for a run, do an energetic step class, boxercise, spin whatever and THEN concentrate on your stomach crunches. You will see the results you want much quicker as aerobic exercise encourages the loss of fat so that you can see those gorgeous muscles you’ve been toning.

Totalchunk Top Tip: Only do stomach crunches when you have completed aerobic exercise. Your muscles will thank you for releasing them from under their fatty prison! Bring on those weird cut off belly tops that skinny celebs seem to love so much right now!

Yes my friends, poorlysick is a word… and if it isn’t, I hope my usage of it on the world wide web will get it into the Oxford Concise in the next year or so…

The brutal truth is that I have had a migraine this evening. It started in the early afternoon as just feeling a bit foggy and crap but on walking into the city centre to attend a short training session before embarking on a temp stewarding role at Nottingham’s city castle this Saturday, I felt weak and sick. I stopped at Starbucks and bought a slice of carrot cake and a bottle of carbonated water, thinking it was possibly blood sugar related as I had a rather late lunch at 2pm. Sat in the room, I felt weaker and weaker and had to wear my glasses just so I could keep my eyes open and appear engaged. I had intended to walk home but after 10 mins, gave up and got a taxi. This was rather fortunate as I made it up to the bathroom in time to be sick.

I hate, loathe and detest people being sick in public. I understand it can come over very suddenly but this is rare. Nobody wants to watch a young lady barf in the street whether it is due to intoxication or illness. Considering I have to walk through a dodgy area to get home, I do prefer to keep quite a brisk step!

This all reminded me of two years ago when I was literally struck down with glandular fever. I had never been so ill in my living memory. Apologies for the graphic explanation, but I slept for roughly 22 hours a day with my mouth open because my tonsils were so swollen and covered in white joojoo that I couldn’t even swallow. Nobody wanted to come into my room because the white joojoo smelled so bad. I didn’t eat or wash for almost a week and my first bath only happened because my twin sister had to hold me up to walk me to the bathroom and put me in the bath. I was too weak to even wash my own hair. When I was finally lucid enough to sit up in bed aware of my surroundings, I ordered in a large Dominos cheese and tomato pizza and ate it over an agonising two days.

At Alton Towers after a sleep on the damp grass

I hadn’t noticed any weight loss or a change in my body until I put on outdoor clothes for the first time. My family was horrified by my appearance so I weighed myself. 9 stone 5lbs and I looked like I was bordering on an eating disorder. My auntie was upset by how unwell I had been and how I looked, she invited me round to her house in the mornings for a change of scenery and left lots of goodies around so I could try and gain a little weight back to look more healthy.

My point is that you can’t really control illness and you certainly should never hope for it as a means to lose weight as you will gain it much quicker once you’re back to full health. Also, when you are ill your body needs calories to fix itself so don’t use illness as a dieting opportunity as it will probably backfire!

Anyway, my dinner tonight was rice and runner beans as that was all I could stomach as around 8pm and I knew I had to eat otherwise my headache would get worse. About 10.30pm I made myself some pasta and pesto. My breakfast was two shredded wheat with milk and lunch was Winnie the Pooh Pasta shapes with a couple of soft bread rolls. I only took two proactol today so food diary is looking a tad pathetic. Not including the carrot cake because I was unlucky enough to deposit that in a bucket in my living room. Classy bird!

It contains 5000 calories, that’s enough to feed an average male over two days. It’s so enormous that you have to sign a disclaimer when ordering it, and if you finish it then you get it for free. No this isn’t a riddle, I’ll tell you now, it is the largest English breakfast in the world! It contains a heart stopping:

• 10 sausages
• 10 eggs
• 10 rashers of bacon
• 5 slices of black pudding
• baked beans
• mushrooms
• tomatoes AND
• 10 slices of toast

If you finish all that in 20 mins flat and don’t have a drink as you’re munching away, you get it for free. Not that you’d mind too much paying for it, it costs £10.95 ($17.75) and is enough for four people to eat although I don’t know if they would let you share with your girlfriends on a Saturday morning whilst nursing the mother of all hangovers. Better get a pot of coffee on girls!

Think you have a strong enough stomach to eat all this in 20 minutes?

The breakfast is so big that it has to be served on a tray rather than a plate. That is enough to turn the stomach of even the hardiest UK lorry drivers! Where can you find this cholesterol-fest? Mario’s Cafe in Westhoughton, Bolton.

If you don’t finish the gigantic breakfast, your disclaimer is pinned to the wall with over 50 others. Dieters, there is nothing wrong with a blow out treat once a week, but this is ridiculous! As funny as this story is, leave this kind of thing to the guys and have a bowl of Special K instead!

I sometimes appear a bit aggressive and hard-nosed at times. Having been raised in a family of strong women who won’t stand for any messing, I am very confident in asserting my beliefs and opinions whether they are requested or not. Underneath this no-nonsense exterior, I am an absolute sucker for looking after the vulnerable and one of the things that makes me really sad is elderly people alone in the world with no one to look after them. After all, nobody actually sets out in life to be Eleanor Rigby!

I set out this morning intending to review Innocent smoothies but something else on their website caught my eye…

Innocent have launched a campaign called ‘The Big Knit’. Basically, Innocent and Sainsbury’s have teamed up with the intention of donating 35p per bottle of smoothie sold to Age Concern and Help the Aged. They want to raise £250,000 so that these charities can fund projects and advice centres that enable older people to cook nourishing and yummy food, even living on just a state pension. It is a crime that 10% of the UK population over the age of 65 is malnourished. It doesn’t have to be that way and with better education and information made available to our more vulnerable citizens, this can be turned around and it is everyone’s responsibility to get involved.

How do you know that you are buying a special pack? This is the fun bit, the bottle will be wearing a knitted hat!

Behatted Innocent Smoothie - look out for and buy these!

Innocent are even having a competition, asking people to knit little hats and to send pictures of their designs to their Flickr page. They are doing a ‘hat of the week’ contest that starts this month. If you want to enter your own knitted designs, the closing date is 16th October. (For more information, click on the picture to your left.)

I’m not making any money from this, so why am I raving about The Big Knit and asking that you buy little bottles of smoothies with the cute hats on?

Nutrition is not just an issue that effects the elderly. People who are malnourished are more likely to become ill in the old winter months. This includes dieters who are trying to lose weight but not taking into consideration the value of the fewer calories that they eat.

It is so easy to become carried away with dieting, you cut the ‘naughty’ foods out of your diet or you reduce your consumption massively. When dieting, the biggest thing to remember is: EAT FOR NUTRITIONAL VALUE. Foods like rice cakes are low in calories but they have a very high Glycemic Index (or GI) and they are not filling and have as much nutritional value as paper. Empty calories are worthless and you should make the calories you eat count. Your body needs fibre, fat, carbohydrate, protein etc and this is never going to change. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: there is no point in being thin if you are not healthy. Your health is reflected in your skin, your hair, your nails and even your eyes and smile. Losing weight is meant to improve your life and your health, if this is not your aim then maybe you should reconsider your motives for weight loss.