This week has been really hard going as I have found that it is very hard to attempt to do such an intense workout on a daily basis.

I usually find exercise extremely difficult as in my experience, far from any endorphins being released, I actually found myself experiencing terrible mood swings after running. During this challenge, I haven’t experienced mood swings and instead of feeling exhausted and irritable, after exercising on the Versaclimber I’ve felt able to carry on with my day without throwing any china mugs at the wall. I don’t think I can credit the Versaclimber with banishing my post-exercise grumps though!

I’ve tried to do much shorter sessions on the days I’m not attempting to register a time for my challenge. This keeps me motivated as exercising doesn’t feel like a chore anymore.  Like with most things, if you don’t feel like you want to do them then you’ll do a rubbish job or eventually quit.

This week, I managed to do the full 1/4 mile (1320 feet by my calculations) twice. This is a noticeable improvement on last week when I had to attempt to complete the challenge in sections which was a little embarrassing to admit. I’m much more proud of this week’s results!

Thursday: 20 minutes 55 seconds

Sunday: 19 minutes 36 seconds

As I have weak knees, I do try to take shorter steps (about 6inches) as it eases the pressure on them. Swollen and red knees at the age of 24 are just not sexy! I’ve also found that listening to music makes a massive difference to my stamina otherwise after 5 minutes I’m bored and focusing on the ‘burn’ and how I dislike feeling out of breath and sweaty.

What I will say now is that if you’re new to using a Versaclimber, don’t attempt to go for 20 minutes at a time because when you try and walk normally, your legs will feel like jelly and the chances are, you’ll fall over like I almost did!

I wonder what next week will bring!

How did time go so fast? It doesn’t feel like that long ago I was blogging for Total Chunk every day!

In the last six month I have started a new job, had some b****** crash into my car and Jonny and I bought our first house! It’s been a stressful time and in October/November 2010 I went on a popular low calorie diet with disastrous results. It’s all very well reducing your calorie intake but you need to eat enough of the right foods to allow your brain to function. I could barely concentrate, I was dizzy and felt nauseous most of the day. I was grumpy and struggling to sleep. This was no way to live – I’d be a crap anorexic!

So I lost half a stone in a month which was great… except I couldn’t keep my diet up and keep my job. It’s generally accepted that you need to be of use or ornament for someone to pay you to turn up to the office everyday and unfortunately, I was neither.

I was also stressed about purchasing our house and to keep our home running, my job ticking along and get everything in place for the mortgage company and the solicitors then adding on diet and exercise was too much and I admit that myself.

We finally moved in to the house just before Christmas and in January I started yoga classes (new post coming soon!)

For me, 2011 is about exercise.

We’re currently in the longest recession that the West has seen in recent history. We are seeing record levels of unemployment and more and more men are finding themselves out of work and for the first time, some families have found women being thrown into the role of breadwinner.

Our economy is messed up and I am angry about it because my family and I have been affected by it. I was unemployed half of last year as was my father, and now my lovely boyfriend is in the same situation I was in six months ago. I certainly have my opinions about the incompetent Gordon Brown. However, this is a weight loss blog and not a place for me to air my political views in more detail!

Take this blog post with a pinch of salt. There are men who can cook and some can cook better than a lot of women! But, I would hate to offend anybody! However generally, women tend to do the cooking and delegate other household chores. If your experiences are different, please do contact Jonathan at Personal Stories, as he would love to hear about how couples are coping with handing over traditional chores. If roles are reversed and you’re a woman having to cook meals for the first time, this can apply to you too!

Role reversal can cause problems if you are trying to lose weight and follow a strict diet. If your man’s cooking leaves much to be desired, there are ways to avoid becoming acquainted with the toilet on a face to face level. My father lived alone for years before meeting my mum but stick him in the kitchen today and he is lost and you’re likely to get a cheese sandwich made with half a block of cheese!

So here are a few pointers on how you can guide your partner to getting involved with your diet.

1. 

   Can your partner help you stick to your diet plan?

   Insist on cooking when you get home. It is exhausting and you have to wait longer to eat but you can make a huge batch of say, Chili or bolognaise, shepherds pie etc from scratch and freeze it so all he needs to do is pop it in the microwave later on in the week. He can help and get to find his way around the kitchen before flying solo.

2. Let him make a few mistakes and have a couple of cheap microwave meals (see tip 1) on standby so that when he realises that improvisation doesn’t work unless you’re a top chef, the revelation doesn’t force you into a starvation diet.
3. Leave lists – lots and lots!
4. Plan ahead together. I have to plan meals a week in advance so I don’t end up eating rubbish food out of convenience. Let him see how much work goes into planning a healthy diet and ask him to rise to the challenge.
5. Buy your main groceries online. There are usually companies who deliver locally grown, seasonable vegetables to your door for a pretty good price. One of the companies local to me charges £7.90 for a 3kg box of seasonal veggies inc delivery.

This isn’t an exhaustive list of suggestions but if your domestic roles have reversed and you are trying to stick to a healthy weight loss plan then something has to give. If your partner is supportive then he or she should be keen to do whatever it takes to help you get slim and get healthy.

Last pictures of 2009 - Goodbye stomach!

Jonny and I met at the very end of 2008 so technically, even though our relationship blossomed throughout 2009, I accredit my luck at meeting such a sweet and lovely man to 2008.

This is because 2009 was mainly rubbish! I spent half of it unemployed and we almost lost my dad in June as a stupid doctor who I would like to poke in the eye, diagnosed acute appendicitis as wind. He’s ok now luckily but I will never forget the horror of seeing my daddy looking weak and forlorn in a hospital bed with a bile bag attached to a tube coming out of his nose. Cue various car problems and the destruction of our bicycles on a 70mph road on the way to Holland. We had hoped things would start to improve… until Jonny was made redundant just 3 days before Christmas which led to me saying “blow it, I’m going to enjoy Christmas and eat/drink what I want!”

The picture above was taken on New Year’s Eve 2009. As you can see, my waist and hips have expanded massively in the last year. What you can’t see is the thigh fat and that my once lovely bottom is becoming saggier and saggier as the days go by.

These are not the words of a paranoid young woman who is looking for compliments, these are the words of a woman desperate not to let herself go just yet! I don’t want to be one of those women who lament the fact that they hated the way they looked when they were young. I want to enjoy my 20′s and not go through my youth pretending that I don’t care about the belly I am starting to acquire.

Louisa aged 12 in Steel Band

Losing weight and looking good for my own benefit is important to me. I was an ugly and awkward child/teenager who was skinny and clumsy. Continually picked on by the jealous and insecure partly for how I looked and partly for having a mouthy sister, I struggled for years accepting my appearance.

Now I am a grown up, I have absolutely no interest in proving anything to people I used to go to school with. I want to get slim now before I let myself go and find myself needing to lose 100lbs in 2011! When I started blogging, I realised that my desire to lose 14lbs would seem ridiculous! I’ve read so many weight loss stories in the last few months and there are people out there who were desperate – they had to lose weight or they would die long before their time. This is why I changed direction and stopped writing about my diet and started writing dieting tips.

I would love to hear your dieting stories and any unusual diet tips you’ve found to work. Please reply in the comments or on the content page if you would like your achievment to be featured on Total Chunk – just like South Beach Steve

2010 is the year for change, I can just feel it! This is why I am encouraging YOU to take part in the Perfect 10!

Over 10 weeks, we will learn 10 things about each participant and yes, there is a prize but it’s only open to US residents. If you don’t live in America, don’t worry because there is nothing stopping you from getting involved, you just aren’t eligible for the prize but South Beach Steve has kindly said, if you aren’t a US resident, he will try and source an alternative prize, possibly a dvd of his motivational videos. Here are the rules (taken from Log My Loss)

1. The intent is for everyone to start this on January 1st, but as long as you begin by January 7th and post an update on January 8th, you are eligible.
2. Begin by commenting on this post letting me know you are joining the challenge, then post your goals on your blog.  If you don’t have a blog and you want to participate, you will have to post your goals and your updates as a comment on this blog.  Be sure and see rule #1 – I would like to see the goals posted on your blog by the 1st of January, but you have until the 7th.  Come on though, if you know about it now, don’t sit around and wait until the 7th.  By the same token, you don’t have to wait until the 1st to let the world know you are participating.  In fact, I would prefer you tell them right now. 
3. Updates must be done at least weekly.  That means the first update is due on Friday, January 8th.  If you choose to update on Mondays, you will also need to post an update on Monday, January 4th, or Monday, January 11th.
4. You need to post a comment on the weekly reminder posts letting me know you have done your goal updates, preferably with a link to your update post.  The link is not required, but it makes it easier for others to follow you.  Although I will be visiting your blogs and commenting on your posts, I am using the update posts on this blog to help me track the challenge.
5. You have to tell one thing most other bloggers will not know about you weekly in your updates.  For example, telling us that you were a Van Halen groupie in the 80’s or that you spent two years as a nun on a small island off the shore of Greece would do.  Well, either of those or something as simple as your family has a tradition of wearing plaid pajamas to your New Year’s Day  breakfast.  I will give suggestions along the way for this.

Blogging is a fantastic way of staying accountable throughout your weight loss journey. If you want to publicise your blog (and you’re a real person, not a spammer from the far east looking for easy links) get writing and get commenting on other weight loss blogs. After all, everyone appreciates kind and helpful words from a stranger

Louisa and I can both tell you that our mother can be very critical of us, especially in terms of our looks. After years of my jeans being pulled up and my top down, comments etc, you get the picture, today the momentous moment arrives, she says to me ‘you’re looking skinny. That’s a good outfit for you, you’re looking really slim’. ‘

It’s a great feeling that someone who you wanted to notice your weight loss has done so with no prompting.

Anyways, the point I want to make is that it’s great that people have noticed your achievements and they’re pleased, but sometimes friends and relatives can start saying that you’ve gone too far the other way. Louisa had the same a couple of years ago when she was having a tough time, that’s just weight loss from stress that will rectify itself, it’s not healthy and it’s not cool. Other times, friends can be jealous and want to dampen your success by implying that you have a problem.

I fully expect any time soon, someone will start to say that I’ve lost too much weight. This is a load of rubbish because:

- My bmi is at 24.4, this is in the perfectly healthy range. If it at any time for me personally drops under 21, you can find me in the chippy!

- I eat within the expected amount of calories for a woman each day (2000 – that’s right, I eat the big 2000!)

- I don’t feel the need to hide my eating/not eating/amount I exercise

- I wear a UK 10-12, this is considered to be a slim and healthy size. If 10s or even 8s were falling off me and I could see my bones, I’d start to worry.

No one likes to hug a bag of bones

So while it’s exhilarating to hear people praising you for losing weight, there is still that urge to maintain the status quo if they’re still offering you left overs or using you to feel good about themselves (I don’t see these people anymore) and that’s the point where you have to put the above points as questions and be completely honest with yourself. If it’s just jealousy, then those doubters can shove it! If not, how can you sort this out in the healthiest way possible.

The reason why I wanted to discuss this is because we all talk about our goal weight, but what about when we’re not there yet (like me) and people you care about question if it’s too much. What do you think?

Joe as a fat kid - Aged 13 (source: News of the World - Click Image to Visit)

Joe McElderry lost significant weight before competing in the X Factor 2009

The winner of 2009′s X-Factor was Joe McElderry, an 18 year old boy who lost over 2 stone before entering this years  X-Factor.

Joe has an amazing singing voice and never faltered over the 10 or so weeks of constant singing in front of millions watching British T.V.

When his past was revealed it showed that Joe was once very overweight which is still evident in his cheeks but you would never notice it unless it was pointed out to you or you saw his old pictures from a year ago!

Was this sudden weight loss for the show? Or was it that Joe hit the wall and said “enough is enough” a year ago whilst looking in the mirror?

Previous contestants of talent contests such as Michelle McManus and Rick Waller have been heavily criticised for their weight with Michelle’s career going no-where after she won the talent show Pop Idol.  This showed a need to be attractive as well as talented on such singing contests as with so many other areas of entertainment in the modern world.

So whether Joe lost the weight to increase his changes of winning the X Factor or he just did it for himself I say well done Joe and I wish all the best for the future!

Boy that little fella can sing……..

UPDATE 2010 – WE WERE RIGHT!!!!!

Joe has spoke publicly about his weight loss, claiming to have lost 2 stone through plain good eating and exercise. Knowing that the weight was the one factor holding him back for the contract with Simon Cowell he shed the weight in just a year to reveal his squeaky clean handsome looks

Here’s Daily Mail’s take on our story

A few weeks back, I wrote a post about how singing could help you lose weight. If you’re sat in a car on a long journey or you’re in a traffic jam with precious little else to do, it’s no substitute for the gym, but it’s worth a shot to pass the time! Sit up straight, pull your stomach in and belt out those notes!

Anyway, Jonny likes to watch The One Show at 7pm when we’re eating dinner because he likes to pretend that he likes presenter Christine Bleakley. In reality, he is a bit of an old man at heart and enjoys the inoffensive banter and the nature sections they include. Well, today they included an item about how singing lowers your cortisol levels which I thought mildly interesting…

Cortisol is a hormone that is produced by your adrenal gland. It’s often refered to as a ‘stress hormone’ as when you are anxious or stressed, your body produces cortisol. Cortisol stimulates the ‘flight or fight’ bit in your brain. Your blood pressure will rise, your breathing may become shallower and other chemical reactions happen which may induce other physical complaints.

What does this mean for you losing weight?

Well, early studies have suggested that cortisol may be linked to obesity. For example, those who eat when they are stressed obviously do not benefit from higher cortisol levels! As far as I am aware, this is not scientifically proven however, for those interested in the chemical science behind why they over-eat, this could be a fascinating insight.

So back to the original thought on the BBC’s The One Show, how can you lower your cortisol levels? The reporter did a little experiment. He went to visit a choir and gave them a little sponge to soak up a little saliva. The choir then sang for an hour and re-did the saliva test. After all the singing, the choir felt energised an happy. After the results came in, it turns out that singing can lower cortisol levels thus reducing stress.

If you’re a stress-eater, try out singing instead of eating and let me know how your experiment works!

AMELIA

Today is my driving test and just over an hour before I get in the car with the examiner, of course I’m nervous, but I’m calmer than I have been in recent weeks over it.

I’ve had a cup of coffee and some frosties for my breakfast which I know isn’t going to hold me in good stead because it’s sugar and I’ll definitely feel hungry again in half an hour.

The temptation to eat badly at times like this is overwhelming, you just grab what you know is going to be tasty and something that is going to reassure you that everything is going to be ok. Just before my instructor picks me up in a bit, I am going to have a bit of a snack, 2 oatcakes and an apple and knowing that I’ve put something good into my body I believe is going to help me firstly not feel hungry and secondly feel good about myself that I am worth it.

Sometimes when you are stressed, you might just grab food before you have even thought about it and say later that you deserved it because you’re stressed. Perhaps instead of a bowl of frosties I should have had a bowl of porridge and an apple… because I deserve it, which depending on your feelings of porridge might sound self deprecating, but it works.

More than ever when you’re feeling stressed, you need to slow yourself down and just stop and think about what is going on, before you snap at your partner, feel the pressure get on top of you and the next thing you know you’re in the nearest car park of a drive-thru scoffing junk.

Total Chunk Tip: Stress can lead you many different ways, but if you take a moment to think about what you’re about to eat and believe that you deserve to eat well to be able to cope with what you’re going through, you’ll make better choices and feel good about yourself and have the energy to get through the day.

This last week has been difficult to say the least! My car died and I was terrified that the time had come to scrap my 13 year old corsa. Firstly because I love her, secondly because I can’t afford to replace her. As always, Jonny and I persevered and I would drop him off at work on my way to work. Inevitably, he would make me late but beggars can’t be choosers – he was letting me borrow his car so that I could get there in the first place. Anyway, the difficulty lay in that he was working 14/15 hour days last week as his company are launching a new product this week. On the Tuesday, he worked 12 hours and I sat in his office waiting for him. Clearly, that is very impractical to bother with for more than one day. The following two days I had to go back out to his work to get him. On the Thursday, I stopped at the supermarket to pick him up something microwavable yet healthy. He got salmon and new potatoes. That was alright for him!

You see, my father and I have a difficult relationship at times. He is extremely temperamental and we’ve had monumental arguments in the past. We still do to this day. However, if I need him, he will whinge and generally make a pain of himself but he does always come through for me. He demonstrated this last week by driving 100 miles from Gloucestershire to where I live (Nottinghamshire) to fix my car. So (back to the original point about Jonny being lucky to have salmon) I decided to make him a home-made sausage casserole  for me and dad as cooking is not one of mum’s strong points. Unfortunately, my efforts were rubbish! I had lost the recipe and I tried to memorise it but clearly to no avail. Anyway, in spite of my poor show in the kitchen which resulted in the breaking of a glass measuring jug and an equally innocent wine glass, dad fixed my car in less than 40 mins. He even looked at Jonny’s car and fixed my phone as I had dropped it the previous night. We are currently liking my dad.

I drove back home for the MOT on Friday night sans Jonny. It was easier that way as I needed to be up early Saturday morning for the aforementioned MOT. Surprisingly, my car PASSED! Don’t worry about congratulating me, I have already celebrated – with one solitary glass of wine.Have you not noticed, I am trying to diet but had no time to exercise and prepare decent meals. This week, it’s about damage limitation.

Anyway, since my return from The ‘Shire, I have been massively tired and completely incapable of writing anything carefully constructed. In fact, this has been a stream of consciousness which I expect to read back tomorrow and think HUH?!

It’s not about self-discipline, it’s about being in the right frame of mind to make dieting work otherwise the stressful aspects of your life suddenly magnify. There is self-discipline, there is knowing when to stop eating… and then there is knowing when to give yourself a break. Losing weight is a lifestyle choice that needs to revolve around you. When you start revolving around your diet and stop doing the things you are MEANT to be doing (meeting friends, lunch with a colleague etc) that is when you need to ask yourself if you have a problem.

Over the next few weeks, I hope to cover the issue of taking dieting too far and why it is better to be slim rather than thin.

It’s been a while since I weighed myself. As I’ve started a new job, I’ve found routines a bit rough as for the first few weeks we were next door to a supermarket and would squeeze though the fence to get food at lunch time. After 3 weeks, we moved to another office with no shops for miles around. This is good as you can’t pick up snacks in weak moments. It is bad because you don’t bother to go for a walk at lunch time.

Now I’m starting to get settled into the job I decided to weigh myself. I had worried that I would gain weight but I had stayed constant at 11 stone (154lbs). I had dared to think that I had lost weight as both Jonny and his mum complimented me last week but alas the scales don’t lie. Unfortunately, I’ve not been taking Proactol either which means my stomach hasn’t been great. This morning I was seriously considering picking up some laxatives on the way home but it wasn’t necessary. Phew!

I feel much more settled now though and ready to commit to dieting properly. Even though I am a healthy weight, I would like to be fitter and slimmer rather than a healthy weight and a little wobbly around the edges. My BMI is in the healthy range at under 25.

Tuesday’s food diary

breakfast: strawberry museli

snack: kit kat senses (165 cals)

lunch: cheese sandwhich

snack: cinnamon bagel with a tiny bit of butter

dinner: half a pizza

Overall, that’s roughly 1800 calories.

I could have eaten the whole pizza but I didn’t want to. It’s not a signal of self-control or strength as some would have you believe, it is a sign that you are more in tune with your body and you should be pleased with yourself that you can stop when you want to, rather than you think you should. I know I am proud of myself!