Louisa's Weight Loss Blog

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.

I am like Superman, by day I work as an anonymous copywriter, you might have seen some of my work and will never know. By night, I am a vibrant advocate of weight loss! Scouring the internet, trying to dispel weight loss myths, call people upon bad (or just ridiculous) “advice “, and generally try to make the internet a more interesting place.

Unfortunately, for me, last week the company I work for moved offices. It is only a few extra miles on top of my journey, but I now spend an hour a day driving. This frustrates me for two reasons

I love driving but when I spend an hour a day driving, I do feel as though my time could be better spent...

1. Petrol now costs 105.9 English pennies per litre of unleaded fuel. This is £1.06 to everyone else. Therefore it now costs £50 for me to fill the tank of my little Corsa. This makes me sad.
2. The traffic is awful in the mornings so driving to work takes up an hour or more of my precious time.

If you’re really trying hard to lose weight, this is time wasted.

Or is it?

I drive around in this little purple corsa. Sure, she is a bit old and I need to adjust the clutch tomorrow as the gears won’t go in but she is called Vivienne and she is my baby. If I were to make a lot of money, I would probably tidy her up a bit but I’d make sure I’d get some decent mileage out of her, I’d never sell her unless I really had to. Anyway, in the car I sing for pretty much the whole journey and I couldn’t help but wonder: Does singing burn off calories?

I did a quick search on Google and the results pointed towards singing and waving your arms in church. Now, I am not a believer in any religion and I don’t wish to enter into a debate about my lack of religious belief here. Although I am happy to clarify that Richard Dawkins really helped me clarify my non-beliefs.

Anyway, after much searching, the general consensus appears to be that you burn off 4 calories a minute singing. This is 240 calories an hour. I expect this is if you belt songs out as opposed to shyly humming.

I wouldn’t replace singing for the gym or anything, but for burning a few extra calories when you really can’t do much else, plug in your ipod and pretend you’re Whitney Houston or Pink in the car! I’ve been singing in my car since I passed my driving test back in 2004 and I’ve come to enjoy the weird looks from bemused drivers. I suppose people seeing me (a young woman singing in a car covered in flowers) would think I am weird but I couldn’t care less! Belt out your favourite songs!