It’s all TOP SECRET at the moment… but I have started taking a new weight loss pill and diet plan so that I can report back to Total Chunk readers at the end of the February about the product’s effectiveness.

Looking at the packaging, I’m not convinced or impressed with the product but I do hope for the sake of those who already take the diet pill that it does actually work!

Without giving too much away, it really does look like an expensive multivitamin – looking down the ingredient’s list it appears to be a list of vitamins with caffeine. When was a vitamin deficiency the root of weight gain?

Anyway, watch this space and I really do hope that I am wrong about this diet pill…

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

Everything has an opposite, so the seven deadly dieting sins must do too, which is why I have had a go at writing about the seven heavenly dieting virtues.

This one has been a bit harder as it’s less applicable to dieting than the deadly sins (why are sins more interesting? Who knows!?) but work with me and I’ll try and make this post interesting and informative.

Thing is, the heavenly contrary virtues are a bit boring as they overlap a bit – so I’ve used artistic licence to combine the four cardinal virtues with three theological virtues.

Many people want to lose weight with the help of Jesus – type ‘lose weight with Jesus’ into Google and it returns over a million results which is rather incredible.

I’m not a religious woman but this post is definitely applicable to all dieters, whether they are determined Atheists or can’t get out of bed without saying a prayer.

Happy reading!

HOPE: As long as you have hope that you will achieve your weight loss goals then you are still capable of reaching them. If you are into motivational stuff, you’ll know that the people who write down their goals, maybe in a diary or an online blog, are more likely to achieve them as they are constantly aware of the bigger picture.

We all get despondent at times, it’s human nature to feel as though we are getting nowhere when we have worked so hard but are not yet seeing amazing results. Sometimes seeing the bigger picture seems almost impossible! For example, women find it harder to build muscle than men – so if a woman hits the gym with her man, they could do the same amount of exercise but he will appear to gain muscle quicker. This can be hugely demoralising but as long as you understand all the factors in your diet e.g. your food intake and your biology then you aren’t daring to hope, you have a darn good reason to hope to be successful at losing weight.

FAITH: Faith is the confidence you have in others. Obviously people have faith in God, but God is not going to get you slim no matter how much you pray if you’re eating 4000 calories a day and only stand up to get more food! Nope, in this case you need to have faith in YOURSELF.

Losing weight requires a huge amount of emotional and mental strength as you will find yourself facing temptation to eat the ‘naughty’ foods and tempted to spend Saturday morning in bed instead of burning calories down the gym. You need to have faith in your own abilities otherwise you will be wracked with self-doubt:

Self-doubt = failure

See it like this, hope and faith are entwined as hope provides the vision to work towards, faith is the belief that you can achieve this vision.

Fortitude: Fortitude is pretty much a synonym for ‘strength’. This is a NECESSITY for losing weight.

There will be times that you will have to say “no” to well meaning friends and family who would like to offer you a chocolate/biscuit/glass of wine.

Find healthy diet-friendly alternatives that help you stay strong so that you are making conscious choices to stick to your weight loss plan that don’t make you feel resentful about missing out on the treats you like.

You also need to find the emotional strength to do more exercise. Join a club where people rely on you being there to function so that you don’t find yourself making excuses not to go.

CHARITY: Charity is the act of giving and doing it gladly. Tell friends how good they look or how much you appreciate their support. Kind words like this are truly a gift.

There is a huge weight loss community on the internet so get involved! Search for weight loss blogs and diaries and get commenting on other people’s weight loss stories and help encourage bloggers to continue with their journey because sometimes, as I am sure you well know – losing weight is a fierce battle from one day to the next. Be prepared to set up your own weight loss blog and tell your own dieting story and share your own tips. Be generous with your kind comments, I can assure you, the internet community appreciates it!

Alternatively, you could try losing weight for charity. Ask people to sponsor you £1 for each 1lb you lose over 6 months or do a 10k run for charity like I did in October 2008! I can’t think of many better reasons to motivate myself to lose those nasty Christmas lbs!

PRUDENCE: Prudence is wisdom and knowing when to be discrete.

Dieters need to make prudent decisions on sometimes an hourly basis. In my office I get hungry because I’m sat in front of a computer all day. My body wants to do something and my natural instinct is to eat.

In cases like this where dieters eat when placed in certain situations that cause them to over-eat, maybe when they are stressed, bored or unhappy, the dieter needs to be cautious.How can you make prudent decisions?

• Make a deal with yourself – you can eat a low fat yogurt in 30 mins when you have completed a certain task if you eat due to boredom
• Tempted? Choose the naughty chocolate cake but have a smaller slice and be prepared not to have another treat like this for another 48 hours at least
• If you eat the crisps, you must do an extra 10 minutes of cardio at the gym tonight
• Do you eat when stressed? Research methods that you can use to help regulate your stress levels such as the Alexander Technique.

TEMPERANCE: Temperance is the act of moderation. This means knowing when to stop with not just eating, but exercise and the extent of your limitations.

It seems pretty obvious that you need to moderate your food intake, so I’m going to take another route to temperance…

Obesity is soaring but so are eating disorders. Too often people go from obese to anorexic. It seems as though the two have some kind of link – an obsession with food.

When you start losing weight it is so satisfying and when you hit your target it’s incredible and you feel on top of the world – and some people become hooked on the euphoria of losing another pound. If your friends and family begin to comment that you are getting too thin, reassess your weight loss plan to a maintenance plan.

JUSTICE: Only you will know if you deserve your weight loss. If you’ve worked up a sweat every 48 hours and tried really hard to make nutritious meals that fill you up and give you good energy yet you’ve not over-indulged, then you have truly deserved your weight loss.

However, many people have been scammed into believing that weight loss can and should be easy. It is not! I could slap anyone who tries to tell you that losing weight is simple as breathing! Complex minds and complex problems require innovative ideas and sometimes, the closer you get to your goal, the more creative you need to be with your tricks to lose weight. Check back to Total Chunk for dieting hints and tips that you won’t see anywhere else.

With hard work and dedication you will see results. You will experience sacrifice and possibly hardship as your body begins to get used to eat real food instead of synthetic rubbish that is clearly addictive. But after all the effort you put in, when you look in the mirror in 6-12 months and you admire your slim, healthy figure, you can say to yourself:

“I did this for me, and I deserved it.”

The 7 deadly weight loss sins

Today I am going talk about the Seven Deadly Sins of Dieting. Deeply rooted in Catholic literature, the original seven deadly sins were gluttony, fornication, avarice, sorrow, wrath, acedia (restlessness), vanity and pride.

Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’ remains on my must-read list but I have a few more books to read but I think it’s a group task, I feel as though I won’t appreciate it alone or without guidance!!

Anyway, Dante’s epic poem (written between 1308 and 1321) updated the original sins to what we are more familiar with today: gluttony, avarice, luxuria, acedia, wrath, envy and pride. However the Catholic church did away with luxuria (extravagance) and we now know (officially) the sins are: pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth/acedia.

As dieters, we all are guilty of these sins but let’s remember that these ‘sins’ do not mark the end of our quest for a slim and healthy figure. You don’t need to do a penance or repent and feel guilty. All we need to do is recognise that we have made a mistake and try and not do the same thing again. I’m also going to write about the 7 Heavenly virtues so look out for that.

Happy reading!

Lust

LUST: You spot it from all the way across the room. Your eyes savour the incredible sight before you, lingering over the subtle curves of the frosting. Yes, you have seen a piece of chocolate cake in the coffee shop and it is calling to you. Well, less calling and more bellowing and stamping it’s feet, clamouring for your attention!

It is fair to say you are experiencing lust, food lust!

How do you get past it? Well, as I’ve said previously, taking a deep beath and asking if you want it is dumb. Of course you want it! You just don’t need it, there is a difference and recognising that is half the battle. What you need to do is take control of the situation and either make a healthier choice or give in with conditions i.e. you have no more treats for a week! By making a conscious decision where you understand the future sacrifices you may have to make and feel in control of your decision, these dilemmas will gently ease and better food choices will come naturally.

My dad was very proud when I graduated with my BA (Hons) Unfortunately the gowns are not flattering!

PRIDE: We all know the saying “pride comes before a fall”! When you acheive a significant, or even a minor weight loss you should be proud, it would be very mean and uncharitable for anyone to rain on your parade and mutter that you “still have a long way to go”. No, pride is good but in small doses.

The trouble with pride is that we tend to reward ourselves for our good behaviour which brings good results and this is right – but we may not have broken our old habits yet and reward ourselves with edible treats that unwittingly result in a gain the following week, undoing all your hard work.

Please do be proud with achievements, shout them from the rooftops! Just don’t see weight loss results as a licence to be a little piggie and stray from the diet ‘because you deserve it’. Treat yourself to a magazine, make up or a bit of organic skincare.

Greedy people have been likened to pigs!

GLUTTONY: Bit of an obvious one here old greed is! Any diet that says you can eat as much of you want of any food is probably one to approach with caution. There is also no such thing as negative calories! Eating tonnes of any vegetable e.g. celery is ill-advised but in moderation, it can be a nice filler snack to keep you going until your next meal.

The trick here is recognising when you are full and feeling happy to finish eating.

How many of us have kept eating even though we’re full just because we are enjoying what we’re eating. Have you ever seen a skinny person continue eating for the sake of it?

So how do you learn to recognise when you’re full and stop eating when you are?

• Eat with other people and find out how much other people eat – it’s interesting to see and if they eat less, you’ll probably eat less.
• Eat slowly, be sociable and chat to your companions. It takes 20 minutes for your stomach to tell your brain “stop feeding me, I’m full!”
• I don’t want to sound like your mum but chew your food properly! I am guilty of not chewing properly too so I consciously try and chew each mouthful 10 times before swallowing.
• When you chew, savour it. Surely it’s better to really enjoy a little bit rather than shovel a lot down without really noticing the taste.
• Put your knife and fork down between bites.
• Drink water as you eat. Not to fill your stomach with fluid but to ‘cleanse the palette’ so that you are able to distinguish the taste of different foods on your plate.
• Don’t be afraid to pop your dinner in the fridge and come back to it later in case you’re peckish again in an hour. The phrase ‘little and often’ comes to mind here.

AVARICE: Avarice is a funny word as it is similar to gluttony but it also encompasses other greedy behaviours such as betrayal or desire for material wealth. This could technically involve engaging in actions that hamper others’ attempts to lose weight so others will praise your efforts more.

ENVY can cause some pretty nasty actions and I cover it in a minute – but this should be pretty obviously unnacceptable greedy behaviour: telling a friend the chocolate eclairs they are eating are low fat and low calorie when they’re not.

This is a serious betrayal and counts as greedy behaviour if you are looking to get more praise for losing more weight than your friend this week for your weight loss efforts.

In a less serious example, avarice could just involve stockpiling food at home under the ‘in case of emergency’ proviso but when you keep so much food at home when there is no pressing need to, you are only opening yourself up to temptation in weaker moments.

ENVY:There comes a time during your weight loss journey that you seem to hit a plateau and everyone around you seems to be shedding pounds at a terrifying rate. It’s natural to be jealous when someone appears to be losing lots of weight when you just want to be a size 6 and wear skinny jeans.

Remember that bigger people lose weight at a quicker rate so if you go to Slimming World with a friend who is 3 stone heavier than you, she probably will lose more than 2lbs a week!

If someone does seem to be doing better than you, don’t harbour resentment because we’re all in this together! Certainly don’t act on such negative feelings. Ask your friend for any dieting tips and enjoy their successes because they’ll be equally as thrilled for you when you hit your target.

This owner was too lazy to walk to dog! You'll never lose weight doing that!

SLOTH: Of course there are days that it’s hard too even haul yourself out of bed in the winter! In the last few weeks when it has still been pitch black outside I’ve hit the snooze button in the hope that there might be some sunlight in five minutes. Unfortunately, it’s still dark when I leave for work!

There is momentary laziness when we ask the universe for five minutes more in bed on a cold morning and then there is pure sloth.

Avoid taking the stairs? Hate walking five minutes to the shop to pick up a loaf of bread? That’s laziness.

All the little things add up. If you started taking a 15 minute walk in your lunch hour, an hour’s walk after a sunday roast will feel like less of a mission. You have to work at wanting to exercise at the start of your weight loss journey but after a while, you’ll get used to it and feel terrible if you miss an exercise session.

Exercise is a vital part of losing weight so if you’re not prepared to walk up one flight of stairs, you really ought to ask yourself if you have the determination to lose the weight you need to at this stage in your life.

WRATH: Anger is a very negative feeling. Anybody who denies that they ever get angry is either in denial or so laid back that they make others around them angry!

Many dieters experience problems with their moods when they start their weight loss plans. After all, junk food is known to contain addictive chemicals and so when you’re trying to eat healthily and get these additives and chemicals out of your body, the ‘come down’ can be just as bad for a dieter as it is for those giving up smoking.

If you believe that you may become moody and angry in the first week of your diet, warn friends, colleagues and loved ones that you may be short tempered as you are starting a diet. Get them on side to begin with so they will be more unsterstanding (and forgiving!) Be conscious that you could be in a bad mood. Distance yourself from stressful situations or difficult people and remember to apologise if you do snap at someone.

When a relationship ends, you may certainly be heartbroken. It is normal to cry and need a comforting hug from your friends and family, fun drinking sessions with friends and so on to forget about the emotional pain. The thing is that most people cannot get to the fun stage until they have finished the ‘wallowing’ stage and this is where the Heartbreak Diet comes in. We have all been there and most women will support you and try and help you by telling you of their experiences and how they got through it. You will get over it and you will meet someone nice again. I didn’t meet anyone remotely nice until Jonny came along which was three years after my last relationship!

Most women will be familiar with the Heartbreak Diet and it can go one of two ways.

• Some women won’t want to eat at all. They will only eat when forced and each mouthful of food sticks in the throat and you always feel sick afterwards. Normal eating will usually resume after a few weeks but women who have lost weight as a result will typically be thrilled with their new bodies and will work hard to maintain their new weight.
• Other women will turn to food for comfort and can’t stop eating. They will put on weight and may spiral into depression and feelings of low self-esteem.

When your heart is broken, you will either turn to food for comfort... or turn away from it.

There are ways around the unfortunate second option if you believe you may fall into this trap.

• Surround yourself with mates and maybe eat with them too. Cook healthy meals for each other and go to exercise or dance classes together.
• Keep your self esteem up, stay busy and treat yourself regularly with small gifts that aren’t food.
• Join the gym, spend all the time you would have spent with him exercising and working for the body you always wanted.

I have really been getting into X factor over the last couple of weeks. I’ve found the live shows really exciting and nerve wracking at times. I HATE the twins with every fibre of my being! They are certainly amusing but that isn’t good enough for a talent contest when there are so many talented singers who would give their right arm for such an amazing opportunity. Then they’re wasting it d***ing around in red PVC jackets! What I do know is that Ricky had a few more weeks left in him and he was cruelly sacrificed by the voting public. I’ve just been watching the new Sunday show and it’s been so nerve wracking i’ve been snacking on doritos with hot salsa. Oops.

Miss Frank are brilliant but the pressure will be on to lose weight

I’m not sure who I think will win yet but I do like Louis’ act Miss Frank. They are fresh, sassy and fabulous! However, they are hardly the image of a typical girl band and I believe that if they wish to pursue a career after X factor, they will have to reassess their image. They were incredible last night but the girls are on the chunky side and most record companies would have them agree to go on a diet as a part of their contract. My advice to the girls if they choose to lose weight (and anyone undertaking a job that requires a lot of energy to get through the day) would be to not rely on sugar to keep your energy levels up. Avoid refined sugar like the plague! Caffeine in black coffee has its benefits but should not be relied upon to keep you awake beyond your natural capabilities. Indulge in brown rice and lots of high-fibre  filling vegetables that give you bundles of energy. The GI diet is great for giving dieters plenty of energy although it is a lot of effort to prepare every meal. They will need this wholesome energy to cope with demanding dance routines and a hectic schedule.

Total Chunk Top Tip: If like X Factor act Miss Frank you may be embarking upon a hectic lifestyle and you want to lose weight, do not rely on sugar and caffeine to keep your energy levels up. Try the GI diet as a way of getting lots of energy released slowly over the day.

I have been too busy with my new job and my philosophy exam to update Total Chunk this week but do not fear, I am back for good. All my good intentions went to hell and losing weight has been the last thing on my mind… so much so, that I ate a huge amount of cake this evening because I really didn’t know what else to do!

Anyway, just because I have been cramming knowledge in for my exam (it was on Wednesday) it doesn’t mean I haven’t been bursting with ideas for my beloved weight loss blog.

Today’s topic is detox diets. Celebrities such as Carol Vorderman will have you believe that they are the best thing since sliced bread. I can reveal here and now that there is actually no medical basis for such rave reviews.

Water is a natural detox on its own merit but too much is harmful

Don’t get me wrong, a detox diet will not harm you if you only follow it for a couple of days. Unfortunately, people are drawn in to undertaking potentially dangerous diets with false promises of weight loss. If you restrict your diet to 500 calories a day or less, you will of course lose weight on a detox diet. You will however, not be getting the nutrients you need to keep your immune system up and if you participate in a low calorie, high plant intake diet your body could go into starvation mode. When your body goes into starvation mode, you will hold on to fat as your body will try to conserve it for as long as possible for energy. Detox diets also have a high water intake and last year, a woman died as a result of drinking too much water. Water poisoning can happen to anyone of any age, health status etc. The water dilutes the salt your body needs to function and as a result your brain will swell and you could suffer potentially devastating consequences such as brain damage.

The truth is that you do not need to detox your body. Your liver and kidneys do the bulk of the filtering out of toxins with no outside assistance and rarely do they actually NEED it. You might feel ‘cleaner’ after three days of ‘detoxing’ but the likelihood is that you will be tired and lacking energy from a lack of protein and carbohydrate.  You will also probably gain more weight than you lost over the few days as your body is trying to regulate itself. When you are dieting, consistency is the key!

I also strongly believe that there is no need to detox using enemas regularly as this encourages your excretory system to become lazy. So when you stop using them, you could certainly find it hard to have a natural bowel movement. If you ask your doctor, I expect you will be given the same advice.

Total Chunk Top Tip: Detox diets will not help you lose weight as a part of a long-term solution as your body will find it hard to regulate itself and you may gain weight. If you feel compelled to detox, do not participate for longer than three days and be careful about your water intake as too much can be very harmful.