Louisa's Weight Loss Blog

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!

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!

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.

Wow! You would not have believed how nervous I was yesterday before my very first weigh in. I have been taking diet pill Proactol to help me lose weight. The last 14lbs is always the hardest as it is very stubborn and I need help! As I have spent the last week updating this blog about my daily progress and scouring the internet for useful weight loss tips, I didn’t want to let you (or myself!) down by gaining instead of losing weight.

Jonny and I filmed a short video of my first weigh in on wii fit, I can rather triumphantly announce that in my first week, I have lost 2lbs in weight! This might not sound like anything to be excited about, but any seasoned dieter will tell you that 2lbs a week is a good rate to lose weight at. If you lose much more per week, you are possibly limiting your calories and increasing your exercise in a way that is not sustainable in the long run.

Think about it, if you cut your calorie intake to 1500 a day and lose weight but then go back up to the government  recommended 2000 cals per day for an active female, you WILL put the weight back on. This is why a diet need to be a life style change, not a quick fix. All of the tips that I publish are small changes that can make a huge difference when combined with other factors.

To see if Proactol actually works, I have tried to eat as normally as possible, minus the constant snacking but increase my exercise as well as taking the pills.

Monday’s food diary:

Breakfast: Large bowl of crunchy nut cornflakes with skimmed milk.

Snack: 3 choc chip cookies

Lunch: Seeded bagel with cream cheese and a v. naughty belgian bun.

Dinner: Chicken korma with poppadoms, rice and naan bread and a glass of red wine.

Proactol: 4

Exercise: None today

I have been using wii fit to weigh myself for this weight loss experiment, partly because I have convinced myself that bathroom scales are evil and inaccurate! It is also partly because I can use it to do light exercise on the days when I might not want to brave the elements.

When wii fit was released, it was unlike any other ‘game’ released before as you can’t use it like a traditional console game – sat down and staring at the screen like a zombie! To play the game, you have to move and the wii balance board detects your movements, genius!

When wii fit first came out I was a nightmare! My free time revolved around trying to get my hot, sweaty mitts on one. I remember when I finally secured one… I was meant to be working but I dashed outside to make the vital phone call. It wasn’t as cheap as I had hoped, I bought it in a bundle with wii play, mario kart and other games for the princely sum of £150. It was a lot of money for a hard-up receptionist to part with but at the time and even now, I still believe it was worth it!

Despite my intense desire to own a wii fit, I have only used it sporadically. A bit contribution to that is because I didn’t have much room to use it and ‘the crocodile’ was hard to do in my living room! The yoga and the muscle exercises wer very helpful last year when I was training to ‘run 10k’ for Cancer Research as it was great for warming up and cooling down.

A muscle exercise on wii fit

I love wii fit, I cannot deny it is fun, it is innovative and it is exciting. Watching my sister’s father in law play the hula hoop was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen! The penguin slide is so sweet and Jonny is brilliant at heading the footballs! However, it doesn’t offer enough by way of aerobic exercise which is the best way to burn fat. I think Step is alright and Hula Hoop is brilliant for comic value and getting your heart working harder but jogging leaves a lot to be desired. I find that my calf muscles become very tense as you’re just bouncing on the spot and it’s easy to cheat just by swinging your arm! I do like boxing but I struggle with the foot coordination! I am still baffled by Zazen because the high score list is just me x10 scoring 180 for it. How hard is it to sit still for three minutes? Do school children no longer spend an hour in assembly sat on the floor with their legs crossed rendering them incapable of sitting perfectly still?!

I expect wii fit will soon be eclipsed by something better Nintendo has on the drawing board, but so far, the extra motion sensors and other fitness related games such as Winter Resort appear to be doing nothing to hinder the popularity of wii fit. I can’t wait to see what they bring out next.

My final problem with wii fit is that it places a high emphasis on a person’s BMI, as I intend to show in later advice posts, a person’s body mass index is not a reliable indicator of a person’s health. It fulfils a purpose but I think wii fit could be enhanced with a diet section as it is hard to lose weight if you are not putting the right fuel into your body.

Ultimately, wii fit is a brilliant product, it has arrived just in time and I really believe it has revolutionised console gaming, I simply wish they had fine-tuned some of the activities like ‘jogging’ and included an advice bit on diet. I give wii fit an 8/10 rating. Wii fit is not a substitute for exercise but for those who are not used to exercise, it is an excellent starting point.

Let us get this one straight very quickly, dairy is not the work of the devil!

The human body does not make calcium, we have to eat it or drink it to get lovely calcium into our bodies. You might not believe it, but bones are a living tissue and they renew themselves whether we break our bones or not. Even at the age of 20, our skeletons may not be completely formed. Things go downhill from the age of 35 though because part of the ageing process is losing bone density and when a woman begins menopause bone density will drop even further. This is why it is important for women to have a calcium rich diet – because one in two women will fracture a bone over the age of 50 compared with one in five men.

Soya milk (calcium enriched) has more fat in it than semi-skimmed milk. Research on the Dairy Council’s website suggests that people who include milk and yoghurt as part of a calorie controlled diet lose more weight around their waists than those who do not include any dairy products at all. The theory is that the calcium in dairy helps to alter the way fat is broken down.

If you are lactose intolerant, don’t worry because Lacto-free milk is available in most supermarkets although I would avoid the cheese! Hard cheddar is low in lactose anyway as is yoghurt and both are full of calcium.

If you wish to try cutting out dairy completely and and following a vegan diet, please let me know if you see tangible results, I would be interested to hear your story.

Tip: Don’t cut dairy out of your diet unless you have to. Dairy contains vital calcium for bone strength and dairy is surrounded by many dieting myths. Make up your own mind about the benefits. Weight loss should be about improving your health. There is no point in being thin if your bones are weak or if your hair and nails are breaking.

Wednesday, Wednesday doesn’t sounds as if it would be as catchy a song as The Mammas and Pappas singing about Monday… ah well! Can you tell I’ve been listening to lots of music today which is why I have songs on the brain?

I’ve been trying to keep myself occupied today, got some washing done, applied for a couple of jobs but I’ve mainly been working on lots of great content for totalchunk.com because I really want to create a really comprehensive one-stop shop for weight loss. I have battled with my body image and weight for years now and I truly believe that nirvana (or maintaining slimness) is possible. It’s just a case of finding the right method for you.

Breakfast: Museli and skimmed milk

Lunch: Thomas the Tank Engine pasta shapes and two slices of toast

Snacks: Two crumpets with vegan butter

Dinner: Sausage casserole with mashed potatoes and courgettes. Dessert was a summer fruit spongey thing.

Proactol: 4 – one after each meal.

I will admit to three glasses of wine this evening as Jonny and I ate at his aunt’s house. It’s rude not to really!

It is always scary starting a new diet, particularly when you really aren’t sure it’s going to work. My plan is to eat as normal but do more exercise and take slimming aid Proactol. I really want to know if it works so I will be documenting my weight-loss journey and sharing it with you. I hope to lose weight and inspire others to do so as well. I will be sharing with you all the tips and methods to lose weight I discover on the way.

Today (Monday 14th September 2009) was a particularly difficult day as I found out a job I had wanted for months and was lead to believe was mine, was no longer available as they had filled the post. I was extremely angry and upset, hence the cookies! Until that point, I was doing rather well. Doh.

I dutifully weighed myself today, it’s important to be clear about where you are starting from. My weight is 11 stone 2lbs and my BMI is 24.98. I am aiming to lose a stone over the next 2 months.

Here's my weight according to Wii Fit, it's gone up 8lbs since I last used it!!

Breakfast: Small bowl of frosted wheats and skimmed milk. Slice of toast with butter

Lunch: 3/4 pizza

Snack: Half a packet of Maryland cookies

Dinner: Chicken breast with honey and mustard, runner beans and boiled potatoes. Dessert was an apple Muller rice.

Exercise: 30 mins swimming.

Proactol taken: 4 – one each time I ate.