MORE GOALS THAN ENGLAND :)

Getting ready for Henry's party.

It seems such a long time since I last wrote an update on my blog. It's not really, but we have now been away for our Grandson's first birthday party and what a lovely weekend it was. Yes, I did have my cake, and party food, and saveloy and chips, and a glass or two of Proseco and do you know? It was wonderful!
I seem to have so much more energy to enjoy the preparations and the party and even have some left for a walk to the park afterwards.
It is hard to believe it's a year since Henry was born, and six months since I set my first goal of losing four stone by his birthday.
Now it is time to set my next goal, which is to lose another two stone by Steve and my tenth wedding anniversary in October. That will then be 84 pounds in total lost.
It's a funny feeling when you have achieved something, you can sometimes feel a little deflated when the time comes, a bit like the day after Christmas, a special occasion or your wedding day. It's like you have worked up to something, then it's there and gone.
The difference with my situation is that I still need to lose weight, so I need to find the motivation to carry on.
Well, all the larger clothes have now gone. Bagged up and taken to the local charity shop. I did say to Steve, what will I wear if I put the weight back on? He said I wouldn't, so there you go - the old me is gone.
I must admit I did feel good last Saturday at the party wearing a new dress. I am beginning to like what I see in the mirror and in photographs, and it was lovely to mingle and talk with friends, family and guests I hadn't met before with a new found confidence, rather than wanting to sit at a table and hide with a plate of food and a drink.
I have inspired my daughter Jal to lose weight too, and I must say she looked gorgeous in a beautiful new blue dress she had bought. I was so proud, and you should have seen the birthday cake she made.
The next day we went for a long walk along the seafront at Southsea, something I would have struggled with before the weight loss. We talked about the differences that losing weight have made to us. She mentioned to me how much we talk now about fashion and make-up, something we never did when she was growing up, and how it feels so lovely to have these chats about "girly things".
So now it's time to get back to the straight and narrow, so to speak, and carry on where I left off. And the first step is my regular Thursday weigh-in. The result? I've lost another two pounds this week. That's a total of 65 and a half pounds so far. Will I make my next goal? I hope so, and I hope you will continue to follow me on my journey.

PRAISE WHERE PRAISE IS DUE (IT HAD TO BE SAID)

Before I start this weeks blog, I would just like to say that I have reached my first weight loss goal and lost 3 and a half pounds this week, making a total before our grandson's first birthday party of 62 pounds. The cake awaits :)
Having just set my next goal, I feel there is something I need to get off my chest before I start towards it.
Life isn't always easy, and choices may be limited but it is up to us how we cope with the situations we find ourselves in.
Sometimes things that bother one person, another person would not find a problem, but quite often the choices we make do affect the ones around us that we love for better or for worse.
I have said before that back in 2002/3 I lost ten stones in weight whilst taking medication (now withdrawn from the market) to help me do this. It was a complicated time in my life and when I lost weight it did give me a kind of confidence that I had not had before.
At this time I did something I would have never done before and asked a man I knew from a shop I went into if he would like to go to the cinema with me. Within the year we were married and this year we will celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary. Still as much in love today as we were then. (Okay, time to stop the soppy music!)
Now the point I am trying to make is when I first met Steve I was 11 and a half stone. He knew I had lost weight but we had not really talked about it. It's not something you talk to a man in a comic shop about :)
The rest is history. Over the next couple of years I put the weight back on and then it stuck around the 21 stone mark until the start of this year. My weight has never bothered Steve and he and my family love me unconditionally, but the way that my health started deteriorating did really bother them all.
As much as they told me, I dragged my heels because I was in denial. Sometimes we are, but if we want change we are the ones that have the choice to do it and how we do it.
I had been offered surgery and medication again but for me personally I did not want to do it that way. Steve has since told me that he was quite relieved that I decided to try to improve my health and even though my size has never bothered him, he has got quite excited about how much my weight has gone down and he is the one (along with my daughter) who nags me to go out and buy smaller clothes. I have had a lot of support from family and friends, but Steve is the one that puts up with me when I get stressed, cry and feel down; goes without certain foods because he knows I don't want to eat them; puts up with my moaning when we go out for a long walk and I don't feel I can do it. I am the one that decided to give it a go one last time because I wanted to live, but I could not have done it without my family and friends and I could not have done it without Steve. We have gone full circle and hopefully by our wedding anniversary I will once again be the woman he married, just ten years older.
I am so thankful for what I have and grateful for the fact that Steve helps me proofread my blog and enables me to get it onto the web.
Right! Enough of the Oscar speeches. Four months to go, back to the weight loss. My next goal - October 16th!

MORE THOUGHT FOR FOOD

Last time, I left you with the thought of a large slice of birthday cake, a reward for what I have achieved so far this year! That will be in a couple of weeks time at our Grandson's first birthday party, and I can't wait. I am looking forward to seeing everyone, enjoying the excitement of the day and helping to make the food for everybody.

I am not a bad cook, I have always enjoyed cooking and learning about foods from all around the world. It makes our planet seem such a smaller place when you realize we all have so much in common. We all eat, but the question is do we think about what we eat and does it matter?

When my two children were at senior school, I spent a short time as a school governor. The area I was assigned to was Home Economics, which was great because I always thought how important it was to learn how to cook. For whatever reason it does not always happen in the home and often Home Economics at school was our first experience of preparing and cooking food, and knowing what goes in it, which is something we seem to have lost.

Sadly, the government of the time decided that other school subjects were more important, and Home Economics was cut right out when it came to choosing exam subject options. I thought at the time that this was a bad idea. Over the years we seem to have forgotten what good food is.

When I used to teach Indian Cookery to adults in the early 2000s, a lot of the students thought it would take a long time to cook a meal from scratch. They soon discovered that they could cook a quick and healthy meal in no time at all.

We are bombarded with quick food, takeaways, microwave dinners, and there is nothing wrong with that in the greater scheme of things, but food seems to have become such a mystery. Most of the time we do not think about how much salt, sugar or fat there is in certain foods, which is something we need to do if we find we have put on weight and want to have healthier eating habits.

While I was attending the first twelve weeks of Change 4 Life we looked at food labels and it was mind-blowing the hidden salt and sugar that was added to processed foods. Even so-called low calorie foods can contain higher levels of sugar than we might be led to believe. 

I heard on a TV programme recently that just an extra 100 calories a day over our recommended daily allowance can result in us putting on a stone in weight over the course of a year. Such an easy thing to do!

I saw "Masterchef" on the television the other week and I heard food described as "fetta cheese foam", "apricot stew", "beetroot fondant" and "beetroot paint". I feel terms like that can make good food sound elitist, expensive and time consuming.

What we need to do is think about the food we would like to eat and think how we can change things.

There are lots of good, quick recipes out there. We CAN make food cheaply, that looks good and is tasty without adding the extra fat, sugar and salt.

Obesity is becoming an increasing problem in many countries and it seems to me that one of the reasons is that we are eating far more processed foods than we used to.

There now seems to be whole generations that, for whatever reason, have not learnt to cook the basics and have become dependent on quick alternatives that may not be as good for us as we believe.

It won't happen overnight for any of us but let's start to think about just what we are eating and if we do spoil ourselves now and again, do it with food that we really enjoy, not with something that will "just do".

Those of you that drive would not dream of putting the wrong fuel in your cars, but we do it to our bodies quite often.

I hope this week I have given us all some food for thought, an idea of what we can change and what we can achieve step by step.

Until next time, I'll leave you thinking and, maybe, looking at those food labels. :)