Great day with great company!

Morning all, hope you are well!

We had a bacon sarnie to start us off today.

I haven’t been feeling as though I am getting as much from my fitness as I would like, however, coming back to the same cottage as five months ago, which has a steep 100m path to and from the car park, has been a real pleasing eye opener!

Last time, I had to stop 5 times up that hill and it took me a good couple of minutes each stop before I felt I could carry on.

This time, I only need to stop once, and it’s a much shorter stop, this is a really great moment for me, knowing that my healthy lifestyle is actually working 🤗

Below are some pics with Paul, Dan and Lynne to give an idea of bloody horrible hill scale! The first pic shows the steepest bit which is a real bugger after the arduous walk up!

The last pic shows Paul just realising he’s gone ahead but I have the key 🤣

We went for a wander round the local village, Llanberis, which is a short drive away.

Paul is taking our friends up to Padarn Castle which is in Llanberis, Wales, I thought I’d look and listen to the water for a while, so calming.

Here’s a pic of the castle from my first visit:

We stopped at a great little tea shop, I had victoria sponge, it was delicious!

Now we’re back at the cottage and Paul is making fire!

Dan and Lynne are making chicken and leek casserole.

And I’m making use of doing nothing by updating blog 😊

So naughty brekkie and lunch, healthy dinner, but alcohol will be on the menu later!

We’ve currently walked over 12000 steps today.

Btw, yesterday I had fried chicken and chips, but I only had a handful of chips and not all the chicken. Plus 3 long vodkas and Pepsi max.

So, signing off for now. Byeeee 🤗

17lb loss in total – WOOHOO!

And… under 100kg for the first time in years!

Nowhere near my initial target of 28lb but i can’t tell you how pleased I am with my continuous healthy efforts!

Healthish brekkie, Turkey bacon, mushrooms, black pudding, egg. Using 1 cal spray to cook. Didn’t finish facon. 1 slice brown seedy with real butter.

Chose healthy for lunch, I’m sharing fruit with Paul.

That’s it from me for now.

Byeee

26th Sept 2019 – phew! What an evening!

Hi all, hope you are well!

The Welsh trip is almost here WOOHOO!!!!

We’ve been rushing around like maniacs this evening. Strange, I’ve learned how valuable preparing is over these last few weeks, shame I didn’t relate that to preparing for going away 🤣

I stayed home to pack while Paul went and got some food stuff, all we have to do now is pack toiletries and cold food stuff tomorrow morning, and off we go!

I haven’t packed my beloved Bailey’s, instead I’ve packed some vodka and spiced rum, that way I can make long drinks with Pepsi max.

We still need a couple of bits from shop, Paul didn’t realise bedding sets don’t come with bottom sheets!

We’re also going to weigh tomorrow morning, I don’t think it will be a true reflection of our progress as we don’t usually weigh so early in the day or week.

Neither do I think I’ve reached my thrice revised target of 18lb loss, however I’m still a lot lighter and a bit fitter than I was when I first joined this wonderful WordPress community 😊

When I first started I worried that when this weekend was over I would lose my motivation. I promise myself this is now not a concern. My next target will be be to lose 2 stone (28lb) by 21st December! Hard target again, don’t expect to reach it, but I’m gonna try my hardest!

Anyway, on to business!

Food – confession first! Unpacking my backpack from a couple of weekends ago, I found half a tub of Pringles. Who knew two week old Pringles would still taste great!

Normal food, nuts, fruit, hard boiled egg, salad – completely forgot my banana!

This evening we had Friday fish (I know, I know, it’s Thursday), oven cooked spuds and broccoli.

Fluid – 200ml milk, 1l water, 2 cups of tea.

Exercise – does rushing around like a blue arsed fly count? No? Sigh, that’s a shame, no exercise today.

I will try to update over the weekend, even if it’s just a few photos, wish me luck in trying to keep the ‘naughties’ to a minimum 😉

Hope you all have a fantastic weekend!

25th Sept 2019 – a good food and exercise day

Evening all, hope you are well 😊

All in all today has been a good day. Was busy at work this afternoon, so my lunch and exercises got pushed back a bit, but that’s not really causing any issues.

So, to the day….

Food – normal daily food, 28g nuts, 160g fruit, 1 banana at lunch time, then later than usual my salad, and after exercise my hard boiled egg.

Paul’s out with his dad and our eldest niece tonight, watching a football match, so I had the tub of sausage pasta I had frozen from last week for dinner, defrosted and reheated slowly. The pasta had broken down, but it still tasted yummy.

I’m debating whether or not to have my Greek yoghurt, certainly not feeling it at the moment. If I was just having the yoghurt for my dairy I would have a glass of milk, however I have the yoghurt to give my gut bacteria a boost. I’m hoping I feel a bit more inclined to eat later tonight. I think I will have it, I’ll make Paul’s breakfast while I’m at it as he won’t be in till about midnight.

Fluid – 200ml milk, 1.2l water, 1 cup of tea.

Exercise – weeeellll! So if you read my previous post, you’ll know my airwalker broke… while I was on it! No harm done, just have to give c25k a miss for now.

I didn’t let myself use this as an excuse not to exercise though, I found a YouTube half hour cardio work out! It’s great, a bit beyond my abilities, but hopefully that’ll give me improvement markers as time goes on.

Because I was busy at work, I didn’t get to do my exercises until late in the afternoon (working from home this afternoon) so now I really don’t fancy doing my stretchy exercises.

Not a problem though, the cardio gave me a great workout.

Gonna relax tonight, do my nails, which I planned to do last weekend, make my feet nice and smooth again as well 😊

Anyway, that’s it from me for now.

Night 👋

Couch to 5k – and there ends my campaign!

Having tried proper c25k and finding my hips in crippling pain, I switched over to my air walker – I found this much easier on my joints, so had thought to continue the programme on that until such time where my weight wasn’t giving my joints serious grief, then start the whole thing again, properly, outside in the fresh air.

The programme I was using was a nine week programme, and during my lunch time today (as I’m working from home) I started my 1st day of week 2, then…..

BAM!!!!

Damn thing broke on me! I suppose I should be thankful that there was no injury to myself, in fact, there’s no suppose about it, I am grateful, however I was disappointed, this was going to give me the good cardio work out I was after.

The cable of that foot ‘pedal’ dangling on the floor is the thing that snapped – unfixable!

So, in a panic with time, I rushed to find a cardio workout on line, one that would make me sweat for about half an hour (I was rushing because I needed to have it done before my lunch was over) and I found another youtube programme, again a hasfit one, with the coach I like, for just over half an hour.

I’M KNACKERED!!!!! it is one for beginners, and each exercise feels fine… for the first couple of goes, but then… oh my word! you really do feel everything.

Guess what – I LOVE IT! I couldn’t keep up with the two coaches, one of them does an easier version of each move, and my arms definitely burned, and my breathing – yep, that was definitely laboured, but I feel great knowing I’ve worked my butt off!

Here’s the link should you fancy giving it a go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AEO0I5VrQI

So, this will now replace each of my c25k sessions until I’ve lost enough weight to be able to run without the undue pressure on joints.

Weight loss – Diet? Exercise? Both?

Hi All.

I follow loads of bloggers, they all brighten my world in lots of different ways, the following blog post encouraged me to sharpen my knowledge about the role of exercise in my weight loss journey: https://davidsway.blog/2019/09/23/ladies-forget-about-getting-bulky-from-strength-training/

I love food, i mean, I really, REALLY love food – I enjoy the tastes, the textures. I can easily be thinking of what tasty morsels I’m going to cook for dinner when I’m eating breakfast! and as I’m capable of light multi-tasking, I’m still fully enjoying my brekkie whilst thinking of the next meal!

As a result of all these years of great tastes and textures, and as a result of not wanting to miss out on a single morsel and stuffing myself senseless, I am classed as obese, and have a good few stone to go before I’m classed as merely overweight! And I’m not alone, it’s reported that this is a growing concern around the developed world.

For anyone following me, you’ll know I am trying to diet and exercise, seems sensible, I’ve heard snippets of info over the years that suggest I need to do both in order to gain the ‘body-beautiful’.

As usual, the more I read about a particular subject, the more I realise it’s much more complicated than first thought.

So here is what I’ve read today, I’ll pop the links I’ve used at the bottom of the post, and just a reminder – I site on a computer all day, and have absolutely no background in science or medical stuff 🙂

So, healthy weight loss is a mixture, between 20-25% of exercise and 75-80% healthy diet.

Now, as an obese person, and for a lot of others out there, all we concentrate on are the scales, and that number going down, and most of us experience a great high after the first week of dieting, we almost don’t believe the number we see as it flashes back at us…. a FAB loss! and then as the weeks roll on, and providing I carry on with healthy eating, the lbs start to dwindle to a much lower number, constantish, but lower.

So, if we’re losing weight we might think to ourselves, ok, I’m losing weight, there’s gains every now and again, but on the whole I’m losing weight. OR. we might think, but I want to speed this up a bit, I know I’ve taken years to put this weight on, but I want it gone within the next 6 months! I’ll exercise!

The guidelines for safe weight loss are to aim for no more than 2lb a week, that’s about 0.9kg.

Well, if we carry on with just the dieting, and are losing more than 2lb a week, we are getting rid of fat, yes, but we are also getting rid of bone density (important for all of us but especially women during and after menopause, I mean who wants osteoporosis?) and muscle mass (which has many benefits, one of which is to support our skeleton). This is something we definitely need to bare in mind if we’re dieting only.

If we add exercise, according to research the weight loss becomes slower! go figure, I mean why on Earth would I put myself through the “JOY” of exercising, if it’s going to slow my weight loss down, right? But, here’s the great thing, providing we exercise regularly using cardio and importantly strength, we are actually encouraging better bone density AND muscle mass growth. And yes, the weight loss is slower, but not the fat loss – and surely that’s the thing we should really want to get rid off? That’s the stuff that’s choking our organs and making our lives rough!

Speaking about strength training – don’t worry, we will not become the next Mrs/Mr Universe – a lot more time and effort has to go into that sort of look than most of can give or be bothered with!

But then we might have a tracker, and see cracking ‘calories burned’ figures, and think well, know what? I’m just gonna exercise my way to health! Apparently, this is a sure fire way NOT to succeed. It seems quite a lot of us will reward ourselves for our great sesh by having a ‘deserved’ treat – muffin or bacon sarnie anyone? If I walk for an hour at 3miles an hour, i’ll still take in more calories than I’ve burned by eating a Big Mac – not really the treat my body deserves 😀

And by the way, why cardio and why strength? So we burn more calories during cardio workouts to strength workouts, but we burn more calories during the period after strength than cardio. Cardio is a great way to burn calories and strengthen our hearts, Strength is great for strengthening our muscles and bones, along with our balance.

And there are some GREAT programmes we can find on youtube, all for free, and they don’t have to be difficult. We don’t even need much in the way of equipment, when I started my strength training, I used 2x 400g cans of veggies because I didn’t have dumbbells.

So, what am I doing for exercise and healthy eating (or trying to do – I’m a work in progress) to lose weight effectively?

  • Cutting calories
  • Eating healthily
  • Cardio/step
  • Strength
  • c25k
  • Stretching/Yoga
  • Drinking water
  • It helps if we have someone to encourage us or buddy up with us 🙂

In Summary, if we’ve made the decision to change our body shape, let’s concentrate on both dieting and exercising, let’s give ourselves as much chance as possible to reach our goals! Let’s strengthen our muscles and give them some definition, so as we get rid of the fat, those muscles start to shine!

So if you have an aim to lose weight and help you body become more healthy, GOOD LUCK – you can do it!

Please see below for the sites I used for this post.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/exercise-vs-diet-for-weight-loss_n_5207271

https://www.womenshealthmag.com/weight-loss/a19982520/weight-loss-80-percent-diet-20-percent-exercise/

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/sep/19/exercise-dieting-public-health

https://www.emedicinehealth.com/what_is_bone_loss/article_em.htm#what_is_bone_loss

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/muscle-loss_b_974019

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/losing-weight-too-fast

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/cardio-vs-weights-for-weight-loss

https://www.everydayhealth.com/fitness/add-strength-training-to-your-workout.aspx

24th Sept 2019 – another great food and exercise day… So far!

I’m feeling quite relaxed at the moment, I worked from home for the last few hours of the day, and Alexa was playing Clannad to me. Love Clannad, have done since I was a kid.

Anyway, onto the business of the day…

Food – my usual daytime food with a slight difference, 28g natural nuts (walnuts, brazils, pistachio, cashews), 160g fruit (strawberries, blackberries, black grapes), my usual salad with quinoa added to it, a banana, and then my hard boiled egg this afternoon.

Dinner was chicken cooked on a maggie bag with mushrooms, peppers and onion, with my oven spuds and steamed cauliflower. I was using up remains of veg, so there was too much food, neither of us finished dinner.

We’ll have 120g fat free real Greek yoghurt, a teaspoon of seeds and either honey or maple syrup.

Fluid – 200ml milk, 1l water, 3 teas.

Exercise – 25ish minutes stretching exercise youtube programme this morning, I’ll be doing 7 minute cardio, usual 15 minute strength exercise and then more advanced strength youtube programme in about half an hour.

My calves are really tight at the moment, so I’ve been stretching them out during the afternoon, and will take a couple of ibuprofen in a moment so nothing stops my exercises.

I’m looking forward to a lie in tomorrow, I’m working from home, so my couch to 5k will be done during my lunch time.

So, that’s it from me today.

Hope you have a lovely evening or a productive day, depending on when you read this 😊

23rd Sept 2019 – great exercise and food day!

Hiya all, hope you are well!

Thought I would start this post with a bit of internal reflection.

On past attempts, I started of extremely motivated, and then after a few weeks, look for cheats, ie, deliberately not eat anything for hours before weighing. Or deliberately eat something wholly unhealthy as soon as the weigh in had been done.

I would lose motivation, simply going through the motions of improving my health, allowing the naughties to over take more and more regularly, and then panic when the weigh in day loomed!

Paul and I would go for walks, but more often than not I would be looking for an excuse not to go.

The only aim I had was the weekly weigh in. That’s all that mattered. That was the measure of my success.

This time round, what a difference! My measure now is not the scales, it is feeling pleased each day I eat well. It is feeling the pride after I complete some exercise. It is the acceptance without regret when I slip. It is the lack of guilt. It is the knowledge that I am winning my battle. This is the mental reason for my success.

I still love the scales, I still want to see the number go down. But now I know if I don’t lose weight, my body is still a little more healthy than the week before. That is now my motivation.

I still can’t quite believe how determined I feel. Even after two months (a long time for me!). There is still a niggle in the back of my mind that I’m going to fail, lose motivation, yoyo my way back to my more unhealthy self. I can’t get rid of that feeling, so I need to learn to embrace it, allow that feeling, that fear to be a reason to carry on.

All in all, I’m pleased with myself. I am winning, even with the occasional naughty meals/treats/drinks.

So on that note, how has the practical me been today?

Food – 28g nuts, 160g fruit (Black grapes, blackberries and strawberries), 1 hard boiled egg, huge tub of salad.

Tuna with rice, peas and sweetcorn for dinner, proper Greek yoghurt, seeds and maple syrup for afters.

I’ve been worried I’m not getting enough carbs, so I’m adding in an afternoon banana as of tomorrow.

Fluid – 200ml milk, 1l water, 3 teas and 1 can Pepsi max.

Exercise – couch to 5k this morning. Stretching programme this evening.

So a pleasing day 😊

Here’s to many more good days for me and for you.

Goodnight

Couch to 5k – day 3/3, week 1/9 – airwalker!

Morning all!

So this morning saw me using my airwalker so I could do the c25k without feeling crippled during or by the end of it…. Much, much better!

I feel much more confident! My hip hasn’t hurt once and because I was able to put some real effort in, I’ve sweated properly!

My knee keeps needing a click, so that’s a little uncomfortable, but nothing to stop me feeling like im getting some real benefit from exercise.

I also realise that if my hip wasn’t such a problem, being outside and doing c25k properly would be better for me. That’ll come in time.

Thought I’d take a snap of the airwalker.

Anyway, time for me to have a shower and start the day!

Have a good day alk

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started