The New Me

Wow – it has been a long time since I ventured anywhere near this blog. Mostly because I have been extremely busy with a new job and adjusting to working full time hours and also because I have been going through a weird patch with my new eating/living regime and didn’t feel proud to write about it. I went through a period of being the same weight for over two months and finally, last week, I weighed myself and I have reached my first goal – I now weigh 90kg

At the start of all this, I said to myself that I should really try ot lose 10kg and get to 90kg and I will be much happier about myself and life, and guess what? I am!

The biggest differences you can see are in my face, neck and belly. I also have more defined collar and neck shoulder bones – which I love. Everyone has noticed the change and are asking me whether I have lost weight! That is really strange and I am finding it quite awkward to deal with. In one respect, I used to hope I didn’t look that bad before I lost weight and therefore am finding it hard now as people say that they have noticed a change. I will blog about this in more detail soon as it is an interesting aspect that I think needs to be explored further.The next weigh in is tomorrow, so watch this space! I can’t waut to get in the 80s!

New job, new gym and new fitness programme.

Yes…finally, I have managed to start losing weight again. It has been a good few weeks now that my weight has stayed the same and I had been sporadically going to the gym. I had a really busy week last week and only managed to get to the gym twice. I am on track to go three times this week but we’ll see what happens I suppose.

I had a great workout at the gym today. My day started well with me getting lots of chores out of the way and event though I set off late, I decided to walk to the gym. It is a good 30 minutes walk but as the London weather is so lovely today and I wasn’t in a mad rush, I though I might as well enjoy the walk and it always doubles up as a warm up. I was like the cartoon character ‘Road Runner’ and was speeding my way towards the gym listening to some amazing music (The Cure, The Raconteurs, LCD Soundsystem and many others). I was weaving my way round slow moving people and over taking like a power walking champion! I had worked up quite a good sweat by the time I arrived at the gym.

It was quite busy today with the same guys that usually hang around there during the day. They love watching themselves in the mirror and watching all the girls. It’s quite funny when I catch them looking at me or other girls while we are on various weight machines, they can’t resist!

I did 10 mins on the bike, 5 minutes (really fast) on the rowing machine then went over to the weight machines where I did more or less 3 rounds of 20-30 reps on most machines. I then finished the session with a 15 minutes on the treadmill, 10 minutes of that I was running. I felt really pleased with myself and am looking forward to the rest of the week’s workouts….in my NEW gym!

Yes! I joined my new gym today as well, it is just down the road so it’s better for me to go to the gym before/after work. I went in and sorted out all the payments and had my picture taken for my card and booked in for my induction, which is on Wednesday. After that, I can then meet my personal trainer for my 6 week workout plan. It’s all very exciting, I can’t wait to have a plan to work to and hopefully see better results. I will let you all know how it goes.

I also bought my first pair of jeans in 5 years! Yes, I feel absolutely amazing these days and my confidence has increased and my body has started to change with he weight I have started to lose. As a result, I thought I’d try a pair on today and I loved them. So I am going to see what my boyfriend thinks and if he gives them the thumbs up too I’ll keep them.

I also forgot to mention, I got a new job! I underwent a whole series of interviews and tests last week and I got the call saying they want me for the job. I start in two weeks, hence why I decided to swap gyms. I am going to have to start buying some new clothes for my new job – I need to look the part I am also aiming to lose more weight before I start, just to give me that little bit more confidence for my first day, wish me luck!

New Flat – New Fitness Regime!

Catch-up from last week and weekend:

Well, since I blogged last week, we managed to successfully move house (not without the help of our two families consisting of two big/strong brothers, two mums and a very organised dad/driver). I didn’t manage to go the gym all last week as I had a terrible cold and had difficulty just breathing on a day to day basis let alone whilst running on the treadmill. I did however manage to make up for all that with all the packing, cleaning and lifting for the move and on the day, I really worked up a sweat running up and down 3 flights of stairs with heavy boxes and bags.

We are now very settled in the new flat and enjoying the cosiness of it. Although, I must say, when we went back to the old flat to give the keys back I realised how lucky we really were to have a flat so big! Anyways, this way we can hopefully save money on heating bills as the old flat had terrible insulation problems. There is a gym just a few minutes walk away from our new flat that I am thinking about joining. The old gym is just too far away to walk there and back and I would be spending time and money getting there and back every week. I think I’ll pop in tomorrow and see what the new gym has to offer and how much it costs. One advantage of swapping gyms is that I can hopefully get away from a few men at my current gym that seem to have taken a shine to me, P in particular, who even asked me to go Salsa dancing with him!

As you can see in my weekly stats section, I lost another kilo last week! I am over the moon! I have finally moved into the 14 Stone category now and will enjoy working off more lbs to the next stone! I was quite surprised actually because I hadn’t been to the gym at all last week and I also had a few days of bad eating surrounding the move and the few days off we had whilst unpacking. We had an indian takeaway one night and I had about 4 small bottles of larger throughout the weekend to celebrate the successful move. Oh and a glass of bubbly! I also gave into temptation twice this week as it was Iranian New Year (Aide Norouz) and I had our parents round for a meal and we had lots of cutely decorated eggs and some gorgeous Iranian sweeties and some mini easter chocolate eggs and I just couldn’t resist. We did do alot of Iranian dancing though and we worked up quite a sweat. I also had a few truffle seashells last night (mmm…yummy) as I was feeling particularly peckish and fancied something sweet with my cuppa. So I am fully focused again now…I promise!

Here is a picture of our ‘Haft Sin’ table for Iranian New Year (Aide Norouz). Haft = seven and Sin = the letter ‘S’, we always have dress the table with at least 7 ‘S’ objects for good luck in the new year. Can you guess what things on the table begin with the Iranian ‘S’?

See Wikipedia for more information on Iranian New Year: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_new_year

In terms of weight loss and exercise, let’s see how this week goes!? I went to the gym this morning and did about an hours work out and then went to Sainsburys and did a bit of food shopping. Stocked up on lots of olives and lettuce for my lunchtime salads. My broadband still hasn’t been installed so I am on dial-up this week. We really missed having the internet over the weekend, it felt so strange not being able to just check things out when we needed to and I also really missed blogging and reading everyone elses blogs.

I have started to get a great response from readers on my blog and I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who has contacted me. I am so glad that I am motivating people to exercise and live healthily. I really appreciate all comments and encouragement. I even got my first blog review this week! http://www.blogcatalog.com/blogs/fit-firm-and-fly.html

The Jean Genie

Wow…I have had a good start to the week. I have been so busy that I haven’t had a chance to write for a few days.

Since last writing we have managed to find a new flat! Woo! And we are also in the process of planning to pack, we haven’t got round to packing anything yet but we have made a start at clearing out some old books we didn’t want and I have been taking bags of them down to the charity shop this week.

Over the weekend, we went to a fancy dress birthday party (theme: 1960s) and I dressed as a 60s air stewardess. My boyfriend was dressed as Che Guevara (he died in 1967) and we had a great time singing karaoke and dancing. Now I was discussing this with my boyfriend that, I’m not a massive fan of fancy dress parties. I’m not sure if other overweight people agree with me but my theory is this: We hate it because we have to wear clothes that we aren’t comfortable in. Now when I mean comfortable, I don’t mean that they are easy to wear with nice soft fabrics, I mean they are the same old clothes that we know we can fit in and hide all the bits we hate. My usual, comfortable clothes are always a pair of black tailored trousers (usually a wide fit as to not cling to my thighs) and a top and cardigan. Now, I hate my black trousers, but they are the only thing that I think isn’t going to show off my thighs or make my arse look massive – I am so fed up with them that one of my goals for losing weight is to be able to fit into jeans again and look good in them!

Now the pressures that are associated with going to work everyday and wearing black trousers are that people start to think you only have one pair of trousers and wonder what’s wrong with you. No one has ever said anything to me but I know they are thinking it and wondering why I never wear jeans or skirts or different coloured trousers. I have three pairs of black trousers that I wash regularly so that I always have a fresh pair to wear, but I feel so embarrassed and can’t wait to fit into different clothes and start experimenting more with colours. Summer is always the worst time for black trouser wearers as it is always so hot and black absorbs the heat and you simply look stupid walking around with black trousers and a cardi. Now, every summer I overcome the ’showing off my upper arms’ thing in public, but it is always a struggle. I don’t know if it is just me or whether other people have had this experience, but as soon as you wear a short sleeved t-shirt, people seem to start looking at your upper arms and noticing that they are big! I hate it.

So, anyways, back to fancy dress parties. The reason why I enjoyed this fancy dress party more so than others was because I have now lost 4 kgs and I am starting to feel changes in my body. Good changes. And my confidence is starting to increase. So I wore a really cute, below the knee, black skirt and a tight, slinky black top with a 60s patterned neck scarf and a thick shiny purple alice band. I was told several times throughout the night that I looked amazing, sophisticated and chic…so that gave me a boost and my boyfriend kept telling me how sexy I was!

The same night, there was another woman at the party that I know who is also overweight. Although we haven’t talked about it I know that she is uncomfortable with he weight as she shows all the signs. She wears the same jeans and big leather jacket whenever I see her and just changes her t-shirt which is always a dark baggy one. I could tell she hated the fancy dress party as she had tried to accessorise with 60s things rather than wear something that looks 60s. She wore the same jeans, t-shirt and black leather jacket and just wore a pair of sunglasses and put some jewellery on that looked almost 60s. I have been thinking about it since and am so happy that I am trying to make changes. I don’t ever want to be a slave to my weight again, ever!

Hopefully, it won’t be long before I get into a pair of jeans, I can’t wait. I used to wear UK size 16 jeans and I looked good in them, so I only have to go down one clothes size, as I am currently UK size 18.

That reminds me, I need to decide on an ideal weight for me so that I can aim for it. I’ll look at some websites and see what they suggest is the best way of working it out. I know that in clothes size terms if I can get down to a UK 14-16, I’ll be really happy. If I can lose more that would be a bonus!

David Bowie – The Jean Genie, Live: