Early Morning Gym Bliss

I woke up early this morning to get in the gym for my first workout of three for the week. It was a struggle as I didn’t go to bed until 2am, so my eyes were shut while I was getting dressed. I always have to be so quiet as to not wake my boyfriend up, but I always manage to drop something and he opens his eyes and says “well done”. He knows how much I want to lose weight and how much of a struggle it is to get up early and go to the gym before work, so it’s sweet to hear his encouragement.

I walked fast to the gym as it was quite chilly. Once I got there I did a fast 5 minutes on the rowing machine and then headed downstairs to the weights section. I mainly worked on the thighs and calves and then finished the 40 minute session with 15 minutes on th treadmill. It was hard work but I felt so good for doing it.

I weighed myself today and I am the same. I obviously need to start focussing more on what i’m eating and trying to think less about food. I am still snacking here and there and I had some alcohol on the weekend, which I could cut down on, as well as the chocolates/sweets. I haven’t had much but I kind of gave in to eating sugary things and desserts on Friday and Saturday night.

I will focus this week and let you know how it goes. I ate pasta tonight, home cooked with no extra sugar or excessive oil. I feel really full and I’m not looking at eating anything else before bed.

Good night, FFF

I’m back and so is the weight

I’m back again, it has been almost 9 months since my last blog entry and since then I have managed to put all my weight back on again. Two weeks ago, I was back at 100kg. It took a long while to put the weight back on, I managed to keep it off right up until Christmas and then it was a downward spiral from there. One excuse from another. I’m not totally sure why, apart from the eating and not going to the gym enough, I don’t really understand why I let myself get back to my old weight?

Here are some of the reasons:

- Lack of motivation due to long work hours: I now have to go to the gym three times a week before work, so that means early mornings and getting ready quickly in the morning to get to work on time. I could go after work, but I just wouldn’t have the energy.

- Cold weather: throughout the winter months, having to wake up early while it was still dark was a big struggle. I also go to bed quite late, so sleeping is important to me.

- Losing sight of my main aim: I let others things get to me, I started to get back into old habits and eating comfort foods to supposedly ‘help’ me after a hard day’s work. I also didn’t set myself an actual weight loss target, I think that was also a problem.

- Getting too many weight loss compliments from everyone: My boyfriends parents, my family and friends were all noticing my weight loss. Losing 10kg did make a significant difference to the way I looked, but it also gave me more confidence, so I started wearing jeans again and buying more fitted clothes. But deep down, I knew it wasn’t enough and I couldn’t see the person I wanted to be yet in the mirror. I should have just been happy with what I had managed to do already and how far I had come along, but I started to get down about it and gradually lost interest and lost the will to succeed…what was the point?

There were other reasons, which I will touch on when in my future entries, but there were also lots of positives that came with the weight loss.

I started back on my fitness and weight loss regime two weeks ago, Mon 7 April. I will now start planning my comeback and will document all.

Wish me luck!

FFF

KooKoo Sabzi Recipe

Ingredients:

• vegetables (parsley, dill, coriander, lettuce, spring onion ends), about 1 kg
• 6 x large free range eggs
• Zereshk (barberry) 2 spoonfuls
• 2 handfuls of chopped walnuts
• wheat flour, one spoon
• sunflower oil
• salt
• ground black pepper

Wash herbs and rinse thoroughly. Chop finely. Add eggs, salt, pepper, flour, barberry and walnuts. Mix well and beat it to get lots of air into the mixture.

Heat oil in a non-stick pan until it is really hot. Pour in the mixture, flatten the surface with the back of a spoon, and place the lid on. Reduce heat and all to fry for about 10 minutes, until kookoo is cooked under. Cut into 4 equal pieces, turn over, and allow to cook on a low heat for another 20 minutes.

HINTS:

• Chives, sometimes called garlic chives are the same as “tarreh”. If you can’t find fresh chives, you can use the stems of either scallions (piazcheh) which are also called green onions, or Leek which is the same as “tarreh farangi”.

This is a great dish for vegetarians and goes well with rice or even in a sandwich with lots of lovely salad. I used to get leftovers of this to have in my sandwiches at school when I was younger…was always scrumptious.

Loobia Polow Recipe

Loobia Polow Recipe

• basmati or long-grain rice, 500 grams
• lamb or beef, 400 grams (I like using turkey mince)
• green beans, 400 grams
• 2 x medium onions
• 2 spoonfuls of tomato puree
• sunflower oil ( or any other cooking oil), small amount
• salt
• ground black pepper
• Tumeric

Directions:
Peel and slice onions and fry in oil until golden then add meat which has been cut into small pieces and fry over a medium heat until it all gets brown. Then cut the green beans into small-ish pieces and add them to fry for a small time too. After 5 mins add two glasses of water as well as the salt, pepper, tumeric and tomato puree and allow the whole mixture to boil down.

To prepare rice: wash rice twice and, if you have them time soak in salted warm water for 3-4 hours, otherwise just drain the water after cleaning. Pour water in a large non-stick pan until it is half-full and bring it to a boil. Add rice and a spoonful of salt and continue boiling until rice slightly softens and is half cooked. Pour rice into a drain and wash it with slightly warm water. Then finally add the meat-mix to the rice and mix well. Cover and cook over low heat for about 30 minutes. Remember rice cooks by steaming, so try not to life the top off too many times.

This dish can be made so that it is healthy by not adding too much salt or adding too much oil…I’ll leave that decision up to you.

I always have with a light salad (tomatoes, lettuce, cucumber) with a deliciously fresh olive oil, salt, ground black pepper and freshly squeezed lime dressing).

International Food Party

Sorry, I have been really busy and haven’t been updating my blog. This post is from Thurs 5 April…I know, I know, there is no decent excuse for this…I am going to try and catch up on everything in different posts.

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As a leaving do for one of the girls at work we arranged an international food party where everyone had to bring food from their country or origin (or a country that they decided to adopt). Well, my boyfriend and I naturally represented Iran and brought a whole host of Iranian delicacies and Shiraz wine (Wikipedia: Its name stems from Shiraz—the city of flowers, wine and poetry in Iran—in the heart of an ancient winemaking region). I cooked KooKoo Sabzi and Loobya Polow (recipes to follow in next posts) and we were treated to Portuguese (Padrón peppers with olive oil and lots of salt as well as pork sausage and Portuguese Verde wine), Israeli (Matza, horseradish, Jewish wine, sweet chutneys), Swiss (cheese fondue and wine), German (potato cakes with apple sauce, red cabbage and German bread) as well as homemade Australian desserts! See images below:

(Anzac biscuits, strawberry and passion fruit Pavlova and Lamingtons). We also had an Australian sing-a-long to Slim Dusty’s The Pub With No Beer. All topped off with some Bundy and coke!

The food was amazing and I must say, as it was staggered, I didn’t eat loads! Very pleased with myself.

A great night was had by all and we danced all night as everyone brought music from their own countries ranging from Kraftwerk and Keltzmer and yoddling music to traditional Iranian dancing songs (especially Baba Karam).

I did also manage to go to the gym yesterday and feel very happy with myself as too much food was consumed at the party! But I couldn’t resist eating food from around the world!

Hayfever, salads and personal trainers

Since moving house and getting over my cold, I haven’t been too brilliant at keeping up with my fitness regime over the last few weeks. I weighed myself this morning and I am the same as last week – which is good considering I only went to the gym once last week and we had a friend round so I drank more alcohol than I usually do and a few meals out.

I went to the gym this morning after a morning of feeling very itchy – my nose just wouldn’t stop itching and the skin on my hands, neck and face has come up in an itchy rash. I get this every summer, as soon as the sun comes out and I start taking antihistamines. So I think it has started now!

I had a great workout which lasted about 1 hour and 15 mins and I then had a lovely walk round town and did some food shopping for the week. I also checked out the gym near my new flat and found out it costs £35/month! That is £5 more than my current gym but I think I will save not having to use the bus there and back 3 times a week. One good thing about the new gym is that a personal trainer is included in the package – I get to have 1 hour with them every month and they set me a training programme – now that sounds great! I have wanted some proper instruction now for quite a while as I feel I might need to work other parts of my body.

Lunch was lovely today, I had one of my gorgeous salads with chicken, giant olives and crackers (see picture below):

I was so full and I am still now, so I will probably be able to hold out until my boyfriend gets home and we can eat dinner together – we have the choice of stir-fry salmon or soup…mmmmm….we’ll see what one he goes for!?

I am hoping to get to the gym 3 times this week, I really need to get back into my routine and lose some more weight in the next weigh-in, so fingers crossed!

It’s still all on track!

I am back online! Yes, the broadband has been connected and I am back on my laptop on the couch writing this! It’s bliss.

I couldn’t weigh myself this Monday, I was staying at my parents’ house and would you believe it…they don’t own a working weighing machine! I also forgot to weight myself on Tuesday morning before I went to work, so a few days late, the results are in, I have lost about 1lbs/0.5kg which I am ecstatic about! I really thought with all my eating halva, biscuits, icecream and drinking beer last week I would have put weight on, but luckily I managed to keep moving and behaving myself with food portions. I also only went to the gym once as I was extremely busy, so it is a relief to know that I can still lose weight even if I’m not on top form.

Managed to get to the gym this morning, I had an excellent workout. I started on the bike and did 10 minutes warm up on the aerobics trainer workout and then did 5 minutes of fast rowing on the machine. Moved over to the weights section and worked my way through all the muscle groups doing reps of 20-30 x 3. It was excellent because I was really working my muscles throughout the weight training section and I had worked up quite a sweat throughout. I then moved over to the step machine and trained on the ‘fat burn’ workout for 15 minutes whilst watching a Poker tournament on tv and listening to some brilliant music on my ipod. The time just flew by as I was totally engrossed in the poker tournament because my brothers taught me how to play over the weekend. I love it!

The weekend went well…I went to a Tapas bar with my family and we ate loads of gorgeous spanish food and I had a scrumptious desert which I shared with my brothers and my parents. This is new for me as desert was only ever mine! I can’t believe I did it really but the thought process in my head was that I was still a bit peckish after the tapas and one of the chocolate and fudge ice cream deserts was screaming out at me so I ordered it and then I asked for extra spoons for everyone! Not bad aye!?

I am hoping to get to the gym on friday although my boyfriend has the day off and one of our friends is down from Norwich so I may be distracted.

I am going to cook a gorgeous roast chicken tonight with oven roasted carrots and  potatoes.

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:

Quick Update

Right, well now I’ve told you the purpose of this blog, I think I should give you an update on the last 3 weeks since my decision to make things happen. I joined a gym well over a year ago and actually, I was quite good at attending. I tried to get to the gym twice a week and I usually managed to. Along with this going to the gym, I also tried to be healthy and eat sensible food (no chocolate or cakes). This usually worked for a couple of days and then I would have a bad day at work or I would be bored and then I would completely give into temptation, go to the supermarket and buy lots of yummy food! Anything that I could see that I fancied at the time. It would usually be a mixture or something chocolatey and something fruity. Not only was it not enough that I was about to eat all of this, I would also consider buying something for later, after dinner, as a ‘treat’!

After eating all that rubbish, the next time I wanted to go to the gym, I just thought what’s the point? As I had eaten all that the day before, it really wasn’t worth it. So for the rest of the week I would follow the cycle of buying ‘treats’ from the supermarket to eat after breakfast, lunch and dinner. Then, a week later, I would get to the point where I wasn’t happy with my body and might have had a cry or a moan about my weight to my boyfriend and then we would talk it through and temporarily sort the problem. I would then be motivated to go to the gym again and the whole cycle would start again…does that make any sense at all? If not, that is precisely how it felt in my head. It was totally cinsuming. I would be thinking about what I am going to eat as a ‘treat’ before, during and after every meal and I wouldn’t be satisfied until I had my dose of sugar…I would then go about what I had to do thinking about the next ‘treat’.

Now this is when things changed, three weeks ago, I had another talk with my boyfriend and I was crying and telling him how upset I was and why my life was the way it is and he talked me through how he thinks (as a naturally thin person) and he asked me lots of questions (which he normally asked every time we had this kind of talk) along the lines of “why do you want to eat those treats?” I would always reply “because they make me happy, because I like them, because they cheer me up when I’m bored, sad tired”. This time, he just kept asking it and I kept saying my standard response, then I don’t know what clicked, but I suddenly realised that these ‘treats’ don’t actually make me happy…in fact they make me really depressed and they are the reason why I was crying.

So to cut a long story short, after that talk, I just felt really liberated. Now, I know that it has only been 3 weeks, but this time there is something different. I am sitting here writing this blog and being totally honest about something that has been bugging me for years. I have been to the gym 8 times over the last three weeks (I am aiming for 3 times a week) and I have cut out chocolates and other sugary/fatty foods and have just been eating my three main meals and also eating lots of fruit in between.

Now, I’m not saying it hasn’t been hard and I haven’t been badgering my boyfriend about there not being anything ‘intersting’ in the house to eat…but I have been good. In fact, for me, very good. I can’t believe I’m saying this but it feels right and normal! I am so much more relaxed, I just don’t think about eating that much anymore, well not all the crap that I used to eat and I have even been into the local supermarket and walked straight past the chocolate aisle! Now that is a brilliant result, isn’t it?

So from now on I am going to try to keep you all updated on what I’m doing, how I am finding this new approach to life and also give you weekly weigh-ins and possibly some photos so we can track the changes together (if I can bare to show you my flabby bits!).

I would love to hear from any of you out there that are struggling with becoming fit, firm and also holding back on enjoying their lives as well as people that have achieved their goal and how their lives have changed. Also, anyone with advice and support is greatly appreciated. Because I know it isn’t going to be easy and my boyfriend isn’t always at hand to coach me through it but I really need to do this and to carry on enjoying my life. Wish me luck!

You know what? I already have a smile on my face because I have started this blog and have written all of this out!