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

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!

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!

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

Like a Rolling Stone

I have just got back from the gym after a great workout. My weigh-in wasn’t that brilliant today, I lost 0.5kg/1lbs which is better than nothing but at least I am now on the 15 Stone mark! After weighing myself this morning, I felt a bit down, after my success the last few weeks and having gone to the gym 3 times last week, I expected a better result. I know that I still need to cut down my portions at dinner time, I am usually so hungry by the time we eat dinner, I eat too much. So I still need to work on my portion sizes and I also need to find some healthy meals to cook throughout the week to keep the weight loss working.

I have also been thinking that as I usually do a mixture of cardio and weight training in the gym, I may be building muscle which is heavier than fat. So if this is the case, in time, I should gain from having more muscle as it increases my metabolic rate and I will need more energy to to everyday things and in turn lose more weight! So, I can definitely feel my thigh muscles getting more defined and my calves. After the weigh-in this morning, I checked several websites to see what it says about gaining muscle and weight loss and they confirmed what I was thinking. Now I just need to work on different muscles in my body and make sure I use them all otherwise I could injure myself. I think I need to buy a book or find a website with information on the right way to weight train. Any ideas anyone?

I cam across this website this morning whilst looking at weight training and understanding how muscles work. I found this ‘Muscle Game’ quite fun: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/body/index_interactivebody.shtml

I am finding it quite hard to be happy today as I really did expect a larger weight loss – but I keep thinking about how well I’ve done and how proud I am going to be once I’ve reached my target weight (which I haven’t set yet). I was listening to Bob Dylan on the way back from the gym and the lyrics to his song ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ made me think, in particular the section below:

“When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?”

And that is how I feel, I have got nothing to lose by carrying on this healthy lifestyle and I have started to share my thoughts and feelings online here with you all and I would have so much to lose if I gave up and went back to how I was 5 weeks ago…so I will keep going and will do my best to make sure I lose a bit more weight next week!

Bob Dylan – Like a Rolling Stone

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20 minutes fast walk to the gym

10 minutes on bike

40 minutes weight training

15 minutes cross trainer

5 minutes stretching

10 minutes walk with heavy shopping home

Total: 1hr 40mins

The Moving House Workout

I am moving house in 17 days and we haven’t started packing yet. My plan is to get the house nice and tidy first, Spring clean, and then mess it all up again with boxes, boxes and more boxes as well as some bags full of stuff. Cleaning our current flat is always a workout in itself as our vacuum cleaner has started to play up. As if hoovering wasn’t hard enough, I now have to yank at the power cord every few seconds just to move around a room. As Thursday’s are usually my day off from the gym I thought that cleaning the house and possibly starting to pack would keep me active and give me an allover body workout.

It’s funny how I see everyday things now as adding to my weight loss mission. My boyfriend and I have loads of books and we simply can’t move all of them with us again so we sat down the other night and started to decisively choose between which books we really wanted to keep and which ones we were going to give to the local charity shop. Anyways, I ended up taking big bags of heavy books with me on my way to the gym and dropping them off at the local charity shop, it’s amazing how easy I found lugging these heavy bags of books since I started working out at the gym. Let’s hope actually moving house will be as easy – wish me luck!

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:

Who said Monday’s are blue?

You might have noticed that I have added this week’s weigh-in to my blog and….I’ve lost weight! I can’t believe it. I’ve lost 3kg (6.6lbs) and after such a hard start 3 weeks ago, I am chuffed. I’ve been feeling so good since I weighed myself this morning that I have had a gigantic smile on my face all day, which has caused people to ask me why I am so happy when I have been in the shops – and I have been saying, it’s just a great day!

As it is Monday, it is gym day and I walked my usual 20 minute walk to the gym whilst thinking about how much I am enjoying this positive change in my life. I had my ipod on and was listening to Cesaria Evora, Gorillaz, Dizzy Rascal and Nina Simone and was walking in time with the music, does anyone else do that? I sometimes even break out into a mini dance, taking a double step here and a skip there whilst clicking my fingers and miming along, I enjoy the looks I get when people catch me mid-act.

As a treat to myself for losing weight last week, I had an extra hard work out. I spent 10 mins on a really hard cardio programme on the bike and 6 minutes on the rowing machine. I then headed to the weights section and started doing my usual reps on the various machines. I was sweating throughout and quite enjoyed the fact that the weights area wasn’t full of people today so I could relax. The finale was a 20 minute jog on the treadmill whilst listening to tracks that always get me motivated and moving (including The Chemical Brothers, Rage Against the Machine, White Stripes, Plastic Bertrand, Talking Heads and many others).

I am now thinking of stepping up my gym workouts and mixing visits to the gym with some exercise classes and maybe swimming. I also think I need to get a book or find a website with some workout tips and lessons as I think I need some advice on what I’m doing and what muscle groups I should be working. If anyone knows of any good websites or books, please let me know, would be great to hear from any of you who has got a great workout routine that works as well.

Anyways…I am off now as I have to cook dinner before I go and see a flat tonight with my boyfriend. The count down is on now, our landlord has sold our flat and so we’re on the hunt for a new place. We have to be out by the end of March so we have been looking at flats and talking to estate agents – oh the joys!

I’m hoping that I am able to celebrate again next Monday but for now…I am going to enjoy this loss and have dance to Happy Mondays: 24 Hour Party People.

I’ll update on the flat hunt tomorrow…fingers crossed!

Happy Mondays – 24 Hour Party People

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Walking: 20 minutes fast

Gym: 1 hour and 10 minutes (mixture of weights and cardio)