Category Archives: Diet update

Weekly News Round-Up

Diet update, In the here & now, ,

news 1

I’m running very fast this week to try and get ahead of myself.  It’s a clever little devil this WordPress thingamabob, I can write posts up ahead of time and schedule them to appear as if by magic, so in the unlikely event that my girlfriends do arrange for me to be ravaged for 24 hours straight by that dream boy I was dropping hints about, or if I’m actually trapped in the bathroom with a tiger, our posse should still have fresh reading material on a daily basis whilst I’m on holiday, or at the very least most days. Too cool for school eh? I will have some time whilst I’m away (an eleven hour flight for example!) and I adore writing this so I’m hoping to grab a bit of time here and there, but I like to be prepared just in case.

And, stand by for exciting news – we now have our very own Break Out The Skinny Girl Facebook page! If you’re on Facebook, please come and make friends…I’ve been sharing the daily blog posts via the BOTSG Facebook page and you guys can share or post stuff to the page too if you like…get in on the action you know?

I know in the context of the world wide web we’re really small potatoes but so far this month we’ve had almost fifteen thousand page views for the blog from almost sixteen hundred different folk…that’s purely down to you lot telling your friends about BOTSG, so thank you, I think you’re all beyond awesome! The subscription button that I introduced last week has proved really popular and now lots of people are getting Skinny Mail direct to their inbox daily, and feedback has been great…I’ve scratched my head in bewilderment more than a few times and just thought, you know, how has this even happened?!  I dared to dream. And here we all are.

In other back-of-the-net news…everybody in the office ate Chinese food at lunchtime yesterday. Except me! LOOK at my halo shining! I’d taken my lunch, which I’d pointed, and I ate that and left the noodles to them and it didn’t bother me a scrap. And today, I picked my son something up from the chippy whilst I was getting my holiday money, and despite the fact that it smelled divine, I buzzed in and out, picking up lunch for him and nothing for me, and what’s more it didn’t bother me one bit…I felt normal! To a skinny string bean that’s nothing…only a fat girl will get the magnitude.

So I’ve not engaged with the bitch in the bathroom this week, (for those of you who are new to BOTSG that’s code for the bathroom scales!) nor do I plan to until after my trip. Maybe then I’ll propose a truce once a month or so just to keep a watching brief. I should really pull my big girl pants on and deal with the trauma once a month you know? But I feel skinnier…that’s good enough for me. Twice this week I have worn shirts for work which have been too snug to wear up to now, and now they’re not. Do I need to explain the width of this grin..? Nah, course I don’t…you get it!

Anyway, I hope you’ve all had a great week – I don’t actually head out until Tuesday, but let me apologise in advance for any posts that don’t make sense after that…yes, probably too much champagne 🙂 🙂

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Reflections on the Week

Diet update, Freeform thoughts, In the here & now, ,

weekI love Sunday mornings…it’s usually the day where I don’t need to wake to an alarm. Charlie the dog sleeps in my bedroom and he knows that when I’m awake and no alarm has sounded he’s in with the chance of a cuddle. Lately we’ve taken to reading the Sunday papers together on line with his little cold nose pressed into the crook of my arm, as well as the Skinny Girl messages that have come in overnight, since I usually post right before I go to sleep.

It’s been quite a week. My first week following the weight watchers food plan instead of a low-carb regime. It’s gone well – went a bit mad the first couple of days eating fruit which is a huge no-no on a carb free diet, and it’s fair to say that my insides reacted to this change of diet in fairly predictable fashion. Who knew a fat lass could move so fast eh?  Ussain Bolt might have felt a bit intimidated if he’d clocked my personal best somewhere around Tuesday as I sprinted to….ah ok, TMI, right?

Considering I had two days out at conference where the main hall was surrounded by food stalls, freebies, suppliers wanting to give away samples of goodies left right and centre, topped off by a gala dinner where I could only estimate points, I managed to ignore the asshole in my head and keep the faith. I had a brief encounter with the bastard in the bathroom this morning and I’m happy to report than another pound has melted away. Ten pounds would have been better but I’ll take a pound. I’m still in the game.

What else can I share…ah yes, I’ve done a little bit of development on the Skinny Girl website. I’ve tweaked the content on a few of the pages, and most exciting of all I’ve added a subscription facility – yey! This means that should you want a link sending to your inbox every time I make a new post, so you can read it hot off the press or get to the post with just one click, you can become a subscriber and that will happen as if by magic! You’ll see the little box underneath the top ten posts list, just to the right of where your eyes are now…I promise not to share your email address or bombard you with crap. Have a poke around, let me know what you think of the changes…any feedback welcome!

We’ve had visitors from 43 countries so far since the beginning of October – that’s pretty bloody awesome don’t you think?  And this week, somebody posted a comment on the Daily Mail website under an article about dieting where they gave a shout out to our blog…visitors went through the roof. You can imagine the excitement here at Skinny Towers, I was beside myself!

So for every single one of you who loves the blog and has shared posts and told people about it, thank you so much, I’m insanely in love with each and every one of you. As my support network grows, so does yours and I think what we’re building is really special.

Have a great week 🙂

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Switching It Up

Diet update, In the here & now, , ,

hippo

Well it had to be done. You know my attitude to standing on the dreaded scales, and it’s probably what, five or six weeks since I did it? Diet is going well, or should I say my motivation level remains at an all time high thanks in no small measure to writing my blog, and to you lot in the posse for your lovely posts and emails. I’m still front and centre of the sweet spot…BUT. I don’t appear to be skinny yet. Which to be honest is pissing me right off. I mean it’s all relative isn’t it, I know I’m not going to break out the skinny girl in like 10 minutes, but I’d hoped to be at least one dress size smaller by now and I’m not feeling it. So this morning I had a face-off with the bitch in my bathroom.

(Please do excuse my fruity language especially if you’ve joined us for the first time…I don’t generally have a potty mouth but since I’ve named the asshole in my head his power to upset me has diminished quite considerably, so I’ve adopted it as a strategy. The scales have been duly re-named.)

AAARGH. It’s the good news/bad news thing. I’m 5lbs down since my last attempt to make friends with the number on the scale – cast your mind back to last time, I had a sour mood for days afterward. So 5lbs off is good on the one hand but I’ve gotta be honest, I’d expected more. Shit. No wonder my clothes aren’t hanging off me yet. Right then, well I refuse to be fed up about it, but I need to switch this up a bit and I know exactly how I’m going to do it. I’m going to change my diet of choice.

Whatever diet we all choose to follow, if we stick to it it’s going to show results, right? Low carb diets in the past have worked fairly quickly for me but this time I’m not getting there any faster than I would if I was following a broader food plan, therefore having given it a good go over the last couple of months, I’m going to ‘spend’ my food budget in a different way. I’ve been toying with the idea for a couple of weeks anyway – I’ve had to think about what’s going to happen on holiday, given that champagne is a no-no on a carb free diet and I need to feel in control but not limited. So, I’m going to fish out all my weight watchers paraphernalia and crack on with that and see how I go on. The next couple of days should be interesting as my body adjusts to a new regime.

It may make you smile to know that I’ve just had a very predictable dialogue with the asshole in my head…“why don’t you have the weekend off then, and start on Monday..new diet, new week? You could have a Chinese tonight, no need to go mad but how about some noodles? I know you can have those on weight watchers anyway, but if you start officially on Monday you can eat Chinese tonight without it coming out of your weekly points”…he thought he was going to score an easy victory there. No chance asshole, get back in your box. No chink in this armour buddy, better luck next time fu

Have a good week everyone and thanks for your continuing support…it makes a big wide world of difference 🙂

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Skin in the Game

Diet update, Freeform thoughts, In the here & now,

feeling good

I’m enjoying something of an easy ride at the moment – truth be told I feel almost guilty that I’m not providing you with more drama, like my diet blog won’t properly earn it’s stripes unless it’s chock-a-block with tales of struggles and overcoming adversity. All I’ve managed to do so far is to demonstrate that the asshole is…well, an asshole who spends his days just being annoying rather than effective. Which must be twisting his melon BIG TIME because I’ve been such a pushover in the past.

This sweet spot that I’ve landed in is providing me with a protective shell against the worst of him – that, and the company of our posse, obviously. Don’t get me wrong, he hasn’t gone away…he had a bit of a chew at me yesterday in fact. To cut a long story short I had a really early start and I’d taken breakfast with me (low carb muffins, see my foodie page) – the first opportunity to eat didn’t present itself until I was settled on the short flight over to Ireland (which I made with 7 minutes to spare due to heavy traffic, talk about squeaky bum time!) and as I thought about reaching into my bag to get one out,  I was acutely aware of him chuntering on in my ear about how everyone on the flight would look at me with contempt and think ‘trust the fat girl to bring a picnic for a 30 minute flight hahahaha‘ – his words did sting a bit and I decided not to eat. So he still has the ability to make me second-guess myself, but no real teeth to throw me off track, for now.

I’m fascinated as to the reason why – what is it that’s making this feel like a walk in the park? I’ve become gradually more aware over the last couple of weeks in particular that I’m nurturing a deep down core belief that this will be one of the times in my life where I’ve really managed to get a hold of myself and I’m going to complete the long march from fat to skinny, that’s how secure I feel right now. I’m scared to turn over too many stones in my desire to understand what makes this time different, in case it vanishes like a fart in the breeze – sharing my thoughts with the posse on a daily basis is definitely helping, and I suspect that having almost six weeks’ worth of skin in the game is also a factor.

In the first flush of resolve with a new diet it’s easy for him to justify a slip-up as a false start, and persuade me to get on board with his twisted thinking but the fact that I’ve managed not to let his barrage of chatter un-nerve me is turning down the volume of his voice ever so slightly. I wouldn’t say he’s on the ropes but he’s definitely spending more time in his corner.

One piece of exciting news that I have to share is that Crabby McSlacker from Cranky Fitness invited me to submit a guest blog to her website – I cannot begin to tell you how much I’ve chuckled at the prospect of me writing an article for a fitness website. I mean you almost have to have an epi-pen on standby whenever I so much as think about exercise! I’ll post a link when it goes live, in case you’d like to check it out.

So all in all a great week – I’m just going to keep on keeping on…as always, I appreciate your company, it’s helping more than you know. I hope things are going equally well for you guys 🙂

 

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Sunday Check-in

Diet update, In the here & now, , ,

pup

I seem to recall making a rash statement last weekend about using Sunday posts to give you an update on my progress. I’m going to have to apply a little creative thinking if I want to keep you occupied for longer than one blink of an eye, diet updates are something of a challenge when you’re averse to standing on a set of scales.

For those friends who are new to my blog, welcome and to save you wading through past posts, I’m benchmarking my success by size not weight – me and the scales, well we have a ‘thing’ you know? They bring out the diva in me so I avoid them wherever possible, and  working  on the principle that if I haven’t cheated on my diet, I’m bound to be losing weight,  giving them a wide berth means one less opportunity for the asshole in my head to attack my mood if the needle hasn’t moved as much as I’d hoped.

So two good things happened to me this week – my friend at work looked at me and said ‘you look thin today’ – bear in mind this is all relative, I am about as far from thin as it’s possible to be, but when the weight does start to come off, it’s not unusual for it to come off my face first, so I suspect that’s what she meant – it did prompt a cheesy grin and a feel good factor of eleven on the one-to-ten scale!

The other huge thing to happen this week which has caught me completely unawares is the incredible support and messages I’ve had from around the world from people who have dipped into my blog and taken the time to read and respond to my posts – truth be told I’m a little bit overwhelmed.

Sean and Jack, who both have well established blogs very graciously allowed me to signpost their respective sites on my ‘Interesting Stuff’ page, and reciprocated with a link to my blog from their own pages, which has sent visitor numbers into overdrive! I’ve found myself turning into a geek, looking at graphs and getting very giddy when pins started dropping left and right – I’ve had visitors from seven countries in the last 24 hours which just about makes me want to pee my pants.

Being serious for a minute, the amount of people who have reached out and offered words of encouragement, or emailed me and shared their own story has been nothing short of awesome. Exhilarating! Touching.  To the asshole in my head, stick THAT in your pipe and smoke it…there’s a posse of us now and we’re all motoring through this together.

One of the popular motivation theories for keeping on the straight and narrow if you’re in this for the long game is apparently to build a really strong support network. Well bugger me, isn’t that the truth!  I feel on top of the world. Thanks for reading, I feel the support and I’m sending it right back at ya 🙂

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