lose weight

At the start of this year, I lost over a stone using Boots’ Change One Thing, a website where you counted your calories and aimed to stick to a set limit, and kept track of how much exercise you did. However, I got lazy after 3-4 months (as well as being particularly stressed due to uni and personal circumstances), and have not been eating particularly healthy or exercising for the sake of it for months now. And as a result, I’m back up over 11 stone, which is overweight for my height.

I have a couple of deadlines in the next few weeks – on the 18th, the contemporary music festival I’m helping organise begins, and on the 27th I’m performing in one of the concerts. I’m going to be on stage throughout the festival though, so in the next couple of weeks I’d like to try and shed a couple of pounds so that my clothes are not so clingy! I know I’ll feel more confident if I’ve lost that little bit of weight.

After that, I don’t really have any specific time I’d like to be slimmer for apart from Christmas. I think 3 months is a realistic time frame for getting down to my desired weight which is 9.5 stone – on the lower side of the weight frame that is deemed healthy for my height. Thats just 1.75lb a week, which I should manage without making huge changes to my diet and lifestyle, so hopefully will be something I can stick to if I put my mind to it (on the earlier plan I aimed to lose 2lb per week, though sometimes I lost more than that, so clearly the sticky point for me is keeping to the good habits I’ve developed when I’m losing weight!)

Since my last entry, I’ve lost another 4lb – making 9lb in total. I lost 5lb the first week, put 1lb back on in the second week, then lost 2lb two weeks running, and this week I’ve stayed the same weight (I put that down to pancake day!).

Have been using a Martine McCutcheon exercise dvd (but not often enough), and walking more rather than taking the bus, but I still feel I really need to get back to something a bit more energetic like swimming or jogging. Have a ceilidh to go to in 2 weeks time and I’d like to have toned up a little before that! Two weeks after that it will be my 21st, which means lots of photos, so I’d definitely like to be looking a bit slimmer by then!

Woop woop! this was in the last week through the boots Change One Thing – it has set a daily calorie limit, which I have stuck to, and suggested to do 30 minutes of exercise 5 days a week, which I have not stuck to this week – only twice! I’ve even had chocolate within my calorie limit, and have not been particularly hungry (well, sometimes… but 1689 calories is my personal limit and its perfectly possible to eat 3 proper meals a day and snacks!). Hoping to keep up the weightloss with more exercise after I’ve met all my deadlines and exams!

Ive joined the Boots Change One Thing scheme. I decided that 2008 is the year this has to happen, as just before the new year, I was out jeans shopping and could hardly fit into a size 14(UK) – and I am Determined I wont be a size 16!! I bought the jeans as they are really nice and I need some, and now they are also my incentive to lose weight!

I dont have much willpower for cutting out chocolate, cheese, and coffee – and sometimes shopping and cooking a healthy meal after a long day at uni (and the 2 hours of travel per day it includes) just doesnt feature, especially when you’ve got homework to catch up on and a boyfriend who lives 200 miles away to talk to. But I’m determined to make an effort on that front, hopefully me & my flatmate will get ourselves organised better to do a big weekly/ bi-weekly shop, which definitely encourages me to cook more healthily and not rely on pizza from the cornershop.

The other thing I dont have much willpower for is exercise. I’ve never been very sporty, have never set foot in a gym, and am not much of one for running around outside. I also get the study-guilt if I think about going out to exercise, even though I dont acheive that much on a daily basis – I’ll more usually use the time I dont use to exercise to go online. I’d go swimming more often if I wasnt so self-concious (and lazy about making sure my legs are shaved – I mean, I dont see my boyfriend that often and nobody else is seeing them so it just doesnt feature!! lol!!). But theres a swimming pool quite near uni and its quite nice – an old Victorian swimming baths, and the time I went before it was being used by middle aged people swimming on their lunch breaks, many of whom were bigger than me, which made me feel a lot happier to be there. I hope that I can get myself into a routine of going swimming a couple of times a week, but after a while I think I will need to start going to the gym too. I reckon I’ll be writing more (fearful) entries about that when the time comes!!