#FitnessFriday a wet and muddy week

The one problem with walking everywhere to get fitter is that it reduces the amount of time you have for every thing else! So this post is late as I couldn't fit it all in yesterday... This week I have been experimenting with live videos whilst exercising as part of practising my video skills! So apologies for lots of heavy breathing and sweatiness...

I have had no weight change this week - although at my Well Woman check I weighed 3 lbs less than I do at home! So what has gone well or badly this week?

1) Diet

It has been a bonkers week and my diet always does wrong when I am busy! I had very short notice for a day's supply work and ended up with Peperami and crisps for my lunch as that is what my son likes to eat... I really need to improve on this part of being healthy!

2) Fitness

My foot still is not right so I have been a bit cautious. On Wednesday I had a chance to try it out on the Helm as I wasn't needed to help. It wasn't ideal conditions:

#FitnessFriday A Mixed Bag

My weekly parkrun photo has reached the point where I have been brave and ordered the next size down shirt for my 50th milestone! It will be appearing soon but not for tomorrow's run as not being delivered in time... It has been a mixed bag this week as this morning I had put back on the weight I had lost last week... Not sure how much of that is due to a tummy bug that appeared yesterday... So what did I do right or wrong this week:

1) Diet

Not sure I have done too fabulously this week for various reasons - although I ate none of my home baking on Wednesday! I definitely didn't get anywhere near my 5 day on fruit and vegetables most days. That must be something to work on next week.

2) Fitness

I am not sure what I have done to my leg but I have only managed 2 proper runs since my last post. One was a decent parkrun:

#FitnessFriday a day late!

I am running a day late thanks to Torchlight! Which is a shame as its been a good week and I am feeling good:

I am feeling fitter and stronger and I have managed to lose another pound which is a great bonus! So how have I managed it?

1) Diet

Well we ate and drank far too much whilst celebrating my parents' golden wedding anniversary! There must have been something healthier the rest of the week to make up for it...

2) Exercise 

I have managed a variety of runs this week to get myself to only 82 km behind the target which another 9 km improvement. My biggest achievements were my longest run this year of 7 miles and my fastest 10 km since October 2015. 

Today I did my 3rd fastest parkrun of the year without feeling like I was dying so I must have more in the tank if I really tried!

3) September Challenge

I have been managing to keep up with the 30 day abs challenge and I have to say planking for over a minute is ever so hard... However I can see that it is working and my son reckons my boobs are now out further than my tummy! Note to self take photo wearing same bottom half so the waistline stays the same...

#FitnessFriday A Step in the Right Direction

So its time to see how I have done since last Friday when I committed to losing the weight  had put back on and running more! First up how is the 1000 km challenge going:

So that's another 25 km achieved and I am now only 119 km behind instead 122. I can still do this as I had worked out I needed to run 3.67 km a day for the rest of the year so with a few longer runs to make up for missed days I will earn that medal...

What about the rest of my fitness plan?

1) Diet

I have been increasing the amount of fruit and vegetables in my diet as I wasn't hitting the 5 day. Have to admit its probably more fruit than veg though... This week I also ate oily fish a few times at lunch with both tuna and smoked salmon as I know I have been missing out on this type of food. A good lunch looked like this:

Muffin Top Monday: Week 4

Well this week was proof that scales are not a good way to measure getting slimmer! For whatever reason I gained a whole 0.4 pounds.. Oh my what a disaster - well it would have been at one of the Weight Watchers meetings I used to go to. Instead I am relying on the more obvious Lycra photo test:

So apart from my face and neck looking thinner I can see a reduced muffin top and a much looser running top. I am still getting comments from people I haven't seen for a whilst about how good I am looking too.

This week wasn't my best food wise with it being the school holidays and I was home around temptations all week. However I kept myself active either doing house sorting or running and ate a lot less than I would normally do when at home all day. The 90 Days of Sober even coped with a night out when I tried alcohol free wheat beer!

With a busy half term ahead and lots of pressure lets hope I can keep this up...

Muffin Top Monday: Week 3

Well things are still going well with my combination of running and Thinking Slimmer slimpods. On the whole I am making healthier eating choices and stopping when full. My energy levels have rocketed as proved by my race on Saturday. 

There are 4 other ways that I can see how things are going:

1. Scales - down another 1.5 pounds and I am now just fat not obese!
2. Tape measure - this week an inch off my hips
3. Other people - several people have commented on my weight loss this week especially from my face
4. Photographs - I have put my Saturday pre race photo next to my kick off photo and I can see the difference myself:

So let's see if a week off school with being at home with temptation turns out to be a positive test of the slimpod..

Muffin Top Monday: Week 2

It's been a bit of mixed week with some days better than others but I was extremely pleased to have lost another 1.5 pounds! Even better than that I am feeling slimmer and this was proved to me in my update photo:

There is definitely less of a muffin top on the left than there was! The shrinkage was confirmed by the tape measure when I found a 3 inch loss on my waist after 2 weeks. I have even lost an inch off my neck - not sure how that happened..

My energy levels are really boosted and this is showing in my running. I worked out how to use the virtual pace function on my Garmin and seem to have found a current optimum pace which is improving my overall speed. This showed in yesterday's Parkrun when I knocked another 40 seconds off my PB and kept up a great pace:

With my fitbit I am recording my general activity levels and the challenge was upped this week. Over the week as a whole my average number of steps is hitting the target. I may have days when I am under but with running, walking and dancing I have done OK:

So I will keep listening to the Thinking Slimmer slimpod and keep on running until I get to where I want to be..

Muffin Top Monday: End of Week 1

I am joining with Kate on Thin Ice for Muffin Top Monday this week. For most of January I have been trying to lose weight but only moving very slowly with about 0.5 pound a week. Not very impressive after giving up booze for the month in aid of charity. So last week I started listening to a Thinking Slimmer slimpod again. As the programme is all about your body shape and not your weight I bravely took a photo of myself which I posted earlier this week.

After a week of listening to the slimpods and noticing that:

a) I was making healthier eating choices
b) feeling more energised
c) my clothes felt looser

I stood on the scales and found out I had lost 3lbs! At last a proper weight loss after all the efforts. To show how it looks on me I created a side by side montage. The photo on the left was this week:

The muffin top is noticeably slimmer! I have also run a fair distance this week with all that extra energy. I have been chipping away at my personal bests of various sections and notched up a few:

So onwards and slimmer wards I hope!

Reasons to be Cheerful: Indian Summer Edition #R2BC

I do hope everyone is still smiling a week (or more!) back into the new school term? Thanks for everyone who joined in last week and I do hope that I managed to visit you all... Now for this week's reasons to be cheerful for me:

1)  Indian Summer

It has been a glorious few days and we have been able to spend more time outdoors soaking up the sun. Who knows when it will go away so outdoor lunch at the weekend was a must!

Workout Wednesday Week 3: Fitting in the Fitness

I am pleased to have drawn the winners of my competition with Thinking Slimmer so I do hope that they have great success with their new Slimpods! I have been listening to mine and trying to remember to focus on the positives... things like not wolfing down everything on my plate once messages come back from my stomach to say enough.. The clothes that were a bit tight after Christmas are all much more comfortable now. 

This week I wasn't tempted to drink alcohol and was happy with my booze free beer. Bit bored of being stuck with one beverage though so may need to get more variety for the last week and a bit.

As for exercise it was a relief to be able to get out on Friday after not being able to run much earlier in the week due to illness of one or other of us. Not only did I manage 10 km in the rain but I ran the fastest official one too:

That made up for getting wet! At the weekend I had to squeeze in some mini runs with my son as we went out and about:

Better a little bit with a total of 5km than nothing. On Monday I did my first Staveley to Kendal run for a while. I added a loop around the village first to extend the distance. My leg was niggling at me but I thought that was just the cold and thought I could run it off as I went along:

I did manage to complete the 10 km in my second best time but unfortunately I've been limping ever since.. So that's no run today then. Just hope its recovered in time for Friday though I doubt it. Onwards and slimwards next week...

Workout Wednesday: Week 2 2014 - Get fit in the forest

Fitness

With the children and I back in routine last week it was a good chance to get some proper running in. So with the sun out on Thursday morning I headed off straight after dropping the children at school to head back to Kendal. I didn't push myself hard but enjoyed being out having the roads almost all to myself:

In fact I was enjoying myself much I thought I would just keep on going! I had to run past my estate and then go round it a couple of times to make it to 10 km but it wasn't tough (I had signed up to a challenge to run a 10 km event this month!). What turned out to be a bonus was that this turned out to be my fastest ever recorded 10 km (the Christmas Pudding came up as 9.9 km):

So it was a lovely feeling, just need to work on getting it under 1 hour.

When I saw the Forestry Commission mentioning their Get Fit in the Forest campaign I decided to combine our trip to do the Stick Man trail with an attempt at running in the forest. So once the trail was completed I got ready for a run and set off on one of the forest routes. I have to say its lovely to be running down paths like this:

It was very distracting to encounter views like this:

I have to say that the trails are pretty steep in the forest as its on a mountain but it was nice on the down hills and the flatter bits! Next time my son is going to come along with me so I need to find a better route...

Workout Wednesday: Week 1 in 2014 plus Competition with Thinking Slimmer

It's been a while since I did a Workout post as Christmas plays havoc with everything as there are extra activities and then 2 weeks of no school... So here I am in 2014 with my goal of finishing off the job of getting myself fit and healthy. With a wedding to attend at the end of May I've set myself a goal of dropping another dress size by the big day.

By the time the fireworks had gone up on New Year's Eve my belt had got too tight (I blame a Chinese takeaway). So I started 2014 as I mean to go on by going out for a run (in the rain and sleet!). It may not have been the fastest run in the world but I at least tried...

Once I got back home I realised I had been failing to listen to my slimpods for a few weeks so I started listening to them again every night. I also drank the last glass of wine in the house on the 1st January and ditched the booze again for a month. So after a few days my belt once again does up on that last hole even by the end of the day!

One of the things on the slimpods is that you are encouraged to not distract yourself whilst eating i.e. be on laptop or watching TV. So as part of my house sorting I have reclaimed the kitchen table as an eating area and not as a craft, homework or everything else area it became in the run up to Christmas! We had slipped back into bad habits of eating our evening meals in front of the TV which is not good for any of us...

Another thing is to increase our quantity of vegetables and fruit that we consume. This is toughest when you have a small boy who only eats limited varieties but we will get there in the end. My daughter created a 5 a day chart and we aren't allowed a naughty treat unless we have had a minimum of 3. My children are hyper-competitive so hopefully this will spur them and me on for a while until it becomes a habit. It's led to finding creative ways to get veggies into our meals such as my daughter suggesting putting peppers and peas into couscous:

Couldn't get my son to eat it with the veggies in but at least he ate the plain version (minor victory).

I went out yesterday for a much better run but I still have to regain some of the fitness I've lost in 2 weeks. Just hope that doesn't take too long! With a few events signed up to in the spring and summer I need to get my legs going...

The slimpods have been such a help last year that I have signed up as an affiliate. This means that I can offer readers a 15% discount:

* Train your brain to lose weight without dieting

* Feel full quicker, eat less and choose healthier

* NHS consultant’s verdict: ‘It’s life-changing’

* Works on its own or as a diet plan booster

* Comes with 100% money-back guarantee (T&Cs apply*)

* Take the pain out of weight loss - no more diets

(*T&Cs apply. There's no tricks or catches to their T&Cs as you can see if you click here to read them >>).

Here is a wonderful success story:

I've also been given a chance to give away not 1 but 2 of their slimpods to help you lose weight. There are pods for women and men so its good for everyone that feels they need to get slimmer in 2014. So please use the Rafflecopter widget to enter (you have 2 weeks to enter:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Go Sober in October and Shredtober end week 2

Well the end of the second full week of being tee total and doing the 30 day shred. So how has it gone?

The Cut Down on Alcohol slimpod must be helping by Go Sober campaign as shock horror I am not missing it anywhere near as much! The fact that people have now boosted donations to £50 is a real inspiration though. I can't believe that I went through a full weekend of birthday celebrations including a ceilidh and a Sunday dinner without a drop of alcohol.. Let's see how week 3 goes!

As for Shredtober I have now completed a second full week of the 30 day shred! I got bored of level 2 and switched to level 3 a few days ago. You aren't really supposed to be able to until nearer the end of the programme! It was a killer to start with but after 3 sessions I am finding it less of a struggle..

Week 1

Definitely a better waistline but the sideways shots show it much better:

Abs are much tighter and my bottom looking perkier! The scales haven't shifted this week - may have something to do with too much cake on my birthday.... Just glad I can see that the hard work is paying off and half way through the challenges I am feeling so much fitter and healthier.

So here is hoping that as my 2 monthly challenges progress there will be less and less of me to show in photographs on here!

Go Sober and Shredtober end week 1

Well the end of the first full week of being tee total and doing the 30 day shred. So how has it gone?

First challenge on staying sober was ironically a charity fund raiser for breast cancer! I walked in the door and was offered pink cava... one of my favourite drinks. Despite friends saying but it's in aid of cancer too I stuck to my guns and drank J2O and lemonade instead! Was quite funny being one of few people in the room not under the influence of alcohol..

Over the rest of the weekend when I would normally have a drink e.g. watching Strictly I replaced my usual tipple with a bottle of Becks Blue:

Not quite the same but my son thought it was the real thing and told me off! We had to show him the label... So that is week one done and it wasn't too hard. 

Next weekend is my birthday so instead of going out for dinner we are going out for breakfast so no booze. Going to be very strange not having a glass of wine to celebrate! If you want to help me through then join the lovely people who have sponsored me already over at Go Sober.

To help me out the lovely people at Thinking Slimmer have sent me one of their Cut Down on Alcohol slimpod. I have added it to my bed time listening! Hopefully this will be great come November when I can drink again too..

As for Shredtober I have now completed a full week of the 30 day shred! I moved on up to the second level after a few days and have been getting to grips with plank jacks and walking press ups - eek. It does seem to be paying off getting a real hard workout every day. The scales haven't shifted much (1.5 pounds) as I'm swapping from fat to muscle (I dropped 1% on body fat) but I can see how my shape is changing:

Week 1

Week 2

I need to get a better way to take these shots other than balancing the mirror on the bed! 

It does go to prove that getting in shape is not just about the scales. Hopefully if I stick with it the weight will follow as well though as I am mostly eating a lot healthier than last month. Listening to my body and stopping when full and not eating after the children are in bed is certainly an improvement.

So here is hoping that as my 2 monthly challenges progress there will be less and less of me to show in photographs on here!

Charity Tuesday: Go Sober for October with Macmillan

When an e-mail popped up in my inbox challenging me to Go Sober for October in aid of Macmillan Cancer I immediately decided to sign up. It's such a great cause and this is what the official blurb says:

Proceeds from this event will go to Macmillan Cancer Support to help improve the lives of people affected by cancer.

One in three of us will get cancer and it’s the toughest thing most of us will ever face. And the feelings of isolation and loneliness that so many people experience make it even harder.

But you don’t have to go through it alone. The Macmillan team is with you every step of the way, from the nurses and therapists helping you through treatment to the campaigners improving cancer care.

The number of people with cancer is growing every day. Macmillan wants to reach and improve the lives of every one of those people. By taking part in Go Sober, you will help Macmillan in providing practical, medical and financial support and push for better cancer care.

For further information about Macmillan’s work and how to get involved visit their website at macmillan.org.uk

For cancer support every step of the way, visit the website or call the Macmillan Support Line free on 0808 808 00 00

It's great to have such an inspiration to ditch the booze for a month which I try to do once a year. This isn't the best month for me to attempt the challenge as its a) my birthday b) I am getting together with my high school friends and c) I am off on a short break to Butlins! Therefore I am going to need as much support as people can offer... 

So far only my 6 year old has sponsored me and he has given a whole month's pocket money! Please pop onto Go Sober and donate me the equivalent of a glass or bottle of wine to encourage me to keep going....  I am also in a team of Booze Free Bloggers giving each other the strength to survive a month stone cold sober so you can donate to us all together..

To take my mind off the sobriety and help tone up the wine belly I have joined with over 40 bloggers to do the 30 day shred from today. Here is hoping I can complete this one as last time I got flu after 10 days and quit... To encourage me I took a before photo:

Excuse the dodgy quality I had to balance the mirror on the far end of the bed! As you can see the summer holidays have not been good for my waistline... I need to get back into properly focussing on my Thinking Slimmer pods to eat consciously and record 3 positive things about my diet and fitness..

Reasons to be Cheerful week 38 #R2BC

Well we are now well back into the routine of back to school and have a lot to be cheerful about this week:

1) Torchlight Carnival

This made a great return to Kendal on Friday after being cancelled last year due to lack of funds and volunteers. It was back on the streets with plenty of local groups taking part:

It was a lovely family event with lots of people smiling and cheering - oh and we donated lots of money to local charities too!

2) Blog Summit

As I posted on Monday I had a lovely day at Blog Summit Manchester. Plenty of reasons to smile there and not just because of the yummy afternoon tea: 

3) My Fitness and Diet

I seem to be getting back into shape and running further and faster:

I have even run faster than any previous bests on some parts of my Kendal route:

All of this is helping my endless battle to lose weight and 1.5 pounds has come off so I'm nearly back to what I was before the school holidays! I have signed up to Go Sober for October so hopefully abstaining from alcohol for 31 days should help lots. If you want to join my team then please go here or just make a donation as I will be sober on my birthday..

4) My children

Sometimes they drive me mental and then they do something like this:

My daughter has received a head teacher's award this week for her writing which is always a good reason to smile! Little brother was asked to show the rest of his swimming class his front crawl legs as he was doing it so well. Great that each of them has something to be proud of this week.

Weigh in Wednesday Week 11

 

After a gap due to missing my aerobics last week it's back to me in Lycra! This time it's a post workout selfie as my kids on strike again:

 

 

It's not been a brilliant week exercise wise as due to lack of time and an injury the only real workout I did was the Race for Life. Luckily all the picnics and refreshing glasses of cider must have been balanced out as I lost 1/2 pound over the fortnight. Not a huge amount but not bad considering!

So now I enter the danger zone - 6 weeks off work at home with the children. I nearly always gain weight over the break so its a good test of the thinking slimmer pods. Will I manage to eat sensibly and not pig out whilst enjoying time as a family...

There is going to be a bit of a pause in weigh posts as I'm shutting off the laptop and iPad for the first couple of weeks of the holidays! So you'll have to wait a while to see how I do...

 

Weigh in Wednesday Week 10

 

I know this last week, for the first time since I started listening to the slimpod, that I let my emotions control my eating. Therefore I had a couple of days where I ate way too much and felt bad about it.

 

The fit pod had kept me motivated though and I managed 2 good runs this week. In fact I ran for longer without walking than I have yet managed. I've been challenged to run a half marathon next year so I need to build on this distance. This week my runs totalled 11km over 2 runs so I have a little way to go yet!

 

Because of not knowing whether I'd been overall good this week with my poor choices on some days I was in fear and trepidation stepping up to the scales. It was a relief to have lost 1.5 pounds which is a healthy loss in a week. It is quite interesting that I've lost less than half a stone in total since listening to the pods but my body shape has changed dramatically!

 

My daughter took photos for me tonight although my son sneaked into camera for one of them:

 

Here's to looking even better in Lycra next week!