So what do you do when...?

So what do you do when your weight loss has all but completely dried up?
What do you do when calories in vs calories out just isn't working anymore?
What do you do when your body is changing but not how you thought?
What do you do when you're completely unmotivated to carry on?
What do you do when you still have more than 2 stone to go?
What do you do when you've been doing this for a year and a half and still obese?

I have all these questions going round my head, I dunno where to go from here. My weight loss has all but stopped, its very very slow. I'm getting really unmotivated, I've been at this for a year and a half and I'm still obese. I'm so tired of analysing and scrutinising every little thing I put in my mouth. Exercise has completely fallen by the wayside. I've already had a day where I just didn't care and ate what I liked, but felt terrible afterwards. My body is changing but really not like I thought it would, I'm flabby and saggy like an old lady, I dread to think what I'll be left with when I'm done. I think all of this is part of the reason why I'm not as motivated to carry on.

I knew going into this it wasn't going to be easy, I knew it was going to take a long time, I just don't know how to shake this feeling off and get back into this. I can feel my attitude changing a little bit each day, and not for the better, it's like I've stopped caring.

All I know is the decisions I make now are going to shape the next few months. I know I don't want to go back to the way I was, but this sucks. I think I'm going to have a shake up, look at some new recipes, try a few new things, and just generally try and get out of this funk.

*Disclaimer - If you were looking for a cheery, motivational weight loss post may I suggest you go here, here, or for some yummy low cal food here!*

I feel I should end this post on a positive note though so I'll post my progress so far.

SW:  269
CW: 197

Progress pic.

Are you allowed to eat that on your diet?

I have reached the stage in my weight loss where people know exactly what I'm doing and I don't have the luxury of just not telling anyone anymore. I liked it in those days, no-one noticed and I could go on my merry way and no-one would want any input. 

Now everyone seems to have advice, comments, criticism or just plain know better! Many times in the last few months I've heard 'are you allowed to eat that on your diet?' well lets just see, I'm 24 years old I'm pretty sure I'm allowed to eat whatever I want. Also yes I am on a diet, but I'm not restricted to any sort of specific foods. For instance I'm not doing Atkins or anything so drastic, so I don't have to cut out any major food groups, so again yes I am allowed to eat whatever I want. 

This question got me thinking. Why do people seem to be so interested? Or feel the need to tell you what you're doing wrong when you have never asked for advice? There's something about weight loss that makes everyone get involved. They all have some wonderful advice about their cousin's wife's uncle's daughter who lost lots of weight and all they did was drink these awesome shakes, drink water and eat nothing but baby food. Simple! These people, in my experience also tend to be the people who ask 'how are you doing it?' then look thoroughly disappointed when you say nothing but diet and exercise, everyone wants you to say 'oh I took two of these magic pill and woke up 60 pounds lighter.' Everyone looking for an easy answer and in all honesty from my experience, its not hard, its just a long drawn out process and can be ridiculously frustrating when things aren't going to plan. 

Photo from here.

I find the above picture sums it up nicely! 

Anyways back to my original point, people asking 'are you allowed to eat that on your diet?' who think they are doing you a favour by keeping you on track. Where were these people when I was 269 lbs? There was no-one saying to me 'should you really be eating that pizza? or that burger?'. They would never have said that as it would be considered rude. However that was the stage where an intervention would probably have been necessary. 

I have found the most polite way to respond to these comments are to just smile and accept the advice, regardless of whether you're going to use it or not, this way you're spared the lecture on how they know better and they get the lovely warm fuzzy feeling of thinking they helped. I think at the end of the day you always have to do what's best for you. As long as what you are doing is not dangerous to your health, then crack on, keep going and never give up!  

Photo found here.

SW: 269

CW: 208

CGW: 199

xx

Never give up.

I haven't been on here for a very long time, I sort of gave up on it, on the blog not on the weight loss, there was a few reasons for this, my blog was broken and my pictures are all slowly disappearing, an also I had nothing uplifting or even remotely motivational to put on here.

I've still been trying hard with the weight loss, I put on a little bit over Christmas but that was to be expected, that weight came off relatively quickly and then nothing, nada, zilch! I was stuck at the same weight and I couldn't understand why.

After chatting to a few friends and getting out of my grump, it really is quite grump inducing when nothing has changed and the scale isn't moving, I decided I needed to go back and rethink things. Its funny how when you take a step back suddenly things become so obvious. I realised that most days I really was struggling to hit 1200 calories and for someone who has still got a long way to go, thats really not enough! Also quite a large percentage of my total calories were coming from carbs, so that was something else to think about.

Over this last week I've changed things up a bit, and I know that its only been a week but I can see things are moving in the right direction, I'm currently eating 1500 calories and I'm regularly just under my calorie limit of 1660, I'm also more aware of the carbs that I'm eating even though they're still too high.

So my advice to everyone out there who is ready to give up, keep going, keep moving forward and you will succeed!

SW: 269
CW: 209
CGW: 199

Welcome to my journey.

Before:

Weight: 269 lbs
BMI: 42.2

During

Weight 218lbs

BMI 34.1

51 pounds lighter

and a long way still to go 

Never give up bloggers!!

Anthony Nolan

In the space of 2 months, I was unfortunate enough to lose 2 friends to the same horrible disease, Hodgkins Lymphoma. Around the same time I heard about the Anthony Nolan Register.

"Anthony Nolan is a pioneering charity that saves the lives of people with blood cancer who need a blood stem cell, or bone marrow transplant. In 1974, Anthony Nolan's mother, Shirley, set up the world's first bone marrow register to match donors with people who desperately needed a transplant.

Now, every day, we help two people in need of a lifesaving transplant by using our register to find remarkable donors who have matching stem cells, or bone marrow.

We are a UK charity with international reach. We carry out world class research into stem cell matching and transplants to improve outcomes for all patients."
-anthonynolan.org

I went about doing my research about what it entailed and what I would have to do, reading through the criteria list I found that I was not eligible to be on the register. Why? I was classified as Severely Obese and having a BMI of over 35 meant that I wasn't able to donate. This gave me more motivation in my weight loss journey, this is something I wanted to do I want to be able to donate if I'm needed and even if I was never needed the option is there. I made this my next goal!

For a long time I floated around with a BMI of 35.1 which in all honesty was infuriating haha 0.1 is such a stupid number but considering I started with a BMI of 42.2 I was impressed with myself and even more motivated to burst out of the Severely Obese class of the BMI. 

On the 8th of September I stepped on the scale to see a weight of 223 pounds!! Otherwise known as a BMI of 34.9. I had done it! I am no longer Severely Obese and I am simply Obese (this will change!) and I met my goal and could sign up for Anthony Nolan! 

The application was fairly straight forward just filling in your details and some check boxes about your medical history, it was fairly short and didn't take much time at all. Today my spit kit landed on my door and I thought I'd tell you all about it.

 This is what it looks like just a little tub, it doesn't look like much at all.

This is whats inside, you have your little tube and you can see on the top there is a lid with some liquid that you mix up once you've collected your spit in the tube (pleasant I know!!) and then you remove that lid and put the little screw cap on.

Before I changed the caps the liquid from the top goes in and mixes with your saliva. 

And then you pop it in the little bag and post in back in the padded envelope, I did feel a bit nervous about the fact it said biohazard on it.

And thats it done! All I need to wait for now is my donor card. I do feel sort of proud of myself, I hope I'm a match for someone.

For Jane and Maurissa! 
xx

The day before shopping day.

So I've hit the day before the shopping day and I'm running out food and using the spare bits and bobs of food. Dinner time came and I had to come up with something and this is what I ended up with.

Considering what I had left in the house I'm quite pleased.

 75g wholewheat spaghetti
2 Linda McCartney vegetarian sausages
1 large orange pepper
a handful of broccoli (no specifics when it comes to veg lol)
2 small baby corn
1.5 tablespoons Baxter tomato chutney
1 teaspoon sesame seeds

It was also ridiculously simple I boiled the spaghetti and veg until they were cooked through, cooked the sausages as instructed and basically just mixed everything together and added a teaspoon of sesame seeds on top. It was a huge meal and I'm more than full now, I tried to bulk it out as I'm trying to up my calories a bit and it didn't work out too well.

Anyhoos for anyone thats interested

Nutritional Info
Calories: 645
Carbs: 92g
Fat:13g
Protein: 43g

Enjoy!
Hope you're well blogland!

Oh hai plateau-land!!

I've not updated on here for a while, I'm really proud of the progress I've made so far but it seems I've stuck at 224. For the last 4 or 5 weeks (if we ignore my holiday) I've not lost any weight at all, I'm still running 3 times a week, I'm still swimming once a week, I'm still eating a healthy diet with anywhere between 1200 and 1700 calories a day. So I'm on the case I'm not about to hit week 6 with no movement on the scales. I'm going to be swapping my rice for brown rice, ditching my bread altogether I think, and looking for less processed foods.

I need to push past this obstacle, exercise wise I'm not sure how to bump it, I want to get a kettlebell but I dont have the funds for it at the moment. I might jump back onto the 30DS while I'm waiting and let Jillian kick my ass for a while and see if that helps.

Not really sure where to go from here just going to have to figure it out I suppose.
Hope you're well blogland!

Cheat day, kind of!

So today was my Cheat Day, on a Sunday I give myself a little leeway to eat stuff I wouldn't allow myself normally. This was gonna be a look-how-awesome food-porn update but I have no pictures and for that I am devastated because the food was amazing! Just because its my cheat day though doesn't mean I go overly mental its usually just dinner that is my treat :) I swim every Sunday morning to burn some calories and for damage limitation lol I also really like swimming so its win-win really!

Today however I couldn't swim because it was that delightful time of the month, so I dragged my boyfriend out on my run with me, I like it when we run together because my sense of competition kicks in and I really push myself hard and run sprints and I just don't do that when I'm running on my own. According to My Fitness Pal that burned about 350 cals not bad!

One of our treats on a Sunday is we get a roll and sausage from the cafe so that is our little breakfast tradition. We spend all week deciding where we will eat on a Sunday and if I'm honest that is part of the excitement and this week we picked here:

The Inn on the Loch, overlooking Lanark Loch, its very pretty and the food is always amazing. This is the part where I wish I had photos, I had decided during the day to try and convince my other half to have a starter instead of dessert which he never wants to do. The method in my madness was if I had dessert I could have some sort of semblance of nutrition :). Anyway he agreed and I picked Chicken Goujons, Garlic Mayo and side salad to start and for my main I had Chicken Fajitas with another side salad, it was all amazing on the tastebuds and out of interest my other half chose Garlic Bread with side salad to start and Steak Pie, chips and veg for his main! The next time I do one of these posts I promise I'll have photos so you can all see how amazing the food was.

I think for a cheat day I did ok, got some exercise in the morning didn't go crazy and got some veggies in, all in all not bad for a cheat day. :)

xx

Size 18!!!

So today was a good day, I spent it in my favourite place in the whole world. It looks like this

Its called Eyemouth, and is very pretty :)

Anyway tomorrow I have an engagement party so went looking for something pretty to wear and discovered something quite amazing!! When I started this whole weight loss thing I was a size 22 and 269 pounds and I looked like this.

I'm on the left. 

This is today...

Currently 232 pounds and a size EIGHTEEN!!! So chuffed! I can't even remember the last time I was a size 18, I've been really down recently that I wasn't getting anywhere, I went into the shop and automatically picked up the size 22, I had no idea what size I even was! 

I'm a happy bunny this evening!!

Hope you're all well bloggers!

Adios!

Week 1 of running done! :)

So on Monday I decided to stop saying 'some day' and go out running. I am completely rubbish however I've stuck with it and gone out Monday, Wednesday and today and surprisingly I'm really enjoying it hopefully I'll get to the stage where its something I'm really good at. 

The route I run is just over a mile, which seems pretty pathetic but it challenges me for the moment. I run through a nature reserve so as I progress I can change it up and add portions and do different trails. Right now I'm not even running the full mile, I'm running as much as I can and then stopping and walking a bit till I catch my breath/feel a bit better then I run again, hopefully soon I'll be able to run it with out stopping. At the moment I'd be happy if I ran a 20 minute mile as long as I ran it. 

Anyhoos today I was craving a meal from my local chinese restaurant but didn't want to have a cheat day so went about figuring out how to make it relatively healthy. So I decided on chicken and pineapple (usually I'd have it with chips but that was just out of the question) and toddled off to Tesco to find random ingredients which were basically fresh chicken, lots of veg and some egg noodles. So I had a little play about (read chucked in random ingredients lol) and it turned out quite well I think, it wouldn't get a Michelin Star but I wouldn't expect it to.  Anyways it looked like this,

And turned out to be pretty low cal, win-win, yummy meal, full up, 2 left over portions, which means a happy SJ :)

Run Forest Run!

Just another little post from me, its a weight loss one so yeah.

Now that I can actually run again I'm really enjoying it! I ran a little bit yesterday and went out for a run today, the route I took is about a mile long and I did a sort of couch to 5k type method, running for as long as I could then walking till I felt a bit better then running again, I actually really enjoyed it! I did it early in the morning (before I had the chance to overthink it) this poster is actually true for me.

I think it was actually better for me to go in the morning the route wasn't busy I only passed one dog walker and one little old man who looked sympathetic to my efforts. I run here

And to be honest with views like this right on my back door it does give you a little more motivation to run! 

I'm hoping to start running a few times a week, the route is only a mile long but I can add to it as I get better and now that I'm not working its something that I can do for free. I just have to sort out my breathing when I'm running hopefully someone can give me some advice on that.

Starting weight 269 pounds
Current weight 232 pounds
Current goal (I have many lol) 218 pounds

Another forgotten blog post

I've not been on here for a long time and for that I apologise. Life for me is a bit of same old same old just now. I'm unemployed again looking for a new job hoping that something will come of all my searching.

A few things have happened in the last few months, first of which was the race for life, I have never run in my life I could never run, but I saw the poster up in the gym and thought I'd sign up. My sister signed up and did it with me, it was 5k and we finished in 45 minutes which I think is not bad :)

My back sign, number and medal. :) 

Me and my sister at the start of the race.

It was a great day, I raised nearly £100 and I cant wait for next years race, I will be up there ready to beat this years time :) 

Another thing that has been going on is my weight loss, I remember posting a while back and not feeling like it was going anywhere and that I couldn't do it anymore well things have changed a little bit. 

This is me on the 15th of January just after starting my whole weight loss mission seriously. At this stage I weighed 269 pounds (I'm on the left) 

This is me after the race for life on June 3rd, at that stage I weighed about 238. (I'm on the right) 

Any my weight loss ticker now looks like this :) 

I'm really pleased with how I have done and hopefully I will continue to lose in the same way :) My next goal is another stone and a half to 2 stone by the end of September/start of October, I'm hoping I hit that goal :)

Well I think that's about me for tonight's post, I hopefully wont leave it so long before posting again, hope you all enjoyed my little ramblings :) xx

Forgotten Blog.

I keep forgetting about this little blog I need to make more of an effort to keep it updated. My last post I'd just got my job and all was good, well 6 months later and I'm unemployed again boo! However I'm staying positive, I have an interview on Wednesday for a good job that I really want so here's hoping that something comes of it.  I did however buy myself a pretty new dress!! :)

Before I gave up on the blog I was talking about my weight loss attempt and I think I'm doing pretty well :) At my heaviest weight I was 269 pounds and I am currently 242 pounds :) I'm proud of how much I've lost and think I'm doing quite well but I still cant see much difference in my body which is really annoying. My sister came to see me today and got all excited about how much weight I'd lost which is funny cos she's only just seen me a couple of days ago its not all disappeared from then! Lol. Anyways I thought I'd add a couple of photos so I can hopefully see some difference. 

269 pounds

This was me at 255 pounds I'll need to take a more updated photo.

Hopefully I'll remember about this wee blog and keep updating it haha. 

xxx