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

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!

Holidays!

I've had a busy few weeks so really haven't had any time to update on here, my poor wee blog gets neglected more than anything else I own.

Anyways I went away to Aviemore which I personally think is one of the most beautiful places in the country! We did treks and trails and ate amazingly calorific food. It was an amazing week I love it up there I could stay for months and months.

Some photos :)

Anyways back to the point of this blog post there was a picture I took that I was actually quite surprised, I can see the weight loss starting to change my body shape :)

I know we've all seen this one before but I just wanted to put it there as a comparison, some day I'll learn how to do the split screen photo thing.

Anyhoos that's me for now, hope you're well blogland
xx

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

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 :)