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

Bloglovin

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Just checking it out to see what its all about.

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!