From a Christmas Pudding to a Christmas Cracker - Weight Loss Motivation

Went to bed last night and heard drip drip drip. Water dripping through the ceiling into a bedroom. Also the hotpresd, we have tubs with towels and sheets and there was inches of water in them. We drained the tank just in case and turned off the water. Plumber being contacted now!!!

I'll stress the weight off me

stock and plenty of salt n pepper

Oh no. I had a (very minor) leak in my roof last summer, when it was raining constantly for 2 months and I found it very stressful. I had to hound a roofer to come out and fix it, which he kinda did! Hoping it's a very easy, cheap fix. No-one needs that sort of shock before January pay day.

Ah brilliant, great to know all is sorted and didn't cost a small fortune.

Always avoided the calorie counting thing myself.

Firstly because it gets too complicated if you are making whole meals yourself. Something always gets by. I have made salads where the little dressing I put on it had more calories than the entire rest of the dish. And a lot of people forget the dressing when working out a salad. Or the Ketchup on the side of a Carb Free Burger.

Or or or. There is always something that gets by.

And that's not including the sheer frustration of finding your exact ingredients in the app - or worse you find your ingredient but some users have put in different calorie counts for them and you do not know what to choose or it's in a measurement you do not recognize.

Secondly though I have very little faith in calorie counting myself. I simply do not think it works. The entire Calorie in - Calorie out mindset for me simply never worked and I have never seen it work personally. And I think it leads to a lot of weight "yo yoing" and also situations similar to Snowy above where it seemed to work in the past but now suddenly doing almost exactly the same thing again seem to either not work at all or ends up in weight GAIN inexplicably.

So it has always seemed a high investment of time and effort and frustration for little, or even negative, benefits. YMMV of course which is the most frustrating thing with all dieting and weight loss! Everyone is different. But for myself and those I have observed directly I have entirely lost faith in it.

The most dramatic example in my life where I finally lost faith in it entirely was a friend who simply could not lose weight no matter what diets he switched to. In the end I moved him back to what he was originally eating when he started and simply changed WHEN in the day he ate each thing(s). He was eating essentially the same stuff as before - only eating them at different times of the day than he was before - and the weight started to fall off him.

First weigh in on plan and I'm down 4lb.

I have goal set to lose 12.5lb(this includes the 4 just gone) but I secretly would love to push it 19.5lb or even 26lb.

I'm not sure how practical is is but I'm focusing on my first goal anyway. Once the scales is going in the right direction even if it's by an ounce I'll take it!

I've stopped increasing. For the moment that's my win. February is bring it back down month.

Ive stepped back from my attempt to become a cracker. I just have too much going on I need to focus on and dont want to beat myself up for it at the moment.

Week 2 weigh in: 2lb down, total loss of 6lb

I didn't think I'd get the 2lb had a bit of a messy weekend, Friday takeaway, pizza and cake at a kids party on the Saturday. I knew I'd been on plan outside of that so thought I'd get a half a pound or maybe a pound.

Aiming for 2lb next week but if I get the one pound to be at half a stone I'll be over the moon!

Week 3 weigh in: 1.5lb down, total loss of 7.5lb

Half a stone gone🥳

Wasn't eating as much fruit and veg as I should have been but apart from a pizza downfall I stayed mainly on plan. Happy out.

Have two meals out in the week ahead and I don't know how sensible I can be with food in either place so I'll just try my best to keep the other meals in the week decent.

5lb left to get to my current goal.i think there might even be a chance I get to it by the end of February!

Week 4 weigh in: maintained, total loss of 7.5lb

I'm lucky not to have had a gain. 3 meals out, pancakes and a few cocktails.

Going to try push through my bad habits which are creeping back in.

That's the hard part to resign yourself to. It (for 99% of people) all boils down to diet once you hit a certain age. I used to be able to eat and drink everything I wanted once I got a few jogs in during a week. Now I'm keeping an eye on my food and even though my movement is less than usual due to work and its working to drop a few pounds.

Not having time for excercise is something I have actual nightmares about. Thankfully it does not happen so often. Generally when it does however I try to excercise anyway.

By that I mean if I would normally put the gear on and do some kind of work out or run or something else for an hour or two - I would put the gear on and do that workout and run for as long as I literally have time for. Even if thats only 3 minutes.

Sounds a bit ridiculous really. And in most ways it is. But the main reason I do it is that even when I have no time for the excercise in question - it still remains part of my habits and routines. Which sounds like a small thing but actually over time it can be very powerful. And since this is specifically a "motivation" thread I thought it might be worth mentioning.

On the note of snacks and stuff getting in the way I just acquired a Ninja Creami. A little pricey though I believe there are cheaper market equivilants. I have been making a guilt free ice cream (essentially almond milk, protein powder, vanilla extract, and low or non sugar sweetner optional like Monk Fruit) in it that serves up pretty much like softscoop icecream that A) doesnt land on the hips and B) doesn't come with the lethargic sugar crash that sometimes follows a feed of ice cream.

Anyway not sure if any of that helps anyone. But it's a motivation thread specifically so thought I would mention it all the same lest it motivate someone even a little :)

Yeah new borns change everything. A lesson I learned 4 times now :) Thankfully we are done now and won't be producing any more of those!

I did invest in a backpack cradle, a front loading sling, and a running buggy though which I am so glad I did because it carried over to the three new borns after that.

But it meant that instead of losing all my excercise time trying to get baby to sleep and then using what time I had left to excercise - I actually made taking newborn away from mammy (to give her down time) part of my excercise routine. Doing squats with baby on my front - walking or hillhiking with baby on my back - running with running buggy in front of me (I did not like the ones you attach to you back even though I often run with a tyre or sledattached to me - the weight just did not feel right for me).

That's not for everyone of course. Thankfully it worked for me. And the mammys were awfully glad of the no baby time. Especially since all of mine seem to have been constant rather than periodic feeders. So they were drained (figuratively and literally) a lot of the early months.

I was teaching my toddlers to fight pretty much since they could walk too. So in general I have worked hard (and yes it is hard work) to make my children included in my entire physical routine rather than a hinderence to it. But it's no easy thing to do and it's certainly not over night. A lot of trial and error, effort, consistency and comfort with failure.

Indeed. No one says it is easy. Which is why I never give "advice" or tell people how they could be doing things better. Generally it's just good to hear how other people dealt with simmilar issues because sometimes you get lucky and hear something that makes you go "Hadn't thought to try that - let's see if it works".

Generally I avoid ever giving advice or critique unless someone openly asks me to. Which does happen a lot and always feels a little uncomfortable. I prefer just to represent what I have done for me - and hope someone somewhere gets something positive out of that.

Only thing I know is that for me personally NOT excercising does not save time. Because for me it leads to worse sleep and worse concentration. So then I end up needing 10 more hours to do my work week than I otherwise might and at the weekend I end up looking to "catch up" on sleep and so forth.

Not to mention that I have long buried depression and self loathing and there are things I very much need - excercise being on top of that list - to keep regular or those demons start to grow and surface again. A constant war that I will lose some day - but I intend to win every battle in the interim :)

It's a very delicate balance for me therefore. And while it is always tempting to "save time" by skipping X to achieve Y and Z - in the end it just leaves Y and Z taking longer.

But I have the privilege of not working a 60 hour week too. Mainly because I have been so deeply obsessed with work/life balance that I have turned down quite a few raises and job promotions and more if I had any suspicion it would skew that balance.

Week 7 weigh in: Maintained, total loss of 9.5lb

This is well deserved. I ended up with cake and sambos on the Friday, a Chinese takeaway on the Saturday, McDonalds on the Sunday, boojum on Monday and then conference food on Wednesday. I'd have deserved it to be a gain.

I'm going away in 3 weeks and I'm pure hoping that'll be the first gain and that I can lose an lb or 2 before then.

Had my second weigh in at the gym today - down .6kg in a month. Happy with that as can see that my muscle mass is better as is my percentage body fat. And more importantly, I'm making gains in terms of how I feel energy wise etc.

Managed to squeeze back into one of my slim fit work shirts this morning, was delighted with myself!! Mad that losing just half a stone is the difference in being able to wear a shirt or not.

I can indeed & not a single pop of a button!! 🤣

Funnily enough, for me its never been the gut, its always been the bottom of my ribcage and upper torso that was the issue closing shirts. Either way, no need to bin them (for now anyway 😀)