Hi Mum,

The scales magically worked this morning. I have lost 800g this week, taking me down to 116.8kg. Total of 12.7kg gone. Not far to go for 15kg!

So the gym has new scales.

Since last week, I have lost 1.1kg.

Dad, for you, this means a total now of 11.5kg, which also means 23 packs of butter GONE!

I did a 5.3km walk at the gym yesterday, about half of which with a .5% to 1% incline. Which I did notice, I puffed a little bit more. I will be going to the gym tomorrow morning, and then Sunday morning before work. And in between I wil try and fit in a couple of swims or something.

I am officially back on track!

So, at our group meeting at work, my manager brought up how he was doing a half marathon, and he’d like our team to join in. There is a 5km walk or run, 10km walk or run and then the half marathon. I am in the process of rounding up the troops, and we have decided to do the 10km walk. It’s quite a long trek!

So I am officially training for my first official event. We get trackers to wear (so they know our times) – fancy! So far I have around 8 girls from work wanting to participate. And best of all, work is paying our entry fees, as it’s a team building activity.

Hello All.

No change with measurements or anything. This means I must work harder. I did the maths yesterday (well SJ at work did!), and we worked out to lose between 10 and 15kg before getting the wedding, I must lose between 400g and 600g per week.

I have found this excellent website, myfitnesspal.com, which allows me to enter what I eat and do, and tells me how many calories I can eat. It’s great – yesterday I only managed about half of my allocated intake, so it says I will be getting skinnier faster! I am going to use the tool for a few weeks and see how it goes. Just have to keep an honest track of what is being put in the mouth.

Yesterday I went to the gym and spent an hour on the treadmill – I walked 5.2km while watching Dr Oz (and I learnt things about sports bras, saggy boobs, using antacids for mouth ulcers and more!) – so I am going to try and use the gym more, to help achieve over 400g per week. I can so manage that.

Are the activities I have done this week. I’ve been swimming a couple of times and this morning went for a 2.5km walk (lovely, just on daybreak) as I got up too late to go for a swim.

I jumped on the scales at work on Tuesday – they went crazy! I’ve either put on 10kg or lost 15kg… so today Terri is bringing in her scales for people to try. I will hop on those and see what is happening. Must do measurements as well.

Apart from that, not much else to report. Apart from reading about fruits and veges I shouldn’t eat (according to the Celebrity Swim booklet) – bad news, they include EVERYTHING I love over summer – watermelon, pineapple, and a whole lot of other things. Also no potato or kumara or corn or beans or peas. And I had three out of five for dinner last night.

Will check in tomorrow with weigh in results.

I thought I would have a look at what I have lost, centimetre-wise since I started the Quest of Slimness. So, without further ado…

Bust: 15cm
Waist: 17cm
Hips: 17cm
Upper Arm: 3cm
Thigh: 9cm

Giving a grand total of 61cm. Percentage wise, I have lost 12% of my starting roundness. Which is good, but I need to work harder. I went to Balance last night – there was a NINE MINUTE ab track, and I can hardly move today. I am going for a swim before work though, to loosen things up.

Alas! There is to be no more Zumba!

Carla, our most fabulous instructor, can not get a work permit in NZ anymore (apparently we don’t need Brazilians to teach us how to Zumba). So it looks like I will have to find something else to do on a Saturday. I am going to try and think of something I can do that is free – but I may have to give in and pay $5 for a class somewhere else, since I really did like it. Or I might have to get a copy of the Zumba DVD and do it at home. Not the same, but cheap and easy. And I can Zumba daily then… hehehe….

Hello!

Thanks everyone for your love over the last few weeks – been really slack and had some trying times. But nevermind, all is not lost! I have done some measurements this morning:

Bust: 118cm (ha! that is 3 gone)
Waist: 109cm (2cm gone)
Hips: 130cm (1cm gone)
Upper Arm: 43cm
Thigh: 71cm

Still no scales, but I will be using the ones in the gym as of tomorrow. So 6cm gone. Not too bad, I guess, since there has been some badness along the way. I have been doing swimming, but lots of blobbing around the last couple of weekends. My calves have definately toned up, they are looking a lot sleeker and musclier (or however that is spelt). Thanks flippers! I have also learnt that eating 1 50g bar of chocolate (like the ones you buy by the supermarket checkout) takes SEVENTY minutes of going up and down stairs to burn off! No more chocolate for me (except the dark dark choccy – just a couple of squares of that is enough to get me through).

Today is the day I officially get back on track. I have made both a housework and an exercise schedule and I am going to stick to it. Tonight I am going to try the new Balance class – it has a 9 minute ab track (eeek! I might not be able to cough/laugh/walk tomorrow), and from there on there is swimming from Tuesday – Friday, and Zumba on Saturday. Sunday shall remain the day of rest and no housework. I am making salad for lunch today, and shall continue to do so (incidentally, I am going to make a mini salad box for the windowsill, containing microgreens. More on this later).

And you shall all be pleased to know that I was walking in the supermarket yesterday and my skirt nearly fell off. So that must count for something as well!

I will also be using this blog from now on for wedding updates, as my get skinny goal is now for the wedding. We will have confirmed dates in a week or so, and then we can get planning!

In the meantime, my merry band of followers… let me know what you’ve been up to – if you’ve got any good ideas about winter exercise post them up for us – I find winter a good excuse to eat heartier things and snuggle up in the warm, rather than being out and about. But, I do have a heated pool and hot gym to use, so that shouldn’t be too much of an issue this time around.

One last note – Hi Cheryl! Thanks for posting – where abouts in the country are you?

Once again, I apologise for the lack of updates. Between usual house stuff, lots of work, swimming and a funny internet collection (fixed now), there has not been much time to update things.

I am still going swimming – I found some other softer flippers so no more blisters! I cut 7% off my 1km time on Tuesday (I’m doing Tuesday time trials) – which was about 2 minutes, so I was quite pleased with that. The softer flippers are bendier which also means I have to work harder.

Still doing lots of good eating – I am going to start keeping a food diary again. I watched a thing on Prime TV a few days ago about 10 things you need to know to loose weight – it’s the same things, less in, more out, but one thing we did find interesting was drinking calcium enriched milk, which can stop the fat molecules binding into your system and you just poo it out instead. Also keeping a food diary of everything… otherwise you don’t count the ‘healthy’ stuff, which does still count. Also learnt that soup keeps you fuller for longer – they did an experiment with some blokes from the army – half had chicken, veges and rice with 1c water, and the other had the same, but blended up. The water makes the food ‘wash away’ faster, leaving you hungrier quicker. So in soup form, it stays in your tummy longer, making you feel less hungry. Also need to include protein in every mean – 20% more protein with 20% less carbs will see you through to the next meal. Must do some research on this one to find suitable proteins.

Food diary today (well, the planned one), will be low calorie toast with peanut butter, an apple, a salad wrap with no dressing, an orange, sausages with kumara mash, carrots, peas and broccoli for dinner. I’m really craving sweet things after dinner, so will probably have some fruit and yogurt.

One of the girls at work has started on Jenny Craig this week, with the goal of losing 13kg by June. I’m closely watching what she is eating – it’s all good things such as meusli for breakfast, lots of yogurt and berries for snacks, baked potato and salad for lunch, chicken fettuccine for dinner and meusli bars for snacks as well. Getting some good ideas off her – but the main thing she is noticing is that the portion sizes are about half of what she would usually have. Lesson to be learnt here, methinks!

Unfortunately the scales are still bung, as are the ones at work. I’m still noticing changes – like my ring is easier to get off my finger and my ‘back flaps’ (hahha) have nearly gone. Also I have got some definition in my arms, which I have only just noticed. Will measure this week for everyone.

Wow! I have been doing this for over half a year now. Who would have thought I would keep it up?

I have decided to change my routine again, for two or three weeks and see if there are any noticeable changes. I went swimming yesterday, and did a total of 1.5km. I timed myself doing then first 1km (35 minutes) and will re-test again next week to see if there is any change in things. I am going to swim 5 times a week, for an hour each time, and see what changes there are. I am also thinking I will find a swimming event on (one that I can wear flippers with haha), and enter into that – for example, the Round the Mount challenge or something similar. Most of the events like that are over for the year, but they come around in October, which gives me a wee while to get properly swim fit. I might also get a couple of lessons to sort my technique out a bit.

When I last lost weight (I went from a size 24 to a 16/18), I was swimming and doing aquarobics 5 days a week, and I enjoyed that – and I didn’t really change any eating habits, so I am going to give it a go now. It’s quite good as I don’t get too hot in the water, but I am still puffing, so I know it’s working! I was reading in a Woman’s Health magazine that swimming is great for you, because it is cardio AND resistance training all at the same time. Each stroke or kick is like a mini resistance workout, so every movement counts, unlike some exercises at the gym.

Still eating well and all that jazz. Alex has made comment in the last few days that my bum is looking a lot smaller than it was, and I have noticed that my knickers are actually quite loose. Excellent.