"Blythe spent far too long thinking about her 'plan'."

Week 13
Weight: 12stone 1lb
Weight loss: 4stone 2lbs

I’ve done it. I’ve broken through the 4 stone barrier. This is the lightest I have been now for 8 years. Since then I have yoyo-ed between 12½ stone and 17½ stone. I have thought for years that I would be happy to be 12 stone and I have been saying to my mom that at 12 stone I start to look normal. As one of my friends once said when I had lost a couple of stone a few years ago, “you don’t look like the fat girl anymore, just a normal girl who’s carrying a bit of excess weight”. Mmm, with friends like that eh? She kept her mouth firmly shut when I went back to being ‘the fat girl’ again.

So, in my head, I should be looking normal again – yay! I had set myself the goal of being 12 stone for my friend’s wedding next week, so only need to lose a pound this week and I’ll be there. I have to say I am working for this weight loss though. If I just relied on the band I wouldn’t have lost anywhere near as much. I’m not saying this to be boastful, far from it, but, more to demonstrate how I have been using the band as a tool.

I am still having blips. I am a sucker for crapola and am well aware that it goes through the band without any problem whatsoever. My strategy is to fill myself up on more ‘difficult’ to digest foods so that there isn’t the room for the crapola on top. It’s a struggle to be honest and some days I just can’t face the tightness in my chest feeling but, I’d say 5 out of 7 days I am being quite good. The days when I have a blip I just say to myself, “it’s just one night, swim in the morning, walk in the afternoon and stick to the plan for tomorrow”. The swimming in the morning seems to keep me on track to have a good day but, I do tend to overeat between 9 and 10:30pm at night.

I still have some restriction but, it comes and goes. For example on Tuesday night I was in full on muncharama mode. I had 12 oatcakes, small tub of humus, yogurt and a couple of ‘chocolaty bite’ mini-cakes. Ok, not a huge amount in the grand scheme of things but, it did double my calorie intake for the day from 1200 to 2400 in under an hour. The next night I had 2 oatcakes, they got stuck and I spent the whole of The Apprentice being a slime monster until I eventually productively burped them up. So the restriction is really a changing entity on a more or less daily basis.

My plan is to keep up the sensible eating and the exercise, whilst taking advantage of the reduced hunger and then use the band to help me maintain my weight. So here’s my current strategy for my weight loss. This is Monday to Friday whilst at work:

06:30-08:10 – Swim quickly and yet endeavour to keep my hair out of the chlorine water.
08:30-09:00 – Drink 2 pints (1 litre) of weak, warm, sugar-free squash.
09:00 - 1 Oatabix with 1 prune cut up into it, with 150mls of warm, skimmed milk.
10:15-12:30 - Drink 1 litre of warm squash whilst visiting my patients (need to wee quite a lot!).
12:30 - Lunch (made of ½ of previous night’s dinner).
13:30-16.30 – Drink another litre of warm squash.
16:30 - Small banana mashed with low fat yogurt (passes through band quickly for energy).
17:00 - Go for my power walk (6 miles)
19:00 - 1 litre of warm squash.
19:30 - Evening meal (½ tonight, ½ saved for tomorrow).

That’s the plan anyway. The reality is that come 9pm I am on the munch. I now save 200 calories from the day to let myself have yogurt or even a little crapola. It’s just really hard to stop eating it once I have started :(

My aim is to have between 1200 and 1400 calories a day. I am finding that being prepared is the key for me. If I have to faff about and try and think of what I am going to have for lunch, I lose it. I am so busy at work, running around like a blue-arsed fly, that I now take my 20 minutes for lunch and make myself stop and relax to eat it. If I try and rush it or if I am eating whilst writing up patient notes, or returning phone calls, then I get the golf-ball feeling in my chest. Now I actually sit at another desk, turn the radio up and have a daft gossip mag to browse through whilst I eat. My boss is so sweet, she has a friend with a band, so she fields the calls if she knows I am eating :) It makes such a difference.

I’m not perfect though but, having this routine means that, at least for the majority of the day, I don’t actually have to think about food and I eat very well. It’s just the evening that’s the problem. One of my strategies these past few days is to watch the TV only after 9pm and to watch it in bed. For some reason I am less tempted to munch and, if I do, then Jack can hear me go downstairs to the kitchen :)

Sometimes it worries me that I am such an obsessive about all of this but, I am convinced that I really need to apply a lot of mental energy in order to keep on track, ho-hum.

On a lighter note, I attempted to do some running during my power walk. This is for 2 reasons. One, my best friend and I are running the race for life on the 11th ? June (she insists that we run). And the other reason is that I want to reduce the actual time I’m out running. When I started the 6-mile route I was doing it in 1 hour 40 minutes. Now I can do it in 1 hour and 21 minutes. But, the running yesterday nearly bloody killed me. I have to wear 2 sports bras and then, when I am in the rural part of the route, I ran clutching my bosoms to try and control the bounce :) I can only run for a minute, walk for 4 minutes and I still turned into a beetroot face. I spent the time praying nobody would catch me doing the old boob clutch manoeuvre! Oh the shame.


Onwards and downwards.