What a glorious week to restart my seasons of joy posts! The sun is shining brightly, I have just spent a whole week with my family out of the house and we are all looking forward to beginning our next term. It was so good to be away from the computer and away from anything school related, and so good to spend every day with Gary. We are all refreshed and eager to begin work once more.
I even bought some jogging shoes 🙂 Which leads me on nicely to this week’s wibbly wobbly news….
Wibbly Wobbly Weightloss
I’m thinking I set myself up for failure using that title right from the start. Maybe if I’d called it ‘100% fail safe weight loss’ that’s what I would have seen. But no, the actual weight loss really is very wibbly wobbly. That said, there are some really good things going on behind the scenes, and whilst weight loss is still very sloooow, it is happening.
I was reading ‘I deserve a doughnut’, which was a book a reader recommended to me, when something struck me. One of the things the author said was to figure out the boundaries you wish to put around yourself. I know this is basic, but honestly the boundaries I had always tried to follow did not come from me but some weight-loss group or diet. I had never sat down and thought through the boundaries that I needed for myself. By this I mean boundaries that were more Claire-focused, taking into consideration my strengths and my weaknesses. I began to think of what I have learnt so far. I know I have spent forty years eating overnight, to enable me to make the most of my insomnia and be productive during that time. Now I sleep I do not do that anymore. However, I do still feel hungriest at night-time and have no appetite in the morning. I wondered, if I forced myself to eat breakfast, would I feel less hungry at night-time? I knew that curbing my night-time eating may well be the key to actually losing all the weight. So after much thought and prayer, these are the boundaries I placed around myself:
- Eat four meals a day. No snacks
- Split the calories equally between the four meals
- Make sure lots of fruit and vegetables are eaten at each meal
- One day a week I can eat whatever I want
I did this a few weeks before Easter, deciding I would cover the whole process in prayer and wouldn’t weigh myself until Easter. I was excited. Surely God would bless my efforts and those ten pounds which seem to enjoy hanging around would be banished from me forever. Not so. I had lost two measly pounds! Two! An average of half a pound a week. Going at this pace it would take me over three years to lose the weight I needed to lose to be healthy. I wanted to stamp my feet, throw myself on the floor and scream, much like a toddler does when they do not get their own way. Gary then reminded me of all I had gained. I was much more energetic, my skin was better, my hair was better and I was sleeping longer. I sighed. Three years it is then.
It’s funny though, once I had started to make small changes which were completely doable, I felt empowered to make a few more. Over the past couple of weeks I have been working out the calorie value of all I eat. Never having done this before, it was quite an eye opener as I realised why I was losing weight so slowly. So I am changing a few more things:
- Cutting down on bread
- Decreasing portion size
- Moving towards a more vegetarian diet
- Exercising
The biggest surprise is that I have more than halved my portion size (apart from the one day I eat whatever I want) and I have not noticed any difference in my hunger levels.
To see what God has been doing in my life with regards to my weight and self perception please do check out these posts:
All things are possible…. Part 2
Warning! Earthquake alert!!
Yes, I am going jogging. Any tremors you may feel are the likely result of Claire going for a run collapsing under the effect of too much strain on her poor under-trained heart.
I will be going with my daughters and we will be following the NHS couch to 5K plan although, frankly, if I manage to move anywhere past the couch I will be doing well.
Do you remember the scene in the second Brigid Jones’ diary when she come down the fire pole, her knickers plainly in sight through some see through tights? Well this is what came to mind when I tried on my new ‘kit’. The trousers are so see through, I’m really will be surprised if I move off the couch. I am fairly certain the world is not ready to see my backside 🙂
Mummy and Daughter Time
One of my twins guards her time with me with a fierceness which is very unlike her. She seems to need to be alone with me a lot as she navigates her way through the tumultuous teen years. L is becoming more and more like me in terms of her artistic and creative side, as well as her desire to be at home and among people she knows and loves. We very much enjoy each other’s company, and are currently doing some art scrap booking together. On Monday we took a trip to Hobby Craft and I bought some new scrap-book paper which will be perfect to use during our crafty times together:
Using The Evenings
Because we are using the same scrap books as we used for our Proverbs 31 study, I was flicking through the past studies and came a cross this page:
I have decided (now I am not spending my evenings eating the whole time) I will try to utilise them more profitably. I guess it won’t hurt my eating goals to keep my hands as busy as possible 😉
I have a few things I want to do:
- I need to make some curtains to go up in our living room to shield the table from the sun. I have already bought some very inexpensive material from Ikea and am all set to start.
- I will be learning to crochet dish cloths in preparation for my home-made Christmas gift giving this year:
- I also want to make some knitting bags to pop the knitting needles and wool for the little two (also a home-made Christmas present). I will also add a simple booklet explaining how to knit:
Very Special Reading
I am reading such a lovely book at the moment and can’t wait to begin putting all I am learning into practice. This is one of the few books I have read which have lived up to my expectation of it. I am only half way through, but have many, many ideas which I shall endeavour to put into practice over the next few years.
It feels lovely to be sharing a little bit of my own heart rather than just my home school heart. Thank you, as ever, for all your encouragement to write these posts. And thank you for all your emails and comments. I promise I will reply very soon….just as soon as I finish school planning for the coming term which begins on Monday (help!). I hope you are all having a wonderful time this sunny weekend xx