These Boots Are Made For Walking.....

.....and that's what I am going to do in my new and long awaited Frye boots.

They are so gorgeous and when I put them on I just knew that I would be able to walk miles and miles in them and my feet would not suffer at all. They were an absolute bargain and I couldn't not get them! Half price and free shipping......I know how to shop!

One small slight problem though..........my perfect new boots do not fit perfectly and I am gutted about it. I have lost 13.5lbs and even though this is quite an amount and even though I have much more to lose (1lb at a time Jax, just remember...1lb at a time!), I thought I would be able to start wearing these boots straight away. Sadly this is not the case and I am gutted. The reason? My calves are too big! My bloody calves are too big?!! You have to be kidding right?! Nope, I pulled them on....felt the bliss surround my feet and then felt the resistance as I tried to pull them up to their full height up my leg. My language would have made someone suffering with tourettes blush! I was GUTTED!! I was also trying to calculate who long it would be before the leather 'gave' enough and whether I would ruin them by wearing them and having them scrunched up whilst waiting for the 'give' in the leather. Hmmmmmm......possibly not an option.

I need both my calves to shrink by about 1cm, that's all. Not much really. You wouldn't think that was asking too much would you? Well, apparently it is. Apparently my body is well aware of the places I dislike the most and will, in it's evil way, save the weight loss and toning on those places for last! Grrrrr! I done some research on the internet and found that there is not a specific exercise I can do to speed up the calf reducing process. However, there are a shocking amount of people who are resorting to surgery to accomplish this. Uh-uh...no way....not a chance.

So I am planning on adding swimming twice a week to my already slightly hectic schedule, but after hours of trawling through various websites and questions and answers from people on the same mission, this seems to be a good idea.

Oh yeah, I've also ordered some boot stretchers....................just in case!

It's A New Day.....

.....and the start of a new week, one with choices and no mistakes in it.

I got up with a spring in my step, motivation in my soul and determination in my heart. If I am to reach my goal of dropping a dress size in time for my holiday, I have got to do this and not succumb to temptation. At all costs I must have all good days.

So, with this in mind, I was ready to go down the gym when my lad left for school this morning. I found a fabulous parking space close to the gym and handy for getting out, which I took as a good sign. A short brisk walk later, I was in the gym and positively raring to go. There were some other people in the gym when I got there, but I wasn't put off and started on this weeks regime of gym, home, work, home, time with my boy. With the exception of going to work (at the moment), I am looking forward to this week and seeing what I can do.

I didn't find the treadmill that tiring today, so am thinking of upping the speed this week. I done well with the weights and was pleased that I seem to be slipping back into the swing of working out fairly easily, but I still feel as though I have worked hard. With my pedometer in 'activity' mode, I earned an extra 5 WW points in just an hour. So there I was, happily sweating away, lulling myself into a false sense of weight loss from going to the gym after such a bad week food wise!! Yeah, right Jax.......one visit to the gym will undo the pizza and cantonese stir-fry troffing sessions....NOT!

I put on one and half pounds last week, which is no big shocker really. At least I knew what I had done to cause a slight weight increase and knew I could do something about it. So here we go this week, doing something about it. I have given myself the challenge of getting through the week without having a troffing session, unless it is on zero point filling foods, to lose 1lb in weight and to go down the gym 3 times this week. I am off to a good start already, I have been to the gym, eaten within my points and resisted the temptation to tuck into the big tin of chocolates at work today. I must have walked past that tin about a hundred times today and didn't even want to get a chocolate out of it. I just kept in my mind what I had planned for dinner and it worked!

Fingers crossed I can stay this strong for the rest of the week...............

I Really Need.....

.....to stop cooking my favourite meals!

So far this week I have been very good and not been naughty food wise. Today however, I made cantonese stir-fry with extra vegetables thrown in to make it a bit bigger and some noodles. I was very good and measured everything out and worked out the Weight Watchers (WW) points to go with it. It was so good and I really enjoyed it. Unfortunately, I had made a little too much and my lad struggled with his dinner. Not wanting to waste good food, I could not (repeat NOT) resist the temptation to finish off his dinner also.

Suddenly and, quite frankly, disastrously my dinner rocketed from 11 WW points to an extremely not good 22 WW points. And that was before I even thought about pudding! The general line of thinking was that I had already gone wrong, I may as well go really, really wrong! I unwisely chose a vanilla ice cream coated in white chocolate. I seriously doubt the WW point value will be as bad as the 2 dinners I ate, but do you dare me to work out the point value? Yes? Thanks a bunch!!

Actually, I like to know how good or bad I have done. Especially when I have been bad.....you know, damage control!! Ok, here goes............drum roll please!...........they are 6 WW points each!! Ouch, ow, yikes, crikey..............bollocks!

OK, so totally self-inflicted not an ounce of weight loss coming up and I have to admit that writing about it makes me feel quite gutted really. My own stupid fault of course, no one to blame except for myself on this one. Good grief, what a dumbass! Particularly when I had been doing so well. OK, face the music on Monday morning at the weigh-in and get right back on track, get right back into the gym and let's super speed this weight loss now.

Confession Time.......

Ok, I know I should have ignored the hunger pangs.

I've done 17,323 steps today, earned 5.5 extra WW points and walked 7.44 miles, which is pretty good going really. However, all this good work does not justify the dinner I have had. I have plenty of excuses for my choice of foodage tonight........here are some of them;

1. I was knackered.

2. I was really fricking hungry after all the hard work I have done today.

3. I need to go food shopping.

4. I can't go food shopping as our car is in for it's MOT and I don't get it back until Saturday.

5. Having the pizza delivered was cheaper than getting the bus to the carvery restaurant and back and paying for a meal.

Unfortunately for me, now I have a stomach full of pizza, garlic bread, coleslaw and choco-roco pudding, it means that I am going to have to seriously up my game at the gym tomorrow in order to burn off some of the hundreds (possibly thousands) of calories I have consumed tonight. Hmmmmmm......maybe the expense of going to the restaurant would have been justified!

Maybe it's a good job I got an XL large uniform top for work tomorrow, the size that fits the rather large Italian guy in the kitchen, as I don't think any of my figure hugging t-shirts would help the OAP's and their delicate internal systems which lead directly to their bowels!! Bless them. I may actually look like a member of staff tomorrow!

The silver lining to all of this? The XL top will hide the fact that I was a complete troffer tonight!! Woo hoo...win, win situation me thinks.

Oh....one more thing, I know I done the ab crunches correctly yesterday as my tummy muscles are protesting today. I wonder how many packs out of 6 I will have by the 26th July?

A Walk Down Memory Lane.....Via Treadmill!!

Well I done it....I started back at the gym today.

Surprisingly, I really enjoyed it. It was as though my muscles hadn't forgotten all the work they had done the last time I was doing 3 sessions a week at the gym and swung into action without any effort at all.....well, there was a lot of effort put in on my part, but I wasn't half as knackered as I thought I would be! I was momentarily worried when I got there as 2 very trim and toned lads were there pumping weights like their lives depended on it, and a lot of huffing and puffing could be heard, even over the noise of the treadmill going!! Thankfully they left during the first 5 minutes of me being there and I had the gym to myself for the rest of my workout. Bliss......

I kicked off with a 10 minute walk on the treadmill going at a glow (women don't sweat, we glow) inducing 3.7mph. I then done one set each of lateral pull down (wide), ab crunches (which I forgot about yesterday!), bench press, leg press and then lateral pull down (narrow). Then another 10 minutes on the treadmill, this time going at a glow with a pink tinge 3.8mph. Then another set of the weights, the bench press was getting a little shaky at this point, but I soldiered on like a trooper! Another 10 minutes on the treadmill followed, only this time it was at a glow with red patches and puffed out cheeks (the one's on my face, not the lower one's!!) with the effort, going at 3.9mph. I rounded off my session with another set of weights, extremely grateful that no one else was in there at the time as I got into some wonderful positions in my attempts to complete the set on the bench press!!

I managed all the kg I had been on the last time I was there, so was suitably impressed with myself. I thought it had been months since I was last there, but it was in fact only March. So I filled out my little sheet thing with a record of what I had done, in my usual excruciatingly, painfully neat handwriting and popped it back in the F section with a satisfying 'shoomp' kind of noise.

Walking back to the car, I checked my trusty pedometer and was totally over the moon to see that I was already well on my way to my 10,000 steps and had even earned 1.5 extra WW points. By the time I got to work I was just over 200 steps off my target.............then tragedy struck! For some reason, my pedometer reset itself and I had to start all over again. Gutted is an understatement! I tried in vain to remember the amount of steps I had actually done, I know it was 9,700 and something, but do you think I could recall the last 2 digits? Of course I bloody couldn't! In the end I had to add the 2 amounts together and I know........I just KNOW I have done more steps than I have written down.

Any weight loss this week will more than make up for this tragic step event!!

One Small Measure.......Or Several Fairly Big One's!!

OK, usually these are locked tightly away in my safe (seriously), but I thought I would be very brave and put my measurements out there! They will be updated every 4 weeks as my gym self-punishment continues!! I am still debating as to whether I am going to label them or not.....I may just let you try and guess which measurement goes with which part of me! So here they are: 25", 25.5", 37" and 46.5". My magic numbers for the month of May! OK, the first one is my right thigh. The second is my left thigh (I have to say, I have been treating both thigh's equally, so why is one half an inch bigger than the other?). The third is my waist (always been a lot smaller than my child-bearing hips [as my Mum calls them!!]) and the fourth, is obviously my hips. Have just realised I didn't measure my bust, but I will do this next time.

So, the plan is, I start back down the gym tomorrow. My time spent down there goes roughly as follows: 10 minutes on the treadmill, walking at about 3.7mph - a set of reps on: bench press/leg press/lateral pull-down (narrow and wide) - 10 minutes on the treadmill again at 3.8mph - another set of reps - 10 more minutes on the treadmill at 3.9mph - final set of reps. I know that once I get back into it and am plugged into my iPod, which bangs out some cracking music to work out to................yes, yes, they may be mostly 80's pop tunes, but they get me moving and, more importantly, keep me moving. It's very lucky that the gym is usually empty at the time of the morning I go in, as I am sure that in my 'I've just woken up, couldn't find my hairbrush and I think I have odd socks on' state, I may possibly start belting out a few lyrics!!

Tip for those who use a treadmill, do not look down at your thighs when you are walking/jogging/running at any speed - they look about a mile wide and you start to wonder why you are on this fake pavement with no view!

I wil let you know how I get on!! Wish me luck..................

The Hair Colour

I swear, if I had some sort of coinage for every time I heard some old dear tell my Mum that I had lovely hair, I would have been able to retire at about the age of 10. Bill Gates fortune would be a drop in the ocean compared to how much I would have had! This should give you some clue as to how many times I heard it. I hated my hair, with a kind of venomous loathing and would have dyed it a multitude of colours had I been allowed, and it lasted a long time.

The teasing I put up with at school convinced me I must have been extremely naughty in a previous life, and karma was well and truly kicking my arse now.......actually, a couple of times I honestly believe it drop kicked me into the next week! My sister regularly used to tell me that I was adopted and that was why I was the only one with ginger hair. Nice. I thought I had one up on her though, as my Mum was almost the same colour as me. You can, therefore, completely understand my utter devastation, the feeling of betrayal, when I found out Mum's hair colour was out of a bottle!! So, the adoption idea lingered and festered until Mum pointed out (literally at the time) the various varicose veins she had....uh......acquired whilst carrying me. OK, sorry about that Mum.

On top of convincing me that she did indeed carry and protect me for 9 months despite the growing number of varicose veins popping up, then I messed around apparently not wanting to be born (I still maintain I was simply waiting for Dad's birthday, which worked as we share it) and then having the utter audacity to be born with the umbilical cord wrapped round my neck which was effectively choking me with every push (obvious punishment for being ginger in the womb). I was born with a full head of ginger hair. We are not talking a tuft at the front or that funny fuzzy feeling stuff that newborn babies sometimes have, I am talking full-on 'could probably do with a trip to the hairdressers' kind of hair. I have been told a lot of nurses fussed over me, but with ginger's being a minority, it may just have been kindness at the time!!

There you have it really, been ginger ever since!! Love it now of course, as ginger's don't go grey apparently (although I have yet to even start this stage myself), we go ash blonde....ha ha ha!

A Beginning

So, here we are. Whether you read this or not, it will be fun for me to write it. I will tell you all about my (quite frankly) heroic struggles to cope going through life with ginger hair, coupled with being a single parent, although the latter could be considered to be a lot easier!! It will also detail my epic (as in it has been going on for years) trials and tribulations in attaining my ideal weight/BMI - this will include details of self-punishment in the form of gym visit's and my steadfast refusal to wear spandex and be known locally as a gym-bunny!

I hope you enjoy....