Slimming World and Body Balance

This post has turned into a bit of a wordy ramble about my body/weight. Feel free to skip it if that will bore or upset you...I've got it out of my system now and will be back to normal posting next time!

I finally bit the bullet and joined Slimming World yesterday. Some of you may have noticed that I've removed my 'Weight Journey' tab from the blog. My weight has been going up and up, and writing it down each week was depressing me rather than motivating me so it had to go!

Slimming world has, two whole days in, been a positive experience so far though. As I don't eat meat or fish anyway, I am following the green plan which means that as well as all the "free" fruits, vegetables, pasta, grains etc I get two healthy extra As (which I've been using to have between 375-750ml skimmed milk a day - I love my lattes and they are one of my protein sources) and two healthy extra Bs (a wide range to choose from, but yesterday and today I had mine in the form of 35g porridge oats and two slices of wholemeal bread, I will also have houmous or nuts for one of them sometimes). I've previously calorie counted, and I like that I now don't need to weigh my "free" foods. For example, tonight we had egg fried rice for dinner (brown rice, eggs, peas, sweetcorn, soy sauce) and it was great to be able to not have to worry about the weight of everything, or the proportion of my portion size in relation to the whole recipe. Family cooking whilst calorie counting isn't always easy!

Anyway, I'm not always going to talk about Slimming World, promise, but I thought I'd mention it today. I've actually found that my meals are pretty much unchanged, the only real differences is are switching from white bread to wholemeal bread and not adding cheese to everything. My main change is when I want to snack - I've been choosing fruit over chocolate/biscuits/cake...long may it last!

Here are some of my meals from the last two days anyway...

Yesterday brunch (I had a latte first thing, then went to Slimming World meeting 9.30am-11am so this was after that) - porridge with mashed banana and peanut butter:

Pretty new bowl - £1.50 from The Factory Shop

This was actually my only Slimming World "shock" so far. You are allowed 5-15 syns a day for extra foods, and I decided to use some on peanut butter. I decided to have 1 tbsp which is 4.5 syns, but my "half a heaped spoon should equal a tbsp" actually weighed the equivalent of two tbsp...whoops!

For this morning's porridge I decided to just use half a syn for a tsp of cocoa powder, alongside the oats, milk, banana and blueberries:

Not quite as pretty, but still tasty! The SW portion for oats used to be 28g, but it has gone up recently to 35g. I used to eat 40g but I couldn't really notice the drop, this still kept me full.

I've also been eating wholemeal bread. Yesterday I had poached eggs on toast for dinner, today was an egg mayonnaise & cucumber sandwich...

Delicious, and even better when eaten outside. The weather has been gorgeous here today, so this was my "home" for a couple of hours this afternoon...

Bliss! Thank you Toby for having a nice long nap!! ;-)

I had done some kind of activity in the morning to justify my relaxing afternoon. As the title suggests, I tried out Body Balance this morning. Toby went to creche (loved it - so happy (and relieved!) that he's settled in so well!) and my sister and I went to the Body Balance class. It was...interesting. I could feel it was doing me good - my feet and calves (which are my particular problem areas) were on fire for most of it. Sarah didn't find that though so I don't know if it was just me. Haha, even standing on my tiptoes for any length of time made my calves hurt!! The instructor was a bit irritating though, but I'm guessing part of that is how the class is meant to be. For the last song of the class, we all had to lie down with our eyes closed (one lady even put a blanket over herself!) and think about "the hard ground beneath us supporting us as life will support us the more we let go". I don't know. I might give it another go as it is exactly what the podiatrist I saw recommended, but I definitely don't enjoy it as much as I did Body Pump.

Sarah and I were also planning to go to Boxercise at our local gym last night, but annoyingly they are no longer running it. (They've replaced it with a boot camp style class, shudder, we didn't go to that!!) I noticed this morning that the gym-with-creche is starting Body Combat classes (Les Mills same as Body Pump and Body Balance) mid-April so we're looking forward to giving that a try instead. Although my sister is starting her new job next week so I'll either have to go during the day (with Toby in creche) on my own, or in the evening with Sarah if the classes are late enough for Liam to get back from work first. I'm going to miss having my sister as my driving/exercise partner - I feel so much more confident driving with her in the passenger seat, and it's nice to try new classes with someone I know for the first time! She's still going to be in the same town as us though, so like I say, we'll hopefully still be able to go to evening classes sometimes.

Anyway, back to food. Whilst this new "diet" is still in the early stages, I am of course full of enthusiasm. It's nice to finally have some motivation back, I just hope it stays long enough for me to get down to a healthy BMI/weight I'm happier with. As I already mentioned, it has encouraged me to use fruit as my first choice for snacks when I want something sweet. I've been snacking on mango...

and apples...

and also iced lattes - summer's coming! For this I poured a glass of milk with ice, and then made up an "espresso shot" with two tsps of instant coffee, vanilla stevia and a little boiling water. I do also make iced coffees by brewing a pot of coffee then placing it in the fridge overnight, but this way is quicker!

Before stirring obviously!

Mmm, loved this. Iced lattes seem so much more luxurious than the hot version, even though they have exactly the same ingredients!

Finally food picture - tonight's dinner - egg fried rice:

Very simple dinner, but it is one I cook quite regularly. This and pasta with passata and frozen peas/sweetcorn are my two store cupboard staples that I cook when I'm rushed/tired (ie Fridays usually) and both are already Slimming World friendly. The only change I made to this was not using sesame oil to flavour it - just soy sauce - and then Liam added some sesame oil to his once I'd served it.

Have you ever been to Slimming World before? Or any of the other weight loss groups/communities? I did Weight Watchers when Izzy was about 10 months old - although i followed the Core plan rather than Points, so it had similar principles to Slimming World. I did actually get down to my goal weight with Weight Watchers, but then went way off track the week after getting to goal, put 6lbs back on in a week and then never went back again. I was about a stone heavier than that goal weight when I got pregnant with Toby, and then put on lots and lots during pregnancy! I've recently been using the Weight Loss Resources website to count calories, but the problem with that was I found, for me, it really all or nothing. Either I'd be counting every calorie obsessively, and having to weigh/measure every single ingredient, or I'd just give up and not even try to calorie count - eg if I went out for a meal or ate cake made by someone else (or just for days on end when I went off track!) One of the things I like about Slimming World is that, because there is a list of "free food", it is easier to deal with occasions when you don't know exactly what you are eating. For example, if we go out for dinner I can choose to have something like a tomato-based pasta dish, knowing that it's only the oil used in cooking that I need to guess the syn count for, rather than also having to guess the portion size of pasta etc to count the calories.

I do find it frustrating though. I know what I should be doing to lose weight, and a lot of me thinks I shouldn't need to go to Slimming World or the like - I should just be able to eat healthily without following set guidelines and the at the very least be able to maintain my current weight. But the fact is I don't. If I'm not following a set plan then I ate way too much - too many sugary foods but also too much of everything. Left to my own devices I constantly graze on anything I can find. And then I gain weight. I'm hoping that by following Slimming World it will help me to make "better" choices more often. I was so surprised when I chose to eat an apple this afternoon. It was just before I started cooking dinner (about an hour before we ate) so perhaps I should have just not eaten anything, but normally I pick on chocolate/nut butter/dried fruit etc etc while cooking, so a plain apple is a huge improvement!

Sorry for the mega wordy post! I know a lot of you probably aren't interested in diets (in which case, I hope for your sake that you've skim-read this post!) but I just wanted to get some of my thoughts written down. As you can see, it's still a bit of a jumble - I'm not entirely happy that it's got to the stage where I need to go to Slimming World, so I suppose a lot of this post is trying to convince myself that it's what I need to do right now. Something needed to change. I can't just keep on gaining weight. It's not healthy, and I'm fed up of it. I'm fed up of none of my clothes fitting and my joints complaining from having to carry around the extra weight. I want to be able to buy summery clothes without worrying that if they fit over one body area they'll be too tight/loose for another. My tummy is disproportionately large compared to the rest of my body at the moment so I'm hoping that as I get closer to "normal" (for me) my body shape will get more balanced again. Maybe writing it down will help me actually stick to it this time. My Mum has joined Slimming World as well - to lose a few pounds, but mainly to support me. At the very least she's useful for holding Toby while I get weighed - he tried to cling to me when I stepped on the scales yesterday, but I really don't need to add his body weight on top of my own!! ;-)