Friday letters

Friday, Friday, Friday! I am so pleased you’re here! You would think after a four-day weekend I would be happy to do plenty of work this week, but in fact I’m really looking forward to the weekend. That probably makes it sound like I hate my job… I swear I don’t! But I’ve spent most of the week working on a single not all that interesting translation and I could use a break from it. Plus it’s looking like some fun things might be in order this weekend, and who wouldn’t look forward to fun things? I still have a full day of work to get there before that though. So for now let’s have some letters.

 

Dear scales. I very much appreciated you’re sticking to the same number despite all my indulgences in Berlin, but it’s been nearly a week now so it would be nice if you could start moving in a downward direction again…

Dear plants. I wish there was some way I could make you grow faster. I’m so excited for you to look all pretty on my balcony.

Dear Easter chocolate. I hope you know how much willpower it cost me to ignore you now that you’re half price in all the supermarkets! Please hurry up and sell out so I can no longer be tempted!

Dear home office. If I were to look up the word “chaos” in the dictionary I’m sure a photo of you would appear! I’m so sorry. One day we will find the right piece of furniture for you…

Dear Switzerland. In 5 days I will have been living in you for 2 years. Time flies!

Right, that’s it for today. Have an amazing weekend everyone!
p.s. Tomorrow is April’s photo an hour day with Jane and Louisa. Who’s playing?

 

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Friday letters

Hello everyone! This week has confused me again. I had to go into work on Tuesday and I spent half the day convinced it was Friday (not as weird as it sounds – I alternate between going on a Tuesday and a Friday, and Monday was incredibly busy this week!). Today really is Friday though, and that means time for letters!

Dear birds. We don’t really need to feed you as much now it’s getting warmer but if we keep the lard balls until next winter they will only go mouldy so enjoy!

Dear tree by the balcony. I see your little buds! Soon you will have leaves again 🙂

Dear spring flowers. You are so pretty! Hoorah for you 🙂

Dear online sellers. How is it possible that two items coming from the UK can both be marked “sent” on the same day but one arrives within days and the other takes 2 weeks. Me thinks one  of you is telling porkies about when the “sending” actually happened…

Dear St. Patrick’s Day. Apparently you are today? I had entirely forgotten about you this year!

Dear cheese. You are so tasty, but so many calories! I couldn’t believe how much of my daily allowance a sandwich with you took up the other day!

Dear scales. I have been really good recently and finally you have decided to agree with me. 1kg down this week (probably a lot of that is water weight, but whatever. At least the number is going down!)

Okay, that’s all for today. Must eat lunch (leftovers from last night) and get back to work. Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

July goals: Update

Hello there! I’m working from home today because the train I usually take to get to work was cancelled and with the next one it was unclear whether/when it would be stopping where I wanted to go. If I’d realised that earlier, I’d have stayed in bed longer! But never mind… this way I started work earlier than usual so I get to have extra breaks.

At the beginning of July, I posted some goals for the month. Now that it’s August, I suppose I should look back at those goals and see whether I actually achieved any of them or not. Making monthly goals is not a thing I usually do (and I won’t be making any for August… goals and birthday month don’t mix!).

• Complete the 30 day squat challenge.
  I actually did it! Okay, it ended up being more of a 33ish day challenge because I inserted a few extra rest days when my thighs went on strike and refused to even consider the number of squats I wanted to put them through that day. I see no difference in the size of my thighs, but Jan claims they feel firmer so there’s that.
• Be more careful with my money.
  Meh. Sort of. More careful than in June anyway, although I still had slightly less left at the end of the month than I would have liked to, especially sionce I assume I am going to need a lot for Taiwan!
• Lose 2kg before my brother comes.
  Well, I got half way there. Lost 1 kg before my brother came. Now I’m down to 1.5 kg lost, although it fluctuates a lot. The scales did show the weight I was aiming for once last week, but I think it was just a fluke.



Not a combination of ingredients I would have thought of myself, but utterly delicious!

• Complete the summer reading challenge.
  Those who read my last post will know that I did not, in fact, complete the challenge. I still have one book to go.
• Eat fruit.
  Wellll, I had some raspberries in a glass of spritzer, ate two whole apricots in July and also had a mago and avocado salad (amazing!) one night while my brother was here. Not quite as much as I was aiming for, bit it’s fruit so I’ll take it 😉

So, there you have it. A semi-success, I suppose. I would have liked to save more money and do better on the fruit front, but this is better than nothing.

YAY Friday! (letters)

It’s Friday and I’m so pleased this week is over! Maybe I’ll actually get to enjoy this weekend now that I’m no longer constantly attached to an ice pack…

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Dear wisdom teeth. You’ve been out of my mouth for over a week now and I’ve yet to eat a non-soft meal. This ordeal better be over soon!

Dear food. I am sooo looking forward to eating you properly again! Pizza, crisps and other hard and crunchy things, here I come!

Dear goal weight. It seems I have actually achieved you. Looks like the wisdom teeth extraction diet was the way to go. (And no, I do not recommend this as a way to lose weight!)

Dear weather. Is all this rain really necessary? Please could you send just a little sunshine soon-ish?

Dear readers. Thanks for sticking around through all the wisdom teeth posts. I promise to change the subject now… as soon as I find something else to write about! Being ill limits opportunities for blog-worthy news, I’m afraid…

Dear weekend. Hello! Nice to see you again. Let’s spend some quality time together, okay? (That means no rushing by before I’ve even properly registered that you’ve begun!)

The last weigh-in Wednesday

I have to admit, I’m bored of weigh-in Wednesdays now… and I’m sure you are too! So I’ve decided to make this the last one. It was only supposed to be a summer thing anyway, and by this time next week it will be September (eep, where has the time gone?!). Even if it isn’t officially autumn until the 22nd of September, it’s still an autumn month… and that was a long-winded explanation for something so simple! I think I’d better get on with the post…

Photo credit: Esthr

I’ve almost reached goal weight now (still not telling you what it is though. Ha!). I’m 1.3 kg down on last week, and weigh a whole 3.6 kg less than when I started the challenge. Go me!

I’ve only been weighing in every other day for the past two weeks, but my body fat percentage has been up and down just as much as when I was doing it every day. The ups have been lower as time goes on though, and today’s percentage is 28.3 %, down by 0.8% compared with last week!

Today’s waist line measurement was 76 cm (following on from 76.5 the last two times), which is 4 cm less than my starting measurement of 80 cm and puts me well below the unhealthy boundary. Phew!

I suspect I may look something like this… (Photo credit: pasukaru76)

Exercise has been… wellll, non-existent to be honest. I did do some walking (more than the usual tram stop to work and back, which I don’t count), but that’s about it. However, my local supermarket currently have fitness products on offer, so I took advantage and finally bought myself some hand weights… which means no more lifting tins of mangos! I might get my Jillian Michaels DVD out again this week and see how I fare doing a workout with actual weights…

And that’s my last weigh-in Wednesday for the time being. I might mention my measurements as part of another post in future, but I don’t intend to dedicate any more entire posts to weight loss… at least not until next summer when it’s time to stop hiding under stomach-shaping tights and baggy jumpers again!

Weigh-in Wednesday: 30 minutes exercise not happening!

So, it’s Wednesday again (how did that happen?!), and that means it’s time for another weigh in.

Despite my plans to treat myself on Saturday, I actually ended up doing pretty well this weekend, mostly because I was so buy preparing for curry night I didn’t have the chance to eat anything else that day! In the end, I was only 10 calories over my daily limit despite the glasses of wine.

My weight has fluctuated a lot since last week, but it hasn’t gone back up to my starting weight at any point, which is good. Last week, I was 0.5 kg down from when I started… this week I’m at roughly the same, although I did record a weight that was 1 kg down from original weight. Only on one day though.

My body fat in percent also fluctuates quite a bit, but it’s only gone above last week’s measurement of 28.5% once. This morning’s result was 27.8%, down 0.7% on last week and 2.2% on my starting percentage. Here’s the graph from MyFitnessPal to show you how much it fluctuates. It’s generally around the 28% mark though… well, apart from that one day where it shot waaay up to 29%!

After getting stuck at 78 cm for what felt like years, my waistline measurement finally crept down by another half centimetre (yes, I count the halves!) and has been 77.5 cm for the last three mornings in a row. I did measure 77 cm once, but the next day it had gone back up again.

My plan for this week was to try and actually achieve my goal of 30 minutes exercise on 5 days a week. Sadly, this hasn’t happened once so far… since last Wednesday, the most I’ve managed is 15 minutes. It’s just too hot to exercise! And this week I also have far too much to do.

Photo: zebedee.zebedee

On the calories front, I’ve been doing really well! Admittedly, I was 375 above my limit on Friday, but apart from that I’ve been sticking to it pretty well. The last couple of days I’ve felt really hungry and just wanted to eat everything in sight. On Monday I was good and managed to restrict myself to a single serving of dark chocolate peanut M&Ms and a small handfull of spelt snack things from the organic supermarket, but yesterday U was unable to resist the cheesy crisps and eded up around 300 calories over my daily limit. To compensate, I forced myself to jog on the spot past the point where I would normally have given up and managed to make it to a whole 5 minutes on both days. Quite an achievement for me! Not that it helped much… 5 minutes of jogging in place burns a mere 42 calories. *Sigh*

I’m not sure how well I’ll be able to keep up with the healthy eating thing while I’m in England, but I’ll do my best. We’ll see how well I fared in two weeks time…
Wish me luck!

Weigh-in Wednesday: The first week

I joined My Fitness Pal on the recommendation of The Pink Rachael. For the first week, I decided to carry on with what I have been doing anyway – eating as healthily as possible and trying to fit in some exercise between all my other commitments – and see what insights I could gain. Here’s what I’ve discovered:

• Star jumps (jumping jacks) don’t use up nearly as many calories as I expected. So why exactly have I been jumping around my kitchen like an idiot? 😉
• Pine nuts contain a surprising number of calories!
• There is far too much sugar in my diet. Most of this comes from yoghurts.
• I would be much better at sticking to my daily calorie limits if I didn’t have a social life 😉
• I am totally useless at judging correct portion sizes. If I don’t weigh out ingredients, I will automatically make too much!
• I can currently only jog on the spot for 2 minutes before I have to stop.

All that said, I have been doing pretty well so far. I haven’t always been below the calorie limit that MFP specifies in order for me to achieve my goals, but every day so far I have been below the number of calories it says I would need to maintain my current weight. And now for the numbers…

– I didn’t tell you my original weight (and I’m not going to now ;-)), but this week it is down by 0.5 kg.
– My body fat is down from 30% to 28.5%
– My waist measurement is down from 80 cm to 78 cm (there is some fluctuation, but it tends to be 78 cm in the morning and 79 cm in the evening… the last 6 measurements have all been below 80!)

Here’s a graph showing my morning waist measurements since I started using My Fitness Pal:

All in all, the first week went pretty well. For next week, I want to try and meet my exercise goals (30 minutes a day on 5 days of the week) and actively plan some meals in advance based on the number of calories they contain – during the first week, I was making our “normal” (but healthy) meals and checking out how many calories they actually contain. I already know I will be treating myself on Saturday though… planning on  having friends round for curry. And wine, of course 😉