Thanks for the compliments and kind words folks. I used to always think I'd never be able to motivate myself to lose weight when it takes months and years to see the weight you want to be rather than weeks but my opinion on that changed once I started. In a relatively short space of time, probably weeks, I was beginning to notice clothes fit differently. I started the weigh in at work thing at the end of September and received my first unsolicited comments about it at the work Christmas dinner, when three separate people who I usually have no interaction with came up to ask me if I'd lost weight. After that, every few weeks or so someone at work would ask about it and say how different I looked and having people say something about it out of the blue was a real motivater.
One of the best bits has been shopping for new holiday clothes and trying on sizes I've not fit into for 6 years, or buying and wearing a bikini with no hang ups about my body at all.
For anyone thinking about losing weight, I would really recommend just going for it. The key things that helped me were
1)a weekly weigh in, so I could see what I had achieved which encouraged me on for another week
2)keeping a food diary at the start, so on less successful weeks I could pinpoint where I had gone wrong
3)Reducing portion sizes: I'm still not great at this, I love rice and pasta and could (and do) just fill a plate with them, however I force myself now to prepare less and try and measure out proper portions most times I make them.
4) Taking food to work. Stopped getting rolls in the morning and started eating cereal, followed by a baguette or low fat meal for lunch. I found the key here was to make sure I kept my packed lunch interesting. Taking in a ham sandwich would hade had me queuing for the canteen as soon I went for my lunch but making a baguette with ham, halloumi and tomatoes meant I looked forward to it.
Hope that doesn't sound preachy, I just want to offer any tips I can of things that helped me! My biggest single factor was wearing a pedometer and seeing an estimate of fat/calories burned in a day vs fat and calorie content of some quite seemingly innocent food. I'm lucky in that I have a pretty active job but if you don't, just start walking after work. My sister had a baby 18 months ago and she's slimmer than she's ever been, because her car broke and she walks everywhere with the pram.
Curiosity wrote:
Jen must be like