The impromptu walk yesterday didn’t leave much time to fit in the hands and feet pampering that went by the wayside due to the iPod debacle on Sunday afternoon. It really had to be done though because my toenails were ridiculously long which is not good for walking. Foot care is very important, so I made the time yesterday evening to cut my toenails, remove the red polish that’s been on there since Christmas and give the bottoms of my feet a good going over with the amazing gadget Commando got me for Christmas. It’s basically a mini electric sander for feet and I love it. It’s no secret that I have skin like old leather on the bottoms of my feet, probably from so much time walking around barefoot. Honestly, walking over hot coals would be no problem, I’d not feel a thing. But you can have too much of a good thing and I have a constant battle to keep it under control.
It wasn’t the long soak in soapy water with essential oils I’d been planning but it was better than nothing and I promised myself a proper All About Me Day next weekend. While I worked on my feet I caught up with some Biggest Loser episodes on sky+. There was a huge chocolate temptation and I watched, wondering how I’d have dealt with that. Could I have resisted? Somehow I doubt it. Mind you I wouldn’t have eaten the thirty odd one contestant managed. I think I might have been sick if I had. With an average chocolate being about fifty calories that’s over one thousand five hundred calories worth of chocolate! I wouldn’t like to be him on weigh in day for sure.
A question I’m often asked is “how can I lose weight fast?” And I wonder how much of this comes from programmes like Biggest Loser where contestants are unhappy if they lose less than five or six pounds a week. If you Google ‘lose weight fast’ You’ll find millions of articles promising to ‘lose thirty pounds in thirty days’ or lose ‘ten pounds in two weeks’, usually prefaced with easy or simple. Invariably these articles are about some stupid fad diet that is totally unsustainable long term. What they don’t tell you is, unless you change your eating habits for good, you will not keep off any weight you do manage to lose.
The simple answer to the question of how to lose weigh fast is, you cant, not if you want to lose it permanently. Losing weight permanently is NOT easy or quick. It’s hard work over a long period of time. The Biggest Loser is not the real world. For a start, most of the people on the show are VERY big, much bigger than I was even and I was pretty large for a short woman with, what turned out were, small bones (who’d have thought that under all that fat?). The bigger you are the faster the weight will come off initially. Bigger people burn more calories when they exercise because their bodies have to work harder just to carry around the extra weight. Also, in the Biggest Loser house, they exercise six hours or more a day. Who has time to do that? Who would do that even if they did have the time unless they had Jillian Michaels shouting in their face? They are provided with good healty food, not surrounded by fast food, sweets and chocolates (except during temptations). Of course they lose weight fast. The real world is not Biggest Loser and in the real world a loss of two pounds a week is a big achievement. Most weeks it won’t be that much.
If you have, say, four stone to lose, even working hard every day and never giving in to temptation The best you can hope for is to take twenty eight weeks to banish those extra pounds, that’s about seven months. If you lose at a slower rate, say a pound a week, you’re looking at double that and that’s without the enevitable plateaus and things like birthdays, holidays and Christmas to slow you down. My good friend Mel C did an amazing job losing her weight, she consistenty lost two pounds every single week. We used to joke about it. She is a very special lady though. If you really want to lose weight, forget about the fast bit, forget about the fad diets, just slowly build up your exercise, and make sustainable changes to your diet. Cut out the junk food and the sweets (as much as you can) and try to eat more fresh food. Above all keep working on it, especially when the going gets tough.
We had very heavy rain here in the night, so much so it woke me up! Usually nothing disturbs my sleep so it must have been bad. Luckily it had all cleared up this morning but I was a little late getting out of bed thanks to the snooze button. I very rarely snooze the alarm but this morning I just couldn’t keep my eyes open. Consequently I was dashing around like a mad thing to get ready for work.
It might not have been raining For the walk to work but it was freezing cold. I’d dashed out without putting my gloves on so, halfway down the road I stopped to get them out of my bag. Guess what? They weren’t there. It was too late to turn back so I had to pull my sleeves down as far as I could and live with it. Finally, after weeks of forgetting, I remembered to turn off the main road in time to take Gigi’s pretty route though so, despite the cold hands it was a lovely walk. Almost as soon as I left the road behind I was greeted by the cheery sight of some bright orange Pyracantha berries tumbling over a wall.
After all that I almost missed the little cutway, right at the last minute I spotted it. I’ve only walked home that way twice and it’s funny how different things look walking in the other direction. The cutway leads towards the school and just after I’d gone through the barrier stopping cyclists riding down there a schoolboy flashed past me and disappeared like lightening down towards the water. He must have been late for school, or very eager to get there. There were some wonderful fluffy seed heads as I came down the steps and turned towards the river, almost like tiny bunches of feathers. The seagulls were flying low over the water in the little quay, looking for fish I suppose and on the opposite bank all the little boats were moored, bobbing about on the river. Further along a pair of swans and three cygnets paddled at the waters edge, just visible through the bushes. Further still a line of gulls sat on an old boat. So much more peaceful to walk this way than along the road, even if it did add a little distance to the walk to work. I’m looking forward to the lighter evenings when I’ll be able to walk back that way.
When I got to work my hands were frozen solid so I went straight out to the little kitchen to make a hot drink. There was cake in there, someone’s birthday. I looked at it, made my drink and left it where it was. After answering the normal Tuesday morning influx of emails I started looking at the website again, hopeful that the changes I’d sent over to the web admin would have been made. They hadn’t! So I started going through it all again, step by step, creating another list of changes. It’s slow painstaking work, worse still, it’s work I’ve already done once. Needless to say I wasn’t in the best of moods. When I went out to the kitchen to make another coffee to wake me up a bit, Alice was out there cutting herself a slice of cake. “Do you want me to cut you a bit?” She asked. I tried to resist, I really did, but in the end I gave in and had a tiny sliver. It wasn’t even particularly nice. Why do I do these things?
For lunch I’d taken a slice of crustless quiche to make a change from the usual wrap. The trouble is I’d been a bit stingy with the portion. At midday I ate it but it really didn’t fill me up, even though it was nice. Tomorrow I think I’d better take a bigger slice. I was still hungry when I went out to buy some cheap gloves for the walk home. Gail said she’d walk up the road with me as she wanted to go to the shops too. She wanted to stop at the sweet shop so I went in with her. Bad mistake, especially as I was still hungry after the quiche. An afternoon of trawling through the website ahead of me sapped my willpower. It’s no excuse I know, but I bought Maltesers, and I ate them when I got back to the office. Cake is bad enough but Maltesers as well, I’m going to have to have a better day tomorrow to make up for it for sure.
When I went to wash my cup up before I left work tonight at least all the cake was gone so there was no more temptation. There was also another beautiful pink sunset outside. A few more weeks and I’ll be looking at that on the walk home.
Thank you for this blog. Well said. And how do you have so much beautiful foliage in the same place you had all that snow not too long ago?
Thanks for taking the time to read it Paula. After all my travels one thing that never ceases to amaze me is how green this little island is. Despite all the frost and snow some quite surprising things have survived.