Dave's diary - back on plan, back on Minimins

Congratulations on your weight loss Dave. You probably don't remember me, but I posted on your diary right back when you started. We had a similar starting weight, and have both lost a similar amount of weight so far. Your diary has inspired me and kept me motivated all the way through - just wanted to say thanks
 
omg:eek: just read from start to finish, a huge well done from me.:cool: what a great weight loss.
 
Hi all :D:D

Sorry I haven't stopped by for an update for AGES I've been sooooooooo busy just haven't had the time!!

Don't panic, all is well, and I will be back hopefully tomorrow or the next day to bore you to death again hehe

Dave ♥
 
Wow, Dave! Well done :) I came here looking for some motivation for my coming week and I certainly found it. You've done so well! Keep up the absolutely amaaaazing work :)
Kaz x
 
I know it is driving me crazy. I am addicted to checking here and looking at Dave's progress. May have to get help to break this addiction as it is depressing to come ehre and see no updates :)


DAVE are you still out there? How did EE go, how much did you lose last week? this week?

Tell us all !!!
 
Hi all,

Very sorry I haven't been updating my diary much, I just seem to be so busy all the time, and unlike all the other things I do online (and even here on Minimins) updating my diary needs longer!

I will attempt to make amends now ... I have worked out that my last proper post was way back on Thursday 8th April. I am so naughty for leaving it that long, and I will endeavour to not let it happen again!

Hard to know which is the best way to bring you all up to speed, do I do it in time order, or under different topics (weight, exercise, etc) or just throw things in as I think of them lol.

So I have decided to just write, and things will come out in the order they want to!

As I left things, I had just begun on my first week on Extra Easy. I had decided from the off to give it a fair go, but if after a couple of weeks I wasn't getting good results (as I have most definitely been getting on my green days) I would just switch back. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Sadly, I didn't actually give EE a chance to work in the first couple of weeks! During the first week I managed to avoid the pitfalls of a poker night, only to succumb to a massive chinese the following night! At official weigh in I put on ½lb as a result. To be honest my home scales had still shown a loss and I think it was more to do with my shift that day and what I had eaten and had to drink during that day, rather than a bad week.

But the second week, I had a 'flexi-syn' night straight after weigh in. That is to say I put all thoughts of healthy eating/weight loss to one side and pigged out. This was a planned splurge, as I had been struggling to stay focused and enjoy the plan as I had been, and decided to have one big blast to clear out the cobwebs so I could be refreshed again from the next day. And the plan went like clockwork ... until the Friday night ... I went out to a friend's 50th birthday, stuck to plan having only 5 vodka/diet cokes and sticking to plan at the do ... only to pick up a meat and chips from the kebab on the way home!! That is the kind of thing I can get away with every once in a while when at target and maintaining, but not while I still have so much to lose. I don't even have the excuse that we were drawn in by the nice smell as we purposely diverted our walk home to have one! Not my proudest moment, but I don't drink very often so I don't see it being a problem that will repeat all too often. And, for the record, the food tasted naff anyway lol.

Then on the Sunday that week, the wife went out with her friend to watch the Dancing on Ice show at the O2 and I had the kids for the day. I took the boys to Wetherspoons for lunch, I had the 5 bean chilli (only 4½ syns and delicious!!). The day was going perfectly in terms of food until the wife got home late and we decided to have an indian!! Unlike the kebab earlier in the week, the indian was of course delicious :) But just like the kebab it was unplanned and not a good decision to make. As you would expect, I put on 1lb at my official weigh in that week.

So my first two weeks on EE hadn't exactly been a success, but then I hadn't given them a chance to shine.

So I decided to have a 100% fortnight on EE, starting from the Wednesday 21st April. I am just over one week into it, have been enjoying it immensely, and it is definitely working.

At weigh in Tuesday night, I showed a loss of NINE pounds :) This got me my 6½ stone award - though perhaps ironically not the Slimmer of the Week award as I had put on the previous week lol.

I'm two days into the second EE trial 100% week, and so far so good. Both in terms of how much I'm enjoying it and finding I can make it suit my home life and work shifts, but also in terms of the results I am seeing/feeling. I'm not expecting much of a loss this week following the superb amount that came off last week, just a ½lb loss on Tuesday will give me an average of 2lb a week loss over the four weeks regardless of my poor attempts in the first two weeks!

I am now only ½lb away from reaching my 7 stone award as well, another reason why I am keen to lose ½lb this week :)

As for home weigh ins, on Tuesday 27th April I weighed in at 16 stone 12¼lb, which took me past the 8 stone total weight loss milestone which was massive for me!

The same Tuesday also saw me passing my practical driving test, so once again I am the proud owner of a full car driving licence. And this time I intend to keep it lol.

We have been trying lots of new meals since starting EE, including: shepherd's pie (with mince opposed to Quorn), spag bol (same), pork sausages and spring onion mash, jacket with minced beef, spiced chicken casserole, chicken and leek pie, lasagne, chicken tikka masala, spaghetti carbonara (using ham instead of the HEb bacon that I had on green days), cajun chicken burgers and spicy wedges, and today for lunch I have just finished eating spicy chicken, spinach and potato curry. All these meals so far have been delicious (in particular the cajun chicken burgers/spicy wedges - SW magazine no. 76, page 24 if you are interested!!) and we have many many more lined up to try in the forthcoming weeks.

So long as the weight continues dropping off, I will stay with EE.

I have been keeping up the exercise when I have had time, although haven't made it to the gym in weeks, and haven't been swimming either. I have been out cycling whenever time has allowed (more about cycling later!!), and also jogging. Yep, jogging!!

I have found a route from my house, around town, and back to my house, which is 6 miles or thereabouts, and have been doing it every couple of days. Who needs a gym or pool when the weather is this good?!?

As for cycling, I have signed up to do a sponsored bike ride called the Nightrider. Sounds good eh? Wish I had read the smallprint before agreeing to it to be honest ... it is a 100km ride (62 miles!!) around London ... at night! We start at 23.00 from Crystal Palace, and end up there again some time in the morning. Hopefully. I am doing it for a local charity, the Kent Air Ambulance Trust, and if you can find your way to sponsoring me we would be very grateful - you can do it online here : Dave Piggott is fundraising for Kent Air Ambulance Trust - JustGiving. I am hoping to raise a total of £1000, and so far have over £600 :)

Oh, and I went for a ride the other day just to see how long I could go for on the new road bike, and ended up cycling all the way from Faversham to Margate, which was 25.7 miles!! My bum was well sore, and it has scared me to think that on the Nightrider I will have to ride twice as far as that PLUS another 12 miles :(

Congratulations to everyone for making it to the end of what is definitely my longest diary page ever! Sorry again for leaving it so long, I will keep on top of it I promise.

I will try to pop in again later to reply to everyone who posted before I came in today, but for now I must go and get ready for work. No rest for the wicked and all that!!

Hope you're all well, back again soon ♥
 
wow Dave 9 lbs is amazing, i fully expect to hear you'll get Man of the Year next week at your meeting! You seem to be getting into the swing of EE now and how much exercise are you doing! I've had a month away from SW, and went back this week with a half pound loss, i need abit of your motivation! Have a great week!
 
OMG well done and well worth the wait. Amazing !!

Good luck with EE and keep us posted.

I have lost my way the last few weeks (the lead up to and running the marathon, kind of decided i could eat what i wanted ) so now back to needing to lose instead of maintaining so will be following your example of 100% EE starting tomorrow !
 
Bayside, I guessed you were taking a sabbatical as you hadn't updated your diary for a while (even longer than me hehe). I am VERY impressed that you have had a ½lb loss considering you haven't been following the plan for so long, I am certain that I would have put on loads in the same situation! I need to the plan and the rules to guide me each day. Man of the Year nominations are next Tuesday and I would be surprised if I didn't get it, although I don't exactly know what it means anyway lol. I will let you all know as soon as I do :)

eve, sorry again about the delay, things have been manic this end. I have had a kind of project through work and it has been my focus for weeks. It is over, I am glad to say, all done (and all accepted!), and won't need to be redressed in the same way ever again. Hopefully. Another project coming up though, but they are actually giving me 3 days off work to do it which is very good of them, and I have the help of someone else too. So no excuses for me not being on here regularly lol.

Teresa, I don't think following the plan 100% while you're training for the marathon is all that practical to be honest, so don't beat yourself up! How was the marathon? I popped in on your diary to see if you'd post about it I shall check again in a sec to see if I missed anything! Congratulations on completing it (I am of course assuming you did finish it haha). As crazy as it sounds, I am considering entering it next year. It is not the kind of thing I would ever want to do more than once, but as a one off, after losing so much weight, I love the idea! I hope you enjoy your 100% week as much as I have done mine, and touch wood your unwanted weight will come off again quite easy for you :)

I actually don't have much to say tonight, I am only really here so that you lot don't tell me off hehe ;)

I have a very busy few days ahead, and I have spent almost hours planning everything for them!! Tomorrow morning we are popping around to see my old neighbours, who we love very much and miss greatly. Then home for lunch, and Marie and her man are coming over for dinner - we are having beef lasagne with side salad but Marie sticking to the salad only with some prawns or something thrown in too. Sunday morning we are off on the train up to North of Oxford as we are visiting my cousins, aunty, and my little Goddaughter. We will have brekky here before leaving, take a packing up for lunch with plenty of fruit too, but I have no idea where we will end up for dinner! We have a hotel for the night so maybe there, or maybe somewhere else. I'm gonna take the big SW bible with me in case it helps, and I'll have all of my syns available to use as well. I'm sure whatever we end up doing there will be a better choice I can go for. Then on the Monday morning brekky is supplied by the hotel, and unless they can prove to me they use the leanest meats and Frylight I'm going to have to pass over on the full english which is supplied and go for Weetabix grrrr lol. Lunch we are having before leaving, but again I have no idea where we can have it! Never been there before. Again though I will have the whole day's syns to play with as we are planning on salad for tea when we get back. And en-route home we will be at St Pancras - one of the stations I serve as a High Speed driver - and there is a M&S there that sells the most sublime fruit!! Can't wait ;)

I found out recently why the jacket potatoes in Wetherspoons are so high in syns ... they DEEP FRY them!! OMG!! I get sooooo annoyed with things like this, and food packaging and labelling too!! It's hard enough to lose weight when you decide it's time to, without things like this making it harder. I wonder how many people have had the jacket spud at Spoons 'knowing' it is the healthy option? Grrrrrr. SORT IT OUT SPOONS!!!

I feel like starting a war ... anyone else in? ;)

ttfn ♥
 
Yeah lets go after 'spoons!

I updated my Diary Dave but still am not 100% OP argggggggggh but a Sneaky weigh in has me down a couple of pounds but need to not be complacent !

Have a nice few days and hope you can find good SW choices and if not just try not to use that as an excuse to rebel !

Teresa
 
Teresa, I'm fairly certain having endured something that most people couldn't even WATCH from start to finish and is one of the toughest test of fitness and endurance in existance, you are allowed to cut yourself a little slack hehe. I suspect with a body as fit as yours it won't be long before you are back at target again. You have done the hard part already, which is to take the time to realise you are a few lb heavier, and decide to do something about it! I'll be joining you at target sometime this year I should think :)

And I will be applying for one of next year's marathon places from Tuesday morning too! Fingers crossed. I'm also seeing if I can get a guaranteed place in the Slimming World team which will be running. Double my chances :)

We are all packed and ready to go, I had my normal Weetabix brekky, and am taking a bowl of pasta (chicken tikka, pasta, sweetcorn, 4tbsp extra low fat mayo for 2 syns, spring onions (sf), mixed peppers (sf)) and also a satsuma, apple, banana and some apples for lunch and the journey. We will arrive in Charlbury a little after 14.00; No idea where we will be having dinner nor what choices there will be, but I have 13 syns left and following EE so a lot of food is free and I bound to have some options. Same is true for tomorrow's brekky and lunch - I am having a salad when I get home tomorrow evening which uses only 2 syns so I have 13 (and a HEa and HEb) to split between brekky and lunch tomorrow however I see fit. Seeeemples :)

Here is the place we are staying at Untitled Document it is an ex monastery so I'll need to be on good behavior hehe.

Hope you all have a great weekend, better weather than it seems we're stuck with, and manage to remain focused and enjoy the plan ♥
 
i really envy people with the willpower to do marathons, think I'd collapse after the first 10 minutes :/ anyway you seem to be doing fabulous, am sure you'll hit that target before you know it :)
 
Hope you had a lovely weekend away!
Good luck for WI
Jayne x
 
Hi all

Had a lovely couple of days away ... foodwise I had brekky and lunch as planned, but things didn't go quite so well at dinner! I actually asked them for something NOT on the menu as I couldn't find much of a healthy option on the menu - I went for a ham omelette with salad. It was served with chips, which I ate most of but as I had 13 syns to play with I wasn't too worried. But then my wife left a piece of her beer battered cod on her plate and for some reason I couldn't bear to leave it there! And then I went from having no dessert, to have a banoffee pie (the ban would be syn free, not so sure about the offee!!), to finishing my aunt's bakewell tart off!! Sadly none of it was actually so nice I would say it was worth it. And unlike a couple of my previous 'flexi-syn' moments it certainly wasn't planned either. I'm just glad I had been on plan until that point or goodness knows what the damage could have been!

Moving on swiftly ... Brekky the next day was as you might have expected, a choice of cereals, fruits, full cooked. This was now Monday morning, and with the bad choices I made the previous evening still weighing heavily on my mind (sorry for the pun but they don't get any better hehe) and the fact I was weighing in the next evening in my thoughts, I passed up on a cooked breakfast - even though most others around me were tucking in! - I went for two Weetabix. I checked and the milk was semi skimmed but I had no measuring jug with me so guesstimated the 250ml which isn't too much of a problem. It would have been under rather than over, but not much in it. And there was no sweetener, so I just had it plain. Boring lol. But it did the job. Lunch was in a pub in Witney (David Cameron's constituency for anyone who isn't already bored to death of the election) which wasn't a Wetherspoons but had a menu just like them. At first I was going to go for a jacket potato after I had ascertained they didn't deep fry them, but then I noticed the 5-bean chilli on the menu. No idea of the syns but I figured wouldn't be too far from the Spoons version (4½ syns), and if anything would have been lower as I gave away most of the tortilla chips. Snacks during the day were all fruit, and dinner on arrival back at home was a salad.

Syn wise for the day I used only 2 for the salad plus whatever lunch was, so well within budget.

Still not pleased with my choices Sunday night, but must move on, I did have a lovely couple of days away and overall I am reasonably pleased with things foody wise.

Other that the Sunday night thing (ok, I lied, the banoffee pie was lovely!) I have been on plan 100% the entire week.

Today is weigh in day. This morning, on my own scales, I was exactly the same as last Tuesday. But tonight on the official scales it translated to a ½lb increase. I was actually expecting exactly that, as this week I haven't had a chance to jog since my morning weigh in like I did last week. I'm content with the result tonight, but striving to do better next week.

But ...

Time for the real news ...

My group have nominated me for the Man of the Year competition :)

I don't actually know a lot about it, other than I will now be going to the District Finals (see how I put capital letters on them to make them look more official lol). I sadly can't progress any further to the National Finals as I don't qualify - You need to have lost more than 5 stone (which of course I have) and you also need to be at goal (not yet). Hopefully you are allowed to be put forward more than once as I'd love another crack at it next year when I can go all the way. For now though, I am very much looking forward to this year. Even though I don't know what it is haha.

Oh, and I have entered the lottery for the 2011 London Marathon! I have donated my £32 entry fee already, which means that if I'm not drawn out as a contender I get a second chance at a place in a separate draw. Still not sure I even want them to pull my name out to be honest lol ;)

I am also going to contact Slimming World to apply to be in their team. Double my chances.

Good luck to you all for your weigh ins this week, I hope you are all comfortable and happy on the plan, and get the results you deserve on the scales ♥
 
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