Week Seven

This Week's Weight Loss: 0lbs
Total Weight Loss: 8.5lbs
This Week's Training Activities: Walking, Jogging, Sightseeing & general busyness!

Another week passes & I haven't lost any weight! Then again, I did lose 3lbs last week so I suppose I'm okay about it.

The week started off with a weekend in London. We both had an absolutely amazing time! The weather was beautiful, our hotel was lovely, the boyfriend loved his tour around Lords & hated the London Eye but we really enjoyed ourselves. Due to the weather, we ended up walking most of the time & racked up an amazing 41,000 steps on the pedometer. We worked out that we walked about 16 miles. I was also pretty chuffed after looking at a few photos of myself with the sights of London. I think my actual words, 'Bloody Hell! I look tiny!'  I was 15 stone at my heaviest & wearing size 16 clothes. Although I have lost a lot of weight in the past 18 months, my mind still seems to think I'm this whale of a person (even though size 16 is most definitely not a whale size. It just made me look even shorter & stubbier than ever!) I still look at size 12 clothes wondering whether it'll fit. Anyway, here's a few piccies of London to share with you...

Me & the Lord's Pavillion. (Very exciting for a cricket geek!)

Me on the London Eye.

This was taken by the boyfriend one handed, the other hand was clutching the bench. The wuss!

Anyway, on to training talk! This week hasn't been the greatest week for training. With all the walking that we did at the weekend, I've tried to take it easy. I've currently completed 2 runs from Week 5 of the NHS to 5k podcast. My running record is now 8 minutes non-stop. This will hopefully be jumping to 20 minutes tomorrow when I do my 3rd run of the week. I've also changed my running route so I run to another park the other side of my area. It's really helped me to keep focused, I think if I was doing 8 minutes running circuits around my local park I'd be completely bored. With the clocks going forward this weekend I'm also hoping to start swimming now the weather has improved. My nearest swimming pool is a 15 minute walk away which is really helpful! So hopefully in my next entry, I will have swimming in my training activities.

Eating hasn't been so good this week. I've been feeling very fed up lately & have resorted to eating. Well, mainly snacking on lots of naughty things! This week we've had homemade chocolate muffins & carrot cake hanging around the house & colleagues at work have been bringing in lots of treats too! I really need to stop caving into temptation!! Whilst I'm being very honest, my decision to give up bread for lent was broken at the weekend. I accidentally ordered bread & butter pudding whilst I was in London. I made Chris promise me that he'd help me avoid eating anything with bread. But neither of us noticed what I'd done until I was half way through my pudding. Oops! How silly am I?

I've had another brilliant week fundraising. The boyfriend's colleagues have sponsored me £50.00 in total which brings the full total up to just below £250.00. Absolutely amazing!!! I'm chuffed! So the target has been moved again up to £300! Remember, I'm also putting handbags up for auction on EBay to raise more money for the Stroke Association too. If you've got a bag you've hardly used, why not donate it to the handbag auction? Training and raising money has been such an amazing thing to do so far. Its brought back a lot of lovely memories about my grandparents & its lovely that I'm back in contact with some family members that I haven't spoken to for a while.

Thanks so much to everyone for reading this. See you next week :)

Week Six

This Week's Weight Loss: 3lbs
Total Weight Loss: 8.5lbs
This Week's Training Activities: Walking, Jogging & general busyness!

This week has been busy, busy, busy! I feel as if I haven't sat down at all this week! I've been really pleased with my diet this week, I've treated myself a few times (I've had a little piece of my carrot cake for elevenses everyday) this week but I haven't gone from one extreme to the other. I've just been more aware about what I'm eating, how much and how hungry I feel. It seems to have worked! The weight has fallen off me this week & I think I may be very close to going down a dress size. My clothes are starting to get baggy! 

This week on my NHS couch to 5k training I've been running for 5 minutes non stop. It's an absolute miracle for me! Each session, I am now running for a total of 16 minutes. That's basically half of the podcast! It's mad to think that I'm running double the time I was in week 1! I've actually started to feel like a proper jogger too! On Sunday, I joined the other joggers in my local park in the freezing & drizzly weather & on Tuesday, I decided to go for it & run on the pavement next to the main road. That's right, I actually went public with my jogging! God knows what they drivers & pedestrians thought but I thought I must've looked proper cool! I'll be taking my third run of the week tonight as I didn't have chance last night. Then hopefully by the end of Week Seven I will be running for a total of 20 minutes non stop. Yes, I am very worried! I'm also hopefully going to try & find time to go swimming next week. Well, that's if the weather ever warms up! 

Week 2 of giving up bread has gone well. I'm starting to become addicted to Ryvitas. The whole idea of giving up bread was to have a variety of different lunches. So far I've had jacket potato one day & ryvitas the rest. It's been far too cold this week for salad! I'm thinking maybe the huge weight loss is due to not eating bread. We'll see what happens though. 

The boyfriend & I are off to London this weekend. The main reason is to see the Ashes Urn at the Lord's Cricket Ground, I bought the tour tickets for his birthday present last year! We're really excited and planning to walk everywhere to save money and burn calories. We're going to be proper tourists & see all the sights! I'm thinking the diet may be forgotten about over this time but we'll see. I really fancy trying a sushi restaurant whilst we're there. 

I'm sorry there's not much more to report on this week! Hopefully I'll get chance next week to give the handbag auction a big push! I haven't had chance to do much marketing for it this week & my page has had a serious lack of sponsors too! If you still haven't sponsored me, please do! This is all for the Stroke Association. If it was for myself, there would be no way on earth that I'd be training on a Friday evening! 


Have a lovely weekend! 
x

Week Five

This Week's Weight Loss: 1lb
Total Weight Loss: 5.5lbs
This Week's Training Activities: Walking, Jogging & Housework!

A very bad week! Well, that's what I thought anyway! I keep saying on my blog that next week I will try to be healthier and then I go and give in to temptation. We spent the weekend in Suffolk visiting Chris' parents and celebrating his school friend's birthday. I felt as if I had a bread overload - bacon sarnies, crumpets, toast, hot dogs, burgers. Not the greatest start to the week. Maybe I was unconsciously trying to fit my 7 week consumption of bread into one weekend ready to give it up for lent. I don't know but I most definitely felt bloated by Sunday evening and then I gave in to a Indian Takeaway after a very long drive home. Remember that Sumo picture from last week? There was most probably some resemblance on Sunday night. I also decided to try & make a carrot cake at the beginning of the week which was absolutely beautiful & have been scoffing that throughout the week. I was so nervous about weigh in this morning because I really thought I had put on all the weight that I had lost but thankfully I have lost a pound. I have actually lost weight! My excitement at 6.30am was not appreciated by my grumpy boyfriend!

I've found myself completely bored of the exercise bike this week. It's so dull and I can't seem to focus for long before finding some excuse to get off it so I've been looking into other ways to exercise. The weather has been beautiful this week, cold but still lovely & sunny so I've been finding myself walking a lot more. I had a long walk around my favourite park during my lunch break on Tuesday. I enjoyed it so much that I'm planning to run there on Sunday morning. Speaking of running, I'm still doing well with my couch to 5k podcast. I'm now running for 3 minutes without stopping or feeling too tired which is a personal record. I don't think I've ever run for that long! I'm feeling a little worried about next week's podcast as it's running for 5 minutes so I'm going to hopefully going to fit in a 4th run on the Week 3 podcast tonight before badminton. I'm also looking into swimming, zumba and even getting a personal trainer although we're a little strapped for cash at the moment so I may have to wait until pay day. 

As announced in last week's entry I have decided to give up bread for lent this year & its going well. I've had some lovely lunches this week including jacket potato, salad, ryvitas & pasta salad. I've enjoyed them all. I even managed to avoid the garlic bread I cooked for the blokey the other night which is very unlike me. I think the one i'm really going to struggle with is not eating pizza but so far, so good! 

I think that's all to report on this week. Don't forget to read my handbag auction post, I've already received my first donation (thank you Debbie!) Thank you for all your donations so far! I'm still completely blown away by your generosity. I'm hoping for a huge weight loss next week, I want to get to my half a stone target weight loss next week & I'm starting off with fitness Friday today. No naughty snacks as of yet & an evening of running & badminton. I'm actually looking forward to it! 

See you next week! 

PS: Forgot to add my excuse about the Army day assault course. Took my tracksuit ready to have a go at it to find it was a little too extreme for me. I was right to back out of it, someone broke their collarbone taking part. Good choice by Becki!

Handbag Auction!

Hi everyone,

Its an early post from me this week. Don't worry though I will be giving up a full update on my week as usual on Friday/Saturday.

The main reason for this post is that I've been thinking of other ways I can fund raise to raise as much money as I can for the Stroke Association ready for my upcoming 10k assault course. I've designed a poster for my partner to put up at his school to get his colleagues to sponsor me (if you would like one for your workplace, let me know!), I'm also hoping to do a cake sale & sell my cakes for £1 each.  However a colleague of mine explained that a friend of hers had a handbag auction & raised a lot of money for charity.

So, how does a handbag auction work? Well, every female tends to have at least one handbag they've hardly used sitting at the back of the wardrobe. If those handbags were donated to me, I could post them on EBay & all money raised would go straight to the Stroke Association & that dusty handbag could find a lovely new home. If I can get enough people interested, I will happily spend a weekend cleaning the bags and adding them on EBay to raise some extra cash for the Stroke Association.

If you'd be happy to donate me a handbag, please let me know. I'll let you know if I get enough of a response so you can get friends and family involved too!

Thanks :)

Week Four

This Week's Weight Loss: 0lbs
Total Weight Loss: 4.5lbs
This Week's Training Activities: Exercise Bike, Walking, Jogging & walking up 18 flights of stairs!

So, wow! What a week! Thank you so much to all my readers who have already got me to my £100.00 target so early on. There's still another 11 weeks until Mad Monk so I can't imagine how much can be raised for the Stroke Association with your generosity. I'm trying to think up other ways I can raise a bit more money. So far the only idea I've come up with is a cake sale at work seeing as all my creations seem to go down a treat. If anyone has any other ideas on how I can raise more money at work I'd really appreciate them.

With all the donations coming in it's really helped me focus on exercising. There's been a few days this week where I haven't really felt like training due to the miserable, cold weather. I'd be much happier with a takeaway curry watching Hollyoaks in front of the fire but i've stuck with it & trained 6 days out of 7 this week which i'm really pleased with. Week 2 of the NHS couch to 5k podcast is completed and I can successfully jog for 90 seconds without collapsing. I was really proud of myself until today when I had my lunchtime walk, I saw two elderly men jog past me looking nowhere near as red and out of breath as I usually do. It reminded me that I've still got a very long way to go until I'm ready for a 10k assault course. Speaking of assault courses, we've got the Army coming into work next week to show students that the army 'isn't just about Afghanistan' (Yeah, right!) Anyway, they've got an obstacle course with the chance to win an iPad for the fastest male and female. My lovely colleagues have ofcourse, put my name forward to have a go. I highly doubt that i'll be winning that iPad but I'm pretty sure there will be photos in my next blog!

As you can see above its been another week of no weight loss despite all my exercise and sticking to my limit of 1200 calories a day. In frustration I am currently munching on a Curly Wurly (the lowest calorie chocolate bar, mind!). I've been told that this is due to me building muscle and muscle is apparently heavier than fat. Does that mean I am doomed to be overweight all my life? In 11 weeks time rather than looking thinner, my muscles will be so heavy, I'll be looking more like this:

I guess at least it means I'll be able to float across the River Derwent rather than swim.
Anyway, I'm hoping once the warmer weather eventually comes I will finally get rid of my winter blubber & lose at least a few pounds. I have also decided to give up bread for lent just to see how that helps. I think I'm really going to miss my sandwiches for my lunch but I'm intrigued on whether it will help me feel less bloated.

For all those currently reading my blog who haven't sponsored me yet, you know where my online sponsor page is & if you don't then shame on you! (Pssst! Its www.justgiving.com/madbecki) If for any reason you'd rather give/send me the money, just leave me a comment or let me know & I'll put you on my sponsor form instead. Your donations have really help keep me going this week so thank you so much, I really do appreciate it! :)