Is this thing on?

*tap, tap* hello?

Is anyone still here?

A short hiatus...

Hello.....I'm back!  Not sure if anyone is still here or if they ever were....but hey ho, here I am!  I've been away being generally crap....maybe this week's goal should be not being crap for a week?

I've heard it said that everyone has a book in them.  I think I do and this week's goal (aside from 'not being crap') is to write something every day and this measly blog post doesn't count.  I love urban fantasy books, Ilona Andrews, Kelley Armstrong, Patricia Briggs and so on and am hoping to continue along the same vein without plagiarising, which is harder than you think!  I think I have a great idea and then it slowly dawns on me that this fantastic completely original idea is actually very similar to something I read in so and so's book, very disappointing.  Deleting umpteen paragraphs is not as satisfying as ripping out rows of bad knitting but is lonelier, sadder and somehow more pathetic as you watch sometimes several hours worth of words vanish.

The NaNoWriMo lot aim for a book in a month so I probably wont be able to invent, write and finish a book in a mere 7 days but sod it, what else am I doing?

No wheat or sugar and gallons of water

The approximate volume of water I've drunk this week

It's official! Lots of fruit and water no sugar and hardly any wheat is good for you! My skin is clearer, I feel lighter and less bleurgh (for want of a better word). I'm not as tired in the mornings and feel generally more alert. What's not to like!

Drinking litres of water is easier at work, I have to be honest. There's a water cooler and I just walk back and forth for most of the day, and then I walk back and forth to the loo but lets gloss over that. Obviously eating vast amounts off fruit and drinking ridiculous volumes of water with have an effect on your, ah, digestive system but trust me when I say it's a change for the better. Our scales are out of batteries at the moment but I genuinely feel as though I've lost a bit of weight, even if I haven't , I feel like I have so perhaps I wont bother getting new batteries.

It's not as easy to drink lots if I'm out and about – there is a lack of public toilets and as we discussed in my last post, pelvic floor exercises not withstanding, I really don't want to have to hold in a wee all the way home from the town... On these sort of days I found myself drinking gallons of water in the evening rather than pacing it through the day. Now I don't think this is a major problem but I think it would have been better to spread it out a bit more.

Eating less wheat has forced us to be a bit more creative with our dinner choices as well; we can't fall back on that old fail safe of pasta with sauce for 5 dinners out of 7. This has worked wonders for getting rid of the scraggy vegetables which tend to linger floppily in the veg basket at the end of the week – for a couple of vegetarians we really waste a lot of fruit and veg...

The no sugar thing is also coming along ok, I am still struggling to ignore and change old habits and will still find myself rooting hopefully in the basket for a forgotten biscuit but these events are fewer than at the start of the week. I am noticing sugar cravings hit me if I'm feeling emotional or stressed and it is harder to say no. There are a lot of changes going on at my work which is leaving me feeling quite unsettled, curbing the urge to inhale an entire packet of chocolate digestives is taking a bit more willpower than I would like. But the end gain is worth the struggle – having chucked sugar for three weeks earlier in the year I definitely noticed a reduction in enjoyment of sugar snacks when I had fallen off the wagon; things just don't taste anywhere near as nice as you remember them tasting and this knowledge is helping me stick to the plan this time round. I don't want to crack and devour 40 biscuits only to continue to feel empty and unsatisfied at the end.

These commitments are something I am definitely going to continue – I think the results even after a week, are pretty positive. I'm actually going to take a photo each week to see if there is a difference in my skin and if I'm feeling sufficiently brave, I might post the montage on here... This weeks experiment has been a resounding success I'd say!

Mid week update: No sugar, no wheat, no fun...

The amount of fruit I've eaten so far...

 

I'm sticking to it!  Ok it's only really day two but trust me, it feels like I have been doing this for weeks...

Yesterday I was in the office which helped enormously, I ate my body weight in fruit and drank umpteen glasses of water. Actually I drank 7 pints of water, I know this because I was ticking them off in a diary like the spod I am.....

Today was much harder. I'm not being plagued by physical cravings but I am gripped by cravings brought on by old habits and routines. Around 10am I would trot downstairs and make myself a bit of toast and cheese. Maybe at 11 I might have had a biscuit or another bit of toast. Lunch would probably be a sandwich. I could generally manage to last from lunch until dinner without more snacking but if I couldn't, another biscuit would probably hit the spot. 

Not today though! I was in the kitchen around 10am staring sadly at the toaster but made do with a banana. At 11 I was back in the kitchen and took myself back upstairs with an apple. I gave myself a stern talking to at lunch and had a baked potato and beans. However, I have just remembered that beans have added sugar so that turned out not to be the safe choice I thought it was going to be.  Lets gloss over that shall we?

I'm back in the office tomorrow and possibly Thursday - hopefully this break in routine will help shake the desire to inhale every sugary carb within grabbing distance.

Week 4: De ja vu all over again...

Disclaimer: Not my feet

It's under 3 weeks until the baby turns one. Under three weeks! I'm not sure how I feel about this yet so we'll park that thought and focus on the problem at hand. Baby weight.

I didn't think I had put on that much weight while pregnant. I don't think anyone really thinks they've put on weight though - it's easy to convince yourself that 'it's all baby' until the day you walk out of the hospital with the baby in a car seat and you still squeezed into your maternity jeans, your gorgeous firm belly now a deflated, squishy mess somehow almost the same size as the day you waddled into hospital. This was a surprise to me. In the back of my mind I was prepared not to immediately spring back into pre-baby shape and size 14 jeans but to still look pregnant was a shock.

Never mind, nine months up, nine months down I told myself. Well, it's over nine months now and although I don't look pregnant any longer I'm a size up from where I'd like to be and still have a squishy belly.

We're having a little birthday party for him on the weekend after his birthday with friends and family and although I'm looking forward to it I am all too aware this momentous occasion will mean photographs. Candid shots, posed shots, shots of my butt as I bend over to pick him up. Shudder. Now I understand that at best I will be able to lose 4 or 5lbs between now and then but if that 4 or 5 lbs is no longer tightly adhered to my chin(s) I will be happy.

So the resolution this week (and until the party) is no sugar (yes, again!), only one serving of wheat a day and to drink 3 litres of water a day. If I can't look slim I will at least look glowing! And if I don't look slim or glowing no-one will notice as I will spend most of the day in the loo.

Watering plants and other minor things: Update

This week has been a resounding success. I have chucked something out every night this week, have watered all my outdoor plants (indoor plants are looking bit dry but they will have to wait for another week!) and am clenching as I type.

Throwing stuff out has been strangely cathartic. I'm able to look at the masses of stuff we have - this is no exaggeration; we have a barn full of boxes which haven't been unpacked from our house move, ahem, 2 years ago - with fresh eyes. I've only really gone through stuff in the house and even then, it's just been my and the baby's things which have been cleared out but this small start has made me keen to get going through the rest of the junk. I almost feel like just taking every unopened box to the charity shop, clearly we haven't missed any of it! But this is a bit drastic and I think eventually we would wonder where the Tibetan nose flute or Native American dream catchers are. Only joking, the majority of the boxes are full of Haynes manuals to cars we no longer own, ridiculously large serving platters and obscene amounts of Christmas decorations.... All of which I will probably end up keeping... Even if I keep it all though the very act of reminding myself what we actually have will be useful in curbing spending and drawing some of the more useful stuff back into the house.

Watering my plants every night has had twofold benefits; it's got me out of the house when I've been sitting at a desk all day and it gave me the opportunity to critically examine the health and well-being of my plants: not great if I'm honest...  I discovered my honeysuckle has powdery mildew and my courgette plants are being eaten by mice.

Cutting the honeysuckle back hard and spraying with some lethal chemical is apparently the way to go. I've done the cutting back but once I'd hacked off all the affected bits there was only a single stalk left. It looks slightly ridiculous but I'm hoping I've saved it without having to resort to spraying. The worst of the courgette plants I covered with half a milk carton in the hope that this would provide a barrier to mice giving the plant a chance to re-establish itself. Hey, it might work.

I might extend my nightly waterings to the house plants as well. They are just as badly neglected; I do not have particularly green fingers....

For those hoping for a super exciting blog, I'm afraid you've come to the wrong place... pelvic floor exercises, watering plants and de-junking are basically as thrilling as it's going to get...

Rock on!

Week (ahem) Three: Water my Plants and Other Minor Things

Verdant greenery

I buy plants.  I plant plants.  I sit back and admire my handiwork for a few days, then I forget about them or I'm a bit busy and I plan to do it later and the next time I go to the garden I am confronted by a plant graveyard of dry, dead twigs.  So this week, I will water my plants every night!

Because watering plants isn't too taxing I thought I might manage to commit to more than one challenge this week (gasp!).  I know!  I'm really living life on the edge here. 

After my no sugar failure I'm a bit loath to blithely promise something and then fail again - this would be a very dull blog if that were the case -  I'm going to do this!!  Oh, I didnt manage to do it... I'm going to try that!  Oh, it didn't quite work out....  Not very inspiring. And I'm afraid my second challenge isn't a big glittery ball of awesomeness which will have you waiting with baited breath to see if I succeeded or failed but it is something that we women really should do more of: pelvic floor exercises.  Exciting huh?

Without going into too much detail, after having the baby my pelvic floor muscle had taken a bit of a battering and could really do with a bit of toning (as could the rest of me...).  When the baby was born my muscles were utterly knackered, they've improved massively since then but I think with muscles there's always room for improvement!  I'm guessing they were stretched out of shape by the weight of the baby and all the fluid during the last few months of pregnancy and surprise surprise these muscles didn't ping back into shape either. 

Apparently for the best results you need to do this three times a day - the midwife suggested doing it while brushing my teeth but this was too much like patting your head while rubbing your belly and I just don't have the coordination.  Basically, you exercise your pelvic floor by imagining you're stopping a wee mid flow.  Don't grit your teeth, screw up your face or otherwise tense up - this should be a quiet, secret exercise you can do while waiting for the bus or doing the dishes - nobody needs to know what you're up to!  There's more info on the NHS website here.

Now I'm going to push the boat out this week and do one more thing.  I know.  How will she manage it I hear you cry! She must be superhuman! 

Now the final task is a biggie; I'm going to throw out one thing each night this week.  Again, not so exciting but necessary unless I want to wake up one day and have to burrow through a wall of magazines to reach the front door.

So that's it for the week.  Water pants, pelvic floor exercises and chuck out some junk.  Totally doable.  Clench well ladies!