Weightloss Wednesday : Week One - I Want Biscuits!

Hey Guys!

So today marks the first week of my weightloss journey and it's been a tad unconventional to say the least, had some really good days and some not so great days so here's to hoping it's all balanced out! By that I mean events such as Saturday when I was unfortunately taken into A&E which resulted in me not eating anything but a chicken sandwich all day due to not being able to hold down food. However, Friday I gave into my cravings and ended up having a curry with my family so definitely a week of highs and lows, not the best start to my journey but a start none the less.

As with the start of any diet my cravings have been through the roof lately! For some reason I have developed a strong affinity for tea and biscuits which I've only managed to control by either having to put calories aside then exhibit expert self control by only having one or two, or not allowing myself to leave my room once I've reached my calorie goal for the day. Smooth. I've also gotten the stomach pains and nausea from hell due to the change in my eating habits but I'm hoping that should settle down within a week or so and I'll start to feel less like I'm at deaths door.

So here's the part you actually want to know, how much weight have I lost since last Wednesday? Well I'm happy to report that despite the discrepancies I've actually managed to lose 4lbs this week!? Now my goal is 2lbs a week but as some of you may know you tend to lose more weight the first week of a diet due to water weight and things like that. I realised after publishing last weeks post that I actually didn't give any sort of indication to numerical goals at all after deciding not to publish my weight... which was stupid. So my current goal is to lose 25lbs at around two pounds a week, which means I should hit that goal by the 11th of February if all goes to plan. However with Christmas just around the corner I'm not expecting that to be the case and will try not to be too hard on myself if it takes that little bit longer.

Now I've also been thinking as to how I can make these posts a little bit more interesting and ways to further convince myself to keep going, so I've decided to start setting weekly goals to try and keep myself motivated. Now I'm not a gym bunny nor do I have the healthiest of lifestyles (obviously or there would be no need for Weightloss Wednesdays) so these goals are very much start small, dream big. However, they will hopefully keep me going in the right direction! This week my goal is to walk 10,000 steps a day which I'll be keeping track of using one of my favorite apps (review coming soon!).

So that's all I have to fill you in on this week guys, four pounds down and only twenty one to go...because that doesn't sound daunting at all! One final thing I would like to say is I have enabled Google+ followers meaning if you use Youtube, Blogger or any other google owned site you can now follow me using that account. So please do go give the icon a click as it's looking all lonely at the moment, thank you for reading and I'll talk to you all soon!

Love & TubTubs

Weightloss Wednesdays : A Confession

Hey Guys!

So as the title indicates I have a bit of a confession for you all. As some of you will know the start of last year I went on a weight loss mission and was successful in losing 35lbs and dropping down to a UK size 10. Recently following stress, comfort eating and a few to many nights out I have managed to gain back 25lbs which I am not overly pleased about (to put it mildly) so here begins my mission to re-lose the weight, and to keep me motivated I'm going to check in weekly with you guys!

For those of you who are new here and don't know me (and were likely lured in by the promise of pug pictures) hello! Quick rundown of what you've missed! I'm 5"4 so any extra weight I gain is not carried well, I'm currently a size 12/14 (previously a size 14/16), I gain weight in weird places (who has rib fat anyway!?) and I have a strong affinity for baked goods and my bed. Any questions?

Taken just before hitting the -30lbs mark in Spring

I made the realisation this needed to occur whilst struggling to get the zip done up on the dress I bought for Christmas (and having to face the reality this wasn't just a "shitty primark sizing" problem), And therefore I decided to weigh myself, then promptly wished I hadn't. Now originally I was planning to put my weight and measurements on this blog so you guys could keep tabs on my progress but as we all well know the internet is full of trolls so why add fuel to the fire. Sorry to disappoint guys it's just not something I feel comfortable doing at this moment in time.

As with any plan of action I need some goals, and as great as be a size 8 with wonderful boobs would be it's not the most obtainable of things for me to aspire too. I think my focus on this journey is to get back into size 10 clothes, by that I mean comfortably and not in a way that gives the impression of a sausage about to burst out of it's skin. I also want to be healthier as a general rule and not collapse into a gasping heap after climbing three flights of stairs to my labs or have stomach pains for days after eating something I probably shouldn't have. As to how I'm going to attempt this momentous task? I'm a student, I can't justify gym memberships and quick portable meals are a staple part of my existence so just as last time I'm going to put the focus back on just eating better foods, exercising more and generally stop having the approach of a hobbit when it comes to food.

Although the main idea of weight loss Wednesdays are for me to update you guys on my progress over the coming weeks I also want to throw in a few extra bits on the weeks that are a bit barren. I've already got reviews of the app and books that helped me lose weight in the first place but if there's anything else you guys want to hear about leave a comment and I'll give it a go! You're the ones supporting me by reading this so the least I can do is try and make things interesting!

Thanks for reading and I'll catch up with you all soon

Love and TubTubs

Fitness Fridays: A day in the life of my diet

Hey m'lovelies, so when I said I was going to start FF I received an email from a lovely girl who wanted to see what I was eating day to day on my calorie restricted diet. Now i'm no nutritionist and my diet is far from good but it's a damnsite better then it was when I was eating takeouts every other day, probably still a bit carb heavy but I'm taking in so much less saturated fat and my body's really thanking me for it!

Now I took the pictures for this blog three weeks ago and have only just gotten around to writing it (oops!) but a little bit of background is that on this particular day I wasn't at home and was looking at potential universities so this is in a scenario where I was eating lunch out but it still gives you the general idea of what kind of things i'm eating during the day.

Breakfast was a pot of golden syrup poridge, poridge is so good for you, syrup maybe not so much but personally I can't stand the taste of porridge unless it's sweetened. I was up at 6am and in for a long day so this was great for slow realise energy and did tide me over until my late lunch.

Lunch was a M&S duck and hosin sauce wrap, now I like to think these are really good for you because of the protein and salad, however the reality of the situation is duck does have a far amount of fat in it and white tortilla wraps aren't exactly a shining example of health but everything in moderation! Besides, these are probably in the list of my top five favorite foods ever because they are utterly delicious!

Dinner was a king prawn stir fry with rice, sweetcorn, onion and broccoli. If you want to make this healthier I would definitely recommend using brown rice rather then white because it's so much better for you however this is what I had in my cupboards and this is what I made do with. Stir frys are my favorite thing to cook at the moment because they're so quick and filling and you can put pretty much anything you want in there. Dinner was followed by a bowl of light vanilla ice-cream, at only 40kcals a scoop I highly recommend this to any dieters with a sweet-tooth.

So that makes up the bulk of my diet for the day, throughout the day I try to drink as many fluids as I can, if you're not a huge water lover like me I highly recommend supermarket own flavored water, just make sure it's the ones with only a couple of calories because some brands can sure pack a lot of extra crap into something that's seemingly healthy! If I get peckish throughout the day I tend to snack on sugar free jellys however if I need something a bit more subtancial I find something light like an apple will tide me over until my next meal.

So hope you guys enjoyed the first post of this series, I'm really looking forward to it because I've just started up my health kick again and I can't wait to share with you what i'm learning. Until next time!

Love & TubTubs

Fitness Friday's!

Hey guys! So today I'm going to finally talk about something that people have been asking me to do ever since I entered the wonderful world of blogging, that being my weight loss! So if you follow me on twitter you'll know that at the start of this year I made a new years resolution to start losing weight. Over the years I've been on so many diets but inevitably I've always ended up back at square one, this time i was adamant I wasn't going to let that happen.

So today will be the first of my new "Fitness Friday" series, now this doesn't mean that every single Friday I'm going to upload a fitness blog post as that just wouldn't work out with my schedule and I don't want to make promises I can't keep, not to mention that coming up with something new and different every week on a single subject could prove to be pretty tricky! So i'll be uploading posts for this series as the ideas come and i'll keep a log of them in the sidebar so they'll all be in one place for you!

Quick background on my weight loss so far, I started the process on January first 2013 and it's been a slow steady process with me taking months out here and there due to personal reasons etc, however making sure that I maintained my current weight during those months out. I hit my first weightloss goal back in July of losing 20lbs and this is when the after picture shown below was taken.

After & Before

My ultimate goal is to of lost 42lbs by the end of this process, now unlike most dieters I haven't put a strict time on this goal and another key thing about this is that my emphasis is now on becoming a healthier person rather then about my weight (This wasn't the case at the start but that's probably a whole blog post in itself). So over this series I want to share with you the things I've picked up that actually work and the habits that I've found that can actually be reasons as to why the weight isn't shifting.

So let me know in the comments any particular posts you want to see in this series and I hope this is useful to some of you out there.

Love & TubTubs