Tag Archive for 'weight loss'

1st May – New Month – New Start

Published
by
thetoad
on 1 May 2008
in Dieting, Food and Mental Health
. 0 Comments

Greetings audience, I offer my apologies for neglecting the blog for as long as I have.

Basically, after the psychiatric assessment I lost the plot a little bit – going over the past and stirring up the mud at the bottom of the pond is never good for me and I got a lot ill for a couple of days. I didn’t much feel like blogging, in fact, I didn’t feel much like doing anything much at all.

Then when I’d just about got myself together, TuT had to go away for a couple of days for a training course for his job. I know couples that don’t mind separation, that can deal with one of them spending Monday to Friday away and just spending weekends together, but that is not the relationship TuT and I have. We both HATE being apart. Especially at night. It was playing on my mind, TuT’s impending departure for a few days, and this further added to my stress in trying to get over the psychiatric assessment.

TuT left on the Sunday afternoon, leaving me with an empty hollow feeling in my stomach, that was never full, no matter how much food I ate. I tried to stick to my weight watchers points, but was comfort eating. I hate spending long periods of time on my own. I was also scared to death that something would happen to TuT on his long drive to the North.

On the Monday I decided to treat myself to something nice for lunch as I was hungry and hadn’t really eaten a proper evening meal on Sunday evening. In town there is a sandwich shop – doing all the typical sandwich fillings and jacket potatoes, but it is run by Thai people. In addition to doing the normal stuff you expect from a sandwich shop they have a Thai menu.

I was craving a Chinese take away with TuT away, but, they are never open at lunch time, so I thought I would satisfy my craving with a Thai Takeaway. I ordered the Thai noodle soup – with eager anticipation. What I got was a bag of micro-waved supernoodles, the vegetable component was carrots and cauliflower – I had no idea that cauliflowers were Thai?! And a few pieces of sandwich chicken. I was disappointed, but starving, so ate a fair bit of it, but then felt really bad.

Supernoodles can be up to 12 points – and they are certainly not worth 12 points. So I just felt like I had ruined weight watchers on something that wasn’t even worth it.

I recently read an article that explained that cravings are not actually your body signalling that you are low on a particular vitamin or mineral. For example just before your period you sometimes justify the chocolate craving as your body needing sugar and magnesium. Or if you crave crisps it’s because your body is low on sodium. In actual fact these cravings are down to a craving for comfort as these are the foods that we associate with happy and comforting times. It’s a psychological craving as opposed to a physical need.

I read this article after the Chinese takeaway cravings I’d experienced whilst TuT was away; and it made sense. Chinese takeaways are my favourite take away and TuT and I often enjoy one together on a Friday night at the beginning of the weekend – I have rarely ever ordered a Chinese take away on my own before moving in with TuT – so I was craving the togetherness of enjoying a Chinese takeaway together, which is something I always associate with Friday nights and the beginning of TuT and I’s weekend together.

On the third day of TuT’s absence my parents arrived for a short stay. They weren’t up for bedding down on the inflatable air bed in our spare room, so stayed in a nearby hotel.

Spending days with my parents also spelt diet disaster. Already, thanks to the evil “Thai” noodles and comfort eating I had a 1lb gain on the scales on the Tuesday morning weigh – in. It was annoying, but not unexpected, due to the foods I had been eating.
My parents took me to the posh sandwich shop over the road for Tuesday’s lunch and then we had some lagers whilst watching the football in the evening, and finally, for me, a Chinese takeaway!!! Craving satisfied, whilst sharing with my mum.

The next day saw us going to Brighton for the day and we went for a lovely lunch at an “all-you-can-eat” Italian – pizza, pasta, salad and garlic bread. It was delicious and I tried to focus on filling up on the delicious salad bar.

In the evening I wanted some “mum cooked goodness”; so I got mum to cook tea for us all out of the ingredients I had in the flat. We had savoury mince with mashed potatoes (the aunt bessie’s frozen version! – thank you Delia!) and vegetables. It was comforting and delicious and fairly healthy I would say; although by this point I had abandoned sticking to my weight watchers points allowance as I had no idea how to point what I had eaten so just tried to keep things as healthy as possible, whilst not pointing.

TuT returned on Wednesday night – hurrah! So happy he returned safely. The parents left on Thursday lunch time and I was pretty stressed out by all the changes. It was wonderful seeing the parental units, but a total change to my usual routine and with TuT being away as well, plus still getting over the psychiatric assessment; the upshot was by Friday I lost the plot big time.
I had this constant churning feeling in my stomach and was convinced that cosmic forces were out to get me. I couldn’t stop crying and my head was constantly buzzing with sounds and thoughts. I managed to get through to the nurse that had conducted my psych assessment – by this point I was thinking that I needed to be on the psych ward I felt so spaced out and frightened, all the time, with a churning stomach. It was awful.

The nurse agreed to see me that afternoon, and there was talk of a doctor being called in to potentially give me something to calm things down a bit for me. I was a total state.

After seeing the nurse things calmed down a bit. I talked through everything and the churning feeling eased off somewhat. The psych nurse explained that there had been a mess up with my referral to the day hospital and it would be a while before they picked me up, so in the meantime she would see me – “off the record” as it were, to keep an eye on me until my support system was properly in place. This was reassuring.

TuT and I enjoyed a wonderful weekend together, without the shadow of TuT going away as we had had the previous weekend.
Tuesday morning revealed another 1lb gain, which to say I had been comfort eating with TuT away and hadn’t pointed my food the whole time my parents were staying and when TuT came home, was expected, and to be fair, with what I’d eaten, I could have deserved to have put on a little more.

I just need to focus now. I bought one of the weight watchers journals, and I am going to fill in every single bite of food and every single drink and track all my points properly from now on.

I am also wearing my weight watchers points pedometer and trying to beat the previous days bonus point earning score.
So yesterday, armed with my trusty pedometer on my pocket, I marched to see my psych nurse for my second appointment with her and to find out the progress of my referral to the day hospital.

What surprise news I was greeted with when we met, She has arranged to take me on her case load officially and will see me until my referral to the day hospital comes through and continue to support me during my attendance at the day hospital. She is my official care co-ordinator and I now have the support of my own permanent CPN (community psychiatric nurse). This level of support is something I have not had since I lived in the north and is a big relief.

Today is the 1st May and I am a big believer in starting new things, or improving on old things. So first thing, I need to keep all you readers entertained and get blogging again! I think I’ve got off to a good start!

Tale From The Scale

Published
by
thetoad
on 8 April 2008
in Dieting, Food and Losing Weight
. 0 Comments

So today was my Weight Watchers meeting. I had a mad moment about my slippers beforehand. At my meeting you can’t weigh in your socks, it has to be the shoes you have on or slippers or flip flops. It is too cold for the flip flops option so it’s slippers for me.

Today I weighed in my “Bear Head” slippers, they are more like socks in their fabric, and have a little strap going over the top of my foot and then a teddy bear head at the top of each slipper. I would say they are more like slipper socks than proper slippers and hence I chose them as they are the closest thing to socks I can get away with when getting weighed.

After last week’s gain I felt I needed all the help possible to get a good loss this week.

I have lost one pound. But with the 2.5 pound gain from last week, that actually still puts me at 1.5 pounds heavier than when I joined 3 weeks ago. I feel this has got to be the injection – who ends up 1.5 pounds heavier when following Weight Watchers?!

I posted about this on the Weight Watchers forum to see if anyone else had found the same, a few people were, I felt, a bit unkind in their replies, saying I am using the Depot Provera injection as an excuse and it’s down to me not following the Weight Watchers programme correctly. Feel a bit low in myself about this. My leader has asked me to fill in a tracker this week so she can see exactly what I am eating and if I am going wrong anywhere. I will fill out my tracker properly this week and see what the verdict is next week when my leader, Melanie, looks at what I have eaten.

Melanie also mentioned drinking lots of water again, like the stand-in leader from last week, so will continue getting my water down me. Currently I am managing about 3 litres of water a day, plus tea and coffee. It gets bugging going to the toilet all the time, but think it must be helping.

I have been to the farm shop today to stock up on lots of point free vegetables. I got lots of things from a fennel bulb, mange tout, apples and cauliflowers. The cauliflowers are huge and were on offer for “2 for a £1”. Our fridge now looks like a greengrocers stall and I couldn’t fit both the huge cauliflowers in! So I made some zero point and core friendly cauliflower soup; here’s the recipe in case you have some cauliflowers that you can’t fit in the fridge (!) or you just fancy a nice tasty zero point soup : -

Curried Cauliflower Soup (zero points and ‘core’ plan approved)

1 Large cauliflower, split into small florets
1 Large Leek, finely chopped
1 Tablespoon Curry powder (more or less depending on how hot/mild you like it)
Fry Light Oil Spray
1 Litre Vegetable stock made up with 2 knorr vegetable stock cubes and boiling water
Fresh coriander (optional)

Spray a non-stick pan with fry-light and add the leek and sweat over a moderate heat until slightly browned and softened. Stir in the curry powder and keep stirring the leek in the curry powder for about 30 seconds, to combine, but careful not to let the leek stick once the curry powder is added. Add in 1 litre vegetable stock and the cauliflower.

Simmer the mixture until the cauliflower is tender and starts to break up when you push a floret with a wooden spoon.
Using a stick hand blender whizz up until totally smooth, adding some fresh coriander, if using, before you whizz it up.
This makes enough for four large portions and is a very comforting and warming meal.

The Great Breakfast Debate

Published
by
thetoad
on 7 April 2008
in Dieting, Food and Losing Weight
. 1 Comment

Years ago, possibly ten or more, a magazine recommended a book that you could only get in America; it was called simply ‘The Skinny’ “What every skinny knows about dieting but won’t tell you”. I HAD to have it. I managed to get it from Amazon and when it arrived I could not put it down until I had read it.

To write the book the authors had conducted a series of “skinny lunches”, inviting skinny women to lunch to find out what exercise they did and what they generally ate to stay slim. Each chapter of the book, there are lots of them and all fairly short and includes funny topics such as “What to do if you accidentally drink a full fat coke instead of diet coke” how much weight you can expect to lose or gain depending on life events – moving house, a divorce etc. As well as comprehensive calorie lists for fast food restaurant foods. One chapter was entitled “Breakfast”.

I was brought up on breakfast before school. No matter if I couldn’t really face it or want it, I had to eat a bowl of cereal before school. We were never allowed the sugary fun cereals that were always on TV when I was watching kids television. The most exciting it got was rice krispies! I had some kind of belief that bad things would happen if I didn’t eat my breakfast.

Then I started my famous “breakfast/tea diet” which I have written about in an earlier post, and I always began my day of starvation with a large bowl of cereal. During this time cereal was a bit of an obsession. I’d spend ages wandering up and down the cereal aisles, checking the fat content of any that I hadn’t tried before and fancied. It was just about the only food I could eat without guilt, without measuring out, just enjoying it.

Then I read ‘The Skinny’ which explained that there are no proven benefits to eating breakfast. The people who think if they don’t eat breakfast they will faint by 10am have probably never skipped breakfast to see if this was true. That not eating breakfast saved loads of calories that you could spend later when you were actually hungry and on something more worthwhile than a bowl of cardboard tasting cereal. This seemed to sink in with me, so when I stopped the “breakfast/tea diet” and followed a more calorie controlled Weight Watchers style of diet, if I could get away with skipping breakfast then I did. Firmly believing what I’d read in the ‘The Skinny’; that I was saving calories, it was an unnecessary meal. I was rarely hungry first thing in the morning so it wasn’t hard.

I did lose some weight following this method of not eating breakfast. But I was being very careful of what I did eat during the day. And the summer of my Atkins style of eating I never ate breakfast, but then I was not eating very much during the day and for my evening meal either. So what impact not eating breakfast had on my diet and weight loss at that time can’t really be gauged.

But since reading the book and going through a long phase of not eating breakfast it is a meal that I always struggle to eat, thinking I am saving myself calories by not eating it.

However, more recently people like Ian Marber, The Food Doctor, sometimes seen on Richard and Judy, advocates eating breakfast as part of his “10 Principles” for losing weight. It’s just that I never really feel hungry in the morning, but then having read through the CORE Plan in my Weight Watchers book I am thinking that maybe I think feeling hungry is feeling absolutely RAVENOUS, starving hungry, which is not the correct hunger to feel. The hunger scale makes for interesting reading; and in fact the more I read about Core and seeing the results that you can get from people in my Weight Watchers meeting, I am wondering whether trying a week on core would be worth a trial?

So this week I am going to make sure, as much as possible, that I eat my breakfast within an hour of waking up and see if that has any effect on my metabolism and weight loss. Has anyone else noticed whether eating breakfast or not eating this “most important meal of the day” has had any effect on their weight?

Losing My Routine and Weight Related Thoughts

Published
by
thetoad
on 26 March 2008
in Dieting and Losing Weight
. 0 Comments

It feels like Tuesday but I have to remind myself that it is Wednesday. This is a good thing in that it is only two more mornings to get up before the weekend, but bad in that I won’t feel like putting any sort of routine into place as come the weekend, everything changes again. I really hate the way that bank holidays stuff up my routine; it would be ok if I worked as I would just go back to work and everything would feel the same – except for some disorientation about what day of the week it is. However, being unable to partake in employment means my days whilst TuT is at work are up to me to fill productively.

As you can tell from lack of blog entry yesterday, after the Easter Break, I wasn’t so productive yesterday or managed to re-establish my weekday routine. The day started out with Weight Watchers. My first meeting after joining last week. At this meeting for some unknown reason, you are not allowed to be weighed without your shoes on. So you have to either weigh in your shoes (!!!!) or weigh in a pair of slippers or flip flops. Luckily last week, my first weigh in, I got away with weighing in my socks because the meeting had already begun as I was late, and the clerk that was helping with the weighing didn’t notice I’d taken my shoes off. This week however I took along my lightest pair of pink slippers and put those on, took all my jumpers off, and clambered on to the scales.

To reveal I’d lost a pound.

One Pound.

In my first week.

I must be happy about this I know; but I am not. There’s something on the Weight Watchers website that says it’s the equivalent to a box of butter but that doesn’t make me feel any better. In the past when I have been to slimming clubs my first week has always been something between 3 and 5 pounds which always made me feel spurred on and inspired. A lot of hard work to lose a pound just does not inspire. What made it worse was that a girl of a similar age to me joined last week at the same time as me. When we had our new members talk she was saying that she was Cabin Crew i.e. an air hostess. I didn’t think she even needed to lose any weight as she was very slim already, but I can imagine working in Cabin Crew you do need to be as light as possible. She comes back yesterday and had been weighed before me and she had lost SIX and a half pounds! Half a pound off losing half a stone! JEALOUS! I know that she followed the ‘Core’ plan, whilst I am on the ‘Points’ plan and it did make me tempted to try that plan this week, but I just don’t think that the ‘Core’ plan would work with what I cook for TuT and I. I do cook from scratch most nights, but sometimes I do use a jar of ready made curry sauce for example, which I could take off my weekly allowance of 21, but if that happened a couple of nights a week, using points on a ready made sauce, I’d have little left for wineage, a few crisps, or anything else that I would deem a proper treat. I’ll stick to the points plan for the time being.

I should be pleased as I did have four days off over the Easter weekend with TuT and could have quite easily have gained a pound, so to lose and not gain weight is a good thing – especially as I am still under the effects of the injection.

It has made me so angry and so upset the way it has not only destroyed my confidence in my appearance in having gained all this weight, but has taken my actual confidence in myself away. When I went on the injection I was losing a lot of weight fairly rapidly – it wasn’t healthy, but I loved wearing size 10 and 12 clothes and was happy in my appearance and confident. Looking back I stopped losing weight once I went on the injection, but around the same time I moved in with TuT and my eating habits improved from what they were when I lived on my own. I put the halt in weight loss down to this and continued to eat in a healthy way and exercise.

Over TuT and I’s first Christmas together I gained 5 pounds, I didn’t think too much of this – everyone gains weight at Christmas. But despite going back to being more strict with my eating and exercising, the weight didn’t come off, in fact by Easter I’d gained a stone.

I put this down to unhappiness and lack of exercise – I was spending a lot of my days as a “house cat” – not going out, except to walk to the local shop to buy a paper or something.

Then we moved to Northamptonshire to a tiny village in the middle of nowhere and TuT had to use my car as he’d lost his company car in changing jobs. So for two months or so I was an enforced housecat and although I managed to get out on my bike or go for a run, it wasn’t done with any consistency as last summer it continually rained for months on end.

When I eventually got my car back I joined Cannons Gym in Northampton. It was a bit of a drive, but aware of my increasing weight, I didn’t mind. I had a personal training session where upon I was weighed and by this point I’d gained 2 stone 6 pounds. I set about my new gym routine with vigour and tried to embrace carbs as the fuel I’d need for all the exercise I was doing.

The weight never shifted and when we moved to Milton Keynes I persuaded TuT to let me go to the local Weight Watchers meeting. By this point I was now near enough exactly three stone heavier than I had been the previous year. I put this down to eating more and being less strict with myself and not really following any sort of diet, along with a continued dip in my exercise levels. The months of having no car and being stuck inside with the pouring rain outside had established a bad routine of actually being content to stay in all day and do no exercise.

I started doing more exercise to earn bonus points and did manage to lose a couple of pounds, but I was once again eating very little as eating the full points allowance just seemed far far to much food from what I was used to eating normally and I wanted to lose weight, which meant to me, reducing the amount I was eating currently.

I wasn’t in the right frame of mind and the dark winter months were not really the right time to start drastically cutting down on my food intake – in fact, no time is the right time to do this! So I dropped out of Weight Watchers just before Christmas, treated myself to some new size 14 clothes and just decided that I was meant to be a size 14 and try to accept it.

In January we moved to the sea side and I thought finally I’d be able to tackle my weight – long walks and runs by the sea, attending the gym, fresh sea air and healthy food. So almost as soon as we moved here I embarked on a health kick and started doing loads of exercise and expected the weight to start falling off – except, it didn’t and hasn’t.

I know it is down to the injection but it has just made me so sad – the whole of last year I’ve always found someway of blaming myself for my increasing waist line; lack of exercise, eating more, eating more carbs – everything all related to me and having bad eating habits. I haven’t been able to go out for a meal and just order what I wanted without feeling guilty about the extra calories I was eating. In so many ways I have just been so unhappy in the last year all related to my weight and food intake and although in some way it is a relief to find out it wasn’t my fault I have gained all this weight, it is still here, it will take a lot of hard work once the injection does wear off to get rid of it and in the mean time I feel a fat frump with no confidence and rock bottom self esteem.

Win The Weight War!!

Published
by
thetoad
on 20 March 2008
in Losing Weight
. 1 Comment

I posted yesterday all fired up after my 5km run/walk I’d been on – with all those endorphins rushing around my body I couldn’t help but write a positive entry after the gloom of writing about my weight misery the previous day. I am thinking that I should update you all on what happened when I went to see lovely Triage nurse Jane and what has happened since on the battle of my blubber.

I saw Jane, she spoke to me about what I ate and weighed me. I told her I thought it was the Trazodone and Amisulpride combo that was piling the weight on and making it difficult to shift. I then half-heartedly mentioned that I was on the Depot Provera injection – now is not the time for pregnancy! Surprisingly Jane told me that would be the cause of my weight gain and that it is famous for putting weight on.

“Whenever any of my patients go on the injection I warn them that they should be prepared to gain weight.”

Jane said gravely. When I went on the injection nearly two years ago I was very borderline anorexic and spoke at length with the nurse in the North about weight gain. She said it was possible because it increased your appetite. I had ultimate control over my appetite at that time and was pretty used to feeling hungry so if the only way I could gain weight was by eating more, then I would ensure I continued to eat very little.

However, the weight has slowly crept on in the last 18 months since being on it. When I got home I looked on the web and there were similar stories to mine out there, women that had gained three or four stone in the years whilst they had been receiving the injection.

It was a great relief to find out the cause of my weight gain. I spoke to Jane about what I generally eat in a typical day and she could see no problem with what I was eating, although she does want me to keep a food diary for a week and return to see her with it, and of course, I no longer want to use the Depot Provera injections to prevent pregnancy of bambino Toads.

I felt as though a weight had been lifted off my shoulders (if not yet off my body!) – if Jane had confirmed my suspicions that it was the Amisulpride and the Trazodone I would have just had to continue taking them as I am the most stable I have been in a long time on that combination of medication. Whenever I have been taking my medication in the last year since the weight started to creep on, at the back of my mind I have been thinking they are making me fat. For a while I messed about not taking my doses properly thinking that would aid weight loss, but getting mentally poorly at the same time. (and funnily enough, not losing any weight!!)

After seeing Jane I quickly hot footed it to my local Weight Watchers meeting which was taking place the very morning I was seeing Jane – Tuesday mornings at 10am. I was a bit late so had to creep about whilst Melanie conducted the meeting, getting myself weighed with a clerk and signing up for the monthly pass that not only saves me money on my weekly meeting fee, but gives TuT and I access to the ‘e-source’ which contains an online points tracker, recipe builder – basically everything you need to accurately track your points of the food you are cooking and eating.

Finding out my weight wasn’t too much of a shock as I’d already just been weighed at the Surgery with Jane. When I attended Weight Watchers in the North it was Tuesday mornings at 10am with the lovely Jenny. Now it’s Tuesday mornings at 10am with Melanie in the South, but she seems just as lovely – conducting her meeting wearing a pink rabbit ears headband for Easter! At the end of the meeting myself and another newbie spent some time with Melanie as she went through the two plans.

Melanie had joined Weight Watchers nine times before cracking it and losing her weight – it took her 18 months to lose something like 30 pounds, and then she became a Weight Watchers leader. I asked her what was it, on the ninth time, that everything clicked and she lost her weight. Melanie explained that she began staying to the meetings and just taking the programme more seriously, she began cooking whereas previously she would have four or five takeaways a week. I was advised to try the points plan and make small changes this week. I am slightly concerned that I have joined the week before Easter – I am not expecting any eggs – but TuT and I are off together for four days with days out planned and it will take some discipline to stick to my running programme. In some ways I feel as though I have joined the week before Christmas and if I’d realised I might have joined next Tuesday.

But the war on my weight is now waged! I am determined to stick to my points over the Easter weekend and get some sort of weight loss on Tuesday – even if it’s just a pound.

Time is ticking on – it is time to stop writing about weight loss and get out for my run and do something proactive to lose that pound!

Nothing Tastes As Good As Being Slim Feels

Published
by
thetoad
on 18 March 2008
in Dieting
. 2 Comments

Welcome to the first proper entry on this new and exciting blog.

Last night I was full of happiness and optimism. My fiancé – TuT (Toad undergoing Training) had spent so long setting the website up, making sure my email was working and helping me load up my first entry, everything was good.

I watched my Delia which I really enjoyed and spent the rest of the evening reading and watching television – a pretty typical Monday night. I didn’t have any wineage and going to bed with a low calorie hot chocolate I felt healthy and virtuous, having been swimming and for a brisk 3km walk during the day and cooking a healthy stir fry for tea.

Then I wake up this morning, expecting to feel lighter and happier. I have spent the last hour and a half in floods of tears and have made TuT late for work. He hasn’t even had any breakfast and I feel like living shit about it. I just hate my weight, my appearance, and the fact that the majority of my clothes don’t fit.

When TuT and I moved in together I was a size 10/12 and sometimes if a particular shop was generously sized, an 8. I enjoyed shopping for clothes and the weekend was always a chance to get a little more dressed up than during the week and I was happy with how I looked and felt about myself.

The dark side of being that size for my 5 foot 10 inches frame was that I was achieving the size through strict avoidance of carbohydrates, a sort of Atkins diet that I had fashioned. However, after years of watching fat grams and counting Weight Watchers points, I wasn’t embracing the Atkins philosophy completely by eating mounds of cheese and cooked breakfasts, I was still avoiding the high fat foods as well as the carbohydrates. I just wasn’t eating very much at all.

I wasn’t taking any medication at this time for my mental health problems and the weight was just dropping off me.

“Nothing tastes as good as being slim feels”

Despite the ill health I experienced whilst following such a restricted diet and the fact that in its latter stages I was borderline anorexic, I loved being slim and wearing my size 10 jeans.

Now 18 months down the line I eat a much more varied diet, whilst still trying to be healthy, but including carbohydrates and pretty much all food groups. But I have gained four stone in the last year. I know I am healthier because I don’t permanently have some sort of cold or flu but I feel so bloody FAT. I am a size 14, pushing 16 now and I absolutely HATE IT.

One of the main differences is that I am now on medication to help manage my mental health problems. I take an antipsychotic called Amisulpride and an antidepressant called Trazodone. The weight has pretty much started creeping on slowly since I went on to these two medications. However, my web research this morning has said while it is possible to gain weight on these medications, although it is a rarer side effect than other antidepressants and antipsychotics, it is possible to LOSE WEIGHT whilst taking them.

So I need some sort of diet to follow and need to do a good amount of exercise. I have no idea where to start as TuT and I reckon we are pretty healthy at the moment and there isn’t much I can cut out of my diet. Following my hours of tears this morning I have rung the doctors and I am going to see the lovely Triage nurse, Jane. I saw her a few weeks ago and she was so lovely, so I am hoping she can make me feel better and offer some advice on how to get to a healthier weight and size.

Watch this space…