3 stone in 10 seconds

It's finally time to tell you all about something that I've been doing throughout this diet that I've been really excited about, but that I've not mentioned because I didn't know how well it'd work. My big brother Aaron is an animator, and he got me to take a photograph of myself every day in the same position and in the same outfit (my swimming costume). Then he put them all together in a little film so that you can see me losing the weight!

I think it's seriously awesome! I honestly never thought there was so much of a difference in the before and after shots, but I look like a completely different person and I know which one I prefer! Anyway, check it out!

Amazing right! I just keep watching it and scrolling back and forwards and watching all that weight falling off! But it got me wondering; where exactly does all that weight go? I mean, I know I 'burned it off' by only eating the amount of calories I was actually using and all of that, but what happens when it's burnt? Does it just evaporate, does it ooze out of my body in my sleep, do I (excuse the crassness) poo it all out??? I thought I understood all of this stuff, but look at that video, that's about half of my body weight that's disappeared there! Does that make me less of a person? Are there bits of flab floating around that were once attached to my butt?

I understand liposuction, because you can physically see the stuff that's coming out, but where exactly has my flab gone!?! Not that I want to sent it a postcard or anything, it's just that I was rather attached to it for a long time and I find it bizarre that I can have lost so much of myself and have no idea where it's gone!

Hope you enjoy the video :) It's not all over from me, I still have 4 weeks of 'refeeding' to ween me slowly back on to normal food, and I still have loads to learn about what to avoid and how strong I am around various 'trigger' foods, but this is the end of phase one. And from the video, I'm going to go right out there and call it an unparalleled success.

The end is coming!!!

Do you ever get that feeling, that smugly satisfied feeling of being right about something and proving to everyone that you're stronger than they thought you were?

That feeling's been growing inside me since Christmas, because it was really Christmas when I finally knew, and not just knew, but KNEW knew, that I was going to finish this diet and lose the weight that they said I'd lose. Since I started I had a feeling that Christmas was going to be the point at which I failed, having made a valiant stab at it, and lapsed back in to old habits with a giant bowl of icecream to console me.

But it didn't happen! And for practically the first time in my life I'm a week away from actually finishing something! Because I'm not one of life's great finishers of things. Hobbies, jigsaws, academic pursuits... all started with so much enthusiasm and commitment (except the jigsaws, they're normally started with boredom and an vague attempt towards 'family time'), but all dropped within a few weeks. This time I'm one week away, and aint nothing going to stop me!

AND I'M NOT OBESE ANYMORE!!! I always said that was my goal, to be out of the scary deep red zone on the BMI chart and into the slightly less luminous orangey 'overweight'! I'm OVERWEIGHT! Big tick on goal achieved there. Party hats all around.

One week to go and I've got mixed feelings about it all. It only means the end of the program, not the end of the diet obviously, but it does mean and end to the support and I've been thinking alot recently about how much that's meant. Not just the support of the locums on the end of the phone (which I think I may have overused slightly!!!), or the support of my family, but the support of people I see everyday telling me I'm looking good or my goodness aren't I looking thin. As I wont be losing weight so fast I wont get that so much, and, ridiculously vain though I'm aware this is, I'm going to miss it.

PS. BIG DATE IS TOMORROW!!! I have my outfit all sorted out, I've been given HUGE amounts of advice from all sorts of conflicting sources and my insides turn to jelly everytime I think about it. I think I'm nearly ready!

Diet trousers

I've been looking at a lot of diet sites today, and I'm really excited about something...

I can't WAIT to take my cheesy photo with my old trousers pulled out to show how much weight I've lost!!! At the start of the day I thought those photos were slightly ridiculous and completely overused, but after an entire day surfing the net I've come to see them as the pinnacle of dieting success! I may even have to buy special giant trousers just to illustrate the point (although my stupid brother informs me that I may have missed the point of the exercise...)

So what, I hear you asking yourselves in a bemused sort of way, prompted this day of research? Well it was lots of things really. First of all I was at work and so had nothing better to do.
Secondly I've been feeling a bit down about the diet since Christmas - I was allowed to eat a pretty normal Christmas meal, and although I enjoyed it I kinda wish I hadn't. It's made my tummy start feeling a bit funny again and brought back the constipation that you all enjoyed hearing about so much. Then I started back at work and I've been getting so many amazing comments from people who haven't seen me for a few weeks about how thin I look that I've been buzzing all day and couldn't think about anything else.

And thirdly, possibly most importantly, is because of my sister. She's done the traditional thing of overeating at Christmas with the resolve of losing weight in January (gyms must just adore this time of year!), but she's decided to lose the weight in the most idiotic, mindless way possible. All those people who sucked in their breath when they heard my weightloss scheme of nutritionally balanced milkshakes and careful medical attention must just be in hysterics when they hear my GENIUS sister's plan! She's going to do a milkshake diet (clearly I am a shining example), but she's decided she can't afford to do a proper one so she's brought a bunch of Slimfast milkshakes and has vowed to eat nothing else.

Bloody idiot!

So I've spent the day researching other diet plans and trying to find one that suits her so that I can talk her out of it. I did a bunch of research when I first started, so consider myself the expert in the family, but I wanted to do some more with an insiders knowledge so that I could present her with a slightly more rational plan.

I decided that I liked Howard's Way actually. They've made this whole thing pretty darned easy because they do meetings and medical checkups and phone support and other stuff like that which helps people like me who only make an effort when everything is laid out on a plate! I'd be interested in hearing more about some of the other plans too - I've heard a lot about Lighter Life, but I don't think they teach you so much about eating healthy when you finish the diet and I was really scared about putting it back on through not really knowing what was bad for me!

So I'm trying to get her to abandon the crazy plan and either just eat healthy (she's not nearly as large as I was) or to lose 3 stone with HW.