Omega's journey

Hi Cate, Want2Lose and Mand

Thanks for visiting my journal. LOL I have been looking in on the challenge every day but not looking over here...

Things are generally going well here. I am working hard but not getting much weight loss... That often happens for me... I have stuck rigidly to the food plan but have seen less than a pound come off a week for the past couple of weeks... My exercise levels have been high, high, high too...

I have been out walking every day... The treadmill oil has finally arrived and I have oiled my Tunturi T60 treadmill - and now have it as a fall-back...
My formal exercise classes have been good too. Over the last week my classes were as follows:

Sat - 1 hr salsa, 1 hr zumba
mon - 1 hr aerobics, 1 hr zumba
tues - 2.5 hr salsa
wed - 1 hr zumba
thur - 2 hr salsa

Today is Saturday. We will not have our normal Saturday 1 hr salsa lesson this morning as my salsa teacher is dancing at the Dutch Salsa Congress in Amsterdam... He normally teaches me zumba too - but he has an excellent colleague who will lead the class today.

It sounds silly but I was quite upset on Tuesday when my pedometer reset... It lost all my data for the previous week... I remember that it was over 30,000 steps for Monday and am convinced that it would have made it that far on Tuesday if it hadnt reset... It was pretty high before the first of the three salsa classes... It was 30,835 for Wednesday... The fact that the pedometer reset means that I felt that I was robbed of my steps...

I need to buy at least one pedometer if not two... Unfortunately I cannot get the model that I am wearing and I am never happy with change... On my big weight loss project I used to wear two pedometers so that they could check up on each other (the step counts get so big that I worry that they are exaggerating things and it takes away the chance of a reset losing all the data)...

Cate - I am convinced that you are being modest and will always be an expert on Cohens. You always were so active and helping such a lot of people - and I see that this is still the case. I think that this is particularly important as Cohens has a particularly restrictive food plan and therefore is full of temptation to lapse... You have helped a lot of people to either not lapse or get back on plan if they do.

Want2Lose - while we would have both preferred to not regain that lost weight - it is good that we have both had the sense to come back and address it again.

Mands - I am ok thanks :) I really need to be more active at keeping up the diary...

I gave myself a lovely motivational treat on Thursday... I went into a charity shop near where I live and saw an absolutely stunning little top. It is a little tight at my tummy at my current size but it fits and my parents say that it looks ok now...

My tummy is where I am carrying all the weight that I have gained... All the dancing and zumba have kept me ok from the waist upwards... My boobs are still big - but that is loose skin... I am wearing a UK size 32JJ bra... A 32 back size is not big...

I know that this top will look brilliant when I get some of this weight off my tummy... and it will be perfect for my salsa nights...

The top only cost me £3... It was money well spent.

Some people are snobby about wearing things from charity shops - but I got some brilliant clothes in them when I did my big project. I knew how many of my expensive big clothes that were in great condition I would be giving away to charity and started buying.

I am still running the little challenge on Another Diet Forum... We spent the past week dealing with accountability... It was going to be a high cal weekend for the Americans with Super Bowl... They knew that they were going off their diet... I dealt with eating in and eating out and eating bad all in one swoop... I said that it didnt matter what they ate they had to list it... No need to weigh or measure or count anything - but list it warts and all...

I got good feedback that it helped them to limit their badness at their parties because they didnt want to admit to having too many bad foods... If I had asked them to be too restrictive they would have just announced that they had parties and would lose the points on those days - so the challenge would not have helped them at all...

I have expanded it up this week so that people are still listing their food but putting portion sizes on too... Its a small step - but means that people who have not been counting calories have the data to do so - either now or when they do their next spot check...
 
I got a nice weighing today... 11st 6.2 I hopped on and off the scales quite a few times actually as is my habit and got some slightly higher and some slightly lower - but settled on the first exact number I got 3 times... I have always used this "get it 3 times and it counts" notion... anyway - it is the first time I have had a weighing of under the eleven and a half stone mark since the big house move last spring...

I still have another stone to go to get to the 10.5 stone that I was at the start of last year...

I gained a fair bit during the time of the big house move because it involved getting the old house ready to rent out while my husband was working 300 miles away so we were already not permanently living there... For example getting the new kitchen fitted was a killer since there were 3 weeks where I was there by myself and I didnt have a kitchen at all... I had to use a screwdriver to get a pipe in the kitchen wall to give or stop giving water... I ended up having far more takeaway than appropriate... I ate out whenever I had company to do so too... I could not get my exercise done either as I had too many boxes to pack and it was down to me to do it...

I have eradicated Christmas already and eradicated the gains since last summer... I am definitely working on the gains of spring now - with lots of milestones and the 10.5 stone "start of 2012" being a key one...

After that I will have lots of milestones to take me back to my real goal of 9 stone that I was supposed to be maintaining and its zone...
 
Your weighing methodology is like my own. I weigh multiple times (up to 6-8) until I hit one number exactly 3-4 times. Always, there will be higher and lower measurements than the one I choose. Great job on the losses!
 
Oh my word - I do exactly the same! I jump on the scale about 6 - 8 times and then I take the 3 consistent weights. I thought I was mad - glad to know I'm not the only one:smilielol5:

Omega you should be so proud of your progress - you are really doing fab! Keep going at it hard!
 
I got a nice weighing today... 11st 6.2 I hopped on and off the scales quite a few times actually as is my habit and got some slightly higher and some slightly lower - but settled on the first exact number I got 3 times... I have always used this "get it 3 times and it counts" notion
Sounds like you may need a "get a newer and better scale" notion. :D

Good work on the loss.
 
Thanks Don, R1962, Mands and Mr Vee for visiting and the words of support.

LOL I honestly think that all scales have a little uncertainty... My scale measures theoretically to .2 of a pound... The bottom line is that anything that is not on that exact number is guaranteed to wiggle between them... It is a pretty good scale which we bought when I was doing my big project and it always agreed with both the Weight Watchers and Slimming World scales...

I am currently inclined to blame the floor in this house... I much preferred weighing in my previous house... I was happier with the floor there - but when you are in a house over 100 years old you have to deal with antique floorboards...

I suspect that I would do the same thing where-ever I was and with whatever scales I was using...

You have to remember that I am so obsessive that people diagnosed with OCD have told me that I taught them the meaning of the term obsessive...

I am currently unhappy with my pedometer and I want not one new pedometer but two... When I was on my big project I always wore two pedometers (one on each side) to check up on each other...

I joined both Weight Watchers and Slimming World (their biggest competitor in the UK) just after I hit my "half my start weight" milestone on the way down as I figured that they didnt have too much experience with extreme weight loss but they had tons of experience helping people lose 20 pounds to get to a goal weight... It gave me a good insight into both their programs...
 
I laughed at some your comments, only because I have said the same things. My hardwood floors (60 year old house) ARE a bit wonky so I finally cut a piece of plywood for the scale to sit on to account for it. I still have to watch it closely, though.

I don't use a pedometer (yet) but would very likely also use two to verify their accuracy. As a brewer of beer, I use several thermometers to calibrate against each other to confirm that my temps are as consistent as possible. I can live with a little OCD... sometimes, the devil is in the details.
 
You have to remember that I am so obsessive that people diagnosed with OCD have told me that I taught them the meaning of the term obsessive...
I don't have OCD, I have CDO because now the letters are in alphabetical order like they're supposed to be!
 
Don - the plywood sheet scale location sounds like a great idea. LOL the funny thing is that our previous home was built in the 1930s (the age of your house) and I was more confident about weighing there... Having said that - we had a new floor base put in the bathroom some years ago before we had the floor tiled so the entire bathroom was effectively sitting on a big levelled sheet of plywood...

How big have you made your plywood scale stand and have you screwed it into place or it is simply laid down before you get onto the scales?

I want one too!!!

MrVee - I love the improved acronym.
 
Omega, I cut the piece of plywood to roughly match the dimensions of the scales 4 feet... maybe about two inches wider at each foot. It's attached to the scale by replacing the screws that held the feet in place to include the plywood. Pick up the scale, and the base comes with it. This helped in rooms where the hardwood slats were a little uneven.
 
Thanks for the info Don. I could certainly do with something along those lines... We can never get things "too accurate"...
 
My exercise levels are still really good... Granted - fairly predictable and nothing at all associated with a gym...

Monday - 1 hr aerobics, 1 hr zumba
Tuesday - 2.5 hrs salsa
Wednesday - 1 hr zumba
Tonight is 2 hrs salsa

I will be doing some walking first... I do some walking every day - either outdoors or on the treadmill... Sometimes I do both... I will go out soon - but may do some treadmill later as we have snow lying and the pavements are still icy... Thank goodness for my yaktrax ice grippers... they are brilliant for walking on ice...



I paid £20 for mine at a local outdoors shop and they really are great for getting outdoor walking done when the weather is bad... They seemed a bit expensive at the time - but it turned out that they were worth the money... The only problem is that you go sliding about if you go into a shop with shiny tiled floors while you are out...

The strong focus on dance was fairly predictable... I did a lot of dancing when I was young. I actually took quite a lot of dance exams as a teenager and came very close to coming a dance teacher... I was taught by a former British champion... My favourite genre of dance was Latin...

Of course that all lay dormant after my weight doubled in my twenties... It suddenly came to light after my weight halved again...

We moved back to Newcastle last year and I have found a great dance scene here... I have a really good salsa teacher who also runs some excellent zumba classes... I am hooked so have done a lot of zumba classes with a lot of teachers... whenever I meet people that go to numerous classes - I ask who teaches the best classes that they do... Basically - everyone with multiple teacher experience agrees that Chris does the most energetic zumba classes in this city... Chris often has another zumba instructor (Riccardo) working with him and Riccardo takes the class if Chris is away.

LOL It means that we see our zumba / salsa teacher almost every day.
 
I laughed at some your comments, only because I have said the same things. My hardwood floors (60 year old house) ARE a bit wonky so I finally cut a piece of plywood for the scale to sit on to account for it. I still have to watch it closely, though.

I don't use a pedometer (yet) but would very likely also use two to verify their accuracy. As a brewer of beer, I use several thermometers to calibrate against each other to confirm that my temps are as consistent as possible. I can live with a little OCD... sometimes, the devil is in the details.

I could do with that plywood idea on my floorboards too.

I have a pedometer. It really is worth getting one.
 
I use the following calculator to work out how many calories get burnt at zumba.



My normal zumba classes are in the toughest category - but if I do other classes with different instructors then I rate them as I find (normally of the other categories)...
 
I'm trying to imagine a Zumba instructor with a Geordie accent in a Zumba video and I'm failing to put it together. :D

Now granted my experiences with Geordie accents are mostly ex-footballers and alcoholics (usually they are both), but still...
 
LOL MrVee - the fact is that I have a Geordie accent so everyone on this forum has a Geordie accent when I read the postings through in my head... That should blow your mind... You now realise that you have acquired a Geordie accent... :biggrinjester:

Chris definitely has a geordie accent...

copying from my other forum...

I have found a track from January / February (when I was sorting out the house down south) of someone going to a ZBNE zumba class. Chris is my main zumba teacher......



lol at 2 mins 20 you can see a clip from danza maozinha with everyone walking like penguins...
 
LOLYou now realise that you have acquired a Geordie accent... :biggrinjester:

I can no longer understand a single word I'm saying.

I was watching an independent film on cable a few years ago, and it was set in a not so upscale part of Newcastle. I remember this film well because it had subtitles. No joke. :D
 
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