The Curvy Goddess

Online window shopping...

Its less than five days since I got paid and I am already fretting about my finances this month, there is lots to pay for and many expensive social events planned for august, which sadly means that this month I'll have to watch every penny and not purchase a single item of clothing.  Poopy :(

Of course a girl can dream though can't she?  And one can definitely window shop and plan how to spend the bulk of Septembers pay...

Anyway at the moment I have my eye on this dress...  Me wants it!  At the moment I'm keen to smarten up my wardrobe and this dress would be fab for work and wearing over trousers too when it gets colder.

Also I wanted to say thanks to Andrea who sent me a link to EmeraldAngel, they sell some gorgeous alternative pieces and are open to commissions she tells me...  I'm loving their retro and skull print tops!

Finally I thought I would give a little shout out about Yours, some of the clothes Yours sell are a little mumsy for my taste, but they do also have lots and lots of far cuter and fashionable clothes and I can't fault them on price especially when compared to Evans or Simply Be, you are certainly not getting ripped off for being plus sized by Yours...  I'm very much considering purchasing this little skirt in September as part of my effort to smarten up my clothes :)

Anyway thats my window shopping for now, roll on September pay day!

I'm Healthy, I'm Changing but the Scales Stay the Same

As per usual I have been wrapped up with living, I've had no time to update here. Well when I say living I actually mean working, eating, exercising and sleeping. I'm still finding it very difficult to adapt to doing exercise on a regular basis. There is certainly a lack of consistency as far as the amount of exercise I do goes. Sometimes its 4-5 times a week of gym going and aquaerobics, other times its 1-2. I'd like to have more of a routine, but what about the nights you need to have an emergency starfucks/pub visit with best friend to talk? What about when boyfriend offers to take you out for dinner or to the cinema. I don't particularly want to write off my social life completely during the week, but I do feel more of a routine may help my dreadful energy levels.

I now weigh 12 stone five pounds so you can see I've made little progress over the last month, however people I haven't seen much lately keep telling me I look as though I've lost more weight. I'm really glad that despite the lack of weight shifting I am changing regardless. My tummy is shrinking, my back flab is disappearing and my arms which have I always hated seem to be smaller.

As far as food goes, I guess I'm still eating too much but in some ways I don't care. Ever since I've had hypnotherapy I feel liberated in terms of my diet. No longer obsessing over cakes and chocolate is wonderful. Food is both functional and a joy. When I want something interesting or bit exciting, I cook something tasty. When I want simple food its poached eggs on toast. I have also enjoyed just cooking for myself too, I seem to have a bit more time due to it and I think boyfriend prefers this way too! We've agreed to buy some staples together but will continue to eat our own food.

All of that aside I guess I still need to make some changes to my diet, it needs to be lower on quantity. I have no idea how many calories I currently consume. I think the major change diet-wise this month has been that I have drifted away from the GI diet and now eat 'healthily'. I've sticking to low gi principles of eating, but not adhering to rigidly to the GI Diet anymore, for example if I was to follow the GI diet I'd not eat eggs or bananas. Despite the lack of weight loss, I think moving away from the GI Diet is a good development for me. I'm grateful for good old Rick and his recipe books and ideas, but I feel I've grown up diet-wise enough now to fly away from the low GI nest.

Oh well, more tweaking changing and exercise is to be done, I am confident I'll get there in the end!

Going our separate food ways…

My boyfriend and I have shared our food for quite some time by both equally investing the same amount of money in it each month. However this month we are not and my half of our usual budget is all for me!

Recently with my new routine of going to the gym every evening I have started to realise that my eating patterns need to change. My diet changed 18 months back to adapt to the low gi way of eating and it now needs to shift again if I am to truly change my lifestyle to permanently accommodate exercise. My feeling is that I need to eat more during the day and less in the evening, which suits me just fine! Less time cooking in the evening equals more time to myself.

So this month I am experimenting, I will see week on week what I lose, if I lose anything at all! I'm going to keep a record of what I eat and what exercise I do (and how much time), I guess I'm hoping to see a pattern. This week's result I already know will be a load of b*****ks because the monthly evil is due and it always causes bizarre weight gains or losses. Anyway with all this experimentation the last thing I need to be worried about is someone else eating. Boyfriend and I have agreed that for this month we will feed ourselves, our larder full of tins, dried pulses and herbs/spices can be eaten by us both, but when its gone, well its in our bellies…

With this change I am feeling drawn to soups once again for dinner, but of the speedy variety, which involve no diary and will keep well in the fridge for a couple of days. Lately for lunch I've been having salad, new potatoes and a bean burger (taste just as good cold) for lunch, it is very tasty and easy but I think I need to vary my diet if lunch is to be my new main meal of the day. I shall consult my low gi cook books for ideas.

I shall keep here updated with my findings.

Weight Update

Last week I seemed to have got eating and exercise a bit better coordinated and I lost 2 pounds.

I haven't for a while kept here updated with my actual weight, it has fluctuated quite a bit so I will start with my weight four weeks ago when I had my sugar-zapping hypnotherapy, my weight that week was 12 stone and 11 pounds. On Saturday morning I weighed 12 stone and 6 pounds. Five pounds in four weeks is good progress, slow but at least I finally seem to be getting somewhere…

Finding Balance

Everything is good right now.

I go to the gym.   I work hard in the gym, I like pushing myself.

I don't eat sweet stuff, nor do I think about it or want it.  Cake is slug food as far as I am concerned.

However in 3 weeks I have lost 3 pounds, which is a bit dull really.  I wanted to report back that I had lost loads!

Trouble is though, that I am eating too much despite having kicked the cake habit.  Don't get me wrong I'm not eating loads, but I am eating too much caloriewise to make all this extra exercise count. 

The particular problem areas are my daily snacks and the time between exercising and eating dinner, I'm eating stuff like peanut butter on toast before going to the gym because I am absoutely starving when I get home from work. My snacks at work, although healthy are also quite calorific.

It seems that I need to find a balance between what I'm eating and when I'm eating it. So I'm making the following resolutions:

• I'll only eat one low gi scone a day
• If I am starving before going to the gym/aqua aerobics/yoga I shall eat a banana and drink a bottle of water
• I will embrace savoury healthy snacks, carrots, tomatoes and nuts (small amount of course) will be my new friends
• I will go to the gym as soon as possible after work and not "just check hotmail/ebay etc" before realising its 6:40 and thinking S**t!

Hopefully these changes will help get my weightloss going again...

Anyone seen some D Cups? Mine have gone missing...

After my initial couple of stone weight loss way back, everything shrank rather scarily.

Six and a half inches disappeared from my waist and three from my bosom, however my cup size remained the same, infact many of bras fitted even better than before.

So I assumed that this meant flab from back and sides had gone. My D cups for now, were safe. New bras were bought and for a while I felt the best I had done in ages.

Lately though I've felt unsettled about my appearance. I hate most of my clothes, they are still new, strange and I believe that they are all transitory so not worth getting attached to. Many items have been bought to replace clothes I had before, but they are just not the same any more. And my belly has been looking huge.

Last week I tried on a bra I don't wear too often. My boobs just didn't sit right in it. There was too much space and certainly no oomph…

So last weekend I went and got measured at marks and spencers. It seems that I have lost a cup size. This also explains why my belly has seemed so big, its now much easier to see that its not protected by a huge bosom.

It is a bit annoying though because I had previously built up quite a stock of bras in my old size. But regardless there is action to be taken…

So...

My underway drawers have been emptied.

There are bras going to charity and new hardly worn bras going to ebay.

I have three D cup bras which fit okay, I will be using these till Friday when some C cup bra shopping will commence.

How to deal with A**holes

I'm really enjoying Kira Cochrane's The reluctant dieter series in the Guardian.

Unfortunately the Guardian doesn't seem to organise their site very well so its not possible to give you a link to all of Kira's writings so far.

Anyway this week's piece was particularly amusing, providing an excellent comeback, should you ever have your weight pointed out to you by some tosser on the street:

"...by Wednesday, some arsehole has called you "fat bitch" in the street, and you find yourself tucking into french bread and brie. Zut alors! Once you can shout back: "Yes, I am fat, and you, my friend, are a wanker," this cycle ceases to exist..."

Hypnotherapy: My bad relationship with sugar is finally over

WARNING: I do not recommend reading the post below if you are eating.

Last Thursday I was miserable.

Despite now comfortably using a gym and going to exercise classes, I still wasn't losing any weight.

And I was at battle with myself, constantly…

I wanted sweet things, cake, chocolate and ice-cream. But I also wanted to lose weight and the two of them are just not compatible, especially as once I had one cup cake or Twix or ben and jerrys, I just wanted more.

Abstaining from sweet stuff was hard.

As soon as I stopped eating it, all I could do was think about it. And then it was on my mind all of the time, I need that Twix with my cup of tea, I've been to the gym so I can go to starbucks and get a cup cake - I deserve it.

I was exhausted by needing, wanting and having sugar. I was fed up of feeling that way, all the time.

…

And then a miracle happened.

I went to hypnotherapy.

Rambled all of the above, in uber fast Rachel-talking speed to the poor hypnotherapist, barely having time to breathe between words.

I wanted sugar out of my life for good.

Somewhere in my intentions to fix my diet and health - I screwed up. A normal relationship with sugar is not something I can have anymore.

So the hypnotherapist did his thing. He used NLP and hypnosis. I was asked to talk about a food I disliked and a choc/cake/ice-cream that I liked.

I thought of steak & kidney puddings (dislike) and of twixes (liked - in the past sense, because I don't anymore).

Fortunately for me I have a rather traumatic memory of a steak & kidney pudding as a child. This was no ordinary steak & kidney pud, it came from my Dad's army ration pack and there was probably dog in it rather than steak. It was revolting. The texture of the bits of kidney in that pie did and still do make me shudder. It was like slugs.

And that’s it. Sugar addiction all gone. I don't waste time obsessing about sweet stuff any more, it doesn't pop into my head constantly. There are times when I notice the absence of my addiction and in those moments when I try to think of one of my former sweet favourites, I see them in my head looking all perfect and then a giant, ugly slimy grey slug on them. And there is no f**king way I'm going to eat sluggy sweets ever again.

I haven't eaten any sweet things for seven days now, normally that would have taken an enormous amount of will power. But this last week has been a breeze. Eating healthily now is so easy, spending time making healthy food doesn't seem the chore it did before when my energy levels were riddled with extreme highs and lows.

I really, really love this.

I hope it lasts.

Inspire is Online!

Just a quickie to say that Newlook's inspire range is now online!

Loving this dress...

Will be posting more soon about hypnotherapy (I am sugar free for 6 days now because of it), Kira Cochrane and poor, poor Fern and her gastric bypass surgery.  But really busy!

Hypnosis: Going to the Gym

My hypnosis session regarding my fears about using a gym involved a great deal of visualation and focussed very much on how I physically 'feel' anxiety.  I was happy with way of doing things as I am very bad at verbalising my own stress, discomfort and fears, so for me whenever I am stressed or worried it is very much a physical feeling.  The session itself was a strange and familiar experience.  Familiar because now well into my second term of yoga I am quite comfortable with someone guiding me into a relaxed state and strange because although I felt completely lucid and awake, at the end of the hour when opening my eyes I felt as though I had been asleep for hours.

So did it work?

Yes and no is an honest answer.

No because I was still nervous about going to the gym on my own, but also yes because I actually did go and on entering the gym I immeditely stopped feeling anxious and just got on the machines. 

Yes it did work because although I was worried about going to the gym, all of my physical anxiety symptoms did not appear, my stomach was pleasantly settled. 

...

Three weeks on, I am now very comfortable using the gym.  I enjoy that it is a bit of 'me time', cheesy as that sounds, its also very true.  I go to the gym without my hearing aid (which I very much need for conversations) and my mp3 player switched on.  I quite enjoy the time to think, or not.  And best of all, I love that the gym is 2 minutes away from my flat, there can be no excuses for not going.

In hindsight I now feel that hypnotherapy has helped a great deal with my fears of using a gym and of exercising alone, its liberating to think that now how much exercise I do lies with me after so long of being afraid to make that leap.