Slimming World Sunday #1!

It's the start of a new year and for some of us, one of our resolutions is to lose weight!  I mentioned doing Slimming World in my New Year's Resolutions post and people seemed interested in hearing about it, so here I am!   After being so inspired by Laura's amazing weight loss journey on her blog, I started doing Slimming World back in September, but kept it to myself, only telling a few people in real life.  I wanted to give it until Christmas to see if it worked for me because I didn't want to start blogging about it, only to stop a few weeks later.  I wasn't sure if I was going to blog about it at all, but over Christmas I did some thinking and decided that if I joined purely because I was inspired by Laura, then maybe I could inspire people to take the plunge!  So this is the plan stan.

I'm going to blog about it on a monthly basis but no doubt will be chatting about it on Twitter and posting photos of food and meals on Instagram.  If anyone has any questions about it, you can absolutely leave a comment or email me and I'll get back to you about it.  I want to keep this blog predominantly beauty related, but don't mind veering off topic once a month and we can keep each other going!

So let's go back to September.  If I was doing a video on this I'd have done some wavy special effect and twinkly music.  It's like it was meant to be...  I was this close to joining Slimming World and it was only when my work bessie signed up for it that I bit the bullet and decided to join the following week in my local club.  And even more of a sign that it was meant to be was that the day before I joined, there was a coupon in a Sunday newspaper, allowing me to join for free!  It was like the stars had aligned!

So off I went to my first meeting by myself and it's times like those where I really do have the whole blogging experience to be thankful for because I can go to things on my own without any nerves.  I was actually excited to go which was never ever the case when I was in Weight Watchers.  The new members had a wee walkthrough the plan and I'll be honest, there's a lot to take in on the first night.  After our leader Ali told us all about the plan, we had the group meeting and this is where I knew this was the plan for me.  The group.  Oh I love my group.  It's full of women and a couple of men who are just normal, down to earth folks who are there to lose weight and have the chats.  As everyone spoke about their weight loss or gain for the week (no numbers are mentioned if you've gained just so you know!), others spoke up with tips, tricks, recipes and motivation to help each other.  As sappy as this sounds, I got a teensy bit emosh sitting there because for the first time in allllllll the diets I've tried, I actually believed I could do it long term.

And I am!  I didn't go to meetings over Christmas, but as of my last weigh in on 9th of December, I'm down 18lbs and have kept it off over the Christmas break.  I'm even hoping to be down at my next weigh in.  In all the weeks I've been doing it, I've only gained once - a half a pound, and as mad as it sounds, it's because I didn't eat enough that week.  I've maintained for 2 weeks and lost every other week and I'm totally back into the swing of it now!

I knew absolutely nothing about the plan when I started and it took me about a week until I knew what I was doing.  A group leader will explain the plan much better than I'll ever be able to and I still flick through my book or go onto the website whenever I'm unsure of something.  But essentially for each meal, make sure 1/3 of your plate is full of super free foods, like fruit and veggies and the rest can be free foods like lean meat and seafood, pasta, rice and potatoes.  There are other healthy A and B options that you can have and if I go into that now, we'll be here for the day!  You can have 5-15 syns a day and can either spread them out over the day, or save them up if you want a treat like a glass of wine or chocolate!  You don't have to weigh or measure anything, count or track points and that was a big issue for me doing Weight Watchers.  That and they seemed to push their own processed products a lot.

I think about food differently now.  Never did I think I'd say that!  I'm eating lots of fruit and veg, so much veg, and cooking all the time now.  I've been bringing my breakfast and lunch to work for months now and it's saving me money along with helping me lose weight!  Clothes that were too tight on me are now hanging off me and I need to wait until payday to buy new trousers for work as they've now turned into culottes, oh yeah, fashionista wha?

So this was my little introductory post.  At the end of January I'll do another one with more in depth details about what I'm eating etc but as I said above, if you have any questions, just drop me a line at karen@lovelygirliebits.com and I'll do my best to answer you.  If you want more frequent Slimming World posts, then let me know and I'll see what I can do!

For the first time in ages, I believe I can reach my target weight.  I'm walking taller now, have more confidence and although I've a long journey ahead of me, I actually know I'm going to get there!