Hi my name is Amy and I'm a crap-oholic! I clearly need an intervention or some sort of junk food rehab clinic to lock me up! Last week I started being slightly healthier, I say slightly because when it came to 5am and starting work at 5:30am my sugar tooth kicked in with a Nutella go bar...baaaad mistake discovering those bad boys. I managed to lose 4lbs throughout the week but come the weekend we had a craft and cake fair at work and the will power practically ran out the building! Tomorrow is a new day! Everyone has stumbles. This is mine. I was showing clients at work my before and after photographs and I was reminded of how much work and effort I put into myself this time last year. I was a whole 20lbs light and may I even say it, the abs were becoming an actual thing! They were there! I mean I still had a layer of fat around them but they definitely existed. Then all willpower and motivation left and here I am. A junk food-aholic confessing my sins on here. ...

Short update today! Busy Bee and all. Today I completed PiYo Day 3 - Define: Upper Body. Let's just say my upper body needs a lot of strengthening. I'm still loving the workouts and the added bonus about todays workout, it's only 20 minutes long! So even when my back was hurting, I've had barely any sleep and I have a million things to be doing, it was only 20 minutes out of my day. I am still working on my tricep pushups, I'd like to see them improve the more practice I get. I also want to see my general fluidity between movements improve. Only time will tell.  I've printed out the workout timetable and I'm writing in my little notes underneath. Today was also the day that I was sup;sed to be running with the NHS couch to 5k app, I'm in week 4 of that, but life is getting in the way. With family members in hospital, dental appointments and an attempt at catching up on sleep after 10 hours in A&E, running maybe getting put on the back burner for ...

So if you haven't noticed before, I'm a flitter. I latch on to the idea of a new workout routine. I've attempted Jillian Michaels' Body Revolution, Insanity, T25, general walking using my fitbit. I am happy to say I am keeping up with the fitbit challenges but the rest unfortunately dwindled away. I Love Jillian Michaels and I will one day go back to it, but for now my new little test is Piyo. Now if you don't know what Piyo is, it is pilates and yoga merged together with high intense intervals. Hard work but easy on your joints. I always knew I wasn't very flexible or strong, but I gave myself a little credit, I wasn't a weakling. I'm here to say, Day 2 down - I am a complete weakling! I kinda love it so far. I found it so hard! Normally, when I find an exercise routine difficult and painful I quit pretty quickly. This time something is different. It is kind of like a competition with myself to become more flexible. I am determined to be able to compl...

At the beginning of the year, I set myself the goal of becoming fitter. Like so many people I'm realising just how busy and hectic life is without adding in trips to the gym and working up a sweat doing various different workout activities. As a solution to this problem, I dug out my old faithful Fitbit. I have a Fitbit Flex which is the basic wristband model. As far as I'm concerned it does everything I require: track my steps; allow me to input my food intake; monitor my water consumption; and track my sleep pattern. In the photograph below you will notice one shining light; this indicates roughly how many steps you've taken. Now this was taken at the beginning of the day, with my daily goal of 10,000 steps, one dot indicates 2000 steps taken. The reason I'm blogging about this today is not to give you the hard sell on a Fitbit or other step counting devices out on the market; and it most certainly isn't to make you go all calorie counting crazy. I simply ...

Well....I haven't been on here for a long time. Sorry about that. Been a very busy girl. But I thought I would pop back on here and give an update of my progress so far. So I have been doing Slimming World for about 14 weeks now, to date I have lost 1 Stone. I have also had some losses followed buy some gains. I let my sweet tooth run free with me for a while, but I'm fully on the band wagon again! I have also started doing pilates classes every week and wait for it....I went to MetaFit! METAFIT - 30 Mins of sheer hell followed by 6 days of agony. It was intense! I used to do Insanity and even started Jillian Michael's Body revolution and I have to be honest, Metafit killed me. It probably doesn't help I forgot my water bottle in the car and half way through I had to run away to the bathroom and drink from the tap. Yep I was shattered! I then spent 6 days whimpering at every little movement. Now last week I had a gain. I had a bad week of sugar fille...

Determination vs. Weakness Today I had a bit of bad news and the old Amy would have felt down and then gone and had crisps, chocolate, biscuits or ice cream. Today I am going to admit, I did get rather down trodden and very emotional, my poor dog had to deal with me all afternoon. However! I did not resort to junk food. I made a choice to stick to plan. I did go to Mcdonald's and order a chicken and bacon salad (only 1.5 syns without dressing or 4.5 syns with Caesar dressing) I have become one of those people who go to Mcdonald's and orders a salad and I felt good...well as good as I could. Don't judge the trip to Mcdonald's...tomorrow is grocery shopping day, my cupboards are bare and my fridge is empty. I have used my syn allowance for the day but on three separately portioned out items so I don't feel bad. I am however upset with myself for not hitting the gym since Saturday....that's a week tomorrow. I am definitely going tomorrow. Today would hav...

Try Something New! So during the meeting this week, we were told to try something new everyday that will support and aid our weight loss journey. Yesterday I tried mango, tasty but it was very hard...maybe I had a bad batch. I also tried Harissa Chicken, Ohhhh that was so tasty. We made the Harissa paste from scratch so we knew it was completely healthy.  If you don't know much about "Slimming World", it is not a diet, I will start by saying that because nothing is banned. It is all about teaching you about healthy foods and foods that are good to enjoy once in a while, these foods contain syn values. You get 5-15 syns a day. You also have your healthy A option which can consist of set amounts of milk and cheese, your healthy B option which can be wholemeal bread products, cereal, cereal bars etc.  If you want tolerant more, go to this website: http://www.slimmingworld.com This will help you to understand why I have taken to cooking meals and items from scratch...

Lets start at the beginning... I have always been on the chubby side, never obese, never worried, just uncomfortable in my own skin. Over the years I've tried little diets, I've tried supplements but I've never had the will power to see it through. This all changed when I had to make the hard decision to quit my international job and return home to the UK. I came back to no job, moved back in with my mum, I basically hit a massive low. It was my choice to leave my job but even so it wasn't easy. I left friends and security behind but in return I gained my family and home town back. Here is where my healthy lifestyle began. I arrived back into the country and into my mother's loving arms. For the first week whilst my mum continued to cook healthily as she was on "Slimming World", I sat there enjoying the glorious home foods and drinks that I longed for whilst living abroad. a few ciders here, a big bag of chocolate there and before you know it, I ...