Pick a diet, any diet

It's that time of the year for New Year's Resolutions and the advertising companies prey on that.  So far on the TV I've seen ads for:


* Jenny Craig (Cheryl Baker from Buck's Fizz swears by it)

* the Special K diet

* the 'real woman's DVD' by Kerry Katona (yeah, all woman....)

* the newly launched pro points system by Weight Watchers

and that's all in the space of 2 days.


Over the years I've done WW, Slimming World, the Cambridge Diet, the egg and orange diet, the 1000 calorie a day diet.  The very basic principles are all the same: eat less than your body needs over a sustained period of time and you will lose the weight. 


What some of these diets don't advocate however is the need for a healthy and balanced diet.  And I'm not using the word 'diet' in the restrictive sense, but in the what you eat sense. And what you eat is so very important. I have found through trial and error that when I eat natural foods that haven't been processed that I actually feel a whole lot better.  My skin improves, I have more energy.  What I try to do is to eat foods that are cooked from scratch, and where there are sauces that they are generally made up from herbs and spices rather than out of a jar or packet. I'll be honest though, there are one or two jars out there that taste pretty darned good and so they will be included, just as sometimes, strictly for convenience, a ready meal will find its way in, but I can hand on heart say that they are few and far between.  


As I try to see it - it's all about balance, isn't it?  Everything in moderation......


so they say.


Anyhow, the diets.  They will flood the market in the next few weeks and I expect we will quickly tire of how fab Cheryl Baker now feels, or how Kerry has toned up using her own DVD.  Bottom line is to shop around and pick out what suits you and your lifestyle, but above all, keep it healthy.


I will be back to it all with a vengeance from January 4th and I will be back to my own way of healthy eating.


Bring it on! 

Welcome To My World

I have finally jumped onto the blogging bandwagon!  I've been thinking about it for the longest time  but always found a reason not to.  Not enough time.  Not enough to say.  Not interesting enough.  Blah blah blah.  But you know what?  I finally figured that this is not a blog - this is my diary, Warts'n'all. 

If you've read my background you will know I'm a member of a weight loss website.  On the latter stages of my weight loss journey, I posted a daily diary on there and I found that to be hugely beneficial in keeping me on the straight and narrow.  Soooooo..... my thought process in doing this is the same, by doing a daily (or as near as dammit) diary it will help keep me focused and accountable.  If it's in black and white then I gotta do it.  Right?

A brief resume:

A lifelong yo-yo dieter.  First diet was aged 11 and comprised Limmits biscuits and slender meal replacements.  Since then I've done pretty much everything from counting points, to sins, to cutting out food completely in favour of milky drinks and soups.  Some of them got the weight off me, but none kept it off. 

In the summer of 2005 I hit my all time high on the scale.  I remember that day.  I cried.  A lot.  Then I got down to the job in hand.  It wasn't easy, at times I went backwards, but I kept that day in the summer of 2005 in the front of my mind.

Three years later I hit my goal having lost over a third of my body weight. I remember that day too.  I cried.  A lot.  But it was different, oh so very very different.  I took a photograph of the numbers flashing at me on the scale and posted them onto the weight loss website.  I thought "This is it, my journey is at an end."

But of course, it wasn't.  It was only the beginning of a new path.

Since then I've continued to yo-yo, but the string is very much shorter.  But you know what?  I want and need it to be even shorter.
 

I'm ending 2010 a little (ok, more than a little) over my happy weight.  Truth be told, I don't know what I weigh at the moment, I'm saving that little treat for the New Year.  I imagine it will be around a stone, or 14 pounds, over my happy weight but I will share it once I brave the scales.

The aim of this diary is to help me get back to where I want to be and to keep me there.

Permanently.

I will share all the good things and a fair bit of the not so good, although I hope that will be few and far between!

I will share details of what I eat and drink, by posts and pictures.  (I’m trying to work out a way of having links and pages to things like ‘recipes’ and so on.)

I will be honest to you and to myself.

I'm very new to the world of blogging so forgive me for the way stuff is laid out sometimes, I’m learning!