(no subject)

[tinyjo]

Right. I weighed myself this morning and I am 15 stone. This is way significantly too much. The last 3 stone of that has been put on in the last 4 months pretty much (although I haven't been formally tracking so I could be remembering that wrong). I need to do something about this. I'm going to make an appointment with my GP at the beginning of next year and see if she's got anything to say or any suggestions but for now I'm looking for suggestions from you lot. This is my experience so far:

• Slimming clubs per se don't help motivate me. If they've got a good program and my willpower is good then I'm happy to pay for them but the being weighed by someone else bit isn't a motivator for me and I generally find that most of the people at the meetings have completly different lifestyles to me so I don't get much from the discussion. That being said, if you know a good one with a good system, feel free to recommend it.
• Previous experience shows that unless I actively enjoy an exercise I don't stick to it and also that there are very few exercises that I actively enjoy. I quite liked swimming but found that if you do that every day you end up smelling of chlorine all the time, which I really didn't like. I like riding horses but that requires a regular timing and somewhere to do it (none of the Oxfordshire stables I've tried have ever answered their phones or called me back!). Now that I've finally recovered from my cold I'm cycling to work again but any other suggestions for exercising are welcome
• I've had a huge increase in my desire to snack during the second half of this year. I notice it particularly when I'm watching TV - if I'm settling in for an evening of Veronica Mars, I'll usually do it with a couple of glasses of wine and half a pack of (low fat) cream crackers. Any good tactics for distracting myself from my desire to snack? (n.b. I can't knit while watching TV :) ) Previously I haven't had much of a problem with this - I've snacked before but it's been much more under my control.

So, any ideas?

Comments

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

Wine is a pleasure, not a master. What I want is to find a way of losing weight without having to spend all the time working hard at that instead of enjoying some of my life.

[vinaigrettegirl.livejournal.com]

You have so much to enjoy, including evenings in or out with friends, with or without some wine. I'm not saying wine *is* your master, but looking objectively at what you write about your evenings, it's clearly not your servant, exactly, either. The impression I have, which may be wrong, is that you have at least one if not two large glasses of wine almost every night and you find it hard to not do that. If that impression is wrong I apologise. If that impression is actually, possibly, even partly accurate then seeing it for what it is will help you lose some weight without losing the pleasure you have from a glass of wine now and again.

I guess it boils down to what we consider "normal" and "pleasurable" in life. Hard calculation.

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

Yes it is something that I do regularly but it's not something that I find it particularly hard not to do if I choose - I had hardly any when I had my cold because the taste wasn't the same.

It's very difficult to judge with a substance which is known to be addictive but that you take a great deal of pleasure from where you stand with it. I tend to be very analytical of whether my desire for wine is based on pleasure in taste or in other urgings but it seems so far that it it genuinely the taste that I crave.

[t--m--i.livejournal.com]

Alcohol is a bit of an emotive subject (along with, boomb boomb, eating and obesity). So it's harder to talk about than (say) residual pesticides or whatever.
About six-seven years ago I got into the habit of having a couple of home poured G&Ts every night and put on more than three stone in a year. I stopped as part of a weight-loss program. But then I became aware of the links between alcohol and breast cancer and didn't start again. I'm not TT but I have, what, a drink every few weeks maybe. The links between obesity and cancer are also facts you may find help to motivate you to find a lifestyle which comes with a lower BMI - they certainly helped me !