The week before I had my graduation ball, which I was also worried about. Thankfully, a lovely personal shopper named Rachel was on hand to find me the perfect dress and stop me having a stroke in the process.
For anyone reading who doesn't know me personally, that's me in the middle. :)
Essentially, food is not my issue at the moment. For that last two three months I've been watching what I've been eating slimming-world style. As far as possible. My downfall has been the booze. Since I became single I've had the urge to be out all the time. I don't know why, all I know is it has been really good for me. But not good for my plans to lose weight.
Gradually though, I've worked out ways to make my alcohol intake not count for so much on the scales. Switching wine by the bottle for vodka with diet mixers was the first step. Nights where I would usually go out for a drink which turned into a bottle of wine on a weeknight with no plan to do much afterwards have stopped - I've realised I get just as much satisfaction going out and just sticking to diet coke, because ultimately it was the company that mattered.
Working this stuff out has helped me hugely on my struggle to losing weight. Without exaggeration, I would say I'm out of the house around 6 days a week. If I was constantly fretting over counting calories, would that be happening? In all honesty, probably not.
We all have so many excuses. "I'll start on Monday", that's my favourite. If you're not willing to start that day, then you'll never be willing to give it your all. "I've got too much of a social life", there's nothing wrong with enjoying a weekend, or the occasional weeknight. If you stop yourself from enjoying yourself you'll never stick it out in the long run. It shouldn't feel like a chore. "I'm never home to eat/ I don't have time to cook", bollocks. I spend a couple of hours a week cooking and packing up into tubs, where they go swiftly into the freezer. That way on the nights where I'm running around needing just to grab something (which happens to be nearly every night...) it's a matter of picking something and sticking it into that wonderful contraption called the microwave. Hey presto, fine dining and good food choices in a single portion tub.
My point is that the longer you make excuses, the longer you're kidding yourself. The social life was my excuse, and now I'm working round it. I even went out one Friday night to a local nightclub, sober, and it was the best night I'd had in a while. This week alone I've had a dvd night with a friend which included an alcoholic beverage or two and a share of a munchie box (luckily it was not appetising so it was easy to turn down more than a piece of pakora and a few chips!), a graduation 'meal' (2 glasses of champers and a bacon buttie, cheers mum) which finished in the bowling with, yup you guessed it, another bottle of champagne, and an evening out at the pub and a nightclub last night. Tonight I'm looking forward to a night out with my soon-to-be teacher colleagues and most likely more than a few drinks on Saturday night. I've accepted that I have a busy social life and I enjoy eating out and having a drink (or ten) - it's how you work around that that counts. The good food choices every other meal, not drinking when I don't need to and attending classes at the gym whenever I can fit them in.
Now that I've got past my excuses, I'm well on the road to doing this properly. I'm finally below the 12stone mark for the first time in over a year, and I intend to keep going the way I've started.
Back at Slimming World properly, attending classes on a Monday night, and I'm hoping this will simply speed up the process. I've been managing on my own fairly well but there's nothing like a good kick up the backside to spur you on a bit.
Ciao x
