Have been so busy, new video for the week!

Hi everyone, sorry I have been a bit M.I.A. I have just been so busy lately, my daughter is heading off to Australia for over a month which is going to kill me and I have been busy arranging passport, getting her motivated to get packing and today the day has finally arrived and her and I are travelling back to my home town Gisborne where I will hand her over to my parents who will then fly out next Wednesday..phew!

Here is my YouTube video for this week, I'm so sorry it's late I had a few technical difficulties!

I hope you are all well, and I will definitely be posting from Gisborne and will upload some photos. Take care, Barbs xx

And so the vlogging starts: Week 1

Here is my first vlog which I am just calling Week 1 because I cannot come up with a fancy schmancy name for my vlogs, it's what happens when you stay up too late and are so tired that you can't come up with anything clever. Enjoy!

Ebony and Ivory

Yesterday was such a glorious day, the weather was amazing and I loved my workout in the morning. I was sweating as if I had just  landed in Samoa, walked across the tarmac and instantly felt sweat dribbling down my legs, which incidentally did happen last year :)

The weather is definitely warming up here in New Zealand and I'm loving the extra burn I'm getting, however, I have also acquired the most ridiculous tan lines. My arms are shocking, I'm ebony and ivory in one! I wear a really good sunblock and yet I still tan. Genetics plays a huge part in this as my parents' are both part Polynesian. Do I think it's a bad thing having my skin change colour? no absolutely not but I would like an all over tan rather than looking like a walking life sized neenish tart!

Excuse the grainy picture!

I did it, I'm back at YouTube!

Well like I said a couple of posts ago, I'm back at YouTube and I am extremely glad to be back there. I have reconnected with some fantastic friends, and am so happy that anyone actually remembers me :) Relationships are so important when you are on a weight loss journey and I realise the importance of keeping those relationships going. I am so excited I can barely contain myself!

So here is the video I posted at 4:30am this morning with my lower eyelids hitting the table as I rendered this video for what seemed like an eternity! Note to self, never video on two different formats, silly, silly goot! Am I tired, hell no! I even did my 7.8km this morning, it's a fantastically brilliant day!

Feeling a little ho-hum

Well today, actually yesterday it's 2:17am at the moment, yesterday was a bit ho-hum, I felt a bit out of sorts like I've had a disturbance or something and I cannot get back into line, does that make sense? Yeah I think it does.  When I get like this I tend to feel a bit let down or lost even and then that's when the cravings kick in and boy did they ever do that today...grr...yesterday! I obviously need sleep don't I?

Curbing those cravings were a lot harder than usual, in fact I felt it was near impossible to stay on track, but I pulled myself together and came through, I've been feeling a bit like this for almost a week and it's driving me nuts! Luckily working out and eating right is so ingrained in me that I will not go off my plan!

Another thing that is not sitting well with me at the moment is that I promised I would help a friend with his weight loss and well, I haven't been, there's a communication issue and seeing that I don't like to be a giant pain in the ass, I have left it at that and now I feel bad about it. I guess I will just wait and see if he still wants me to help him to get moving and to reach his goals which I would love to see because he really deserves it!

There's not much else to say except I wish my rendering would hurry up so I can upload this video to youtube and then go to bed!

Nite xx

Salmon with Gremolata & Jasmine Rice

My favourite fish of all time is salmon, it's rich, full of omega oils and while it can be expensive to buy fresh, you only need a small amount. The gremolata takes this fish to a whole new dimension, the lemon and herbs are fresh and tasty it's a power packed vitamin meal.

You can use brown rice instead of Jasmine, whatever floats your boat :)

NOTE: The fish is cooked on the stove and in the oven so you will need a pan that can be put into the oven.





Ingredients - serves 2

2 x 150g salmon fillets, skin on
2 tablespoons Cajun seasoning (approx)
1 tablespoon olive oil


GREMOLATA
2 cloves garlic, chopped finely or grated
3 tablespoons flat leaf parsley
1 tablespoon grated lemon rind


TO SERVE
6 asparagus spears
1 cup of jasmine rice

Preheat your oven to 180C (350F)

Bring water to the boil in a steamer and steam the asparagus until tender, at the same time cook the rice as per directions on the pack.

Place the lemon rind, parsley and garlic into a bowl and mix together. Take a chopping board and sprinkle the mixture onto the chopping board. 

Season the salmon fillet with with a little sea salt and cracked black pepper then sprinkle cajun spice over both sides of the fillets.

Heat a non-stick pan with the olive oil and cook the salmon skin side down until the skin is crispy then flip the salmon fillets over and put the pan into the oven to finish the cooking process. 

Remove the salmon fillets from the pan and place onto the chopping board covering the salmon with the gremolata, cover both sides of the fish.

TO SERVE

Divide the asparagus spears onto each plate and place a fillet of salmon (skin side up) on top of the asparagus. Lastly place the rice next to the salmon and garnish with coriander and a slice of lemon.

My crazy love affair with lettuce!

My daughter's think their mother has lost the plot because while they sit down to eat their calorie laden icecream, I am sitting there with a bowl of lettuce, yes that's right lettuce! No dressing, no nothing just the lettuce and it has to be iceberg. I've become a bit of a looney detective going through the lettuce display at the supermarket checking them all before finding the biggest and healthiest looking lettuce I can find. Just yesterday one of the staff came over and said "you must really like lettuce", I said to him "I'm like an alcoholic is with booze, I can't get enough", and it's true, I can eat a whole one everyday! Is eating this like a maniac helping with my weight loss? you betcha! It helps curb my appetite especially at night, as I've always been a night time snacker and when I get the urge, I just dive into the fridge and grab me some crisp green goodness. My daughter says it's like living with a human sized rabbit!

So what are the health benefits of eating lettuce? It's low in saturated fat and cholesterol, a good source of iron, vitamin B6, K, A and C and is high in dietary fibre. It also contains traces of omega fatty acids and folate. Is this the only vegetable I eat? no of course not, I eat a lot of dark greens, carrots, sprouts, mushrooms and a lot of cruciferous vegetables. So come on, get your lettuce on!

What's that green stuff you're drinking?

I love green smoothies especially this recipe. I was face timing my sister one day and whilst talking to her I was enjoying the fresh deliciousness of my green smoothie, she looked at me, asked what it was, I told her and she greeted me with a face that suggested that one of these power packed morsels was never going to pass her lips.

So what is in my smoothie? It's mostly vegetables, yes that's right VEGES! I had seen Dr Oz create a smoothie on his show and decided to give it a try and I loved it, I did have to modify the recipe as kale is not readily available in New Zealand at a price I believe is fair, so I replace kale with either spinach or silverbeet.

Here's the recipe: take everything you see in the picture below, throw it into a blender add two cups of water and whizz away! It makes around 4 standard glasses.

INGREDIENTS

1 banana
1 apple, skin on
2 stalks of celery
big huge handful of kale or other greens
1 tsp fresh grated ginger
2 tbspns chopped parsley
1 tbspn ground LSA (optional)
2 tsp spirulina powder
2 cups cold water

Finally, I found a gym!

Lately I have been thinking that it is about time I went somewhere to burn more fat and enhance the muscles that lie beneath the layers of fat that currently adorn my body, so I decided I'd go back and join a gym again.

View from the gym upstairs

Last year I belonged to an amazing gym but it's too far away so I needed to find an alternative and I found a great gym in the city called Ocean Spa. It's really quite nice, the gym part is a bit small, but you have the use of sauna's, lap pool, huge spa pool and another pool heated to 38 degrees where you can just relax and let the worries fade away! Will I be swimming, HELL NO! well, not yet anyway, I'm not quite prepared to reveal my chocolate ripple body to unsuspecting clients wanting to relax and not be freaked out at the sight of my half nakedness!

The personal trainer was really helpful, I told her what I wanted, and she suggested a lot of arm, leg and core work but with decent weights, not the prissy light ones so I was happy about that! Don't get me wrong, I just want to be toned and not have batwings, I'm not looking to being Mrs Hercules or anything like that eeeew!

She was very impressed at what I had done to get 21kg (46.2lb) off my body and she congratulated me and boy did I feel fabulous after that. I've done this thing mostly all by myself, concocted my own food and exercise regime and for once in my life, it's worked!!! I am very proud of myself, I deserve a giant pat on the back from me ;)

So I'm looking forward to getting started, not so much the weighing, measuring and blood pressure taking they do before you start, that I won't like but it's a necessary evil to be able to feel the burn!

YouTube videos...yes I'm finally ready!

A few years ago when on yet another weight loss trip, I would sit for hours watching videos on YouTube created by people like me trying to shift the almighty bulge. Seeing how brave these people were, I decided to give it a go and a few months later had acquired 500+ subscribers, it was so weird to me that people would be so interested in anything I had to say, I never got that much attention at home and yet people were taking time out of their lives to sit and watch me prattle on about myself. But as with anything, there was a downside, the comments. Most of the time they were encouraging and inspirational but I received a lot of flack and being as self conscious as I am I started to make less and less videos until I completely stopped altogether, but that wasn't the only thing that stopped, my weight loss did too.


That was 4 years ago and now I'm back and amazingly enough I still have 385 subscribers, more than likely though I will probably only get 3 views per video and do I care? of course I do, I need the support!  I am ready to take on the YouTube video challenge once again, but this time with a decent helping of "I don't care about the crap comments, I'm here for me" armour. I need to be in a community where I can share ideas and be inspired by other's efforts and hopefully offer something back in return.

So next Monday (NZ time) I shall post my first video and I promise to make them interesting rather than me sitting there barfing up an endless monologue of I'm doing this, I'm doing that, well that's the plan anyway :)

Not quite the day I expected.

Today has been a bit of a mixed bag, I can't say it was a good day, or a bad day either because it was really a mix of both. I woke up this morning at a reasonable hour and had the best sleep I'd had in a very long time. Then I get up and immediately my daughter's decide they're going to throttle each other and breakfast becomes yet again, a war zone!

They leave for school and I feel like I cannot be bothered going out and exercising, but I do, I kick my butt and get outside. I leave the house and  power half way down the road and with freezing nips decide to stop and pull on a warm top. I finally make it to town and against a huge head wind which blew my hair in all sorts of directions. Then whilst walking past a cafe down town I see a table of women dripping in label clothing and gold. One of them looks at me directly and says to her friends "oh disgraceful". I couldn't believe my ears! and before I knew what was happening I heard myself say "I heard you shit head!", yes, I had forgotten to switch on my be nice filter, and then I flicked her the bird, oh boy! Thing is, I am sick of these "career cafe" women who do nothing all day because they are married or dating some rich businessman (or woman) who is supporting them. I don't like confrontation and usually the thought of saying something back would fill me with fear, but somewhere deep inside me a fuse had been lit and it had to go!

After that annoyance I went home had a shower and came back to town as I thought it was high time that I try clothes on as mine are all staring to hang off me. I stood at the racks and grabbed a size 18 (US16) jeans and size 20 (US18) top, I thought this would be really funny since when I started this journey, I was a size 26 (US24) top and 24 (US22) jeans. I go into the changing room and OMG the top fits! the jeans, I could get them on but not do them up so it won't be long until those jeans will fit me! The funny thing is, I still see myself as that really big woman that started this journey and it's going to take a little getting used to looking at the shrinking me.

So as you can see, today was definitely a mixed bag of events :)

These shoes were made for walking....and hiking!

A few weeks ago, my parents arrived back from an overseas trip and decided to pass through here for a visit as we hadn't seen them for quite some time. My mum loves to walk, she is tiny and certainly does not look her age (please, let me have her late aging genes!). One morning we decided to go for a 7km along the parade and when I showed up she took one look at my beaten up Nikes and was horrified! "Barbara, how the hell are you walking in those, don't your feet get sore?" to which I said "yes". So we went for our walk then headed to town to exchange a shirt for my father and the next thing I knew she was dragging me into Kathmandu to get some new shoes.

Kathmandu is one of my favourite outdoor gear stores, they have the BEST jackets, packs, tents you name it, if it's outdoor gear you need, they have it, and yes even toilet tents!

So anyway we go into the store and she walks right over to the where the shoes are placed, grabs a pair and asks the sales guy to get them in my size, which happens to be size never mind, tall woman = big feet! Anyway he comes back and there are none in my size the biggest being a size 7 so I had to opt for a pair of men's in exactly the same style except red and black and thank goodness they had a pair to fit!

These shoes, I kid you not are VERY comfortable, at first they felt stiff because there is a metal sheath inside for stability, after all, they are a hiking shoe, but after a few 7km brisk walks, they feel great! They are 100% waterproof and glow in the dark so motorists can see you if you are out at night walking along a busy road like an idiot!

Progress Chart - I finally made one

Just click on the graphic

Finally I did it, 20kg gone!

Well it's actually 20.1kg if I want to be pedantic about it and heck yes I do, that extra 100g is mine!  :)

So I finally made it to one of my goals, how do I feel? friggin' fantastic all the hard slog has definitely paid off! Today I went for my usual walk and decided to do a little video of things I see along the way and once I got to town and spotted myself in a shop window, I freaked out at how small I have become, I'm still a big girl, but I'm not the size of a double decker bus anymore! I am not used to seeing myself that small, in fact, this is the smallest I have been in YEARS since I'm sure, my early 20's!

So what is the next goal I am striving for? 50lbs lost (22.7kg) is the next goal and that is only 6lbs (2.7kg) away. Why do I care about weight loss in pounds? I like to visualise my weight loss as something I can see in real life and staring at myself all day doesn't give me enough of a shock value. I go to the supermarket, head for the butter aisle and stack up blocks of butter as each block is 1lb. Stacking 50 of those suckers is going to be a real sight to see, I just hope I don't get told off for playing with deli goods in the supermarket :)

Time to tighten the wobbly bits

Well it's got to the point in my weight loss journey where I cannot just keep going for walks and that's it, I have to suck it up and start doing the exercises we love to hate, yes you guessed it, crunches and other stomach torture inducing activities. I have to admit though that after I have done the work I love the tightening feel that you get, but the next day, not so much as laughing and simple things like coughing can be a bit painful.

So today instead of my usual pathetic attempt of partaking in some crunches, I got online, found some ab workouts and now I sit here with that lovely tightening feeling I mentioned. Tomorrow will be interesting because not only did I put myself through an ab workout, I also did a multitude of squats, half height squats and the dreaded walking lunges. I can only imagine that tomorrow not only will I not be able to laugh without pain, I will most likely have a real job of trying to go to the loo from the pain in my legs I will be expecting in the morning.

All in all, it's been a fabulous workout today!

Dealing with small losses

Today I hit a snag, I had the lowest weight loss I've ever had since I started this new lifestyle. I lost almost 1 pound. For a split second I thought DAMMIT! but then very quickly I decided that there are worse things such as that 1 pound being a gain instead and landing in a comfy spot on my ass.

When you work your butt off as much as I do small losses can be a real challenge, but you have to remember that there are certain factors besides food and exercise that can change your results week to week. So I grabbed a pen and paper (something I don't do very often thanks to technology) and I wrote down what I could've possibly done to alter my successful record of weight loss.

1. I was sick during the week
2. I missed working out for two days so I only got in five workouts (I usually do 6-7 per week)
3. I noticed that I hadn't been drinking enough water, so I made a conscious effort to get in 2 litres per day
4. I ate a friggin bag of salty Uppercuts chips and no, not the small bag!
5. I didn't eat enough on a couple of days
6. I never get enough protein

Taking a look at the list above and after a wee bit of research, any of the above can alter my progress, however it is not the end of the world, but I could've done without the chips!

So this week, I will be addressing my protein intake and keep on drowning myself with water until I can get my water levels in the balance again and with the weather getting warmer here, it's very important to keep drinking and staying hydrated :)

Food...what's going in my gob!

So I guess it's about time I disclose what I am eating, after all it's all part of the weight loss machine isn't it?

Once upon a time, I used to be a chef, I loved and loathed that work. Loved it because it gave me an outlet for my creativity, loathed it because the weight would keep on creeping on especially with the type of food I had to cook, desserts! Pavlova, cheesecake, devil's food cake, gateaux, profiteroles, croquembouche you name it, I can make it and I certainly can eat it! For me, taking four ingredients and whipping up a feast is no big deal but during this weight loss journey I have found that I really cannot be fagged with cooking at all so because of this I eat mostly raw and very nearly vegetarian.

A typical day in the Barb kitchen looks like this:

Breakfast: Green Smoothie (celery, silverbeet, lemon juice, ginger, apple, banana, water, spirulina)

Snack: Raw Almonds

Lunch: Spinach & Feta Wrap filled with grated carrot, iceberg lettuce, red onion, edam cheese, sprouts)

Snack: Rice Crackers and Fruit, or Greek Yoghurt or Fruit Salad

Dinner: is usually one of the following -

- Moroccan Spiced Chicken with Brown Rice and Green Salad, no dressing
- Cheese, Spinach and Mushroom Omlette with Brown  Rice and Green Salad no dressing
- Spicy Chickpeas in Tomatoes with Brown Rice and Green Salad, no dressing
- Vegetable Wrap with a Garden Salad, no dressing
- Quinoa and Roasted Vegetable Salad
- Steak (med rare) with Brown Rice and Green Salad, no dressing

Snack: nuts again!

Other: Coffee, cannot do with out my shot of java!

So there you go, the menu, it's not exactly the most exciting on the planet, but it's what I can deal with and keeps me away from the taboo foods! Am I bored with my food? absolutely not and when I finally do get sick to the back teeth of brown rice and chickpeas, I will simply change it :)

Cravings, how I live with them

Cravings ugh! I don't get them very often any more but when I do get them they are BAD but luckily not to the point where I want to rip the door off the pantry. From day 1 of my new lifestyle plan I made a pact with myself that I will focus on the what I can have and not on what I can't because I want to have positive thoughts on this journey and not focus on the negative otherwise, I will do what I always have, crashed and burned.

So with this in mind I created the '2 Day Craving Rule' where if I get a craving for something, I will tell myself 'yes you can have it BUT you have to wait two days'. So after two days if I still want it, then I'll have it, at least then I know that it's a genuine craving rather than a spur of the moment boredom filling binge!

So why two days?

- after two days, I usually don't want it any more

- I need to make sure it is in fact a craving

- I can work out a little harder to compensate should I do in fact satisfy my craving

Has it worked? yes, have I satisfied my cravings? yes I have (with positive thoughts) and usually I will only have a small amount because I'm satisfied that I even got a little.

This whole thing is such a mind trip and if you can sort out the mental side, everything else falls into place!

My workouts.

I can't call them workouts really because a workout to me is something that makes be want to pass out on the floor and curse a million times, but how can you call a brisk walk along the beach front with the wind in your hair and the sun shining down, work? I think I'll call them my 90 minutes of me time.

I walk at least  six days a week and go 7.8km most days. Just recently I've incorporated weights, ab work (ugh!) and boot camp type exercises, actually those exercises can be best described as 30 mins of kill me time because they are pretty hard especially when you weigh as much as I.

But it's working, sometimes I have to do a double take when I walk past a shop window or catch myself in the mirror because there is a lot less of me than almost 14 weeks ago! My clothes look ridiculous, I look as though I've gone and raided the clothing bins and just grabbed what's available but the truth is, I don't want to spend money on clothes that won't fit me in a few weeks time, I've already dropped 3 sizes! So until that terrible day when I walk into town and my jeans fall down to my ankles, I shall stick to the status quo. :)

Unwanted advice ... ugh!

Anyone who knows me really well understands my tendency to 'not want to hear it', meaning advice from people who mean well but who always seem to never engage their 'be nice' filter before they open their gob and release a verbal diarrhoea of "you should do this" and "you should do that" blah, blah, blah!

I recently had one such incident. Before I launch into it and let you know what rubbed me up the wrong way, let me first say that this person (who shall remain nameless) is one of the most supportive, kind people I am lucky to know.

I received my fortnightly phone call from said nameless person and all was cheery and polite until they asked me about how my weight loss was going. I mentioned that it was going extremely well in fact better than I ever anticipated and was very pleased with my progress which was true. Then I was asked how much had I lost and I told them and then, silence for what seemed like an eternity. I then was asked what I wanted my goal weight to be and against my better judgement (should've engaged my blocking filter here), I mentioned a range of 65kg (143lbs) to 79kg (173.8lbs) which according to medical charts is perfect for my age, frame and height. Then again, silence and by now I'm thinking uh-oh here it comes, I've blown up the dam and am awaiting a tsunami of 'you should' and then out it flowed. "You can't go below 90kg (198lbs), you're a tall girl" (I'm 5ft 9"), and blah blah blah, and it went on and on, my ears were burning and I could feel the fire of hell burning in my stomach begging to come out and explode, but I controlled it and changed the subject.

Now normally I'm a pretty laid back kind of person but that speech truly hacked me off! What right did someone who might I add has never had a weight problem, tell me that I am wrong and that I should aspire to be an overweight 90kg (198lbs) chubby!

Weight loss is a personal thing for me and I NEVER offer advice to anyone going through the same thing unless THEY ASK FOR IT! I would however take advice from someone who has been there done that because they know what it's like, they know what it is to wake up every morning and think of nothing but what you can eat that day, it's murder and someone never having that experience doesn't deserve to exert their opinions on you. I like to be a motivator and let people know that they can do it, but I never turn anything I say into a negative hurtful thing, I just hope that those I have said things to have seen me as supportive and not bossy or a bitch!

Anyway what I think is this, I will only take advice from those who I know have been there, all the others, get out of my face and let me get on with it, I am doing it and I'm doing great!

Rant over!

...and so it begins, again!

I should've started this blog 13 weeks ago when I started my new lifestyle, but I wanted to make sure that I was going to definitely stick it out and I'm very pleased to say that I am doing way better than I ever expected.

But first, a back story....

I have been fat all my life, no that's a lie, at birth I weighed a tiny 6lbs, then after shooting out of my mother's birth canal I rapidly put on weight until at age 27 I hit my all time high of a massive 152kg! (334.4lbs). I would've frightened a team of sumo wrestlers I was so large! I couldn't fit shoes, barely fit clothes and always felt revolting. A year later aged 28 my then boyfriend and I moved into a two storied house and there began my nightmare of having to negotiate stairs on a daily basis, I was terrified I would fall and roly poly down the stairs, yeah, it wasn't a pretty sight. Later that year my aunt saw me, the first time in a long time and to my horror, she started crying and said to me "I don't want you to die", that was a pivotal moment in my pursuit to getting healthy. I forced myself to look in the mirror and see exactly what was really there, and I didn't like it, what stared straight back at me was a depressed young mother, dying for a new life but killing herself instead. That year I lost 20kg (44lbs).

Two years later the weight hadn't budged much, I went on a rollercoaster of lose, gain, lose, gain, and never really got under 125kg (275lbs), I was frustrated and tired most of the time. At the time I was working in television which meant working mostly nights and with a day that went: 6am drop then boyfriend off at work, look after Havana until 2pm, drop her off at daycare, go to work and finally get to bed at 1am, it's no wonder the weight loss took a back seat. I was constantly lethargic and to stay awake at work, I would gulp down energy drinks and coffee! Then I got offered work at the Sydney Olympic Games working on the yachting coverage and that spurred me on to lose 10kg (22lbs) because there was no way in hell I wasn't going to fit a uniform! While I was there my then boyfriend was made redundant so as a joke I said "let's move to Sydney" and seven months later, we did.

Four years later in 2004 still hovering at around 130kg (286lbs), we moved back to NZ and the end of my relationship gave me a new life as a solo mum and the loss of another 15kg. Another few years later, another daughter now aged 6yrs, a move to another city and yes you guessed it, another weight gain!

So fast forward to 13 weeks ago, weighing in at a staggering 136kg (299lbs), I was reading Fifty Shades of Grey, I couldn't put that book down, I was completely taken by it so much so that I didn't bother with eating some meals just so that I could read my book! I was addicted to something else for a change, then two days later I got the second book and three days later, the third book. Once I had finished the third book I decided to weigh myself and OMG, I had dropped 2kg (4.4lbs)! I was never hungry in fact I felt strangely contented, could it be that I was so intrigued by BDSM and that I wanted to learn more? Actually it was the love story, how I yearn for a story like that, minus the whips, giant wooden cross and genital clamps!

So I devised a plan, a plan to divert my attention from food to other things. I got onto the net and researched for hours and hours into different ways to eat for optimum health and then one day I saw an interview with Miranda Kerr and noticed how amazing her skin and hair was, I'm sure a lot of it is down to some super special genetics but I was curious to find out what else she did to keep herself in great shape. She consumes nothing but organic food, drinks noni juice and follows a clean eating regime. Armed with this new information I began to get excited about my new lifestyle, my first week I weaned off bread, a huge weakness of mine, the second week was weaning off sugar, another drug of choice and then by the fourth week I was ready to tackle some sort of exercise regime but I was dragging my heels because for about six months, I had a really painful achilles tendon after having an accident. I mentioned this injury in a post on facebook one day and a friend of mine (very wise) said "no excuses!" and so I thought about it, thought he was a cheeky bugger and decided he was right, even the smallest amount of movement is still better than nothing at all. So the next day I did my first workout, nearly died from the effort and only managed 3km, BUT I felt like I'd discovered a money tree growing in the back yard, I was completely knackered, my achilles was killing me but I felt absolutely over the moon that I'd done it!

So there is my little story and now it's onwards and downwards from here! I currently weigh 117.7kg (258.9lbs) and have lost enough pounds of butter to stock a small grocery store! Oh happy days :)