Wardrobe Cleansing

I'm sorry I've been a bit absent this week - it wasn't intentional, but before I knew it, Friday had arrived and I hadn't posted anything since Sunday!  The kids went back to school on Monday, thank the Lord! The past couple of weeks they've really been fighting a lot - squabbling about the tiniest little things.  It's been driving me nuts and giving everyone headaches - so now they are back at school it's back to the same routine and hopefully the squabbling will subside!

On Monday I started my first official day of 8k training.  The programme assumed that I had run a long distance on Sunday (it was mid-length for me, I suppose - 2.5 miles), so I was to do strength and stretch.  I don't really have a strength routine at the moment, so I just did my Jillian Michaels Kettlebell workout.  Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday will now be my normal run days and this week has been a gentle introduction - 2 miles each.

Today I woke up insanely early for a Saturday - my one and only day to sleep in!  My body clock is cruel to me and woke me bright and early at 6:20am.  After checking my emails and reading some blog posts on my phone, I decided "sod it, I'm awake already" so I got up.  I knew I wanted to be uber-efficient this weekend because earlier in the week I had sorted through my wardrobe, weeding out all the larger sizes that I will never need again, and made a large pile to put up for sale on eBay.  Ever the sales woman - I was up ironing said clothes (so they would look better in photographs!) at 7:30am!

After I ironed the clothes I'm putting on eBay, I thought I may as well iron Josh's school shirts and Rob's work shirts too.  Three and a half hours later I finished!  My 8k training called for 30 minutes of cross training today - so I opted for another Jillian Michaels' DVD (Banish Fat, Boost Metabolism).  I hate this DVD for two reasons - it's 40 minutes long and it seriously makes me work my butt off.  Yes - both of those are GOOD things, and I think that's why I hate it, because it works!  I was pleased when it was finished because I was incredibly sweaty (my eyelids were sweating!!).  It's super-hot here this weekend, so I did the workout around 11am this morning just before the heat got too much.

Now onto my main subject of this post - wardrobe cleansing!  As mentioned above, I'm putting up for sale quite a lot of clothes that no longer fit me.

A small selection

Now, I'm a hoarder by nature - you only need look in our garage to see that I'm not the only one in the family.  However, when it comes to fat clothes, I'm more than happy to say "bye bye"!  There are two main reasons for this - a) there is no easy fallback for me weight back on ("I kept all the clothes from when I was bigger, so I can just pig out and dig those out"); and b) it's easy money for new slimmer clothes!  I'm pretty much a master at finding clothing bargains, in fact the lion's share of my current wardrobe has come from charity shops.

I stumbled across charity shopping about five years ago when, again, I didn't have a great deal of money for clothes.  I found fantastic brand names at ridiculous prices (£2 for a pair of trousers?!), soon I was hooked.  I sort of stopped shopping in charity shops when I gained the weight I originally lost back, because there wasn't a great deal of selection of larger sizes.  When I was bigger I hated shopping anyway because I always felt like people were staring at me.  Now - I can go in and browse with ease knowing that there will be any number of things that will fit me!

So - in a therapeutic way, cleaning out my wardrobe is another step to a healthy lifestyle!  Ensuring that  there is no excuse for me to revert to my old ways!  And just another note on charity shopping - obviously it's for a good cause which is great, but because the clothes are so cheap it means you can shop "interim" sizes relatively painlessly.  Every time you drop a size, there's no need to go an buy a whole new wardrobe in that size.  What I do, is just find some "key" pieces - a couple pairs of trousers, a pair of jeans, maybe a dress or skirt and lots of tops to mix and match.  In fact the outfit I'm wearing now consists of navy linen trousers (£2.50) and aubergine cotton top (£2).  So - you can look great (come on - don't I look great?!) and feel great because you've just donated money to a good cause :-)

Me in a Charity Shop outfit costing less than £10!

Packing, Socks and other oddities

Our annual trip to the Lake District is upon us!  We leave tomorrow and boy, do I feel like I need a holiday!  Sometimes I feel like I'm running on empty all the time and this week especially as I've been nursing a cold - which unfortunately means I've not been for a run since Sunday!  I've been sitting on my backside all week and feeling very frustrated!  Last night, however, I did perk up long enough to fit in a Jillian Michaels Kettlebell workout, so I felt as if I at least made some progress.

Today has been spent packing - probably one of my most hated jobs!  Who remembers Snoopy and his famous "bleah" noise?  Well - that's my reaction to packing!

I've said before that I am not a very organised person and packing requires organisation in abundance!  Bleah!  I hesitate to call myself lazy - because clearly I'm kicking ass and taking names on the fitness front - no way am I a lazy girl!  BUT - when it comes to pairing up socks after laundry, I'm NOT that girl!  Little do I realise that this not only frustrates my husband no end in the mornings when he is looking for a pair to wear to work - but it was also very frustrating for me packing for our holiday!

Sock after sock was pulled from my husband's drawer with literally NO sign of their mates anywhere!  Seriously - where do these socks go?!  Even if they are not paired in the washing machine, they all get washed and therefore they should all end up in the drawer.  I don't use a tumble dryer, so the socks go from washing machine, to washing line, to drawer - somewhere in between these three locations is a veritable Sock Twilight Zone.

Sockie no mates...

Despite the lack of sock pairs, I have managed to nearly complete the packing - including virtually all the contents of my kitchen!  We generally always go "self-catering", which means that despite the fact we're on holiday - I still have to cook.  Strangely, I don't mind this.  I actually really enjoy cooking.  Even more than that, it means that I can still reliably maintain control over my calories while we're away.  By the time you've packed all the dry ingredients like pasta, tins of tomatoes, beans, fruit juices, bottles of water, spices, salt, coffee (a must!) you've virtually filled your car before you've even left the house!  Thankfully my father in law is coming with us and driving his own car, so we can share the load.

This year I'm trying to be as organised as possible with food (food, yes I can organise, socks, not so much!) - so I've managed to get most of our food (apart from the fresh stuff like milk, meat, butter and cheese) here and we will take it up with us.  I've done the 'buy it all from a local grocery store' idea before - but it ends up costing a small fortune!  Another good money saving tip, seeing as I'm on that subject, is packing your own lunches.  Since we mostly go on day walking trips when we're in the Lakes, I always pack our lunch so we can find a scenic stop and enjoy our sandwiches.  This is a must for longer walks, but makes good sense in my opinion anyway!

So - while I'm away from reliable internet access (and it is quite patchy up in the Lakes!), I've arranged for a couple of guest posts, which, all being well, should come up on Sunday and Wednesday, respectively.  In the meantime, make sure you're following me on Twitter (@walksinthewoods), as I'll be tweeting about our summits conquered and other lakeland adventures!  I hope you all have a fantastic week!

Conquering the plateau

I'm not loving my scales at the moment.  I'm on a plateau.  From previous posts you'll all know that I'm not a plateau girl - I like the challenge of climbing a mountain, not standing around on the flat!  My weight actually went up by 0.7 pounds since last week and I'm struggling to understand how this could happen.  I mentioned in a previous post that I really struggle drinking enough water, so understand this could play a part in the weight not coming off.  I have now been making a conscious effort to drink more water each day and hope I can stick to it.

Another possible factor recently is my serious addiction to Pimm's and Lemonade.  This is my summer drink of choice and I would go so far as to say that I'm a Pimmsaholic.  It's about 85 calories for a glass - ish and lately I've been having one a day.  The biggest problem with this, aside from the alcohol content, is the sugar in the lemonade.

In England 'lemonade' is like Sprite or 7UP - it's a carbonated drink and is quite often used as a mixer.  Our summer had thus far been such a wash out with loads and loads of rain that I hadn't been craving Pimms until a couple of weeks ago when I had a party and bought two big bottles of the stuff.  Of course I used a smidgen at the party and am now left with the remainder in my house, calling my name every night!

So, here are two obvious factors for my weight not shifting.  The other possible problem could be that I'm not consuming enough calories.  I seriously struggle with this because my brain automatically flips out when I even think of eating more than 1500 calories a day "Are you crazy?  You'll gain weight!"  Even though my actual caloric needs for weight loss are 1623 per day!  Somehow I just can't get my head around eating more to weigh less!  Having said that, I struggled with a plateau in May and when I increased my calorie consumption, sure enough the weight started to drop again.

I suppose it's even more difficult because when I started losing weight back in January, I put myself on a very strict 1200 calorie per day limit.  So now, of course, anything higher than 1200, seems like I'm overeating!  In retrospect, I would definitely not recommend starting off with such a low calorie intake because moving forward from that - as I'm discovering - is exceedingly hard!

The final factor which may be playing a part in the scales not budging is my exercise.  Aside from my 5k training programme, which consists of 3 sessions per week, I've not truly been pushing myself as I should with exercise.  I've been for a few lunchtime walks and done a few sessions of 30 minute aerobic DVD's at home - but nothing that is pushing me to the limit.  Ultimately, if I want to see drastic results, I need to make drastic changes!

On Sunday night I decided to try another Jillian Michael's DVD called Shred it with Weights.  I bought this because I was intrigued by kettlebells and I wanted a workout that incorporated some weight training.  When I did the workout on Sunday, all I had was a dumbbell (which Jillian says is fine), however at the end I didn't feel as if I'd had a really good workout.  So, on Monday night I borrowed a friend's 5kg kettlebell and tried it again - flip what a difference!  By the end of the 30 minutes I was seriously sweating like a pig and felt as if I had really pushed myself, so I would definitely say that this workout definitely needs a proper kettlebell to be effective.

I suppose that workout has taught me that it's very easy to fall into a pattern.  If I want to prompt my body to change, I'm going to have to keep it guessing about what is coming next - so I think the key to this is to make sure I'm doing a variety of activities.  I need to mix-up my workouts.  A bit of kettlebells, a bit of running, maybe a bit of swimming if I can summon the courage to put on a swimsuit!  I need to increase and vary my calories to keep my metabolism guessing.  And I need to watch that I'm not consuming too many 'dead' calories in things like alcoholic drinks!

I found this on Pinterest, and need to keep reminding myself that it's true!  Let's hope that changing things up a bit will give a better weigh in next Monday :-)