First gym workout

Today I went to the gym for the first time in aaaaaages! I could only manage half an hour which isn't great but as I keep going regularly, I'll be able to go for longer! I ran for 20 mins and cycled for 10.
And what did I eat today? Fruit all day and then chicken, parsnips and sweet potatoes all roasted in maple syrup and chilli - it was so delicious! That's pretty much my update for today, my next gym session is Thursday with maybe a swim thrown in afterwards as I didn't manage one today!

Horribly Busy Day

After one of the worst nights sleep I've had in a long time (just four hours!), I had an equally bad day at work. Started my day with a cup of tea and just drank lots of liquids all day (iced coffee, diet coke, orange squash and energy drinks). I didn't really fancy food for some reason and I felt so weak and tired that the idea of eating just made me want to.. well.. vom. But for dinner I had a plate of cheese and biscuits and some almonds, so nothing exciting but it was delicious!

In better news, I joined the gym! I have a three month contract and am able to use fitness classes, the swimming pool and the gym as much as I wish. I'm going to the gym for an hour after work tomorrow and will be doing a body balance class once a week on a Wednesday evening. I'm so excited to actually get exercising and feeling good about myself. As well as my hour at the gym tomorrow, if I think I can handle it, I may do half an hour of swimming as well (Lets see how I feel first!).

So that's my most recent news, I'll update you tomorrow to let you know how the gym went!

My Weight Loss Top Tips

Considering I've dieted about a thousand times in my life, I've gained so many tips and tricks that I could write a book on the subject! So I thought I'd share a few of my favourites and what works for me. Here are 10, I will probably continue to do these as a series maybe but here you are for now..

1) Drink more water than a thirsty man in a desert. Drink at least a glass of ice cold water before every meal to stop yourself over eating.

2) Take sea kelp tablets to increase your metabolism, you can find these in Holland and Barratt.

3) If you are trying to stop snacking, buy flavoured gum.

4) Can't give up chocolate? Grate one cube of dark chocolate on top of sorbet to make you feel like you've got heaps of chocolate!

5) Add spinach to everything! Spinach is full of vitamins and minerals, I put it in almost every dish I eat when dieting.

6) Buy a children's divided plate to limit portion size.

7) Keep a food diary to help keep track of where you go wrong and where you can improve.

8) The main element of your food should be vegetables not meat or carbs.

9) If you can, cut out red meat. When I'm dieting, I nearly eat all vegetarian foods.

10) Never beat yourself up about giving into cravings, allow yourself treats otherwise that's just not fair.

What I used to look like

It might help to see my goal rather than just think of weights and numbers and although I'm not fully comfortable posting a picture of my current weight up on here yet, it will come eventually so don't worry about that. So here are a few pictures of me when I really liked the way I looked...

A New Beginning

First posts on blogs are always a little awkward and this is going to be no different. I'll just start with what I want to achieve with this blog and what I aim to post for you lovely internet users who happen to stumble across my ramblings. I'm Hannah or "hlg" and this is my attempt and getting myself back to my skinny self without going down roads that could lead to either hospitalisation or starvation (I'll explain later..!) I am to post meal ideas, what I've eaten each day, my day to day life and hints and tips at weight loss. So first things first, why do I want to lose weight?

Well, I have Crohn's Disease (hence the hospitalisation mentioned earlier) so my weight fluctuates more than most peoples. I've been everything from 6 stone 7 lbs to 9 stone. Currently I am the latter. I don't like being this weight as I lose a lot of self confidence and don't feel great about myself. Being this weight takes me back to bad times in my life when I was bigger before and I don't like being reminded of these times. However I don't want to be back at the lightest I've ever been either. Although happy with my appearance when that small, I was extremely unwell and had no quality of life. My idea weight is 7 stone 7lbs so that is my aim. I aim to lose a stone and a half by Christmas (giving me just over two months to do - easy right?!). Once I achieve that weight, I will continue living a healthy lifestyle.

I've done all kind of things to lose weight, I've done the eating one meal a day for about a year (ending up in my again being very unwell) and I've done the healthy eating thing for about 5 weeks and ended up getting bored and craving fried chicken.

The idea of the blog is to almost prove to someone that I can do it. If I did this alone, I could fail and feel no shame. If I fail here, the whole internet can see my inability to stick to something - and no one wants that.

So here we go. These are my current stats at the time of starting this blog, I cannot wait to see them change in the near future.

Weight: 9 stone / 126lbs

Height: 5"1

Bra Size: 30J

GOALS:

Weight: 7 stone 7 lbs / 105lbs

Bra Size: 28HH

How much do I have to lose? 21lbs

How long do I have? 71 days