Weighing In

I am still slowly plodding my weigh (ha ha) through this weight lose.
I have chipped at it week by week and am still enjoying it.

I don't get too much out of the meetings each week but still enjoy going. Only once have I not felt like going to weigh in but at the last minute I decided against not going and rushed in to weigh. I find I feel guilty if I don't weigh, which means that so far I have attended and weighed in every week I have been on the programme. Very proud of myself for that.

I am actually doing really well and thought I would share some stats with you:

• I have lost 6.2kg (13.67 lbs) to date
• I have achieved my 5% goal. This is loosing 5% of your starting weight.
• I have 100g (0.2 lb) to lose to achieve my stone (6.3kg or 14 lb approx.)
• I have 1.3kg (2.86 lb) to loose to achieve my 10% goal
• I have only 2.8kg (6.17 lb) to loose to achieve WW Goal.
• Then I have to maintain for 6 weeks to achieve Life Membership
• Personally I then still have 2.5kg (5.51 lb) to loose to achieve my personal goal

So life is ticking along at present and all is good.

I am still eating the crap some days but it is not the main thing to eat.

The biggest thing I have learnt from all this:

• Drink plenty of fluids
• Watch your portion sizes, this alone can screw up an otherwise great week
• Listen to your body when eating. If it says it is full then stop eating!
• Get enough sensible sleep
• Get moving......I wear a pedometer everyday now and this is helping me to move more as I must achieve my 10,000 steps per day (ok I am not achieving them but I am getting closer)

I have 5 more weeks of this cycle before I have to start paying to attend, up until now this has been an at work programme that they have paid for. So I have to work hard to achieve goal in that time then I only have to do 6 weeks of maintaining to be a life member and not have to pay anything. Yea me.

Weight Lose

Just quietly I am in the middle of a weight lose programme.
I am not using my blog to post everyday about my current lose, although there is a table on the right hand side showing my current lose each week and the grand total.
I am taking it slow and steady and even though it is a big deal it is not the centre of my life. I am not making it a huge deal for others.
In other words, if I want chocolate cake with marshmallow sauce then I will have it and enjoy it and not regret having had it!
This does however mean that my lose is slow, no I am not loosing a kilo a week like others, sometimes I am loosing just 100g, but it is slow and steady and I am keeping it off.
I have had some really bad weeks but they are being measured with some even better great weeks.
I have had only 2 weeks where I have gained instead of loosing but those weeks have not been too bad.

So what am I doing I hear you ask, well I am attending Weight Watchers each week, I am thinking about points on items but that is not stopping me from eating anything.
I am watching my portion sizes, so I am eating exactly the same as the family just being sensible about how much I have.
Having said that I am eating slowly, listening to my body when it gives me clues as to being full and having had enough.
I have stopped eating in the evening. I found that I was very good at snacking at about 8pm and sometimes I would even grab a biscuit on the way to bed!
I am drinking more fluid, now I am not going to sit here and proclaim you must drink more water, yes water is good for you but you can also ensure you have fluid, whether that be tea, coffee or diet soft drink. If you don't feel like eating when you first get up in the morning at least have a large drink of fluid. I am not a person who can eat as soon as I wake up, my body may be awake but my stomach is not! So I always eat breakfast sat at my desk when I first arrive at work, because of this then I always ensure I have had a drink before leaving home, just seems to work for me.

So my goal is getting closer, slowly, my first goal will be to achieve a 5% weight lose. I am currently 400g off of this goal, so hopefully next week I will achieve it, but it takes work and so this next week will be a determined effort to get there.

Weight Lose

Although it is not been mentioned much I am making an effort to loose some weight.
I have joined Weight Watchers at work and am plodding along slow and steady.
But then in my mind it needs to be slow and steady to maintain, I find if you have a huge blow out of weight loss then you tend to put it back on again the next few weeks because you go back to eating normal again.
That is also why I am doing WW, I want to see how I am loosing weight whilst still eating normal everyday food, whether it be in the same portion as before or by making the portions slightly smaller. That way I know what is working and am not stressed out about having just had a chocolate bar or 3 lollies from the packet.

I am in awe of anyone who can loose weight via shakes and soups and then maintain that when they stop eating those set items.
I couldn't and that was a strength I recognised straight away.
This week I have still had a loss but not as great as previous weeks, but then I know there have been a few influencing factors and maybe next week will be different.
Seeing as this has only been a 3-4 week journey so far then I am not worried, I think you need that first month to encounter all the challenges that life throws your way. You see the differences in weight loss for each week and now know how to deal with it in the coming weeks/months.

So I am expecting nice things for the week a head, a nice weight loss and steady going. I know what went wrong in the last week and now what is good. So slow and steady will continue on, little steps by little steps.

Back Up

How often have you read somewhere about someone having their computer crashing and loosing all their favorite pictues or documents?
Yes, I have many times.
Now never fear we have not had any accidents with the computer but it does always sit in the back of my mind.
I have mentioned to Steve a few times that we really do need to do something, just in case.
Now being married to a guy who knows so much about IT you would expect us to be all organised and sorted....wrong.

However, our computer has been playing a little silly recently. It has suddenly gone very slow, although there is still a lot of space available. We don't have many programmes running in the background and suddenly the music programmes on the computer all stopped working. It kept coming up with errors regarding 'unable to find that song' or 'that file no longer exsists'.

Steve said he would try some stuff but I suddenly had this horror thought that something may happen and we would crash the computer, thus having to spend a lot of money to get some nice company to retrieve all our favorite docs from the old harddrive, if at all possible.

So at 7.45pm on a Sunday evening I suggested he go to the Warehouse and see if they had an external harddrive.
$160 later and a harddrive of 1 terrabit (available space now of about 4 times our computer) we sat and went through everything on our computer, worked out what we would like saved and copied it all onto the harddrive. Pictures, files, documents & music.
So now we have a back up of everything we want to never lose. The harddrive is now hidden in the house well away from our computer so god forbid, if we were ever burgled, we would still have that first ever picture taken of Ben when he was an hour old etc.

I now have to try and remember to get Steve to back up the harddrive ever 3 months or so, cause then at least we will only loose 3 months worth of stuff and not everything!!

More Teeth

My little caring soul of a big boy has finally had more teeth fall out over Easter.
You may remember in August last year that he had his first tooth fall out and he was not ready to surrender it to the Tooth Fairy. Well that tooth never made it to the fairy until October, when another tooth fell out and then he was happy to give them both over for the grand sum of $4.

Finally 6 months later he has had another 2 fall out......

When the first fell, he happily told us that the fairy would bring him $2 for it, however because he had a very wobbly 2nd tooth he decided to wait until that fell out before giving his teeth away. He did not have to wait very long, like 3 days. He even once again informed us that he would be getting $4 from the tooth fairy.
Well he will be getting $4 when he decides to give over his teeth, once again!
For now they are sitting in his little pot that Grandma gave him, on his bedside table waiting until he is either ready to give them over or when he remembers, because it has now been a week and I secretly think he has forgotten!

Further Tooth Update

A week later and we have still not been visited by the Tooth Fairy.
Not sure if he has forgotten or if this is all part of his plan, although he was sick Sunday and Monday, so probably has forgotten about it!

The last I heard, Alex had suggested to him about writing a letter and asking the Tooth Fairy if he could keep his tooth!
I will enquire tonight about what is happening.
Although the $2 is still sat in my purse patiently waiting to be issued.

Will keep you posted.

Tooth Update

Unfortunately Ben is a very caring old soul who doesn't like change and gets attached to things very easily. (He cried the other evening because I had to throw out a toothbrush! he has had many so far, so not sure why he got attached to this one?)
He got all upset at the thought of putting his tooth under his pillow and letting the Tooth Fairy take it away.
Seems he isn't quite ready to let it go yet!

We explained that the Tooth Fairy only takes teeth that are placed under the pillow so if he leaves it on his bedside cabinet until he is ready for her to have it, then that is fine by us.

We will see how this goes, if by the weekend it is still there, then I may suggest to him that if he wants to keep it then we could look at writing a letter to the Tooth Fairy explaining that because it is his first tooth he would like to keep it.

This morning he got up and his tooth was still where he left it. He explained to me that he wasn't ready for her to have it yet, he wants it. I told him, no problem, when he is ready she will hopefully visit.

Wibble Wobble

Push pull
Jiggle joggle
Poke flick
Wibble wobble

Ben has had his first tooth come out today whilst at school
It has been wobbling for a few weeks now but suddenly had that final wibble and out it popped, although like always, I think an apple was involved!

So tonight he has gone to bed with it under his pillow anxiously waiting to see what the Tooth Fairy may leave for him.

As for the Tooth Fairy, I am not in touch with todays market price of teeth?
Seems $2 is the going rate according to all my friends on Facebook.
So I may up the anty for the first tooth and make it $3 as a special thing seeing as it is the 1st, but then stick to either $1-2 for all others after that. (Just have to remember what I did so I do the same for Alex when his turn comes round!)

According to Alex, the Tooth Fairy lives in the sky, she knows when you have a wobbly tooth and she comes to collect it at night. They keep them apparently but he couldn't tell us what they actually do with them!

I love the innocence of children, makes my day

Lost and Found Update

A couple of weeks ago I posted this about a camera we had found in our back garden.

I had just about given up hope on the guy at the windscreen place obviously doing anything for us to help find the owner.

But this morning my phone received a text from a lady saying she believed we had her camera and could she come round and collect it?

She has just been round and she was very happy that we had gone to the trouble to find her. She had a lot of pictures on the camera and it would have been a shame to have lost them.

So our good dead for the year has been rewarded, one very happy young lady just before Christmas.

Lost and Found

On Monday, Steve came in from the garden to show me a camera he had found there.
A little white digital camera that was at the back of our garden in the compost area.

It was laid on the top of the ground so had not been there too long, plus he was also throwing grass clippings down there just over 2 weeks ago and he never noticed it then.

It is a little dirty and wouldn't go, but this could be because the battery is flat. However he did have the brainwave to take out the memory card and put it into our camera.
Hey presto, up came over 500 pictures.
The camera obviously belongs to a young lady in her early 20's. We think we can even say which one in the pictures it belongs to.
Steve thought he recognised a street in one of the shots but we were not sure.
However in some of the pictures there is a company van parked at the house next door.

So being the little detective that I am, I printed off some of the pictures and went and paid the company a little visit.
My theory being that maybe someone from the company would recognise the house that the van is parked at and then they would in turn be able to tell me where the house is to get in touch with the people next door.

Turns out to be even better once I got to the company.
The guy who's house the van is at was at work, he said yes he knew the house I was looking for and even knew the people in the shots as he himself had attended the party in the pictures.
So I have left him the pictures and my contact details and asked him to please contact the people and let them know I have their camera and pictures.
The house in question turns out to be out the back of us on another street quite close by.
However we are yet to figure out how the camera has ended up at the end of our garden as no street backs on to us only other properties. In fact you have to go down another street to get to one of the houses behind us.
So whether someone stole the camera and has then come through the property behind us or they visited the house behind and threw it our way thinking it would get buried in our garden where we are obviously doing some work who knows?
The pictures are dated from March and April, however we were not sure if they were this year or last, but have since discovered they are from this year.

So I will keep you posted on whether we are able to succeed in our little mission of being model citizens and returning the camera and pictures to the rightful owner or not!

Lost

And sadly I do not mean the tv show that is all the rave at the present moment.....!

I mean Alex, who managed to dissappear today at the shopping mall for 10 minutes!

The ladies in one of the shops were very helpful indeed and I am very grateful to them.

To begin with I ran around looking for him and I was fine, but when I actually had to ask someone for help then the horror sets in and you loose it!

When found he said 'I was trying to get Grandad a box of chocolates for his birthday', we had been talking about that just before we went into the shop he wandered from.

All ended well and he was very good for me after that, even sat and smelt the flowers in a gift shop while I paid for our purchases.

Shame the flowers weren't real!

Found

Once again we are a 2 cat family.
Yes that is right, the elusive wandering cat has been returned to us after 2 weeks away.

A nice gentleman called today to say that he had been given our details by the SPCA and he wondered if the cat that he had at his mother's house was ours?
Turns out she had arrived there about 36 hours ago and he had took her in and looked after her, fed her and then called the SPCA to see if anyone was missing her, because she was pleasant, well groomed and had a collar on.

Luckily I had called and informed them that she was missing last week and they in turn placed her on their 'lost and found' board.

Let's see how long she sticks around for this time!

Update on Little Girl

She was reunited with her parents at about 4pm yesterday, although there are lots of questions being asked by the police and also Child Youth & Families as to how this little girl managed to be with them, for 7 hours, and the parents never knew or noticed!

The police are amazed, because she was a clean kepy girl and they just can't believe that no one noticed her gone for over 7 hours.

So rest assured she is safe and well now.

At 1pm today I heard on the news that a small child, about 2yrs in age, had been found in Auckland wandering the street.
Luckily for her it is summer, so the vest and pyjama trousers she is wearing is warm enough for this weather.
Anyway, she had been picked up by the local police and was being held until someone came forward to claim her.
That was at 8am today that she was found, as I write this at 3pm, 7 hours later, still no one has come forward with a missing child claim.

She is approximately 2 yrs old, wearing not much clothing, no shoes, has long brown hair and sounds very cute.
The police are hoping for a happy family reunion, but my concern is that if 7 hours later no one has even come forward, then when does Child Youth & Families get involved?
To me, if a child has not been claimed for over 7 hours I would not be letting her be reunited with family until an investigation has been put into place as to why no one noticed her missing for a whole day?

I remember loosing Alex in the shopping mall for 5 minutes and I was beside myself! Everyone in the shop knew he was missing, I made enough noise about it.

I will let you know when she has been reunited or what the outcome happens to be....