MrsSavageAngel

Slimming World Update – Week 7

10/09/2013 by MrsSavageAngel Leave a Comment

Good morning!

I meant to do this earlier in the week, but made a pact with myself that I’d definitely get it out before the next weigh in. Which is tonight. Talk about cutting it fine!

Anyway I have decided to write these more regularly. I’m going to start by writing a quick update every Wednesday morning, after my weigh in on Tuesday night. I’ll see how that feels and whether it allows me to say enough. So watch out for Wednesday updates from now on (including tomorrow!)

So update from last week.

After the incident with the sausages (ooer!) I must have been super focused the rest of the week, as it turned out I lost 3.5lb. I got on the scales, looked down and my instant reaction was that what I was seeing was a maintain. I was so relieved that the figure wasn’t higher than the previous week, that it took about a minute to realise it was actually a loss! I was gob smacked and super super smiley I can tell you!

That leaves me 0.5lb away from my 1.5 stone award which I really want to get tonight. I have been pretty focused this week; like someone in group said last week – I have been “on it, like a car bonnet”! I haven’t been too challenged this week, which has made things easier and we’ve eaten tonnes of yummy things. I think my favourite this week was Fajitas. Made in the usual way with lots of chicken and peppers etc, but instead of the high syn wraps or sauces (which Ben had), I had mine with free rice flavoured with corridander. Very filling and very yum!

However, one thing I did do this week was to buy a 5 pack of Curly Wurly’s. They are only 6 Syns a pop and I have found it easy to fit them in. But the thing is, I don’t feel good about having one every day, just because I have the Syns to spare. Technically there is no harm in having one every day if that’s what you want to do, but I just haven’t enjoyed them as much as I thought I might. Plus after not eating chocolate for a couple of months, this week has seen my skin erupt again, so maybe I’m feeling uncomfortable about chocolate every day for a reason. it might work for some, I just don’t think it works for me. I’m going to knock this on the head now and not buy multi packs again.

Anyway weigh in tonight. Also looking forward to seeing my friend who has been busy on her days off writing essays. Yes she is Wonder Woman!

I’ll let you know how I do in the morning. Wish me luck!

PS: If anyone has any questions about this please feel free to ask. I’ve had a couple of people ask me things and I’m trying to be as open and helpful as possible. Ask away….

Slimming World Update – Week 6

03/09/2013 by MrsSavageAngel Leave a Comment

Hello again – two posts in 24 hours! I know! Get me!

Anyways, I just wanted to briefly update the old Slimming World story.

If you remember I was hoping to lose 1.5lb last week, to take me to my first stone award. By some unexplained miracle, I actually lost 4.5lb, which took me to my 1 Stone award and beyond, 1st 3lb to be precise. I also won Slimmer of the Week again and Slimmer of the Month (my group must think I’m so greedy hahaha), for losing 12.5lb in Aug. I couldn’t have been happier I tells ya!

However, I knew this past weekend was going to produce some really tough challenges. Ben’s grandma turned the grand old age of 80 this Monday and to celebrate we had an afternoon tea on Sunday, with all the gorgeousness that comes with that (bread, cake, cream!) I’d discussed it with my consultant and spent time thinking about it and decided to join the festivities in a limited fashion, without feeling guilty. I was going to have a small amount and enjoy it. I did and we had a wonderful time (apart from Oscar running round like a loon, but that’s another post!)

What I wasn’t prepared for however, was having someone cook sausage sandwiches for me the day before. I took them, I ate them, I didn’t enjoy them. I spent the rest of the day (actually weekend) veering between being annoyed at myself and being baffled as to why I just didn’t say “no thanks, not for me”. I don’t think it was a lack of will power, I really didn’t want them. It was like I went along in a daze. It really was peculiar.

So what was going to be a weigh in that reflected choices I’d made around a special event, is now going to be effected by a meal I ate almost without realising.

I think I did it to be polite and that is a serious behavioral issue I am going to have to work on. We’ve already put something in place for Ben to help me. When I appear to be making unwise choices, particularly seemingly unthinking ones, Ben’s going to say the word “Rubarb?” to me. Almost like a culinary safety word, just to give me those two seconds to step back and think. But he’s not always going to be with me and it’s something I need to practice myself.

I’ll update you as to how the weigh in goes tonight, but I have a feeling I may not be taking the bag of fruit home tonight 😉

Money, money, money…

02/09/2013 by MrsSavageAngel Leave a Comment

So we had a baby back in 2012 (Oscar, he’s 17 months and awesome!). We’d be married nearly 4 years and together for nearly 14 and he was totally planned. But what I didn’t plan for, rather naively, was the financial impact this baby would have on our lives. I’m not talking about the cost of nappies or putting him through University (although holy crap how do we do that!??!). I’m talking about something much more fundamental and that was my capacity to earn.

I absolutely expected to go back to work. I didn’t loooooove my job, but I liked it enough, it was in a sector I wanted to be in and I was doing OK (having been promoted twice in a year). I fully expected to go back once my year of maternity leave was finished. The organisation had a generous maternity package and I saved enough to cover me through the three months at the end of my leave which would be unpaid. I was OK.

However when we started to look into childcare in the local area I was horrified to find out just how expensive it was. I wasn’t on great money (slightly under the national average), but it wasn’t bad. However all of this would be swallowed by childcare fees. When I added to that travelling costs and taxes I found that, even if I went back full-time, I would be paying out more than I earnt per month, without even contributing to the household costs in any way. I was horrified.

We looked at the numbers and realised we could afford for me not to work, but we couldn’t afford for me to continue working in my current role. I knew I should feel grateful. So many people said they wished they were in my position (at least to my face). But for me the thought of giving up any form of financial independence left me feeling slightly nauseous! I just didn’t see it coming and with all the fuss this government makes about “getting people back into work”, how could this even be the case? I was and still am baffled!

So these were the circumstances I found myself in and the circumstances that I have now had to accept. Don’t get me wrong I have days when I absolutely love not having to leave Oscar and days where I feel I’m doing a real bang up job. But there are also days I feel completely isolated and guilty and lacking in any kind of control. I have had my own source of income, one way or another since I was 13 years old. Moving away from that and living a very different life has been harder than I ever anticipated.

But people to do it all the time, some for many years. They seem happy enough. Are they? Maybe I should ask them how they do it and whether they ever felt the same kind of shame I do not contributing and if not how come? Seriously. I’d love to know how to live this life, without feeling guilty all the time.

Or as I said in another post, maybe I just need to look harder for another job. One that pays enough to make it worthwhile, even if it’s only just worthwhile.

I’m not running down what I’m doing. I’m proud of the care I’m able to give my son. A friend said to me the other day “you’re very brave to do this, I don’t think I could do it!”. I don’t feel particularly brave, but it was nice of her to say. I just have to figure out how to move forward in a way that’s best for all of us. And I guess that’s really the biggest change I’ve had to make.

Slimming World Update – Week 5

22/08/2013 by MrsSavageAngel Leave a Comment

Just thought I’d write a very quick update on how Slimming World is going. I’ve been finding it pretty easy to get my head around as it goes. Apart from the one slip up I wrote about a few weeks ago (you know, the situation with the cream!) I’ve been finding it pretty easy to figure it all out and make it fit round our lives.

As it turned out “Cream Week” turned out to be my best week so far. I lost 3.5lb and got Slimmer of the Week. I wouldn’t advocate cream as a health food, but it didn’t derail me this time (phew!) and it taught me some valuable lessons about forward planning etc.

So as it stands, after 5 weigh ins I have lost 12.5lb. I have another 1.5lb to get my first stone award and I am ALLLLLL over that shiz (as the young people say – apparently).

The friend I go to Slimming World with, also has 1.5lb to lose, but this will get her to her 2 stone award. She’s doing so well and last week won the nominations for our group’s ” Woman of the Year” Award (and yes, before you ask, there is a “Man of the Year” too – although as we only have one guy in our group, that I know of, I think he’s pretty much a shoo-in!). I really hope this has spurred her on and can’t wait for us both to get our respective stone awards together next week!

I am definitely starting to feel better in my clothes. Not enough to rush out and buy smaller sizes yet, but baby steps!

Oscar is also in love with vegetables and his new favourite food in the world are baby corgettes.

So it’s having a pretty positive impact either way.

I do have some challenges up ahead. My Grandmother in law’s 80th birthday Tea is next week, But if I stay focussed and stay away from the cream, I reckon I can handle it. I’ll let you know!

When the past becomes the future…

19/08/2013 by MrsSavageAngel Leave a Comment

We had two visitors this weekend. Ben’s mum and sister made a 400 mile round trip to spend the afternoon with us. I say us, I mean Oscar 😉 They’ve done it a couple of times before. They share the driving. Rachel enjoys some time off from mummy duties and I think Catherine rather enjoys having Rachel to herself for a couple of hours. I like to think it’s as much for them as it is for us.

This time they also had another reason for coming. They bought with them Ben and Rachel’s paternal grandmother’s antique grandfather clock.

We found out back in 2007, that Ben was to be left the clock in Betty’s will. She told us on the night of our engagement party. The family story tells us that the clock was originally made in the 18th Century and has been in the Tapp family every since. Betty made it clear that guardianship of this piece, one day, would be passed to Ben. At the time he was flattered and rather touched that she trusted him with, what has always been, such an important piece to her.

In the intervening years Betty, this tall, strong, opinionated, strong willed, wonderful woman, has developed Alzheimer’s and latterly has moved into nursing accommodation. As her condition worsened in became obviously that her house would need to be sold to finance this intensive care. This is how Ben has come to receive his inheritance while his grandmother is still with us. It made him rather uncomfortable at first, but we discussed it and agreed that the clock would be better off with us, than placed into storage.

This is how it ended up in pieces, in the back of Rachel’s card, whizzing across the south of England last Saturday and is now sat in our bedroom, out of the reaches of Oscars curious hands, awaiting professional restoration and installation.

It really is a beautiful piece and Ben and I spent ages, sat on the floor, discovering it, last Saturday night. It clearly needs a bit of TLC, but wouldn’t you if you were that old? It’s age is apparent manly in the many little repairs and different aged pieces on it. It’s like seeing the many hands that have touched is over the years and it brings home just how honoured we are to have been entrusted with this beautiful piece of family history.

It also shows me where Oscar fits into this line. He is the next generation, the next steward of family history and I feel we have a responsibility to find out and pass on as much information both about the piece and the family as we can.

I know Betty would be thrilled to know the clock is with Ben. I don’t know if she’s been told, I don’t know if she’d know who Ben is. But I wish I could tell her how much we love her and how much we will love this clock, much as she did and that one day in the future this amazing piece of family history will be passed on to the next generation.

UPDATE: You can find a post about the clock’s restoration here.