Food Obsession vs Keeping Fit - an ongoing battle!

I love food. I love the taste, the smell, the look of it (I post a lot of food porn on social networks!), I even love reading the description of dishes regardless of whether I am actually going to eat it. 

There are not many things I dislike and am always willing to give new foods a go.
 I love fast food, homemade, cordon bleu, starters, mains and pudding, vegetables, meats, pasta and rice dishes. 
In fact, I would say the only thing I don't fancy is sushi, I love seafood but raw fish doesn't wet my whistle, but having said that I have never tried it so may be I would like it!

Cake I made for the
Queen's Jubilee

When I started having children I discovered I really enjoyed cooking meals from scratch, with the added satisfaction that they were getting healthy meals (cue smug housewife look), and I found an undiscovered talent in making cakes and desserts which the kids wolfed down!
Although the savoury dishes were reasonably healthy with lots of vegetables in and low fat, the puddings of course most certainly were not!  And, as the chef, it obligatory that you taste the raw mix as well as the finished product and perhaps also the odd ingredient as you go along, just to check it's ok of course! So, adding all those calories to my post-baby weight I began to resemble a small house.

Homemade chocolate cheesecake
for an Easter dinner party

Throughout my pregnancies I yo-yoed with my weight, gaining about three stone each time, losing a bit only to fall pregnant again. I would try to only eat when hungry and foods that were high in nutrients, but boy did I get hungry! I didn't stress too much about how heavy I was getting but I wish that I had been a bit more careful as I am still suffering from injuries caused by carrying the extra weight. I suffered from sciatica and lower back problems, and strained my groin pushing uncooperative trolleys round at the supermarket! The arrival of home deliveries for your shopping was a godsend and I used it all the time when I was pregnant with DD.

A bumper harvest from the garden

The boys were all born 18 months apart so there was never enough time in between to lose the extra weight before I fell pregnant again so, by the time I had DS3, I was about 4 stone overweight! I personally found it impossible to think about myself or look after myself with three young children so I didn't put myself under any pressure to lose the weight, and I had a husband who loved me no matter what size I was. Some of it dropped off naturally, but it wasn't until DS3 was two that I really had time

Imaginatively presented starter served
 in Cancun - crab and avocado 

to take care in what I was eating and tried to get active with the boys. We had recently moved house which had a large field at the back so we took full advantage, using it to ride bikes, play football and other ball games with the boys. I managed to get down to under 11 stone, only to discover that I was pregnant again! Not wanting to undo all the hard work, I was more careful with what I ate in the first three months and also took up a pregnancy yoga class with a friend and went swimming every week. However, despite all my good intentions, when I was in the last trimester I still blew up like a huge balloon and my appetite was ferocious so by the time I gave birth to DD I was back to 13 stone! Again, I was not unduly hard on myself - making sure my baby and boys were happy and healthy was far more important, and losing weight was the last thing on my mind.

When DD was around 3 years old, I finally wanted to do

Pâté starter - my favourite!

something about my weight and, as I had done WeightWatchers before and had all the books, I decided to try it at home. Big disaster! Whether it was because I had stretched my stomach and was used to eating larger portions, but by lunchtime I had eaten all my points allowance and was still hungry!

Then a mummy friend at school said she wanted to go back to Slimming World and another friend knew where the local group met, so the three of us joined up. I had never tried Slimming World so it took a while to get my head around the rules, but after a few weeks I got into the swing of things. I was amazed you could eat such large portions of free food and it really worked for me as if I was full I was satisfied and didn't feel the need to snack on biscuits! I also realised that the plan would work for the whole family as it encouraged cooking hearty meals from scratch, and I discovered a love of preparing and cooking wholesome, healthy meals, knowing I could fill my plate. It opened up a

A balanced breakfast in Mexico

world of possibilities with using herbs and spices for flavouring and I bought myself a slow cooker so I could have SW friendly meals ready at the end of the day. I used my syns for homemade cakes and biscuits I baked with the kids, figuring that I would rather spend them on homemade goodies than tasteless cakes at the shop!

I lost two stone but did it slowly, losing about a pound a week, and didn't worry too much if some weeks I maintained or gained a little - the group was very supporting and helped me see that a bad week wasn't the end of the world, just put it behind you and try again the next week. Writing down what I ate really did help, just like they advise, and the release of a syn counter app for your smart phone made it very easy to keep track. I soon got to know what meals to go for in restaurants (grilled steak and jacket potato was my favourite) or at dinner parties - fill up on veg, rice, pasta and hope for a fruit pudding!

Homemade Christmas goodies -
not diet friendly!

After going for two years, I plateaued around the 10 1/2 - 11 stone mark, but kept attending the meetings as my goal was 10 stone. However, my enthusiasm for the plan was waning and I wasn't trying as hard as I should have, so I maintained a pattern of losing a little one week to gaining a little the next and never really getting anywhere! I kept reminding myself how well I had done to lose the 2 stone and that three years later I hadn't put it all back on, but I really wanted to lose that extra stone.

Finally, a change in leader of the group gave me an excuse to give myself a break and see how I would fare at going alone at home, and it seemed the years of advice from SW stuck in my head as I was fine. I would automatically count up syns in my head, know what foods to fill up on, give myself encouragement when I had a bad week by reminding myself no matter how much I had put on it was not 2 stone! 

Burger anyone?

By the following year I had lost a few more pounds, but at 5ft 4 I knew I should be nearer the 9 stone mark for a healthier BMI so I decided to switch to a calorie counting plan.

This never worked when the kids were younger as I just didn't have the time to work out calories and write it all down, but now they were older and more independent I found I could do it. The My Fitness Pal app was brilliant as it has a huge database of foods and was really easy to track my meals. It also helpfully gave an option to show your average calorie consumption for the week so you could offset bad days against good, useful if you knew a busy social weekend was coming up! 

It was similar to Weight Watchers as you can gain extra calorie allowance from exercise, which again

Cooked breakfast with champagne?
Don't mind if I do!

was very easy to log on the app. It also gave me a push to exercise more and get fitter, something I enjoyed before having kids but hadn't found the time to fit it in until they were older. 

Last year, we had booked a once in a lifetime holiday to Cancun and DH wanted to slim down too, so we started running through my fitness DVD's in the evenings. We started doing them three times a week with a cardio routine followed by a strengthening option, and then we changed to just doing one routine five times a week instead so it only took half an hour at a time (I wanted some
time to chill out in the evening!).
Over the past year we have purchased three new DVDs, as doing the same routine every week gets a bit boring, and at Christmas I won a 3 month membership to a local gym and pool so I go there twice a week instead which mixes it up a bit. When I get bored of that then I'll try out some of the classes available!

After following my new plan for 6 months, I was thrilled to break the 10 1/2 stone barrier, and 6 months later I got down to 10 stone which is where I've settled comfortably for the last few months.

I have a routine of always logging my meals on My Fitness Pal through the day and completing the entry at the end, and if I know what meals will be the next day then I can plan the others around it.

Homemade pizza

Sometimes I am very busy in the morning and miss breakfast, and although I don't condone this as breakfast is an important start to the day, it can help if I'm having a bigger lunch or dinner than usual that day! However, sometimes I have breakfast later which in turn makes lunch later so I then don't get hungry mid afternoon which is a bonus. On the days I do lunch duty at school this really helps, otherwise I find myself coveting the kids' lunch as I'm starving by then!

Over the years I have learnt to factor in a mid afternoon snack on normal eating days to my daily allowance, because if I don't eat something filling I start feeling ill and more likely to grab something quick and high in calories.

I've also discovered that having a breakfast type meal at lunchtime is usually less in calories than a normal lunch and filling, such as a bowl of cereal or egg and toast.

Most weeks, I know what type of evening meal we're having so I can almost plan the whole week, much to DH's amusement when he finds me hunched over my ipad! However, this helps me keep to

Cake I made for DS3

my goal if I'm out at the weekend.

So now my goal is to shift that last stone before we go in holiday in July, but it's not easy! Some weeks I'll maintain or gain a little without knowing why, which is very demotivating, and some weeks we are so busy socially that it is really hard to keep to my allowance (my social life always involves food!).

But keeping track makes sure I don't wildly over eat, and calorie counting is easy as everything nowadays has to have the calorie amount on the packaging. I still enjoy meals out, the odd glass of wine and snacks at the weekend as it's important not to deny yourself all the time, but I am able to enjoy these things because of the exercise I do during the week, otherwise I don't think I could eat any less! The most important thing is to not worry too much if I have a bad week, keep reminding myself that I have done really well to get back to a healthy BMI, and to carry on enjoying food!

My all time favourite - seafood platter

Disclaimer: I was not sponsored for this post and all my views expressed are my own