How to get past a plateau

The above is a real chart of my weight loss since January. Starts off so well, doesn't it? A nice, steady downward slope. And then it kind of... straightens up.

Even when I've been losing weight steadily, I live in fear of the dreaded plateau. We all know it's coming, and sooner or later we are going to get to the point where nothing is changing. So what do you do?

My weight has just started really moving again for the first time since e start of June, and I've actually lost around 4lbs in the last week or so. It's not been a fluke, though - I've worked bloomin' hard to shift that! So I thought I'd share my tips for getting through a plateau.

1. Exercise
I'm sure there are some dieters out there who are instantly like 'I'm out.' I'm with you! Exercise is the WORST. And for the first few months of WW, I didn't do any. Then I started walking a bit more. I started making a point of taking the long way round, and instead of driving the 3 miles to my parents' house, going by foot. Eventually, I braved a Zumba class for the first time in almost a year. And you know what? I loved it!

My point is, start slow. Take it easy at first. But when you approach that plateau, it's time to step it up. And you might actually find that you enjoy it.

2. Go back to the start
My first few months on WW, I tracked literally everything I ate and I saw serious results. But gradually, I started to miss the odd day here or there. A night out was a total write off. And my weight stopped going down. Some weeks, it went up.

The last few weeks, I've started following WW like a newbie again. It's got my motivation back and made me aware of the little extras that were creeping in. Have a biscuit, it's fine. But it DOES count.

3. Set some new targets
That dress in a size smaller, getting to a certain weight, finally being able to wear skinny jeans... if you believe you can, then you can.

My goal was to fit into a size 12 bridesmaids dress for October and you know what? It fits. But it could fit better. So now I'm focusing on getting to a certain point, which would be the slimmest I've been for 7 years. It'd be kind of a big deal to me, and I'm 11lbs off right now.

4. Think about how far you've come
Sure, you look better. But how do you FEEL? After losing 2 stone, my self confidence is higher than it's been for a long time. I actually like photos of myself again. But physically, I feel so much healthier. The sore knees and back that were plaguing me last year have gone. My body is full of good stuff, and my tummy is both smaller and happier for it.

5. Try something new
Like a new exercise class, or some new recipes. There's tons on the Internet - on this blog even - plus in recipe books, magazines. Branch out, get out of your rut, and you might actually get excited about cooking healthily again. And I need to take this point on board, as I've been living on butternut squash lasagne lately. It's so good though!


You might have actually already achieved your target, and if you feel great as you are, that's awesome. You're not at a plateau, dude! You're at target! APPLAUSE.

If you have any other ideas, let us know in the comments!


Image source

Mindset & Motivation

Over my lifetime, I’ve been on quite a few diets. Okay, a lot of diets. And sometimes, they just work. Like now – after a month I'd lost nearly a stone in a month and it really hasn’t been hard. But there have been other times that they just don’t click. Like last year – and this was a big reason why I took a break from the WAMK team. It felt like every week I was making an excuse for gaining weight or not losing and I couldn’t think of any content for the blog because, honestly, I wasn’t dieting well or properly. So what’s changed?

Mindset and Motivation.

It’s not really a secret that the key to a successful diet is about motivation, and I’ve actually been getting quite a few queries lately about my motivation so I thought I’d share them here.

1. When you start a diet, try and do a month without breaking it once, even for little treats.
It’s my theory that it takes 3-4 weeks to get properly ‘in the zone’. If you start a diet and then in week 2, have a friend’s birthday dinner, chances are you’ll end up having what you fancy, rather than what’s diet friendly. It’s important to get the ground rules of your diet straight first of all, and then you can add in the occasional day off. That’s why January is amazing for starting diets, because most of us don’t really go out in January.

2. Be totally honest with yourself.
I work in a social office and we are often handing around boxes of chocolates or big bags of crisps. The other day there was a box of maltesers open, and although a single malteser is only 11 calories, I know full well that I can’t have a single malteser. So I had none, because I knew that I wouldn’t be able to stop if I started. Other people, though, have more willpower. And in these situations, I have another tip…

3. Allocate for diet-friendly treats within your allowance and then you won’t crave the worse versions.
On Weight Watchers, you can have anything as long as it’s within your points for the day. 1 finger of Kitkat, for instance, is 1 point, and a bag of Skips or Space Raiders are 2 points. So if I want crisps or chocolate, I can have it. It means that I haven’t been craving giant bars of Dairy Milk or any other crisps, because I’m still having them most days. And because I’m having chocolate as my sweet treat after lunch, I’m not even getting to the craving stage with it. Which means that I’m normally fine with 1 finger of Kitkat and saving the rest for the next day. I know, it surprised me too! But because I knew that I could have the other finger if I wanted, I felt less cravey about it.

4. Eyes on the prize.
Honestly, I want to lose weight because I’ve gained a lot recently and I feel rubbish. It’s not just for one day, and I am focusing on that most of all. But I think a goal really helps, and for me it’s my best friend’s wedding in October, at which I’ll be a bridesmaid. I want to feel nice in the pictures and I want to be wearing a size 12 dress. And honestly, I want that more than I want a Burger King.

5. Variety, variety, variety.
Being on a diet does NOT mean that you have to eat salad for lunch and grilled chicken every night for dinner. I normally have soup for lunch as it’s low and filling (and there are a ton of different flavours - and that's not even thinking about making it myself!) and then for dinner I experiment with recipes. I’m doing loads of cooking at the moment in bulk form and then freezing portions which keeps me going for the next few days. It also means I don’t have to cook every day! This is really working for me. I am genuinely getting excited about finding recipes that are WW friendly and making little tweaks. Tonight I’m going to try and caramelise leeks! I AM EXCITED.


6. Track what you eat.
Just being aware of what you eat every day makes an enormous difference. If I wasn’t tracking, I probably wouldn’t count the odd biscuit or I’d estimate roughly how much my lunch was, and assume it was fine – but you know what, now I AM tracking I am realising that a lot of the lunch options I thought were fine are not! I also snacked a lot more than I realised. And that’s making all the difference.

7. Don’t let yourself run out of food.
Let’s face it, most of us are on diets because we love food and we love to eat. But in the past, I tend to slip on diets when I don’t have any food in the house or don’t have any snacks in my desk drawer - I want something and it's whatever's on hand. Now my desk is full of WW friendly snacks (Kitkats, Skips and Space Raiders – god, I love Poundland!) and I know that if I get snackish, I can have a low point treat and feel sated. Also, I’m eating a LOT of fruit.

8. Diet buddies.
My best friend and I are doing WW together so we’re constantly texting or emailing or tweeting each other with recipes and ideas, and when we’re together we are talking about points pretty much all the time. We’re spending our weekends experimenting with WW recipes and eating a lot of crudités. It's a bit sad, but it's helping! Because having someone to talk about all that with really helps! It makes you feel less silly about it. Also, my colleagues are all on the healthy eating wagon. While we were buying junk food in December, now we are all supporting each other by thinking healthy. We’ve even started a team fruit bowl where we take it in turns to buy £10 worth of fruit every week, meaning that if any of us crave something sweet, there’s a healthy option available.

9. It’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle change.
This is where I slipped up last year. I would try and diet in the week, but then at the weekend would have a dinner or a party or something and think of it as an evening off the diet and have exactly what I fancied – we’re talking chips with mayo, deep fried halloumi, burgers… it’s little wonder I wasn’t losing weight consistently! If you are serious about losing weight then you need to be serious about what you’re eating all the time, and when you think about the fact that a burger and chips at some restaurants could be in the region of 1000 calories, and a bottle of wine is 500 or 600 calories… and that’s after eating breakfast and lunch… yeah. Makes more sense now, doesn’t it? You can still have those things, but you just need to make good choices. Have the wine but have something for dinner that you know isn’t too bad. Or have the burger, not the chips. Try not to think of it as ‘having a break from the diet’ and keep accounting for everything you eat. In my first two weeks of Weight Watchers, I had Pizza Express, Nandos and Wagamamas and still managed to lose, because I was tracking everything and also making up for what I was eating elsewhere in the day. That’s what’s working. When you start writing meals off, you’ll start losing track of what you’re eating.

10. Find the diet that’s right for you.
I’ve tried almost all of the big ones: Jenny Craig, Slimming World, Rosemary Conley and the only one that worked consistently was Rosemary Conley. But honestly I feel much happier doing Weight Watchers because it suits my lifestyle. It states very clearly clear that a little of what you fancy does you good, and I can still have crisps, chocolate and cheese – all the Cs! I found SW too complicated, and JC and RC too restrictive. I’m not saying WW will work for everyone but I’ve seen results so quickly, I feel pretty confident that I’ll keep seeing results as long as I stick to it. And I’m really not finding it hard to stick to. In the past, when on diets, I’ve been proud of myself for going to bed hungry – I never do that now, and to be honest, I really shouldn’t. If a diet is right for you, it shouldn’t be difficult.


My last tip is that sometimes it’s just not the right time for dieting. I ended up taking the decision to take most of last year off dieting because I was struggling so much, and every weekend brought another temptation – parties, weddings, holidays, etc. I managed to lose a bit of weight before my birthday in the summer and then just started eating again and didn’t stop until January. Not the healthiest plan, really, but I needed to get it out my system. By the time January rolled around, I was so ready to eat healthily again! So, er, maybe I wouldn't recommend a year of bingeing, but I’m a firm believer in giving yourself a last hurrah before embarking on a new diet. You have to WANT it. If you want to lose weight, you need to do it by yourself – all diet plans and diet classes give you is support and advice. You’re the one making the changes.

Image credits: 1,2,3

New year, new resolutions

With the 1st of January fast approaching, the majority of us will be thinking up a new set of New Year Resolutions to stick to throughout the coming year and I don't think I'm wrong when I say that the majority of us will be setting a goal to lose some weight! It might only be the couple of lbs you've gained throughout the festive period, it might be more, or you might just want to be more healthy, exercise more and become fitter. We're all in the same boat.

It takes a lot of hard work and motivation to stick to your goal and lose weight so we'd love to hear what your goals are, and how you plan to stick to them. Here's our own goals to start off...

Charlene - I'll admit that I've been a complete failure when it comes to losing weight this past year and I've definitely put some on. I think I need routine, in the form of planned meals or a set diet, to make this work. Living at home with parents and not being the one doing the weekly food shop is difficult. I also need to rejoin the gym and I'm going to keep a diary of food, exercise and inch/weight loss. The thing I struggle most with is my sweet tooth so I need to think of ideas to keep that satisfied in the healthiest possible way and the other biggie is that I also need to learn to say NO to the free takeaways, cakes and sweets at work every day.

Sarah - I am really pleased with my progress in 2011.  I felt like a million dollars on my wedding day and that was my main aim.  I have since had five weeks off, a week in the run up to the wedding, two weeks on honeymoon, a crazy week of work followed by Christmas and now New Year.  I have gained 7.5lbs of the 25lbs I managed to lose but I am fine with this... you only get married once after all!! My goal for 2012 is to get back on plan and lose about a stone and a half.  I need to stick to Slimming World 100% and wear my hotpants more often!  I think I will be happy when I get to my current goal weight but can always lower it if not.  I am still mostly fitting into a size 10 so it's just a case of feeling as good when not wearing ultra flattering clothes.  I have also done something I swore I would never do again and joined a gym! 2012 will be the year that I not only get to target but also get fit in the progress.

Sarah V - I charted a graph of my weight losses and gains this year and it looks like a heart rate monitor - up and down, up and down! I've fluctuated a lot and am currently the exact same weight now as I was when we started this blog, which is frustrating as I made such a good start in the Spring and lost nearly a stone. I make way too many excuses and allow myself to be swayed by holidays, special occasions, parties and friends and that's why I haven't been able to stick to a diet for more than a few weeks at a time. I have a big birthday in July and my goal is to feel good about my body by the time I get to that landmark age. So overall I resolve to conquer some of my food issues and get to a point where I am eating healthily, but not obsessing and overeating the moment I'm 'off-diet'. So rather than fixating on weight loss, I am going to focus on living healthily instead.

Lucy - so, hello. It's been a while. I think I've been avoiding reality since I returned from Australia, ignoring the fact that I've been eating everything in sight and not wanting to do anything about it. I really need to have a sit down and think about what I'm going to do for 2012, I need to stop saying I'll do things and then just... not follow them through. I'm miserable and I'm fed up, not just with my weight but with my life in general at the minute; I 100% know that if I even just lost a stone I would be so much happier within myself but it's just making myself start. I need to have some willpower, I need to discipline myself and I need to learn to say no. Things have got to change.

Gem -I'm really happy with my 2011 weight loss and want to continue this in 2012. I lost over 4 stone this year but after three weeks of indulgence over the festive period I have put about 5-6lbs back on. My first aim is to shed all the Christmas weight by following the Weight Watcher plan perfectly and keeping an accurate food diary and weighing all my food. I want to lose at least another 20lbs this year to reach my ideal size and then maintain the weight with a mixture of Weight Watchers and exercise. As Christmas shows, I can't maintain weight loss on my own and go off the rails if I don't regularly weigh in. I hope to become a 'Gold Member' of Weight Watchers and successfully keep the weight off, wish me luck!

Let us know what yours are!

Wedding Weight Loss



High on many bride-to-be's checklist of things to organise for their big day is weight loss.  He has asked, you've said yes, the venue has been chosen and a date set and then the diet countdown begins.  It may only be for one day and yes, of course he loved you before the diet, but every girl wants to look her best on her big day.  Especially when you know that the photos will be there to haunt you forever. 

I am no different from any other bride-to-be although I did start Slimming World because I didn't want to be the fat bridesmaid at my Sister's wedding.  But I have been really struggling with motivation of late and I don't know why.  The biggest day of my life is in just over two months and I cannot stop shoving chocolate in my face.  What I really want is cake but if I give in to that then I may never stop eating.  The funny thing is I don't usually eat that much chocolate but since I realised I needed to drop a few stone and quickly it's all I can think about.  

Ask me what one thing I want most for my big day and the answer will always be to look thin.  I really want to look beautiful, as every bride does, and for me that means having that perfect nipped in waist.  So why is the only person who can achieve this so hell bent on sabotaging all efforts?  Why did I find it so easy to drop the pounds when I was trying to look good for my Sister's photos and not my own? 

It's time for me to get with the programme and stop being my own worst enemy.  So if you see me in the supermarket buying a big bar of chocolate feel free to take it from me and give me a slap.

Guest Post - Rhiannon from Vintage Extraordinaire

This weeks guest post is by Rhiannon from Vintage Extraordinaire.

Exercise is horrible, isn’t it? Ugh - all the sweating, all that moving about, and if you’re a lucky gal like me, your face turns a special shade of maroon - just to make sure that everyone around you knows that you haven’t done it in a while. Not since PE at school anyway, and you didn’t even do it at GCSE’s - why would you? It wasn’t mandatory. Plus the sweet shop was open, and in the middle of the day there was hardly any queue. See where I’m coming from? EXERCISE SUX. 

This has been my stance towards it since about two or three months ago. I’ll bring it back to the whole ‘P.E at school’ issue. They don’t really make it an appealing prospect, do they? 

“RIGHT! Run seven laps around the field”

Of course you didn’t want to run seven laps, you’ve just had five hours of lessons and are pretty sure that you just failed your physics test. Still, there were no attempts to spice it up. It just seems as though it was a constant slog of effort and not much reward. I really thought all there was to exercise was running around in your shorts in a frosted field, feeling like your lung’s collapsed and dry heaving, whilst someone in a toasty warm tracksuit blows a whistle at you and repeatedly shouts “Oh come ooon, it’s not that cold!” 

It wasn’t until I started going for walks with my best friend, Amber that I realized that it was possible to get fit, have a laugh and have a decent excuse to over-indulge later that evening - “well I did climb a mountain this morning, I’m morally allowed that third slice of carrot cake.” 

Let me be clear here - we don’t actually climb mountains. The most we’ve done is go up a path that was “a bit hilly”, but I’ve come to realize that the simplest, easiest form of exercise still counts as “working out”.

Walking isn’t that strenuous, it’s free, and it’s a great way of chattering away with your bestie without wasting your money in various branches of Starbucks. You don’t even have to wear shorts! Luckily for me, Amber is of the same “let’s not over-stretch ourselves” attitude. We treat our walks as some sort of FBI project - they’re held in secret locations, we don’t go anywhere we might be spotted and we go make-up free in order to shield our identities. Our routes are in the hills on the outskirts of town, because our stance is very much “ugh gawd, but there are people in the park, they might see us.” 

My advice is to chose a walking buddy on the same level as you - in fitness, attitude and sense of humour. It will come in handy when you’re lying on the floor in the middle of a pedestrian path, wailing “my legs! MY LEGS!”. At that point of the two-hour walk you’re going to need someone who’s going to lie down with you, saying “I know, I know”, and who will say encouraging things like “THINK OF THE BACON SARNIE AT HOME” and “Your arse will thank you for this.”

Then we go home, have cake, and watch Desperate housewives on catch up tv and feel like better humans than everyone else for the remainder of the day, because as the law states, “she who does some exercise, is allowed to be smug and eat cake.”

(and if you like, you can even call it ‘hiking’, that’s what Americans do.)

Festival Survival Guide

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If you're attending a festival this year, plan ahead. Use some of these tips and you will have a great time but not stray from your weight loss target.

You can box up lots of lovely diet friendly treats to put in your rucksack including rice cakes, fruit, cereal bars. I usually take some Weight Watcher cakes that come wrapped individually and I make a sandwich to eat when I have finished setting up camp. It can take ages to queue for your wristband and put you tent up and you will be hungry after all of this. If you are prepared you will eat something healthy that you have packed rather than heading straight for the burger van. You don’t want to spend the whole time worrying about what to eat so it is a good idea to check out the festival website before you go. I found out that there is a great Salvation Army tent at Reading that serves soup and a bread roll for about a quid, so much cheaper than food in the arena and really healthy. There are usually loads of veggie and vegan food stalls and these are great for people on diets, fill up on a pitta filled with falafel and salad or go for some vegetable chow mein on a Chinese food stand (the average portion is about 7 points on the Weight Watcher plan). If you think about what you are going to eat before you get there you can work out the points in advance and take away all the hassle and stress. Weight Watchers have a new app where you can track your points and find out the points values of food so this is worth downloading before you go. You can save all of your weekly points/syns for the festival so you can have a few treats without feeling guilty. Make sure you dance the night away and explore the festival site to burn away some of the calories from all the alcohol you will be drinking ;) Remember, celebrate your weight loss so far by wearing lots of lovely, bright summer clothing. Don’t hide under baggy clothes anymore, dance and have the time of your life! If you have any festival tips please leave a comment.

Guest Post- Laura from Keeping Healthy Getting Stylish

My Healthy Living Journey – Laura from http://www.keepinghealthygettingstylish.com/

laura@keepinghealthygettingstylish.com

Throughout my life I have always struggled with my weight. I can remember the first time I became aware of it, I was only 7 years old and I experienced bullying at school which led to low confidence and self esteem throughout my teenage years. I did try to do something about it, I would exist on an apple a day to try and lose weight, but of course this didn’t work and I ended up bingeing on unhealthy food and eating in secret from my family and friends.

As I got older I tried weight loss clubs, joined gyms and tried various detox diets. Sometimes I did lose weight but eventually I would fall back into old patterns and regain the weight, plus some more!

When I turned 26 and reached almost 15 stone (210lbs) I knew I had to do something drastic. I was recently married and I could really see how much weight I’d gained when I looked at the photographs. I was so unhappy and didn’t want to spend my life like this. I loved fashion but never felt comfortable in my clothes and hated the way I looked. I read lots of nutrition and exercise books and decided that I would try and lose weight myself through healthy eating and physical activity. The more I read the more I realised that the best way to lose weight was to eat plenty of fresh ‘clean’ food and avoid processed food. When I realised how many chemicals and artificial ingredients had been in some of the foods I’d been eating I was horrified! I cut back on heavily processed food such as ready meals and cuppa soups and started to experiment with cooking more food myself, and better yet I really enjoyed it! Over the course of two years I managed to lose over 5 stone (70lbs).

It wasn’t long after that I discovered healthy living blogs, I just couldn’t get enough of them. I found them so inspiring that I decided to start my own blog to help me in maintaining my weight loss. I started to become even more experimental with my cooking after being inspired by recipes on blogs and I even started running!

I used to really worry that I would end up regaining the weight that I had lost just as I had so many times before, but then I realised that some thing had changed. My journey had no longer become about weight loss, it had become about health. A few months ago I made the decision to stop weighing myself all the time and to try and eat for health rather than worrying about the number on the scale and it has been wonderful.

My biggest achievement came in September last year when I completed my first ever half marathon – The iconic Great North Run. I entered the race after encouragement from other bloggers. I had never dreamt I would be able to run 13.1 miles. I had never been athletic at all and before this year couldn’t even run for a bus! Completing the race was like the culmination of my healthy living journey and I couldn’t have been happier.

I’m now looking forward to where the future will take me. I’m now a vegetarian and eat a mostly vegan diet as that is what I have found makes me feel my absolute best.  I’m also studying for a qualification in Diet and Nutrition Advice and I’ve already signed up for the Great North 10k in July and the Great North Run again in September. I’m becoming more confident in my cooking skills and I even tried baking my own bread for the first time! I’m so thankful that I discovered blogging and the healthy living bloggers community. I’ve learned so much, and get so much enjoyment through writing my blog, onwards and upwards to my next challenge!

Thanks for letting me share my story with you!

Falling off the wagon.

Image from weheartit.

As you may have seen in our Sunday Summaries, my original amazing weight-loss results have slipped somewhat. After about two months where I was losing every week, I hit a period where first I plateaued, and then my weight started to creep up again. That’s why I’ve been a bit quiet here lately, because I’m a bit ashamed of how my eating habits have become corrupted.

I know that Charlene has already posted about this, but I wanted to add my piece too, as it's one of the most devastating parts about weight loss. It's so much easier to put it on than lose it. Also, we talk a lot here about what to do when it's working, but I find that when I fall off the wagon, all my good habits go out of the window and I find it really hard to get back into the mindset. Which is exactly where I am now.

Over the last few weeks I’ve had: a wedding, a hen do, a baby shower, several parties, a holiday to Italy and two music festivals. The sudden introduction of serious food-shaped temptation – and so much of it – meant that my willpower didn’t even put up a fight. Let’s face it, I knew I was never going to go to Italy and eat salad for every meal.

So how do you deal with stuff like this? My approach is to wait for the bad things to end – I've promised myself that, now that Glastonbury is over, I’m going cold turkey for a while. I’m sure a better way would have been to go straight back to the diet after Italy, be as good as possible at Glastonbury, and then slide back into saintliness once that was over. But I find that all or nothing works best for me. If I have a chip, I want a plate of chips, you know?

I haven't been back to Rosemary Conley since before my holiday, so I have no idea what I weigh, but I suspect I'm about back at square one. So now, it's just about getting motivated again and getting back into all the good habits I was in before. And trying to forget how amazing high-fat foods taste (so not fair).

What about you? Is anyone else going through difficult temptation periods at the moment? Is it just the curse of summer? How are you dealing with it? And why on earth can’t it be as easy to lose weight as it is to gain it?

I'll keep you guys posted as to my progress - I'm determined to get back to it. I don't want to let you all down!

Motivation - Where are you?

We've been running this blog for 3 months now and I'll admit it, I'm struggling. It seems that I'll find something that works for me (the best thing ever being The 30 Day Shred), I'll be hugely enthusiastic about it, do it religiously and then… nothing. I just stop.

I was seeing results after just 10 days of The 30 Day Shred. It was probably the quickest I've ever noticed any sort of change in my body so it was obviously working really well. So why stop? If I had kept going who knows, I might have had the flat tummy I long for by now. I promised myself I'll start doing it again. But I just can't seem to find the final push I need to get off the couch and JUST DO IT.

I know a lot of you have been doing this whole weightloss thing for a lot longer than me, so I've been wondering. How do you keep yourself motivated? Does diet and exercise really just become a habit after so long? How do you pick yourself back up after falling?