Countdown to september

[Clearingaspace]

All welcome! thread for logging weekly weigh-in, setting goals including self care and fasting, and chat in between! Feel free to just chat also if not wanting to weigh etc.

Sorry well done on 1lb loss @ItRainsItPours not maintaining!

@Clearingaspace my experience (and iirc your experience too) is that quick jumps up like this quickly go back down again. I swear toast triples in weight as it goes down the gullet.

Easy on easy off. I suspect we will all be a little more focused in September.

Hello everyone! Hope you've had a good week.

I weighed myself this morning and I'm still on 74kg which I count as a massive win as it means I successfully avoided over indulging when I was at my parents which was no mean feat. They buy all sorts of delicious snacks for my kids but I inevitably end up eating them. I'm also on my period which has meant I have craved so many carbs.

Thanks for the insights about the reflux @ItRainsItPours i am going to try drinking more water as I never drink enough. I've figured out that most days I seem to get by with one mug of coffee, two cups of tea and a can of Pepsi and maybe if I'm lucky one glass of water which is no way to live and is maybe what is causing the reflux.

@HarpQuartet enjoy the sound bath! It's on my list of things to do at some point in my life!!

@Clearingaspace well done this week! fasting while the kids are at home is so much harder!

Brava, @Fouramclub ! And the sound bath was great, plus the next morning I woke up an hour later than usual and had to go back to bed for a nap later that morning, so something about it completely wiped me out, in a good way.

I'll share a small but significant win: yesterday I broke my fast with an apple and peanut butter, then ate nothing more for almost two hours (because I went out - I need distraction to achieve this nirvana!). Usually I'm a bit like the Pringles ad: once I start eating I find it really hard to stop.

@HarpQuartet that’s lovely to hear. i misread and thought you usually eat Pringles for breakfast 😂 I have had a tube of Pringles this last week or so because I bought them for ds who has apparently given them up. I think this gives a clue to how well I am doing with healthy food at the mo. I think essentially I need to focus on 3 healthy meals a day no snacks and a short overnight fast of 13 hours.

@Fouramclub thars a great result well done!

Need to expunge the delicious thought of Pringles from my mind, pronto!

Delete that thought - nothing good can come from popping that lid

Morning all, 77.1kg, which puts me at the same weight I was 4 months ago! I'm resisting returning to healthy eating habits. Need that "fresh start September" motivation to kick in.

Now I want some Pringles 😂 the bbq ones are my weakness.

weighed in today at 72.8kg - so 1.2kg off from the last week woohoo!

main difference has been much healthier meals with heaps of steamed veg on my plate, less snacks and being a bit stricter with fast times.

Down side has been the hunger has really kicked in at night. My son woke me up at 4am and I could t get back to sleep as my tummy was rumbling. Usually I would go and have an apple or some toast but I resisted and fell asleep again at 6 to wake up an hour later 😂

@HarpQuartet well done! I am in exactly the same position as you (although I am pretty much the same weight as I was last year) and it feels deflating but I'm trying to view this as a long term project to change my eating habits and I do feel my habits have changed significantly (apart from a small blip these past few months of eating pastries every day for about two months).

over the next few months I want to focus on protein and veg with veg being the biggest part of my meal.

i am also going to buy a soup flask and take home made veg soup into work with me!

hope you all have a wonderful bank holiday.

@Fouramclub that's how I want to eat, tons of veg, very inspiring and encouraging.

And yes to being stricter with fasts, nobody is going to do this for me, I have to be my own cheerleader and best friend.

well done @Fouramclub thats great progress.

@HarpQuartet i am with you on fresh start September! Hopefully we can cheer each other on but you are so right, we have to do it for ourselves.

totally agree this needs to be an ongoing project of getting healthier - ups and downs are fine if the overall picture is going in the right direction. I fell off the hbd plan that was working for me - but I still feel I learned from doing it even though some of the weight is back on it has had a positive impact. It has made me realise that I need a large focus to be on eating sensible balanced meals with veg and maybe some dark chocolate or fruit at the end as ‘pud’ and then no calories until my next meal - even milk, which is the tricky bit. Problem is this week I feel like I haven’t had enough energy for buying prepping and cooking and even eating veg - which is daft because the easy stodge will make me feel worse in the long run. Does anyone else feel like that with veg?

i braved the scale and it’s up a bit but not too bad considering I am having my first period in months and it is v heavy plus also possible Covid 😬.

have a lovely weekend everyone

@Clearingaspace i hear you on the veg front! I just don't have the time or space to chop everything up and store it in the fridge. I do sometimes go and peel a carrot speedily and munch on that if I need a snack or just eat a pepper whole like I would an apple (not eating the stalk and seeds obvs!)

what I have learned is that consistency is key and if you eat unhealthily for a week it's fine, just go back to being consistent and don't let your mind set spiral (which is what I did a few months back)

what doesn't help is when you have a low energy day and just want something convenient that the shops are full of UPF like crisps, chocolate, ready meals. When I was unwell in June, I'd go to the shops and get Doritos to make me feel better when really I just needed something savory but they were so easy to reach for and buy!

I use lots of frozen veg, easy to store until you needed and generally frozen quickly after picking, so fresher and therefore more vitamins. Each week I eat red and white onions, mushrooms, leeks, garlic, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, peppers, peas, beans and sweetcorn all from the freezer.
I only buy fresh if I am going to boil it as a side dish. Mostly I make a one pot with tinned tomatoes to go with pasta and meat or cheese.
I also batch cook so make these dishes in 3/4 portions when I have the time. That way when we need a quick healthy meal we just warm up the batch cook, boil pasta and grate some cheese on top. We eat this way roughly 5 days a week with meat two veg or take away/eating out the other 2.

@ItRainsItPours where do you get your frozen veg, sometimes the selection is very uninspiring. My kids are fuss pots but I think I will give your pasta a try as they also need more veg. Planning is clearly the key.

@Fouramclub i find I am either very on it or very not on it - for some reason I can have months where I eat lots of veg but then go to the other extreme - I wish I could consistently be in the middle - it would be a lot more healthy.

weighed this morning an I seem to be maintaining, I have been carby today but maybe a low carb early dinner today will help with not having a gain again tomorrow 🤞

As I live rurally I use tesco online @Clearingaspace .

I am in McDonald’s waiting for our food, definitely need to get back on it in September 😘

Hello all, please can I join? I really need to focus in September as it looks like I'll be ending the summer holidays a few lbs up from where I was at the end of July.

I tend to follow 16-8 fasting but sometimes go up to 20/21 hours depending on what I've got on. Overall I've lost a stone and I've been fasting a few months now but I'm hovering around the 14st mark so still a long way to go!

Welcome, @GameOfJones I think we might be starting a new thread next week - I think a lot of us are looking for a fresh start for September!

does anyone want to give their fasting plans for the week ahead rather than weight loss?
just so I can keep track I am at 183 - definitely up a bit but also I am feeling more squishy. I want at least 1 longer fast where I skip dinner. Also at least 12 hours at night and 1 mini fast during the day of 4 hours.

My Sep plan is to actually do some tracking past breakfast! 50g net carbs (excl fibre)1500 cals, 1 day at full cals and 100g carbs. 1 day at 1000 cals with a longer fast - aiming for 20 hours and possibly a longer one once I get next period (hrt seems to have fixed that), 13 hour fasts rest of week. I will also ideally try for 1 mini 5 hour fast a day too between lunch and dinner. This might all be scrapped by next week though!

Do we want a new thread or just stick with this one? Would anyone like to do the honours for a fresh start thread if so Also should we start the threads on the 1st and call it September or stick with countdown to October method? Crazy that Halloween will likely be in that time frame - I joined the Halloween thread last year 😱 glad I have stuck with it even if my weight has kind of got stuck - still 20lbs down.

Keeping it off is the most important part. I am happy to stay here or move onto a new spangly thread. I suppose there is a nostalgia to stick to the same format. It’s very telling that this thread has far fewer posts than others. Hopefully everyone is busy enjoying the summer. I have a funny feeling this weekend will be our last taste of summer before the leaves turn and we all put the heating on.

Hello! No weigh in from me until Monday as I am in the land of the pastries and cheese and other delicious things (aka France). My aim for August was to not have a pastry ever day as I had been doing the previous three months but that has gone out of the window this week as it would be rude not to have pastries every morning 😁 there is this one little bakery that does crispy flakey croissants that has made me realise the tescos ones are absolutely not worth the calories.

anyway...@Clearingaspace well done for maintaining and I like your plan! I aim to do something similar and stick to no more than 1500 per day but track my protein and fibre. I'm aiming for 100g protein a day but fear it might be tricky. Will see how I get on.

@GameOfJones welcome and that's amazing progress!

Well I'm still hovering around 77kg and I feel ambivalent about continuing to check in on Fridays - even with such nice company 🙂 - because I've been at this weight for about 6 months and STILL need to lose 5kg.

I think I might just carry on IF-ing on my own and come back (to this series of threads, or a different one if this peters out gently) when I've got back onto a "steady loss" path.

@Fouramclub your observation about rubbish croissants not being worth the calories is the message I need to have tattooed on me, and it goes for all sorts of rubbish non-foods.

@Clearingaspace and @ItRainsItPours just wanted to say hi 💞 and 20lb is inspiring! I do like autumn, @ItRainsItPours just hope I can steer myself away from the traditional comfort foods (chocolate) and remind myself that soup is a comfort food too.

@GameOfJones when I've got my head in the game, IF really works for me, I feel healthier and that helps me feel happier.

I hope no one feels any pressure to continue losing weight, I think maintaining is equally hard. I have lost 3 stone this year and have plenty more to lose to get to a healthy bmi. That said if in a year I weigh the same as today I will be happy.
Maybe as a group we have outgrown the weekly weigh in and should just have a thread counting down to Christmas? We could own up to the odd mince pie(which I have seen in the shops already) and generally try to keep on the right track.
If we stay in this section of mumsnet we would hopefully continue to attract the right crowd.

@ItRainsItPours I would like that 😊 and out of interest, how are you feeling about having lost three stone? I imagine it's easier to do everyday things - just walking to the shops etc - but can you feel the difference? I have also lost three stone (albeit over a longer time period) and the difference for me was more related to liking how I looked in the mirror, more than any health benefits, but I'd be interested to know what your experience is.