Calling all Grinches! Who wants to lose weight in December?

[FrancisdeSales]

I have to start watching what I eat and exercise as I am stuck in a rut! It may be bad timing but I don't care. My goal is 2lb a week so 8lb by the end of Dec. I am 159 lb right now (11 stone 5 lb). Please come and join in my insanity - I am also joining a gym this week.

I've said no thanks to a works Christmas do. I just didn't fancy anything on the set menu to be honest, and I didn't want to know that I'd be drinking a few extra empty cals on top. A bit of dancing wouldn't have undone that damage.

I've been sticking to my exercise classes up til now, but they've all finished until Jan now, so I've dug out the exercise bike and set it up in the dining room (in front of the spare TV and DVD player so I can always watch something and pedal away a bit).

I am sticking to counting my points at least up til Monday as a friend and I have had a bit of a bet about who will lose the most on the run up to Christmas. She goes to SW, I go to WW and so far I'm winning, by one pound. Our finishing point is our next class on Monday.

Then I aim to still point and be mindful of what I'm eating, but I do start my Christmas baking soon and will have a few extra festive treats over the week.

I'm not going to go mad though. I usually get LOTS of Christmas presents from the children in my class, but only had a handful this year and only a few were edibles. We don't buy our own chocs though as we do have friends and family that buy them as gifts every year.

I don't like a lot of the Christmas goodies like Christmas cake, stollen etc, but do enjoy mince pies and bake a fair few of them (in streusel form - yum).

I need to do a shop before the big day and make sure I've got lots of veg in so there's no excuse. :)

I'd have loved to get out of my work Xmas do - food wasn't even nice!

tbh I'm not really a fan of mince pies, xmas cake etc. In previous years I tended to treat myself to other stuff to offset the horror of the bleak midwinter but now I think about it, it never helps. I really enjoyed my workout today and the fact that it's mild - and has actually been quite sunny in London - means I'm much more confident about sticking to a diet through the week.

It's fun to be a Christmas grinch

I ended up at the Christmas do! One of my lovely colleagues came down with a bug and told me that there was a spare place going because she couldn't go. So she won't lose her money as I went and will pay her her share when I next see her.

The only problem was.... I'd already cooked and eaten roast pork and roast veg for tea. Luckily, I'd not had a great portion of it and I'd missed lunch so made tea early. And we weren't eating at the do til half 8ish.

The soup was horrible, the turkey dinner was lovely and the pudding (Christmas pudding flavoured cheesecake) was just plain weird. So it could have been worse. And I had no lift arranged due to the last minute arrangements, so I drove and drank lemonade and water. Could have been a lot worse!

Tomorrow is my last weigh in during Dec as next Mon is a bank hol and my class is cancelled.

I'm full of cold, of course I'm full of cold, it's Christmas.

But, in better news, I've lost another pound and because my dh is a last minute Christmas shopper I've been able to make a substitution and get a fitbit Charge HR which I'm ridiculously excited about.

Lorelei, I need to channel some of your exerting spirit in 2016, although I doubt I'll get to the point of enjoying any of it

Did you enjoy your party Charley? It seems unfair if you are paying your colleague for a meal you didn't want to go to and didn't particularly enjoy. Hopefully you have achieved some karma credit

Exerting = exercising spirit. Apparently autocorrect has no faith in me.

I haven't been calorie counting the past few days, eating hasn't been terrible but more usual over eating at the weekend rather than full on Christmas binging! I haven't bought extra wine or chocolates for Xmas, we've received some as gifts so going to open those and hope it helps keep things more under control. Of course could just be an excuse to open gifts early!

I enjoyed the main course and the entertainment as well as the company of my lovely colleagues. It was only £20 so we worth it for that,I don't mind.

My scales at home show another lb off today so I hope that is reflected at weigh in later.

:( Booo.... I am out of routine. Instead of my light lunch of soup and fruit at work and a small tea before weighing in, I had a hearty lunch out with my girls after taking my youngest to the hospital for a blood test (possible glandular fever) and therefore managed to weigh in at half a lb heavier tonight rather than last week.

All self inflicted of course. I'm happy that my scales at home are showing a general downward trend and am finding it quite easy to stick to the pointing thing, mostly.

Charley, I always thin weighing in late must be confusing, wouldn't worry about it. I looked up those points, looks stricter than the old version.

Hope your DD doesn't have glandular fever and that she feels better soon.

Kondos, well done. I do like working out which makes it easier.

I am not supposed to weigh myself fir six weeks on this regime... I already look better so decided against weighing myself this morning, it's weird but I think all the effort is making me stick to my diet better anyway. Haven't eaten any of the stuff in the office but the good weather is helping. I normally struggle with the cold in December but London has been mild and sunny....well, till this afternoon anyway.

The points are stricter on lots of things, but others, like lean proteins are better so it does balance out a bit. Lean meat, veg and a few low fat carbs and you're sorted. It's a bit harder to have a treat though. But I used to do points before they swapped to propoints and they had no weekly points and were a bit more restrictive then too. I am adjusting.

I prefer to weigh in at the start of the day, but do like a cheat day. If I weigh in on a morning then the whole day can go out of the window. This way, I stick to my normal eating until tea time and then just have something I've been craving for pudding/supper.

I was able to go out wearing clothes I haven't been able to wear for a while last night, so I went through my cupboard today and tried on a lot of my dresses that had been too tight. And lots of them fitted :) Result!

This whole weight loss effort was kick started by struggling to find something to wear for my Dad's funeral that was smart and fitted well. DD2 advised me to buy more clothes when I lamented that nothing fitted looked right. I told her I had plenty of lovely clothes already and wasn't buying more. Then went and googled the closest weightwatchers meeting and signed up despite it being nearly Christmas.

Charley, well done on fitting into those clothes.

I find the whole monitoring of eating a real pain so I guess I feel like the added checking of points would send me over the edge!!

Ok, I'm off the wagon for the next two days and the scales be damned. Have a Merry Christmas whether that's on the wagon or off it.

Merry Christmas indeed. :)

I've started the baking. There will be a million calories consumed over the next few days, then back to sensible eating.

I'm hoping that having a few days off (today, Christmas day and boxing day) then a few sensible days, then another day off on New year's eve and possibly the next day) then 3 days being very sensible will mean that I can limit any damage.

:) Merry Christmas Grinches.

Hope all of you Grinches had a great Christmas! I've had a horrible cold that seems to get infinitely worse at night so I'm running on no sleep. I've gained a whopping 7lbs since 11th December, but I've spent two days eating an embarrassing amount of food so a lot of that will be water.

I'm back on the wagon today weighing in at 14st 4lbs

Hi helena. I had a lovely Christmas thanks. Getting sick at Christmas is no fun, I hope you get well soon and can catch up on some sleep.

Food wise it went a bit bananas on Christmas Day. I started mosochistically logging the damage on MFP and stopped when my eyes started to bleed and on Boxing Day I decided to be honest and then added all the snacks I had on the evening

Onwards and upwards. I have my Fitbit which I have to be careful not to become annoyingly evangelical about. I loves it. I had a running race with my 8yo son and he won by an embarrassing margin, so I am going to try and get fitter and see if I can catch up!

hi all, helena, I hope you are feeling better now.

I am fairly sure I haven't gained anything over the holiday but I don't know because I just got home about an hour ago.

my plans to workout didn't work too well so going to do that now. (It rained, my resistance band was no substitute for weights so all a bit plops).

now only NYE stands between me and my holiday!! Really want to look better on this holiday. I don't have many mirrors at home - you know sometimes you see yourself in someone else's mirror and you groan - that happened to me over the last few days. I am short and I feel I look like a big square.

Boredom nearly drove me to overeat but I didn't - Christmas not overeating is fine, as it turns out!!

Glad see you are both still around! I've had a large coffee, a good breakfast and I'm currently working through my second litre of water. I'll take the dog out for a nice long walk later to get my steps up on my Fitbit, as I've been so sedentary I'm surprised the thing hasn't started giving me electric shocks just to get me moving

Oh I'm very much still here!!

actually, boring thing, not going to work out because feel very tired after 3 nights not in own bed - originally today was meant to be a rest day due to travel anyway. So going to do it tomorrow and keep today as planned. (I did do lunges and squats and pushups etc while away).

so now back to 2 days on, 1 day off, from tomorrow. I will also eat carefully on NYE though I did get a lot of "ooh you are making me feel a bit of a pig" these last few days, but if I get on the scales tomorrow and see no gain, I will be pleased. It took me so bloody long to lose a few pounds, no way could I afford to gain any! I did eat 4 home made sausage rolls on one day (home made = huge) but I think control of sugar is probably more important for me than control of fat.

light supper tonight.

That's a good attitude. Fat doesn't make you fat, sugar is what makes people fat so it's definitely sugar that should be limited.

I generally try to keep my sugar/carb count low because it go wild for it when I have too much

I have a major urge for fish and chips.

good thing it's rubbish weather outside!

(I have no idea why I have this urge, I think perhaps too much junk over the last 4 days).

I've done my measurements and I've put on a whopping 8cm around my middle over the last two weeks!

Talk about carb bloat! No wonder my clothes have been feeling a bit snug

Well done on avoiding the chippy!

Helena, I don't think I deserve the "well done" - it's only because it's bucketing down!

did you literally just do your measurements? I only ever do that, or weight, first thing.

Checking in. Very much trying not to go too mad this week. I was going to say 'what the hell..?' for the week, but now I don't want to.

I had baked goodies on Christmas eve.

I had a large Christmas dinner and then a bit of buffet on Christmas day - not too much as I was still feeling full from dinner.

Boxing day was another turkey dinner with trimmings as we cooked our own that day. Then I had turkey sandwiches for tea.

I did have a fair few chocolates though, which really haven't helped. I gave up logging the lot as it would have made me just write the whole week off I think.

So today DD1 and I went and braved the local shopping area. She needed school shoes and I wanted to treat myself to a kindle paperwhite (love reading in the dark room at night but the light I have glares in my eyes!) and I clocked up plenty of steps on my fitbit. There has been a nice cooked dinner that was quite healthy and a bit of pudding, but haven't gone mad.

My jeans def feel a bit tight though! I dread to think what I weigh. I shall have another couple of quite good days before I dare do that!

Happily, lots and lots of the goodies that we were given I don't like. And I didn't even like the cheesecake I made, so have chucked it.

Lorelei

No, I did them earlier.

I stand by the 'well done' - I've been known to go out in the rain for food