A Singularly Lonely Christmas

paulineb_2

I'm doing the zero clothes buying all year as well.

I might take myself off hostelling for a few days as well.

Do another triathlon as well.

I've been invited out for tea by my mums friend on Thursday, she's had a horrendous year, have spoken about it elsewhere and things still aren't sorted, relationship split from partner who is making life very tough, but even so, she's doing OK on her own, her and the kids

And there will be cake. I don't eat cake often so why not, my mum is going too.

calicocat

Wow LB you have it all fairly sorted!!

You have also got me thinking about mine. I too have been comfort eating and drinking over the last 15 months. I don't really buy chocolate, but somehow I end up with it from others bringing it round. I think since working night shifts I have become more lazy....not sure is lazy is really the right word to use all the time as my sleep pattern is ruined and often sleep for short periods and can be tired or listless a lot of the time, so I don't get much exercise.


I found No. 2 a bit scary for me....lol...but if I lost weight I too would have loads more clothes I could wear.

I had already planned the no alcohol thing. Well no alcohol in the house as will allow myself some when out. I have already started this, didn't really buy any in for this xmas/NY, I have a couple of bottles of pink fizz left which will do for over NY and then the cupboards will be bare. I think I will find this a struggle to be honest, when I was chatting at work about it someone said you have to replace doing it with something else.(?). This initially sounded a bit scarily like food, but plan on 'doing' something for the times when i'm tempted to go and get any.Not sure what that 'doing' will be yet though so maybe need to be thinking about that pretty soon, it can't really be garden at this time of year so will have to think.



I also plan to walk more (was the reason to moving by the beach). I have been here since July and have been to the beach maybe only 7 times. I need to get fitter as this has just disappeared over the last year, and I need it for my job too.


I need to get rid of Credit Card bill over next few months, got a nasty shock when I rang the bank!!....quite depressing, but my own silly fault. so need to get rid of that, throw money at the mortgage (I am quite obsessed about this one so will achieve it provided I don't lose my job) , and also save for next car. I haven't been saving anything since moving and that needs to change.

The plans I had for the house will cost money, and not small amounts, so I maybe need to wait a couple of years to do any of that and see how the other plans go first.



What I used to do was take out from the bank when paid the cash sum I was allowing myself to spend in that month and anything else got saved. I had (still have) various tins etc for different things...food,petrol,going out and can swap it all about when needed, but it focused me on my spending for sure. i'm terrible if i'm just flicking a card out as I just don't keep track....hence no saving since July as was so distracted from the plan needing to buy all the little extras you need when moving....also hence vile...and I mean vile, credit card spend. I should maybe look at what I do when not at work as I do love shopping and need to stop this.

Besides i'd be better if I am going to spend, doing it on herbs and pots for the garden, something useful. Actually i'm forming more of a plan as i'm writing.....So...no going to clothes /housey shops...when need to go out and do something, go herb hunting.



LB I would be very interested as to the types of things you will be putting in the living Will as we briefly discussed....if that's not prying, one time when we meet up.


Oh and my 'learn' something one is growing things now I have a garden, albeit very small.

moneyistooshorttomention

Yep...approve those New Year resolutions and have a few of mine.

One of mine is give up "comfort drinking". One hobby I know never to take up is making home-made booze (not at 20p per bottle for home-made wine:eek:). It would be all too easy to down an extra drink or two at that price. At least, at £4.50 for a bottle of cheapest plonk then the cost alone is a bit of a deterrent. Nerves calming down a bit from having moved from a city, but there's still the "oh heck" moment that gets soothed by a drink or two as regards the renovation work I am doing on the house I recently moved to. Yesterday's "oh heck" moment on the house boiled back down to having received my monthly bank statement and I can see I'm ripping through my savings at a rate of knots on the work on this house and I am worried I may not have enough money to even get it basically finished (I'd already given up hope of getting it completely finished in the foreseeable future). Waaah...and may not even have enough money to finish getting it decorated throughout (courtesy of "those things the vendor didn't mention:cool::(" causing unexpected bills). All hints from anyone on abolishing the comfort drinking will be welcome to many of us I'm sure. I'm finding the thought of the money its costing me isn't a sufficient disincentive on its own (despite having retired at my retirement age of 60 and knowing my "Revised State Pension Age" is over a year away and so I'm having to live on about half pension for a while yet:eek: and am not at all sure that I'm not taking out a bit of my savings to subsidise that half pension whilst I wait to get through the "gap" and get the rest of my income again).

So I know my drive me to drink Danger Points and that's having the house in a state (temporary fortunately)/money problems/phonecalls with my mother (as she isn't an easy person to deal with...even at the end of a phone). What are everyone else's and what strategies do you use to deal with them?

Weight to lose = yep = me too. About 2 stones to lose and am resolutely refusing to buy any new clothes I can possibly help because I have plenty of clothes (ie in my correct size).

Learn Welsh, if only because I'm nosy and want to understand everything going on around me:rotfl: and half the conversations here are incomprehensible to me at the moment. They all switch to English promptly when I hove into view, so I'm just thinking "If they can speak such perfect English, then I ought to be able to manage at least reasonable Welsh". Anyway..if Wales does break away from England at some point I'd better know my Welsh well by then...

Take up some voluntary work. I have a nascent community project in mind that looks like it might need volunteers and hopefully its one where I wont have to resign myself to being cold all the time (my experience of voluntary work to date indicating that thermal undies and fingerless gloves are de rigeur, because the surroundings are almost uniformly cold:().

MummyBobble

Love reading plans for next year. I don't enjoy New Year, so many folk (me included) focus on next year being better than the last and forget about any good things that have happened in the last year. 2013 has been dreadful though, so I am turning my back on it and moving on, looking forward not back, and appreciating what I have. 2014 may not be "my year" (lived long enough to know that doesn't happen, there's always something comes along to scupper the best laid plans...) but it will be what I make it which will be the best it can be for me, my children and good friends :A

So :beer: to you all and let's look forward to some happy times xx

Need2bthrifty

Wow you’ve all been busy – and there are definite similarities running through all of yours and no doubt mine.

I usually start with a kind of reflection/review of the past year – just to give myself a wee bit of a pat on the back – but I also realise how expensive a year it’s been and need to focus on replenishing my dwindling emergency fund/savings but still have a life and treat myself occasionally.

So here are what I consider to be my 2013 Blessings/Achievements
1. Close family holiday/wedding which has resulted in much more contact/communication, working together and socialising :j:j:j
2. Ended toxic relationship :T:T:T
3. Totally new bathroom :j:j:j
4. Lifted and relayed paving slabs on drive all by myself :j:j – satisfying but :eek: my back
5. PPI Reclaim :beer: – money I wasn’t expecting so immediately used it to pay off remaining car credit, new carpets for lounge/stair/bedroom and decorating materials for lounge :j:j
6. Weight-loss = down to my lowest weight in 15 years and into clothes I haven’t been able to wear (comfortably) for much the same length of time :j:j

There has been a lot of !!!! going on as well - but it's behind me now and not worth giving it any kind of recognition - Onwards is where I'm looking.

Will work on my resolutions for 2014 whilst I get on with cleaning the house and getting all the ironing done in prep for the new year, will report back later

paulineb_2

I'll just say what worked for me. Somewhere along the line Ive developed somewhat of an addictive personality and I should know better, Im a qualified addiction worker. However, I think a lot of that must have been linked to tough times over the last few years, then it becomes a habit, a bad one.

As I said in previous threads I had a tailbone injury last year. Prior to that I was teaching classes, but life wasnt so good in 2012. I was maintaining my weight but my eating habits were awful. Not so much junk, but portion sizes. After I had the injury I was teaching aerobics and doing some swimming but it wasnt enough. I did nothing about it for about 6 months then I saw that video and decided that enough was enough.
My BMI was ridiculous, I was heavier than I have ever been in my adult life and even though I dont look as much as I weigh, it was over 40 which put me into the morbidly obese category.

I have fitness instructor friends who used to be big and lost it all just by teaching cardio and making no changes to their diet. That doesnt work for me Im afraid. I'll lose some and thats it. I need to work at it.

1 I dont calorie count, obviously I keep an eye on what Im eating but I dont have a set cal count. The reason for that being is that people seem to pluck a number out of their air, lets say 1500 cals. What people actually need to do is find out what their BMR is, that is the number of cals you need to keep you alive, without doing any exercise. The heavier you are, the more calories you need. Theres a site called my fitness pal that lets you do that. I actually didnt do that, but its a starting point for people who do want to know what their BMR is.

2 I reduced my portion sizes. I ate lots of fajitas in the beginning, again the wrap was cal counted and filled it with veg. I could have 3 of those a night for my dinner and I still wouldnt feel deprived. But I did feel hungry at times. Not a bad thing, I ended up stuffing my face so much at times that I actually was hardly ever hungry. In the days before I decided to do something about my weight.

3 I dont eat meat so I eat a lot of veg anyway. I know there are slimming plans that allow people to in theory eat as much fruit as they like, but fruit is generally more calorific than veg, it also tends to have more carbohydrate. So I'll maybe have 1 or 2 pieces of fruit a day and far more veg.

4 Eat when you want to. People never used to have 3 set meals a day, eating at 9am, midday and 6pm or whatever. Theres nothing wrong with having 5 or 6 smaller meals instead of 3 big ones.

5 I tried to eat foods that were lower in GI, such as oatcakes, I swapped white for wholemeal pasta (then I had a conversation with my personal trainer brother who thinks wholemeal bread and pasta isnt that much better for you than white). I eat more sweet potatoes than I do potatoes. White carbs will fill you up but you also might get that Im starving feeling a few hours later.

6 Alcohol. Im afraid I also slipped into bad habits alcohol wise. Wine was always my drink of choice, its full of carbs and unless its low percentage its also full of calories. If you are going to drink wine, drink something thats 8 or 9 per cent and add soda water to it. When I did drink I had a gin and slimline. Ive also become a fan of low alcohol beer. Becks blue tastes like becks, very much. Its 50 calories a bottle and you can buy 6 bottles for £3 in a supermarket. My local home bargains also sells Kaliber which is an alcohol free beer, for 25p a bottle, it has around 71 cals a bottle. If I want a bottle of wine, I'll buy a small one from B and M bargains or home bargains. If I want a g and t I'll buy a pre mixed one again from home bargains or Morrisons at £1 a tin. A year ago my bedtime habit was going to bed with a glass of wine and a packet or two of crisps, now I go to bed with water and some fruit. Its just breaking bad habits and getting into new ones.

7 Exercise. I dont have time to exercise. Yes you do. There are workouts online that you can do in the comfort of your living room that take 20 mins to do and you only need to do them 3 times a week. My exercise routine has changed from a year ago. I now do something called HIIT which is high intensity interval training. Its horrible, its meant to be horrible, but it only takes 30 mins and you are done. And you only need to do it 3 times a week. If you google something called tabata you'll see what HIIT is. I did my metafit training in February this year. I was at my heaviest and my unfittest. I remember coming home, watching the instructor videos and thinking, I'll never teach that, Im too unfit. This is December and although I dont do metafit as a participant I do similar classes and I do teach it. Are there people in classes I go to who are thinner than me, yes, are they fitter than me, yes. But the difference in what I could do then to what I can do now is massive and thats with making a few changes to my diet and some exercise.

8 If you are going to train, look up articles about what you should be eating, pre and post training, its important. So is having rest days.

9 It is normal for weight to go up and down, very few people will lose weight and lose 2 or 3 pounds a week and never put weight back on. There are days where Ive exercised hard and eaten well and Ive woken up a kilo heavier, its not fat Ive put on, its water.

10. Dont diet. A diet suggests an end date and it also suggests a date when the diet will stop and you go back to eating what you were eating before. Its a healthy eating lifestyle. This is month 7 for me and there have been times where its been really tough, 7pm at my computer and wanting some junk food. I dont buy junk food, its the easiest way to cope with how I am as a person. But on the whole, over the time Ive been doing this, its not been that bad. Im 14kgs lighter than I was in May. Ive made a few changes to my lifestyle and I still have a long way to go.

11 There are lots of diet myths, find out what they are, again google will help. The one I see on my facebook page is, look at the big mac and fries I just had, but Im teaching a class later so I'll burn it off. You'll probably burn half of it off if that. Dont use exercise as a means to stuff your face, Ive been there and done that.

12 EPOC. Its short for exercise post oxygen consumption. Thats why high intensity interval training classes like metafit, circuits and tabata work. The way they work is you are working hard for a set period of time, lets say 30 seconds. You have incomplete rest, 10 seconds, this creates an oxygen debt and the only way the body can make that debt up is to burn calories. So you could burn 400 cals in the class and another 800 in the 24 hours after the class.

13 Kettlebells. You can get one cheap from ebay, amazon or play.com and there are youtube vids that will give you workouts. A kettlebell is a fantastic piece of kit, you can do a lot with it. I got a 5kg one in tesco for about 7 pounds. Im a gym goer and I need that discipline but if you want to exercise at home, you wont go far wrong with a kettlebell

14 Shakes that promise you that you will get thin, yes you will but only because the shakes are so low in cals you'll be eating far less calories than you should. Personally, I would avoid like the absolute plague, but those are just my own views

15 Home made soup. a six quid blender was the best purchase I ever made. Fills you up and theres loads of low calorie recipes out there.

And lastly, the only person who makes you think you cant do something is you. At the beginning of this year I wasnt lifting a 5kg weight, Im now deadlifting a 45kg weight, thats because I had someone who believed in me and who believed I could do it. And if you have a bad day, get on with it and get over it. I demolished a full family size bag of kettle crisps one saturday night a few months ago, just because they were there. In the old days that would have set me off on a crisp whats the point frenzy. I just got up the next day and got back to it.

calicocat

Monetistooshorttomention.......

Re: comfort drinking..

I think mine actually started little roots when my dog died 3 yrs ago, then things calmed down, then a catalogue of events happened...step mum dying, dad dying 3 months later and helping him through a vile horrid experience, family stresses attached to this with brother, losing job and ward I was used to 3 months after dad, getting job straight away with same trust but took me a while to feel right there (and still not sure I do), house hunting for months, buying house, moving. anything that went wrong with the house (which was nothing really looking back now) sent me over the edge and stress spiralled...now i worry about money to cover anything that may in the future need doing to the house.

Not sure what any trigger may be on any given day to be honest as I work night shifts and so to some extent my life doesn't have a big routine attached to it. I don't drink daily obviously as work 4 nights a week, for me it's more the one day a week I do drinking too much. Sometimes I think it's due to not doing enough, I can be a bit of a hermit and then probably get a bit bored or lonely at times as i'm not very proactive in general about meeting up with people. This is one huge area I plan to change this year as I do have friends (albeit in different categories) and plan to try to arrange where I do something once a month. This can become problematic due to my working hours though compared to other people's routines. But if I don't make an effort I will never change it will i.


Paulineb I too work within a field that can include too much alcohol or drugs (the end result) so know the pitfalls.

The becks blue is a good tip...I had that the other night and didn't know how little calories it has!! also agree with you about eat when hungry and not these ridiculous times set out by us at some point in the evolution of things.

I can ask my mum if she wants a coffee and she looks at her watch..???......your watch can't tell you if you are thirsty!


Exercise.....can be a bit of a stumbling block for me as I find it pretty tedious and boring. I used to do kick boxing and loved that as we had a right laugh doing it. I need to be either doing something like that, or walking with a friend etc and to be chatting about stuff, as if I pick something i'll get bored with i'll dump it.
Hmmmm...I will have to think about what I will do to get fitter. Of course if I didn't have to work for a living I would have a dog..exercise would be sorted.

Bad nasty work...lol.

To be honest cutting out the vino will be (taking a worst week or one where i've been out too) probably 2000 calories a week...if i've got it right that a bottle is say 1000.


I'm out for a meal tonight, then am cooking roast chicken etc tomorrow with a mountain of roasties.....after that i'm going to look at what i'm eating again......and freeze the cheese mountain I have in the fridge.

paulineb_2

Around 600 cals in a bottle of wine easily. Thats just an estimate, some are lower, some are higher. Higher the alcohol percentage, higher the calories.

Becks blue only has 0.05 per cent alcohol a bottle, same as kaliber. An ordinary bottle of becks has 100 cals a bottle.

Off for the last workout of 2013 and Im having a takeaway later and there will be chips. The difference between this year and last for me is that I didnt sit at christmas stuffing my face because it was christmas. Theres nothing wrong with that, but because I had been eating healthily I was thinking will I just have a couple of days off and eat a lot. In the end, I had a few chocs, a couple of glasses of perry and a curry and some chips.
Couldnt be bothered sitting working my way through a family sized bag of crisps just for the sake of it, the takeaway was enough of a treat.

On the my fitness pal you can log cals in and out, theres a database of food and alcohol with cal counts attached, its also free to use and you can download it on your iphone as well.

I know a lot of people have sworn by the hairy dieters cookbooks, they cook favourite dishes in a lower cal way. You can get them for the kindle as well.

[Deleted User]

Morning everyone, do you know what strikes me when I read through all your lovely supportive posts? It is that LB starting this thread for a specific reason has led to such warm and lovely things happening in lots of our lives, new friendships made, such clever ideas to overcome multitudinous problems, such sound strategies for coping with all and any problems in individual lives, such resolutions being made and plans for better lives and happier futures for so many of us. LB thank you for the original post, I'm sorry that you were feeling so sad at that time but just look at what you've achieved and look how many peoples lives are turned around because of it!!! Perhaps we should rename the thread 'Not Lonely any more, and having a lovely time', long may it continue you're all smashing folks!!! HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone, Lyn xxx.

poet123

What a lovely thread this is. Full of positivity. New Year is not my favourite time but it does give us all the impetus to reflect. My resolutions are very similar to those on here:

Cut down on food and stop the weight creep.
Take more exercise. That will probably be walking.
Lower the wine intake, it is a habit to have a glass with dinner, water will do just as well.
Stop buying stuff just because it is a bargain. Do I need it? Probably not!
Stop getting aggravated by the small stuff of life.
Cut down on the worrying, it isn't helpful.