Preparing your house for Christmas.

With less than one month to go to Christmas my thoughts have turned to preparing my house for the upcoming festivities.  I love the holidays, that holiday cheer that everyone has. It is defintely my favourite time of the year.  However, not only are my thoughts going towards putting up my Christmas decorations but I am also thinking about cleaning the house for the holiday period.  I suppose it is my version of a spring clean but a holiday clean.   So I have decided to plan everything out so that come Christmas week I don’t need to do too much other than the basic every day cleaning and enjoying the holidays.    So what’s on the to do list?

I am starting by listing each room in the house out on an excel spreadsheet, I don’t have a big house to clean so we are not talking major amount of rooms, but it is an average size house. 

Target date	Room
05/12/2012	kitchen
10/12/2012	Utility Room
10/12/2012	Hall / Stairs / Landing
12/12/2012	Living Room
14/12/2012	Tv Room
15/12/2012	Bedroom 1
17/12/2012	Bedroom 2
19/12/2012	Bedroom 3
20/12/2012	Bathroom

You can see from my grid above that I have set a target date to tackle each room on. This means that from 20/12/2012 I will have a perfect pristine house just in time for when those visitors start calling over. I won’t need to worry about opening a cupboard and finding something out of date, or opening another cupboard and items falling out on my head. 

My schedule is a little spread out and I would love to be done before 20/12/2012 but I will just have to see how it all works out.

Each week I will post an update on the big Christmas clean up and let you know how it goes.  I feel the most important rooms to start with are the Kitchen and the Utility room.  Starting with the kitchen will allow me to go through the cupboards and actually see what food is in there, what is still in date ( shameful face) and what I need to throw out or buy for the upcoming holidays.

I have scheduled my hall/stairs and landing and the living and tv rooms for the same days that I intend to put up my Christmas tree and decorations this means it will all be done in one day in each room and I will be stressed out in to when to put these things up when I don’t have a room I am happy.  I am hoping to have these rooms cleared out alittle before then as I have junk cupboards and drawers in there that I would dearly love to eradicate completely.  I may just be wishful thinking here but I think it is worth a go don’t you?

There are countless blogs out there that will help you become organised for the holiday period, to schedule your cooking, cleaning and baking.   Try popping over to some of them to get some fantastic ideas on how to arrange your rooms so that organisation becomes a key component to your holiday season with little stress and fuss.

Keeping the house clean during the holidays

Let’s start cleaning now so that we can enjoy the holiday season.

S

Organising My Weight Loss

You will remember last week I spoke about how I am struggling with my weight loss.  In fact right now I am going back to day one and starting all over again.  Not weight wise – weight wise I am still below goal (I hope!) but I know that I have gone above my own personal weight goal.  So I have decided to go right back and complete a cleansing and a reminder post of how I can get back on track.   I thought this might be useful for some of you out there also. 

Weight loss and organisation go hand in hand!

When you start any weight loss programme the first thing that you need to do is arm yourself with all the information that you require.  

Things you need are:

Your actual weight,

Pro points / tracking,

Renewed inspiration material,

Menu plans,

Exercise plan,

Your actual weight

This is one thing at this moment in time I do not know the answer too because I was too scared to go to my weight watchers meeting and get on the scales.  Yes I am a chicken!  There I said it!  Ok so as far as I know from my last weight watcher meeting I was 9 stone 10 pounds. I am hoping that I haven’t gone above it.  However in recent weeks I am eating – when I say eating it is more picking at food! I am annoyed at myself – in fact I am furious with myself.  Even when I am taking something out of the cupboard and actually eating it - I am beating myself up. Hence this getting back on track phase I am in right now.  So I need to know my actual weight – that will wait until my weight watchers meeting on Thursday – and if you don’t hear from me on twitter Thursday morning – give me a big shout out and telling off.

I weigh myself on my own weight watchers scales earlier in the week however I got conflicting results so I am wary on using it as an actual – first I was 9 stone 11 and then I was 9 stone 9 a few hours later.  So the actual weigh in is the one that counts for me.

Pro Points / Tracking

Knowing pro points in food that you regularly eat is half the battle – the other is having a pro points
(or points plus) calculator to hand.  How you want to record these points is entirely up to you but I use an app on my phone for both points and tracking.   I am in Ireland so weight watchers doesn’t have an Ireland app – so this works for me.

The Iwatchr app for the iphone is amazing.  You can calculate your points for both Europe and the US on it – there and then so you don’t need to bring the book with you.

You can also store in points of frequently used items so that you can reference them quickly and then add on to a daily log. Yes there is a daily log and you can also calculate the points that you have from exercise.

The phone app is great – as you can take it out in the supermarket and check the pro points of a product.  It is brilliant! When I first downloaded the app the next thing I did was go through the weight watchers book and added in the points of my frequently used foods.

Tracking is the best way to discover what you are eating and how many points you are taking each day.  So from today the point tracking starts –  I can no longer avoid it – it has to be done!  

Renewed inspiration material,

 I have spoken previously about my photograph that I use as inspiration – that needs to take front and centre in my mind.  My BFF also sent me a photo recently that really is worse than what I actually thought was my worst.  So I am off to print that now as inspiration and I am going to stick it on the inside of the biscuit cupboard also so that there is no avoiding it!  Never go back.

I also have some lovely pins over on Pinterest – why not follow me.  Take a look at them and take some that will help you get through as inspiration.

Menu plans

As I said at the start of this post – weight loss and organisation go hand in hand that is why planning your meals is very important.

Sit down at the start of the week or even the start of the day if you don’t have that much time and plan what you are going to eat for your dinner each week/day. I use dinner as my main - because for me that is the most pointful meal of the day.  From there I back track on my points for the day and divide out.

It is hard to plan out meals but if you can take some time today or this week do so – look at meals that you can have and look at the points.  Taking this little bit of time will mean the most to you in the long run!

Over the coming weeks I will add some of my favourite meals up here pointed out so that you can try them as well.

Exercise plan

Exercise is important – and it cannot be ignored when it comes to losing weight. I am still walking which is my exercise of choice.  But unfortunately my food choices are sabotaging my efforts with walking.  So hopefully getting back on track with my food will help me see a loss on the scales.  Remember that everyone can find time to fit exercise in to their day  - all it takes is twenty minutes a day –  remember this can even be fitted in to your lunch hour!  It really is that simple!

I promise that I will keep everyone updated on my weight loss over on twitter – please follow me to keep up to date and I will post another update here soon.  Hopefully all good news.

Do you have any tips or words of hope for me during this struggle with my weight loss!  Please leave them in the comment section on the blog or on twitter.

Stay strong

S

Weight Watchers - I'm Struggling!

At any given stage with weight loss, people struggle and at the moment I am struggling. I am currently at home and not working which means I am constantly walking to the cupboard and taking either a biscuit or a bar a chocolate. Anything that has sugar in it. This is not good. 

It is boredom pure and simple. 

I am constantly thinking of ways to keep myself busy.  This blog being one of them. I am not sure if any one really reads this page – I know I am getting hits each day but if anyone is reading I ain’t too sure.   But this is taking my time up each day and keeping me busy so for me its all good and if anyone out there is listening, well thank you and please take some time to connect with me on twitter or email.

Outside of my blog I can tell you that I have the cleanest house in Ireland.  In fact if I take out the vacuum cleaner another time I may not have any carpet on the floor. 

I am still walking – my exercise of choice – but I am finding it hard to stay about from the biscuit cupboard.  It is soooo all in my mind.  Boredom and hunger are easily confused.

When in work, I noticed that I had my scheduled break times – I always knew when it was 1030am as my tummy told so from hunger.  I always knew when lunch time was approaching – again my tummy told me so.

But when you are at home – your brain has more time to think and is not distracted by my usual work load – so I think my body is taking my mental slow down as being near that break time it is so used to having.  Hence getting hungry.  Outside of the above I am not doing much. All my friends and family are working so I am spending most of the day on my own.  This in itself is quite depressing which is why I am trying to fill my day as much as possible. 

I was last at a weight watchers meeting three weeks ago – I was up on the scales and while I wasn’t thrilled at that I wasn’t depressed from it and I thought hey I can get that down.  It has now been three  weeks since I stood on the scale and I am terrified.  Absolutely terrified. Actually beyond terrified. It is scary to be scared of a scales and in all fairness I know from my three years in weight watchers a scales is not that terrifying.  

We must accept what the scales said whether it is up or down – and we must treat each day as a new day and each weigh in as a new start.  So tomorrow is weigh in day and I am terrified. But stay in touch with me and we will see how we will overcome whatever the scales may say tomorrow.  I will post updates on twitter.

 

They say that the best thing that you can do is to drink water.  I am not a big water drinker – worse so since I am out of work.   But I am trying – ok well I have just taken out one bottle of water – but it is a start right. Water is not only good for your complexion but it is also good to make you feel full and not eat as much.  So the water drinking starts today! No more avoidance.  I am going to deal with this little podgy belly and this small thing called a weighing scales head on – and you know what ... I am gonna beat it. 

Do you have any tips and tricks to help ease this bad streak that I am going through at the moment –connect me with me on twitter or via email.

S

What exercise are you doing to stay in shape?

When I first joined Weight Watchers I dreaded the word exercise.  I had seen people who were much skinnier and fitter than me going to the gym, running or walking to keep fit.  At that point I felt like I was too fat to do any of that.   But it was also at that point that I realised everyone has to start somewhere.   So I did.

My exercise of choice is walking.  I love getting out in to the fresh air putting on my music and just walking.   It feels so invigorating after a day in the office to come home and put on my work out gear and go.  Whilst out walking I find that my thoughts often wander to what went on during the day in work, replaying a discussion in my head with a friend or family member.  But most importantly I find it very good to take a moment to think why the hell I am doing this.  Why I have decided on a cold Irish Winters night to go for a walk – well it is simple my health. 

I have tried many sports since I starting with Weight Watchers, some because I have always wanted to and I found confidence to do so when I started losing weight.  Others because I thought they would be fun.

I tried many times when I was younger to learn how to swim – and my new found confidence of losing weight helped me get back in the pool and learn how to swim.  I enjoyed it and it was great exercise and it also helped me achieve a dream – being able to swim. I am now not so scared to get in the pool when I go on holidays.

For fun i joined a salsa class – it was one of those salsa to lose weight classes. I enjoyed the salsa part but the instructor was an utter tyrant and took the fun out of the class for me so i finished the course and put it down to experience.

No matter what type of exercise I tried the one thing that I have loved and enjoyed doing is putting on my running shoes and putting in my iPod and just walking.  And you know what it’s free.  I am a great believer in fresh air being brilliant for your mind, body and soul.  This way it is.   

I also find that walking fits better in to my lifestyle in that you are not stuck to set regime – you can go whenever you have some spare time in comparison to a class whereby you are stuck to a timetable.  I often see people when I am driving to work at 0730 in the morning and they are out walking as it is only the time of the day that they can get to fit this in to their schedule.  Or on my way home from work at 1730 people are out walking as well.

I tend to go walking about 1830 – you see thats the thing it doesn’t matter what time of the day it is – you can always go walking.  You don’t have to wait for someone to be free to join you – you don’t have to wait for space in a class. You can just go! 

I am now at a point that I never thought I would be at - I miss when I don't go for a walk. I miss when I have not done any exercise at all in my day.  Thats a good sign and a sign that I am fit and healthy and in a better place than I was three years ago when to walk to the bathroom was a chore and I figured that was exercise lol

I would love to try out some more exercise classes – but my schedule doesn’t allow for that.  But for some of you out there classes may just suit.  What classes are you currently taking to help lose weight?

Inspire me to try something new by leaving a comment below.

S

A moment of thoughtfulness

Learn how to relax and stress less