Friday 1 April 2011

SWeating in fear

Well fa(c)t fans, in my first week on SW I lost 1lb. On the one hand that’s not a stellar loss for the first week on a diet where the sneaky change of tactics is supposed to through your body into a panic in which it jettisons ballast. On the other hand, I ate out (albeit in carefully selected places and choosing with the SW ethos in mind) three times and we had a takeaway. And I’m bound to have made mistakes as some of it is very confusing to the uninitiated – despite careful tutelage from Claire.

SW is a curious mixture of the liberal and the strict: there is a lot of lassitude with the long list of things that are fine to eat but anything that isn’t ‘free’ you pay a heavy price for. I’m feeling my way round it and am curious to see what a stellar week will produce but it won’t be this week. Oh no. Because this week I have Cream Tea of Terror. We are taking our mothers to the place we’ve booked for our wedding as a mothering Sunday treat. It seemed like a great idea back when we booked it. As it gets closer, we view this with trepidation. I am worried because SW takes a very dim view of anything with flour and sugar. I am going to enjoy it because I’d be stupid not to but I have been stockpiling syns and am anxious as to what the effect on SoD will be on Wednesday. Because I still haven’t lost all my Christmas weight – a month to put on 10lbs and three months later I still haven’t lost it all. What a depressing statistic.

Bf is worried because he fears this will be the point when his mother starts insisting we invite 3rd cousins, 8 times removed and ex-next door neighbours from decades past. Of course we won't be inviting these people but he's not relishing the emotional blackmail that is likely to ensue.

And is it just me? I bet it is. Everytime I look at a chair cover, I think Klu Klux Klan. Yes, even with the sashes (KKK beauty queens?!). I don't think I want chair covers. I don't think they fool anyone anyway - I bet people know there are chairs under there.

I have cycled twice this week and today (the second occasion) I really didn’t enjoy it. There was a stiff headwind and my legs felt weary only 5 mins in. But I told myself that I must be burning more calories because it WAS so hard. And there were rewards – 2 lovely magnolia trees, a cycle path on Southwark Bridge which has been shut for 2 years was finally open and I was transported to extreme levels of bliss when I witnessed a police officer reprimanding (and hopefully fining) a motorcyclist who’d been pelting down the bicycle lane on Upper Thames Street – HA!

4 comments:

claire said...

Stick at it lass! It will work for you I am sure. I never had huge first week losses and got really disheartened while all around me, my friends were losing much faster. But they fell off the wagon, being all or nothing people, they went back to 'nothing'. Now i've lost three stones and they are back at the start. Perserverence.

Also - you normally only lose a lot when you start a diet after eating 'normally' - you have been dieting before. So 1lb is very good i think. There's no huge shock to your body because you've been dieting for so long.

It's funny. I never saw SW as being a punitive diet, or one that disallowed treats. From doing diets my whole life where everything had to be counted, to moving to a diet where the vast majority of foods were free and unlimited felt like a relief, a total relief. And there are lots of low syn treats, or seemed to be.

Agreed on the chair covers. A bizarre means of wringing more money out of brides and grooms.

Enjoy that cream tea!

Seren said...

Good for you - a pound loss is fantastic especially in conjunction with eating out and takeaways!

Oh, and am totally with you on the chair covers thing - hate, hate, hate them. I just don't get why anyone would want to cover a chair.

Sx

Becca said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Becca said...

Good work on the loss! The thing to remember is that switching diets will never have that first week in the same way that going from being a non-dieter to a dieter will, so 1lb is fab.

It took me a while to fully understand the "meal off" approach with SW, because it seemed like just eating what you want. The reality is - decide what you'll have, calculate the syns, and don't have any more syns than you've said you will. Just be realistic and gentle with yourself.

As I said to Claire, SW is the only diet with which I actually know people who have lost significant amounts of weight. That works as a testimony for me.