This is still me ❤️

I do love a list. I actually bought a book last year called The 52 list Project, which I haven't got round to using, I have an app on my phone for my shopping list, I even have a list of things I want to write about. I think its stems from my mum, she always wrote a to do list of the housework etc and its such a great satisfaction to cross things off. Back in 2009, I decided to write a bucket list of things I wanted to do before I was 30 which I came across recently, I realised that I had actually crossed quite a few off, not necessarily before I was 30 but still. Some of them I looked at and wondered why they were on there in the first place . I've broke it down into sections below: Things I have managed to cross off the list. Things I still want to do. Things I have removed off the list New things to add to the list. 1. Been there, done that. Go to a football match Go to Paris Learn to shoot Go camping Go on a gondola in Venice Visit the Grand Canyon Eat in Dans le Noir Tr...

Well that weekend went pretty quickly, but I have news. We have set our wedding date. Hurrah! We went to view a venue on Saturday and it was perfect, my boyfriend wanted a bit of a longer engagement but I don't want to wait too long, so we finally agreed on next May. Not only does this mean LOTS of planning, although we're keeping it pretty simple, it also means lots of weight loss is required. I realised, after reading a few people's reviews on lean in 15, that people had weighed & measured themselves at the beginning & end of the 3 month plan. Dammit! I had stayed away from the sad step since well before Christmas, when I realised I had put on 2 stone in the last 3 years. I got up at 5:30am this morning to get ready and after trying to put it off for about 10 minutes by tidying up random things in the kitchen, I reluctantly pulled the scales out and crept on. 5lbs I have put on 5lbs!! My heart sank. I then got out the tape measure, yep, measurements were more too...

Today is a new day. Thank God. After yesterday's post, a good friend gave me her honest opinion of the situation with my boyfriend and I realised that he is not totally to blame and I am certainly not blameless. One of my best skills at work is communication, I have to deal with a lot of different people and always get good feedback on my communication skills. I also like to think I'm good at this with friends as well, I'm good at staying in touch with people and rarely fall out with people, so why am I so terrible at it in my relationship? After yesterday barely speaking all day I was still frustrated and angry. I had plans to meet a friend for dinner and he was playing football. I wasn't planning on drinking as I wanted to be healthy and also because I was so annoyed, but this was also the reason that I wanted to drink. I wanted to get away from the angry tearful feeling, so I went to lunch with a friend and had a couple of glasses of red. Ooh that felt better. Mist...

Am I being unreasonable? Last night I had a complete meltdown. As I mentioned before, my boyfriend has children who we have every other weekend. Unless we have planned to do something, they like to spend pretty much the entire weekend playing the computer, which incidentall y is in my living room. If it's not the computer it's watching football, this leaves me four options: Join them - sometimes I do sit there reading or just feigning interest just to be party to it but it gets tedious really quickly and too noisy to concentrate on reading Go out - then I feel guilty that I'm not around if they do decide to do something. Clean the house - there's only so much cleaning you can do and as soon as I clean it it's a mess again. Go and sit in the bedroom - watch my own TV in my room circa 1995 As you can guess, I'm normally sat for 75% of those weekends in my bedroom, like a 15-year-old. At first I didn't mind but now it's kind of become the norm and I'...

I am so relieved that Moany Monday is over, it didn't really get any better until I got home.
 I had to do the trek to get my car, which involved a train journey so slow I'm sure I could have walked quicker, at one point it sat for 10 minutes just outside the station I needed to get off at and I had no phone signal to call my taxi driver to let him know, I felt like summoning my inner hulk and tearing the doors apart.
 Then, what should have been a 5 minute cab journey took 25 minutes, I would have walked but the car was in a pub car park in the middle of nowhere. I was sorely tempted to go straight in the pub and order myself a bottle of wine.  I didn't, I got in my car and drove home, cursing any driver that got in my way.
 But enough of that, as I said moany Monday is over and I have woken up with a much more positive outlook, much to my boyfriends delight, I'm not sure he could handle another day of it.
 I woke up at 5:30 this morning with the headache that's be...

Monday is back and I'm pretty sure it's punishing me for being naughty over the weekend.
 Firstly I woke up thinking it was Sunday, then quickly realised it was Monday & I had left my car at the pub yesterday after lunch with my friend, it seemed like such a good idea at the time, but now, in the cold light of day, I realised I would have to faff about on a Monday night going to pick it up.
 I went to make my lunch (chicken with chipotle paste & salad for those of you who are interested, I am now quite addicted to chipotle paste) whilst doing this I dropped pretty much everything I picked up and banged every part of my body on some cupboard or drawer.
 I took my bruised body upstairs with my hot water and lemon, careful not to trip and pour it over myself, switched on the TV, ready to watch Good Morning Britain - I find Piers Morgan strangely entertaining (I know) - only to find the sky Q mini box wasn't connecting (again) I had already reset the bloody thing twice ...

After wobbling on the wagon on Friday, yesterday I came completely off and got run over by it. 
I started off so well, according to the regime, I should have reduced carbs until after I had exercised. Having not done a food shop since the following weekend, I didn't have many options, so I settled for 5 slices of Bernard Matthews turkey breast & a rather brown banana, which was actually surprisingly filling. My boyfriend was out taking one of the children to football so I begged him to get some eggs so that I didn't succumb to another sausage roll from the bakers, which is what they were all having. 
He returned with the much sought after eggs but I was so preoccupied with making sure I had everything I needed on my shopping list that I forgot to have lunch & set off to Sainsbury's lunchless. 
By the time I got halfway round my head was pounding and I felt really weak. I just wanted to get out of there, but I needed to go to Argos to pick up the weights & benc...

The dentist has a lot to answer for. Not only was it a traumatising situation, it also led me to fall off my health wagon. As you know, I treated myself to a sausage baguette yesterday (maybe I said roll before, lets just call it a "baton") The fun didnt stop there, I had an omelette for lunch, as per the #leanin15 cookbook, then went onto five pieces of fudge, four jaffa cakes and several ritz crackers. This episode of bingeing exhausted me and I fell asleep, whilst watching a B horror movie. I then woke up just before the boyfriend got home, cooked him pork chops with creamy greens (and a secret side of mash potato, whcih I wasnt supposed to have. Sleeping is apparently not cardio)  A while later I have sucumbed to several heaped teaspoons of Nutella, this was not going well.
I felt groggy and sluggish, this must be all the wine I drank the previous night, damn those grapes!!! I am now avoiding wine. 14 hours later, I meet a friend for lunch and ordered a bottle of sav bl...

I  had to face a rather big fear of mine today. The dreaded dentist.  I haven't been for five years, I know shocking right.  Obviously no one actually likes going to the dentist, but I have an irrational fear that makes me avoid it altogether. The last time I went it, one of my back teeth had broken, I didn't go then, I went a few months later when it started becoming unbearably painful, I had to have root canal. During the procedure I flinched and ended up swallowing some weird orange stuff they were using and it ended up coming out of my nose for the rest of the day, it was vile and I felt very sorry for myself. This being my last memory of visiting the dentist, I am sure you can understand why I had avoided it. I have unintentionally given myself two days of terror as yesterday I had to go for a smear test, which is never pleasant, especially since the last 2 years the results have come back positive and I have had to go to hospitals for a biopsy. Thankfully, both ti...

Last night I had a rather disturbing dream. I dreamt that I was pregnant! In my dream I was shocked but ok with it and more concerned about not being able to drink at a party I was going to. This would not be my reaction in real life, I would be totally freaked out! Babies or not on my agenda anymore, they were once, up until I was around 30 I guess. As a teenager I had a life plan, get married at 25, have four children and be a stay at home mum, I got married at 27, to the wrong man, I knew that having children with him would be a mistake and we broke up, as did my life plan, which was already 2 years behind schedule. Having never been single since I was 15, I partied hard for a few years, I discovered a side of myself I never knew existed. I experimented, I met lots of new, different people and I felt like for the first time in my life, I was really living. I didn't even do anything drastic, I just did what I wanted, I had no one to answer to. I had moved back into my parents ho...

I feel like I am finally in a good place.  After the last few years of ups and downs, my head feels straight and I feel like my life is about as together as it has been since I was a  kid.  There is just one thing niggling away at me and it cannot be ignored. My weight. Its something I haven't been happy about for a fair few years now, more noticeably since meeting my boyfriend and getting into my mid thirties (lets just blame the boyfriend though). As I have said to you before, I like food, not just because I am a greedy pig, I love going out for dinner, I love cheese & crackers with red wine on a Sunday night, I love a huge bar of chocolate when I am feeling hormonal. I also love booze, I love it a bit too much sometimes. I think, as a lot of people do, I drink to get drunk, not so I can act the twat or turn into a monster, both of which could potentially happen, sometimes both, but to feel relaxed,  feel confident and mostly to not be the only sober person as ...

  I woke up the next morning full of apprehension, today was going to be make or break, I was starting my anti-depressants . I hated taking tablets, a headache would have to be pretty bad for me to reach for the paracetamol, I don't know where it came from, maybe the evil doctor that used to stick a spoon down the back of my throat during my examinations as a child brought on this fear of pills, especially the big ones. Oh I hadn't even thought to look at the size of them!! Luckily, they were a normal size, which I swallowed with a fizzy drink (the bubbles stop you feeling it go down - little tip there for you.) The doctor had gone through the side effects but I never usually suffered from any of those things, that just didn't happen to me. I got into work and was feeling an unusual lack of appetite, maybe it was the anxiety of the morning and taking the first tablet, oh well, I certainly wont starve without breakfast, in fact I could do with losing a few pounds. By luncht...

  I had entered the ballot for the London Marathon and somehow got in. I had mixed emotions about doing it, I thought it would be good for me to have something positive to focus on but also I was bricking it. I'd been pretty good for the first few months training, I barely drank alcohol too but despite my seemingly healthy lifestyle, I kept getting ill. I joked with people saying my body needs alcohol as it seemed whenever I went without it for too long, I got a cold or a virus, things I had never been prone to before plus my libido was at an all time low, another thing that was out of character. I was hoping that all this exercise would boost my mood, as I kept reading articles saying that it would but if I'm honest, it didn't really I was either at a complete high or I was at an all time low and the highs were few and far between. After the marathon was over, the lows got worse and worse, at first I thought it was because of the build up and now it was over, kind of like...

I  was unsure when I first met with the counsellor, she reminded me a bit of a headmistress type. The sessions were at her house and it was in a cosy sectioned off corner of her living room. She asked me why I was there and I started to explain that I had been told I had anxiety, done the CBT etc but now it seems to have come back with a vengeance and I wanted to try to figure out if there was an underlying cause or trigger, after my explanation she just stayed silent, so I felt obliged to fill the silence and didn't shut up for the rest of the hour, as with the CBT sessions, I felt lighter and like I it had been worth doing. We decided on fortnightly sessions and I booked in for my next appointment. I'll be completely honest, I wasnt sure if she was right for me, I felt a little bit like she was judging me which I never had with the CBT therapist, with her I felt like I was having a conversation with a friend but with my counselor, although she never really said much, I just...

Even after the love has gone. Part of my anxiety means that I cannot be late. This is such a major dilemma in my relationship, as my boyfriend has no concept of time whatsoever, often leaving home at the time he’s supposed to be somewhere, I on the other hand like to be at least 10 minutes early, I allow for traffic etc. If I am late it sends me into a meltdown and it's caused so many arguments between us. My punctuality went in my favour on the day I went to see the solicitor as I couldn’t bloody find it. I walked up and down the high street about 3 times before noticing it nestled between Lloyd’s Bank and the Pound Shop. I pressed the buzzer, no answer. Barry pops up in my head! “What if they have mixed up my appointment?” “What if he’s off sick today?” Arrrrrrgh. Luckily before I could respond to Barry or talk to myself in the high street, two people arrived at the door with coffee. “Hi, I have an appointment with David Beckham at 9 am” bless the girl for not even flinchi...

The thing with anxiety is, that it’s always there, it’s never going away. The techniques I learned at my CBT sessions are great and do work, but you do have to work at it. I got a bit lazy. I finished the therapy in March, carried on doing the minimum (meditation etc) then there was a birthday and then we were off on holiday, great right? Not for Barry . I was feeling insecure, so instead of lying by the pool relaxing, I was comparing myself to everyone around the pool, thinking that my boyfriend probably wished I looked better. Why don’t I take care of myself more? All this whilst sipping several Pina Coladas I might add. I hated myself. All these negative thoughts I was having about myself were draining me, looking back now, I can see I was slowly slipping into a hole. I tried to put a brave face on but inside I was feeling quite sad, I put it down to hormones and got on with the holiday. About 6 weeks later, I received a letter from my ex-husband’s solicitor officially starti...

Mental health is so confusing There are going to be a lot of acronyms flying around in this post, so please try to bear with me. So I had booked my lunchtime appointment with the CBT therapist (cognitive behavioural therapist) I was nervous and wasn’t sure what to expect. I had only told my boyfriend and the friend who had told me about CBT, I didn’t want anyone to know, I was quite embarrassed, I wasn’t mentally stable! The session was in an old fashioned building, hidden down a little side street in the City of London, I had to climb about 100 stairs, I was out of breath by the time I got to the first floor and all hot and flustered. I sat in the waiting area, half of me eager to rid myself of the craziness, the other half wanting to run out of the door and hide from it all. Then my therapist came out, she was lovely and put me at ease straight away. I explained that I thought I had OCD and why I thought that, I explained my temperament, the constant worrying and she told me th...

So its halfway into January, the regime isn't going too badly, although I did have Burger & Chips washed down with several glasses of wine last night (  I was celebrating viewing a potential wedding venue) and now have a doughnut in front of me. Apart from that its going well. I've decided to try The Body coach lean in 15 plan , it's actually quite easy and the meals I've made so far are really nice, although I currently have things in my kitchen cupboards that I'd never even seen before, such as Fennel. WTF is that all about? It was actually quite nice. In all seriousness, I need to lose weight. After I separated from ex 8 years ago I was so slim, a size 10-12 could literally wear anything I wanted, but it's slowly piled on and I am now 3 stone heavier, hardly any of my clothes look decent on me and I feel awful. I have two weddings this year, one of which I am bridesmaid for and I am the biggest bridesmaid by far. So now is a good a time as any for a cha...