Think it's time to take myself into my own hands and give myself a severe talking to.

Am back on Induction proper today (Day ONE). I've tried Atkins before and was really succesful, losing a total of about 19" all over and over a stone in weight. Then Christmas happened and there was a bit of a mix up between the 2 sets of parents.

First MY mum fed us Christmas dinner, then we went to HIS mum's to discover that she'd laid on a feast, too. Never seen so much food in my life!

Being one of these who guilt trips you if you don't do what she wants, (but very nicely) we ate a small dinner there. With wine.

Another meal on Boxing Day with his Dad's side of the family and we were stuffed. =sigh=

Life became very hectic then, I moved house and my boyfriend moved in with me. So I've been cooking "proper" meals at night, as opposed to whatever I fancied, Atkins-wise. Money's a little tight at the moment, so cheap alternatives like rice, pasta and spuds seem the order of the day.

That's got to stop. We've both put on weight since moving in together and I think half of the problem is when we eat.

I work shifts, so my time scales are all over the place and he commutes 150 miles every day to work, so is up at 5:30 and home at 19:30 at the earliest. When I'm on Lates, I don't get home until 19:45, so then I have to cook dinner and we don't sit down to eat until 2100ish.

SO...enough of the ramblings....

DAY ONE....

Breakfast was good : 1 x bacon, 1 x fried egg and 2 x slices black pudding.

Have just been shopping and purchased 2 cucumbers, some spinach, diced chicken, cabbage and bits for a grand total of £5.54.

Have swimming again tonight - one thing I truly love, but it doesn't seem to tire me at all. I think I have a lot of stamina... Last night was my first night swimming, in fact first night properly exercising in months and I did 50 lengths without a single break.

Tonight I'm going to try for 60, if the pool doesn't become overly crowded with children.

Then it'll be home, feed the cats and let them out, check on the rabbits, sneakily check on the baby rabbits that were born on Sunday (against my wishes, I might add! LOL Thought I had 2 females...well they proved me incorrect on that score by having 4 offspring. Then a month later I found another litter of 6, unfortunately all dead. Then we had major upheaval in the housing situation - my rent ran out on my current place, my mortgage had not gone through for the new place and we ended up living at my parents' for 2 weeks. Then we booked the daddy in and had him snipped. And now 2 weeks later we find more babies, so he must have sneaked a "last chance" in! )

After checking on those, I'll start tea. Not sure what we're having...forgot to check the freezer before leaving. Might do some steaks that are in there, if I can defrost them in time.

And here's where I fall down...vegetables. I get so bored of beans and cabbage and salad. But that's probably what we'll have with the steaks.

Another of my stumbling blocks is lunch. I never seem to get round to doing a packed lunch at night but am going to try really hard to do it, especially as my other half told me he misses not having one. Yes, he could make it himself, but health & nutrition would make way for an apple and 3 bags of crisps!

Anyway, this is just the start of me being accountable to me. *I* need to lose the weight, so *I* need to take charge of it. And it should be a doddle, given that *I*'m the one that does the cooking!

We shall see.

Have had 2 litres of water thus far today, so another 1 at least to go.

LOL about the rabbits

I'm sure it's not funny to you, but it's funny to read.

You sound like you're getting plenty of exercise. Swimming is relaxing, but one of the sports that I've never really mastered, so I'm impressed.

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Tina

Hi Tina! Thanks for stopping in.

The rabbit situation is kind of funny, I guess...sneakey blighters! Havoc is a good mum which makes it easier - I don't have to worry about them and indeed the first lot she had underneath the hutch whilst they were in the shed for winter. It was only a small shed, about 4.5 feet by 4 feet and the hutch is 4 feet x 3 feet, so I put the hutch on blocks to give them under, in and on to run about in. First I knew of the babies was when one peeked out from underneath and I thought it was a rat!

We've named him Chris, after Christopher Columbus as he's the one that's always into everything and has to test his boundaries. We built them a wonderful run a couple of weeks ago - it's about 14 feet long by 7 feet wide, so plenty of space for them to run about in. Made a door out of a thick piece of trellising so that I or Steve could go in and feed them, clean out the hutches easily etc and all in all, we felt pretty proud of it.

Inside having tea about an hour later, I happened to glance out of the patio windows to see this little white furrball bouncing happily along the fence at the back of the garden.

Ran outside with Steve, caught the pesky ball of fluff and put him back in the run. We started looking for a hole through which he could escape...nothing. Looked up and he was out again!

Caught him again, after checking that he was solid and couldn't ooze through the chicken wire and plomped him back in the run. Stood there and watched him.

Chris, with a knowing smirk on his face, coolly started nibbling the grass with a "What?" expression all over him. So we moved out of his line of sight. Sure enough a few seconds later, he moves over to the trellis door, which has gaps of about 2.5 inches square and simply walks through it.

We had to emergency nail 2 pieces of wood across the lower part of the door in order that he couldn't do it again!

He's also the cat-scarer. I've got 3 cats, well 4, technically, but one's doing duty as a rabbiter with my parents and they all hunt rabbits - very well. They successfully dropped the wild rabbit population in the fields at my parents to a manageable level and I was a bit concerned with how they'd react to the babies.

Jamie saw them first and went into "oooh...dinner!" pose, all hunkered down and staring....bit of a bum wiggle and a creep forward....freeze.....stare.....bum wiggle....more creeping.... Leapt onto the fence post and down into the run with the babies. All 4 of them ran over to him to give him bunny hugs and the look on his face as he went from a standing start to jumping back over a 4foot fence was hysterical.

Sneaked a glance at the new babies yesterday and one had moved out of the nest slightly, presumably when (s)he was feeding and Havoc moved off. They're about 4" long and at least 3 of them. Still pink, hairless and blind, but ther are only 4 days old, so we'll allow them that. Further updates as they grow. Think I've found homes for 2 of them when they're ready, in about 8 weeks, which is good.

So last night....Went swimming and did my 50 lengths again, took me a bit longer as there were a couple of children learning to swim and they were going across the pool, so every now and then I had to stop and tread water to allow them to pass. Can't go tonight as I have to take Chaos to the vets to have his stitches removed and everything checked to make sure that he's OK.

When I got home, I made a chicken curry with the remainder of the chicken that I cooked on Sunday. Sauce was 9.7g carbs per 100g, so I reckon I had about 15 - 18g with the portion that I ate. Put in a red pepper, spinach, onion and some carrots. Did Steve some fried mushrooms...can't stand the smell of cooking 'shrooms! LOL.

Steve was late home as he didn't leave work until half 5, meaning that he missed a few trains. Finally made it home by 2015 - signalling problems in MK made the journey a lot longer than it should have been too.

Was very tired and went to bed at 10. Up at 5:30 for work, though.

The chicken curry sounds good - how are you doing with food the rest of the day?

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Tina

Hmmm..I replied to this...but it seems to have vanished... Bizarre...

Have been drinking my water and not doing too badly. Today's breakfast was a lump of cucumber, Lunch was a handful of nuts. Terrible I know, but one of the baby rabbits died this morning and I'm not feeling that fussed about eating. The other 2 are still going strong and fingers crossed that they continue to do so.

Not a lot else to report - have lost 4lbs so far, which is nice.

There's a note somewhere that explains why posts between 3 -31 and 4-4 dissapeared. Hopefully, they'll be back soon.

Sorry to hear about the baby rabbit, but glad to hear that you're making progress.

Tina

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Tina

Hmm...well it's Good Friday @ 20 past 9...and it's been a stressful last few days.

Firstly Runty One died on Tuesday, then on Wednesday night we noticed that Silver baby rabbit wasn't looking very well and spent nearly 4 hours with him trying to keep him warm and even nipped to Asda's to purchase some paediatric medicine to give to him. Finally got to bed at half 1 Thursday morning to get up again at half 5 for Mr Mice_Elf to go to work...

Unfortunately Silver one had died and now Black one was looking poorly. He lasted until half 11 Thursday morning. Very very sad day. Mr Mice_Elf stayed home as he was very upset and I was very upset and basically neither of us went to work.

We buried the small babies and put fruit trees over them, to try to get some life from death.

Then at half 8 last night, Mr Mice_Elf's boss rings him to tear him off a strip because boss-man had decided to ALSO take an impromptu day off, which basically meant that there had been no IT Project Support at a major bank in London all day.... OOOOPS. So anyway, upshot of that conversation was that Mr Mice_Elf was sacked and not to bother turning up on Tuesday. (Monday is another bank holiday here...)

Money being quite tight as it is, this turned an already upsetting and stressful day into a far more upsetting and worrying day. We worked out that on my salary alone we could pay all the bills and be left with about ?40 a week as "play" money. *sigh*

So another late night for us. Then this morning both mobiles went off at the same time. Mine was my mum and Mr Mice_Elf's was his boss....apologising for his outburst and saying that Mr Mice_Elf *did* still have his job. Mr M_E said that he wasn't sure if he wanted it at which Mr Boss Man became EVER so persuasive! LOL!

Apparently Boss-man's wife had had a stand up row with Boss-Man and called him all sorts of names and a few home truths and Mr Boss-man saw the stupidity in sacking the one IT Project employee he had. I think it's done some good though as Boss-man will have to think about what he's going to say in the future as he knows that Mr M_E isn't fussed about whether he stays there or not.

So....upshot is that he still has his job (and wage) until May when the contract expires anyway. He's looking for jobs as I type. It's a 150 mile one-way trip every day for him with a 14 hour working day, so another job closer to home will be ideal.

Today we also had Mr M_E's family up to see the house and for a meal, which I'm afraid was chili con carne with rice. :( It was cheap and quick, purchased last night, based on the thought that we only had one salary coming in and needed to really cut down on expensive meats.

So yes, Easter Weekend has been absolutely useless, Atkins-wise. *sigh*

AAAAAAAAnyway...tomorrow's another day - right? LOL

Soooooooooooo sorry to hear about you rabbit's!!

Hope your feeling better!!! ((hugs))

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Old age ain't no place for sissies.
-Bette Davis-..
215/?/165 I Can Do This!!!
3/15 192 - 4/12 186 - 4/18 185 - 10/14 184

Wow! Sounds like you're really having a stressful day! Hope that things are looking up for you soon.

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Tina

Happy Easter!!!!

Hope you have a Great Day!!!

__________________
Old age ain't no place for sissies.
-Bette Davis-..
215/?/165 I Can Do This!!!
3/15 192 - 4/12 186 - 4/18 185 - 10/14 184

Thanks Febe and hope you had a wonderful Easter too!

I'm starting again...again...again today. Didn't have a very Atkins friendly weekend, but I'm not too disheartened - we acheived a lot over the break and tbh cooking wasn't on the menu....as it were...

I keep meaning to try the Mock Danish for breakfast too, as that is where I fall down a lot.

So...it's 12 noon, 1 1/2 litres down, 3 hours left of work...I'm going to try to get at least another 1 1/2 litres in before I finish for the day and then home to cook.....something...

B = nothing
L = some slices of gammon & handful blanched almonds.
D = rest of gammon, cauliflower cheese & cucumber.

I *need* to get some more vegetables in the house, but to do so, I *need* to get paid! Spent just over ?100 at a DIY shop yesterday. Don't really have a lot to show for it, either and it came as a bit of a shock, but as one room really needs doing before we can finish moving into it and getting the rest of the house sorted, it had to be done.

I get paid on Thursday though, which is good.

Hey I just saw that you are from coventry. that is so neat because that is where I was born. My parents adopted me there when my dad was station in england. I have only been there once since then and that was on my senior trip in 1994. It was so neat seeing the place where you were born
jennifer

Small world, eh? Would you ever come back here? We only moved to Coventry 2 months ago - it's now the 5th largest shopping town in Britain! And we can well believe it. There're shops everywhere. It's really quite handy!

Yesterday went well...Tea ended up being some turkey strips and buttered green beans, which were really nice. Finished sanding down the walls & ceiling of the 3rd bedroom, so it's ready to paint when we get home tonight. Going to buy the shelves for it as well after work - Mr M_E has already left work - he was allowed a half day, so should be back up here by 3pm, which is great.

Once the shelves are up, we can move stuff back from the 2nd bedroom, to free that up as we have the guest bed arriving on Saturday along with guests, although not together...and no space to put it in! And as one of them is pregnant, I don't think she'd appreciate sleeping on the floor, somehow!

So a busy time. Weighed myself this morning and am back to 208, so 4 lbs lost in 2 days - must have been water weight, I guess. Not claiming it just yet, though - need to make sure it stays off. My jeans are fitting better now, though, so it's a start.

Feeling much more positive today, despite having just worked out my finances! LOL. Ach, we'll get there. Going food shopping tonight - just a little though as I don't have anything left in the freezer at all, so we're getting enough to last until Monday, when the farm shop has a meat special! It's excellent. Last time I picked up 2lbs gammon for ?2.99, 5 good thick steaks for ?3.49 and 10 Cumberland sausages (no filler) for ?1.99. REALLY cheap and EXCELLENT quality. Each of the above did at least 2 meals, 2 packups and bits for breakfast, so it's really handy on the wallet.

Drank 3 1/2 litres of water yesterday...only up to 1 so far today, but plenty of time left. For some reason I tend to sip in the mornings and guzzle during the afternoons.

Am working through lunch again today as my very kind boss let me nip home to accept a delivery this morning. Start shift at 7am and rang my boss at 10 past to ask to go home! He very nicely agreed, so I'm making up the time.

Then it's off to fetch Mr M_E from the station, home to measure the rooms and back out for the shelves.

Tea will be whatever I buy tonight!