Week 13: From Flab to Fab

My Badge of Honour

So we all know the story of the stork – she takes each little bundle of joy, wrapped up in a soft little blanket, gently lifts them in her beak and flies carefully to their loving, expectant parents. She gracefully flaps through the nursery window and deposits the cherub into his new cot, giggling and excited at the prospect of his new family. Lovely.

What they do not tell you is the visit that the stork makes after that. She swoops from the nursery window to the parents room with her second deposit of the day. While mummy is sleeping carefree, that malevolent bird sneaks in and slaps an extra tyre around mummy’s waist. Mummy wakes up in the morning with that wonderful little bundle of joy in the nursery and 3 extra stone that she has no idea where it came from.

OK well, maybe all those iced buns during the pregnancy might have something to do with it. But seriously, it isn’t my fault. It really isn’t – the little blighter in my tummy made me so sick that I had to eat the iced buns so I wouldn’t throw up.

I’m paying for it now though.

During my pregnancy, I stopped weighing myself after the midwife mentioned gestational diabetes. Eww. So I know I have lost most of it but I still have this stone that I can’t shift. But I read my share of Vogue and Elle and Grazia; Madonna and Angelina Jolie promised me the weight just dropped off when you were breastfeeding. Oh no, hang on, the secret to their success is to be the stork – go scoop up your lovely little bundle of joy from some other person’s nursery and you end up with the long skinny legs (and feathers and a beak??)

So I am resigned. I am going to wear this extra stone proudly as a badge of honour, a flag of my graduation to motherhood. It will be the sign that I am fertile and have produced. I have fulfilled my biological role and given my husband an heir.

Yeah right. Rice cake anyone?

The Mummatron

Loosing Weight

OK, this is my area of expertise! I have lost tonnes of weight over the years…ummmm………..

When I was pregnant with my first baby I put on about four stone – so how come the baby was only 7 pounds and 3 ounces? The rest of the weight decided it liked me enough that it wanted to stay.

This was not helped when the baby started to eat solid foods, but not all of what I offered, never all of it! Needless to say the surplus; banana pudding, custard, baby rice, and later fish fingers, bits of sausage, marmite fingers and lumps of mashed potatoes all seemed to find their way into my mouth and straight to my hips.

About this time a blonde goddess hove into view wearing a turquoise leotard and smiling in a slim, smug kinda way – Rosemary Connelly. It seemed you only had to buy her video to shed bucket loads of fat. I bought it – it didn’t.

A few years later Jane Fonda appeared leaping and sweating and going for the famous Burn. I bought that video too but this time I was coerced into actually nailing a smile on my face and huffing and puffing through the exercises by my slim husband who said he would do it too. You know what I am going to say: he lost weight every day whilst I enthusiastically rolled around the floor, leaped up and down steps, shed whole baths full of sweat and tears searched vainly for that elusive Burn, and only lost the tiniest ounce every month.

However, now that I am nearly sixty I have discovered a really effective way to loose weight. Last year I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and since then have lost four stone. Suddenly I have found a will power I didn’t have before, suddenly I can see a very good reason to loose those pounds, suddenly loosing weight has become a complete way of life.

My daughter introduced me to the website Cook Yourself Thin and I found that much more helpful than all the grunting and groaning of yesteryear, although I do make sure I exercise with a fast walk every day – every day! And guess what? I’m really enjoying it! Finally!

Granny Bloggings