Fighting The Flab

Am back, sorry about the absence, but a loss of computer and only running a blackberry (and there is no way on God's green Earth I am using that to update the blog) meant very limited blogging opportunities (which really means I could not be bothered to pick up one of the 4 laptops, or bring my tablet home from work, or use a friends... so actually that excuse is pointless).... Actually lets start this again...

Hello, I am back, sorry about the absence but life took over and I really could not be bothered to expend the energy needed to walk up the stairs to get the laptops :o) (that's better, and more truthful)

This post should have been finished and out Wednesday, however, it is now Thursday and I have still have not finished it... So pretend it is Wednesday and it will all make more sense!

Tuesday is weigh in day for the fab 4 (Kerry, Kellie, Dan and I) and it is with some interpretation that we approached it this week. Firstly, we all got off to a roaring start last week, secondly we have all been talking today about how rough we feel. Now lets get this right, I don't mean rough as in ill, I mean rough as in bloated, lethargic, generally not right.

Add that to my scepticism, about how you can eat so much food and lose weight, Kerry's abnormal insistence that her body will not lose weight or if it does its half a pound a week. The mood was generally down... also if we are honest none of the 4 of us actually like our counsellor, she is at best 'Walter Mitty' and at worse simply incompetent! However, the timing of the group is right for the 4 of us all to make it, so it is what we have. (We also happen to be the loudest, most opinionated and youngest members of the group I think!)

This week there was some faces we had not seen before, the 4 of them sat at the back next to us and promptly started eating! (I have to add that these 4 are also quite thin!). This set Dan off on an incandescent rage, which strangely enough he held back on when he blogged, but catch the post here... However, we duly lined up, paid our money, took our turns on the scales and then sat through an hour of psycho babble  and poorly explained nutritional advice. Now please dont get me wrong I dont think the diet is overly bad, and I dont think the organisation that runs it is particularly bad either, in fact, if you have to go to a fat club then it is one of the 3 I would suggest. Its just our counsellor...

Now.... the weigh in itself... this week I lost 9lbs (4.08 Kilos) giving me a total loss of 26.5lbs (1 Stone 12.5lbs, 12.02 Kilos) which is not too shabby and won me slimmer of the week. The others all lost as well with safe, healthy sustainable amounts. This week the fab 4 lost 17lbs together, bringing our running total to date up to..... weight for it.... (sorry could not resist)..... 52lbs!!!! (3 Stone 10lbs)

Well done to all 4 of us!!! Way to go team!!! Keep it up!!!


Todays thought....

Food Diary

That was it... I felt hungry at points but not starving... Dan saved my life at lunch time. with an amazingly tasty crispbread cheese triangle and slice of ham... with or without black pepper, it actually tasted OK, the only one thing I would say is that crispbreads are still crispbreads..

Had to stop at McDonald's for the passengers on way home last night (whilst being hungry) and I did not have anything, just a diet sprite, so I was quite proud of that!

How do I feel about the diet? well slightly empowered, very confused at the moment as I am working out what I can and cant eat, and trying to work out why pasta and potatoes are free foods? Really?

This morning I have woken up with a pounding headache.... 

For those that have followed me since 2007, you will know I have been through some massive ups and downs. One of the biggest downs was when the Dr told me I would be dead within 3 years if I did not sort my life out. This was the single event that triggered my weight loss. Nothing like facing your own mortality at 29 years of age. I was started on the Lipotrim diet by the Dr and was under the hospital. Weekly weigh-ins and weekly supplies of shakes (the Lipotrim diet is a meal replacement system) followed for a while and I lost about 5 or 6 stone straight away. The down side was how ill I felt, it would come and go, but it felt like I had flu for a long time. I passed out in the bathroom one day which gave me a shock; I badly bruised my ribs, neck and smashed my head on the toilet. I don’t know how long I was out for, but it was a while. That spelt the end of the Lipotrim diet for me. One of my clients at the time ran a diet company (The Diet Plate) and I switched onto this system. Now I am naturally sceptical and I scoffed at how a system which was as simple as this would work, but work it did and I carried on losing weight.

During this time I started kick boxing again and this culminated in being able to represent England at the WKC world championships in 2009. It was a good time in my life; I looked good, felt good and was amazingly fit. Now don’t get me wrong, the next 3 years of my life have been and continue to be amazing, I have met Kerry, have an amazing family, a good job which I enjoy and an amazing lifestyle. However, the stopping training, and the amazing lifestyle (fine dinning, staying at top hotels and eating at top restaurants, the hectic family life and working on the road) have taken there toll on my body. I have been unhappy with myself for some time as I have slowly been gaining weight. I am now (as of last night) back up to 30 stone 8 lbs. I am not sure how I feel about this really; I mean I have noticed for some time now that I have fallen back into ‘fat people’ habits. Eating over the sink, snacking, grazing all day long, playing the services game whilst on the road etc. These have all sneaked back into my life.

I have also noticed people’s reaction to myself, the snide comments, the pointing and laughing from youngsters. This has made me feel terrible, I have been here before. It hurts, the thing I feel worse about, more than anything else is Kerry wanted to go to Ireland for a weekend in August for a birthday treat, but I can not fit into the airline seats… So we can’t go. Yes I know there are other ways of getting to Ireland, and I am looking into them and I am sure we will get there, but the fear of having to try and get on an aeroplane whilst at this size struck a cord that won’t go away.

There is also something new I am facing this time around, and this is not something I have discussed or mentioned too many people. When I was big before, the weight had come on over a period of time, years in fact, but I had remained active. I fell into a group the Dr laughing referred to as very fit fat people. This time around though, the weight has come on so fast my body has not kept up with it. What I mean by this is I am now a different shape, I carry most of my weight around my torso, but I am inactive and my muscles have not kept up with the weight gain. What this actually means is that now I am in constant pain. My back hurts like never before, some small amount of ‘bone’ pain but mostly muscular pain, that sometimes goes into spasm and makes it very hard to move. My thighs and calves hurt like never before, and what I believe is happening is that my muscles are constantly straining and tearing to move my bulk around, which again means it is very difficult to move or do any exercise. The point being proved by playing in a charity football match against my son’s football team which left me in now small amount of agony for 3 weeks afterwards, even now I am still in pain. Certain things that we take for granted as every day things are proving harder and harder to do. I am not sleeping properly (nothing to do with the baby, honest) and even laying down I remain in pain, and I have started snoring. I find it hard to stay awake during the day and I am beginning to suspect I am suffering from a mild case of sleep apnoea, but I hope not.

So, that is where I am physically, where am I mentally and how do I feel about all of this? This is one of the hardest blog posts I have ever written, so please bear with me. I am afraid; I am scared that I won’t ever be able to get back to where I was. I am terrified that I won’t be able to stop the weight gain, or lose weight. I am struggling with motivation even now and even after admitting to myself and others about the situation I am in.

I don’t like myself indeed that is an understatement. I loath myself, I hate the person that looks back at me in the mirror, does this make me change something? No, it makes me eat more. Can I do what I did last time? I really don’t know. I have a family now; I only managed to lose weight last time by having a house that quite literally had no food in it at all, that is not possible now. Its like an addiction, I associate good and bad memories with food, if I get stressed I eat, if I am happy I eat more, if I am sad I eat.

I hate myself for it. I rationalise what I do to myself, to a degree anyway. I sneak food and eat in secret at times. I have even bought sweets in one shop then driven to another shop and bought more sweets so people don’t look at me and think no wonder he is gross, look at what he is eating. I mean they might not think like that, but in my head they do. I sometimes think Kerry and the kids would be better served with someone else in there life rather than a partner and father who is this big, sometimes I wonder if it is worth carrying on at all, don’t worry I am not suicidal, but I would be lying if I did not admit to that feeling being there from time to time, especially when I lie and make excuses to the children for not doing something.

So that is where I am at right now… I hate myself, I loathe what I have become, I am terrified, but I have started a journey.

I have started at slimming world now (well as of last night) and I am trying to do something. I am going to use this blog for what it was originally set up, which is to record my fight against the flab. I have pondered on the idea of trying to place a bet on losing weight but know very little about betting or if anyone would take such a bet.

All comments are welcome and encouraged, all I ask is you bear in mind I am a real human being with feelings and I am trying to be open and honest.


(Posted by James, FIXED AGAIN by Dan...)

Tights

OK OK... let me start this off by saying no I have not lost the plot and yes I am still male. I am not saying I prefer women in tights, for that would just be wrong, I am saying however, after getting ready for a fancy dress party I have a new respect for women who wear tights.

Being male obviously in the tights vs stockings battle there is one clear and undisputed winner. Stockings. Sorry girls, but it is true. I don't mind if they are hold ups, but much prefer the full works including suspender belts etc. However, Kerry and Myself, accompanied by the Usual Suspects of Dan English (of 0ddness madness fame) and his better half Kellie (of Kellie's Kards) had planned to go out on Halloween to a fancy dress party (incidentally this didn't happen, see blog post defence against Dan's slander for that story). As happens in all these cases Dan and I were told we were going and that the girls were going to sort our costumes out. Excellent, mainly because I never have 5 minutes to myself and mainly because nothing bores me as much as trying to work out what to go as.
Dan and I were told we were going as Witches and Wizards, then the girls pointed out that Dan and I were going as Witches and the girls as Wizards. OK, I can live with that, not the first time I have dressed up and probably not the last.
As the day approaches Kerry makes me try on the costume, not too bad, black velvet torn hemline dress, fishnet gloves, wig, false eyelashes, false nose etc.. All of this was fine. Then came the point when she handed me some fishnet tights and told me to put them on.
I looked at them, and thought no way, they will never fit, but what the heck in for a penny. I took them out of the packet and looked at them, having seen people put tights on I did not think it would be a problem, I rolled the tights up (as I have seen girls do) and put my foot in them. Standing on one foot I promptly fell over whilst trying to pull the tights up my leg.
I finally regained my balance and a little bit of my dignity, when I had got one leg in the tights. Then I realised I couldn't get the second foot into the tights without having the first pulled down round my ankles.
I pulled the tights back down again and got the second foot in the tights, then promptly fell over again as I basically had tights tying my ankles together. After regaining my feet, I finally got the tights on. They felt a bit weird, but they were on. Well kind of, there was more holes in them than there was supposed to be as I had put my fingers and thumbs through them in about a dozen places during this exercise. So, there I stood, 6'4", skin head in ripped tights and a dress. Not the prettiest sight, although, bless Kerry she did not laugh too much.
I then had to take it all off again, which I managed to do without falling over, but not without ripping the tights and putting yet more holes in them. By the time I was changed back into my usual attire of jeans and a tee shirt, the tights looked like a piece of ripped cloth, and certainly nothing like tights.
So, in the space of getting the tights on and off, they were in bits.
So, yes I now have a new found respect for girls who wear tights. They manage to get them on and off, and pull them up and down at least 2 dozen times on a night out to go to the loo (well Kerry does anyway as she has a bladder the size of a pea) without putting one hole in them! Now that is a skill.

Of course, there is always an easier option... just wear stockings :o) It will keep your man happy and no need to keep removing them!

I feel this is unfair... Dan's account of the evening is quite accurate, although I feel he stops short of telling the truth about the film 'We need totalk about Kevin', basically it is arty crap and to be fair if you have money to spend on going to watch it then you have too much money and second you should be helping the country out of recession by spending it elsewhere. Also, the two hours spent watching the film could be better spent by doing quite literally, anything else on the planet. I myself, found it a great time to catch up on 40 winks here and there...

So, OK, the film choice was mine... and yes I made a mistake, however, I have chosen many other films to watch that have been brilliant and inspired choices. My main defence for choosing this film is the tubes fault :o)

You see, I have been working in London and have been travelling on the tube every day and every evening, mainly in a dream like comatose state due to the times of my travel and the amount of time I spend at work, and a new born child and teething and and and etc... You get the picture, I am tired and half awake. Well, the tube is littered with literally several posters, all moody and red of this film "we need to talk about Kevin" with lots of stars and quotes from critics. I became mesmerised by the poster, I even saw it whilst asleep... it’s a good poster.

When our night got ruined by castaways (EXPLITIVE DELEATED) and the girls started talking about scary films, I was all up for paranormal activity 3, but apparently it’s too scary... so my mind wandered to this poster... I suggested the film and the girls went and researched it, (I did as well) and all the reviews were amazing! One even said it was the scariest film of the year. Now OK, to be fair this should have sent alarm bells ringing, especially the awards from film festivals, one review even mentioned the amount of red in the film and the way it was used... again alarm bells should be ringing... and normally they would... but this time nothing. Maybe it was because I was tired, maybe it was because I was angry and hurt because I couldn’t dress up as a witch and was bitterly disappointed for the girls who had put in a lot of work for the costumes... whichever it was I am not sure, but the alarms did not trigger.

When the opening credits rolled and I saw it was a BBC film, British film council, national lottery awarded funds, Cannes palm winner etc... I looked at Dan and even said out loud a nasty word... I knew... and I think Dan did too... we had come to watch the antichrist of films... the arty blurry focussed acclaimed gold polished turd of a film. To be fair, we were right...

The only thing I have to say about Dan's comments was this, he does not go far enough, he states;

"I'm not telling anyone to not go see it. I'm sure some of you will prolly like it, or even love it. But we unanimously did not like it nor love it."

I'm telling you he is wrong.... and again if you have the time and money to go see this film DONT. Find something else to do, anything.. Paint the house, write the blog you have been putting off, do the ironing, volunteer at a soup kitchen, give your brain over to medical science, do anything but see this film. I promise you, you will thank me afterwards.

As for not choosing any more films, I am still many many films up on the girls, who have a knack of picking poor films, however, if I choose another film as bad as this, then fair enough have me hung drawn and quartered. It won’t happen again..

Yes, yes, I know it has been a while, some of us are not as prolific at posting as, lets say Dan of 0ddness. Who hasn't given me a hard time over not posting at all (well OK so maybe he has). Anyhow, I have a few minutes today to sit down and compose a short post, so here it is.
In the last few weeks (as I may have mentioned previously) I have been on a job in London. The job like most do have over run and this means I will be here another 2-3 weeks. Not a problem, you see I have enjoyed this job. The one part I have not enjoyed and certainly wont miss is the commute on the trains.
For those that do it for years, day in and day out, well done. You have my respect. I certainly will not be doing it for any longer than is necessary. I have been pushed, prodded, stepped on, coughed over and generally had to pack my not to small frame into a space most family pets would consider small. They have laws about the amount of sheep/cows you can fit into a lorry, but none about how many people you can physically squeeze into a metal cylinder under the streets of London. Somehow that still seems wrong to me.
 So I have been using the train, not just the tube but the C2C to Fenchurch street as well. Which is a nicer experience and every now and then you get a seat as well. It was on this train that I noticed people sit in the same seats on the same trains every day. For some reason I found this quite comical, even though I now have 'my' seat on the train, at first I started taking other peoples. I would deliberately sit in a seat I knew a 'regular' would normally sit in. This, although I found it funny, caused distress to more than 1 person. You would get sarky comments, huffs and puffs, eye rolling at other passengers, and on more than one occasion a "that's my seat" thrown in your direction. All of which I managed to ignore and pretend not to notice. The thing that I find interesting about it, and no doubt some university at some point will run a study costing a trillion pounds to discover exactly what it is I am about to tell you, is that the Women are more territorial than the blokes! Now don't get me wrong people blokes can be just as bad, but, nearly all the sarky comments and that's my seat comments have come from Females. The blokes tend to huff and walk off, now maybe that is because of my size and blokes do not want to 'start' and the women feel safer, or maybe its because the women feel protected by everyone else on the train, who no doubt will jump up to save them when this huge skin head, hoody wearing, red eyed monster (that's me...) attacks. I don't know. But, definitely on the train, the females have less fear and are more aggressive over their seats than the blokes!
Hmmmm, food for thought...

Grrrrrrrrr

Most of us are familiar with the Dick Whittington story, where he comes to London because he hears the streets are paved with Gold. Obviously he hasn’t met the people who build streets, if they were made of gold, not one street would ever be finished, however I digress.
So, London’s streets so famously paved with Gold. I have been travelling a lot around London with work recently (more recently on the tube)  and I have to say, that London’s streets are definitely not paved with Gold, paved with litter, rubbish, cigarette butts, people trying to give you free magazines and news papers, and people with collection tins.

Well Sunday night was Bingo night... Yes you heard me Bingo. Kerry and I and Dan and Kellie headed off to Southend to partake in Bingo. A fun social, night out. Well, so we were all told. To be fair we were quite excited (when I say we, I mean the girls) about going to Bingo. They had been online, and picked which Bingo hall we were going to and what night etc. We decided (by we, I mean the girls!) that we were going by train to Southend Mecca (other Bingo Halls are available).
As we walked out the door this was the conversation:

Kerry: Do you know where the hall is?
James: Yes
Kerry: How far is it from the station?
James: About a mile and a half.
Kerry: I have heels on.
James: I noticed :o)

So we get to Southend after bumping into two other reprobates on the train (Dan and Kellie) and we start walking to the Hall. This bought about several moans and complaints and "I told you I did not want to walk" I went over the conversation above and decided that Kerry hadn't said she did not want to walk. Dan and I did not seem to have a problem.

We got into the hall and whilst we (the girls) were signing us all up to a lifetime of junk mail and god knows else what Dan and I went to the bar. We started on large shorts with sambucca chasers and ended on jugs of WooWoo.Dan claims he wasn't drinking but this picture of him with a jug of WooWoo should put an end to that rumour!

Dan and WooWoo.... What a girl lol

Also, the people at Bingo gave us some Green pens (Dabbers, I am reliable informed by the Bingo Massive) which was fine to start with. However, as the alcohol intake increased the amount of green pen on ever one also increased by a proportional amount, so by the time we was on the train home we looked a lot like the incredible hulk with measels....

The Girls!

Dan's impression of Pontius Pilate

We are planing another night out again soon, apparently they do glow in the dark nights! Watch out!

Well it has been a pretty uneventful couple of days in the Dennis household. I have been working and Kerry has had her hands full with the kids! Amazingly she has not killed any of them yet, and still finds time to run the house and fit in some Zumba! She is totally amazing :o). Albert is getting big, he is now in size 3 nappies (not sure how the sizes work, but they are the ones I have to buy now) and his cold seems to have abated some what. This has had a knock on effect where he is eating properly (well technically I think its drinking) and now has started sleeping for longer as well. The last 2 nights he has managed to do 7 hours straight both nights :o) I thought I would use this as an excuse to post some more pictures of him, heehee.

Minutes Old

2 Month Old

2 Weeks Old

Month Old

 So there you go a few pics from his short life so far. Yes I know he is gorgeous :o) But then he has his mum to thank for that!





On a slightly different note I have noticed Dan has been writing comments, which is all good. His blog is well worth a read if you haven't come across it before. I loved his baby checklist which he rewrote as a basic program for me to understand, which has proved so helpful recently I decided to steal it and post it here.

10 RUN "FOOD"
20 IF NOT "FOOD" GOTO 30
30 RUN "BUM"
40 IF NOT "BUM" GOTO 50
50 RUN "WIND"
60 IF NOT "WIND" GOTO 70
70 RUN "CUDDLE"
80 IF NOT "CUDDLE" GOTO 90
90 RUN "BUILD A BRIDGE"
100 END

The only problem I find is that I now have several bridges with no where to put them, so I think I will drop them off in Dans front garden :o) lol.

OK OK OK I hear you all lol....

So this post has been (nearly) a year in the making... (I have to point our nearly or certain friends, who also write blogs, will point out that I cant use a calendar, How are you Dan? lol) So it should be huge and full? Yes you are right it should be, but it isn't... Instead it is a short summary of the year...

OK, so moved to Canvey Island, moved in with Kerry, got engaged to Kerry, had a baby with Kerry (ok so that was only 32 hours ago and the trigger to blogging again) erm, went out a lot with Kerry, and generally my life evolves around the one called Kerry... oh and the now 4 children we have!

Changed jobs, became an asbestos analyst for the same firm as, yep you guessed it, Kerry works for :o) gave up dieting and kick boxing as far too much hassle... and promptly gained an amazing amount of weight...

Started Muay Thai only 2 weeks ago, and started watching what I eat.... I said watching, not dieting...  That's it for now... I will update later about the new addition, once I have had a chance to sleep....

Stay safe all :o)

I have stolen a blog post from 0ddness as I thought it worth sharing to a few more people!! It is about the privacy settings on Facebook and how to alter them... well worth the read people.


Privacy Woes

It's not been much of a secret that Facebook has been in the press a lot lately. And the more worrying thing about it is, it's been in the press a lot for the same reasons.

Privacy, Lack Thereof, and Your Information.

Now, if you've not seen any of it, it's probably a good idea to pay attention here, because your personal info could well be smeared across any number of websites you've visited, your data could be being used to target you with spam, and you could be getting signed up for random shit.

Right now.

A while back, Facebook changed it's privacy settings. You may have seen the big box that read something like "We've made it easier to adjust your privacy!" which was very nice. I bet most of you went "Ooooh *yawn* *close box*" Fact is, that those settings were changed to various default states that lets facebook do what it likes with your info. Even slightly more worrying was the fact that your FRIENDS could also use your data too.

Not good.

The geeks of the world pointed this out to the non-geeks of the world, and suddenly there was a rather large hoo-har over it all.

What people don't realise is that the guy that runs it has a pretty shady past according to the media. Even the idea and internal gubbins of Facebook were written by a friend. A former friend of his. After he nicked it. Hence him having to make a multi-million dollar out of court settlement...

Advertising is king on the Internet - it's how Google make their money and can afford to give all their stuff away for free. Microsoft is realising this, and that's why they've teamed up with Google to try get a slice of that rather nice advertising pie. So Facebook - who also makes it's money through adverts - has decided that YOUR personal info is now THEIR personal info. And when you're not on Facebook, you actually are, and the sites you visit that happen to have signed an agreement with them are quite happy to see who you are, where you're from, what you do, what other sites you visit...

The worst part - much like Yahoo doing something similar 8-10 years ago - is that you have to opt OUT. That's right, the default setting is "Why yes of course you can look at my personal info!" which means you have to go in an change it. The worst thing, is it's buried. If you're not sure of your way around settings and options, you've got a mission on your hands. Especially when you consider that the "new easy use" privacy settings have 170 options.

170.

So, what do you do? Well, you could go in, and fiddle with all the settings and piss around with what-not and hope for the best. You could get your Not-Dan-Computer-Geek to help sort it out for you. Or, you could try this tool over at ReclaimedPrivacy.org

THANKFULLY it's as easy as clicking, dragging, pressing some buttons, and job done. The instructions are all very clear and easy to use, and bare in mind that I thought I'd managed to set my Facebook page to nice and private. Turns out, I'd missed a couple of settings. Oops.

Honestly, follow the instructions, get yourself secured. It'll only be a matter of time before someone manages to get your info and do something with it... Except, me not being a nefarious hacker, I'm not sure what they would do, but I'm betting something. People are quitting Facebook in droves (I'm not saying it's dying mind you, but they ARE leaving) for various alternatives that are cropping up, and even various media outlets are suggesting "Maybe it's time to try something else"

Good luck out there ;)

Sources:

Facebooks new privacy changes:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/facebooks-new-privacy-changes-good-bad-and-ugly

Facebook reduces control over personal information:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/facebook-further-reduces-control-over-personal-information

Things to stop doing on Facebook:
http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/109538/7-things-to-stop-doing-now-on-facebook

Facebook's gone rouge:
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/05/facebook-rogue/

Essential privacy tips:
http://mashable.com/2010/05/18/facebook-privacy-tips/

What happens in Facebook stays in Facebook:
http://www.albumoftheday.com/facebook/