It’s Sunday, that means its weigh-in day in the Guth/Self household. I’d lost just short of a stone pre injury, then I put 2.5 pounds back on and then stayed the same for one week. I’ve not had a brilliant week in the run up to this weigh-in either. There was that piece of carrot cake, there was the chicken tikka wrap at work, a chocolate or two, an icecream at Bempton Cliffs during the week and the popcorn last night while watching Eurovision. I have been running again though. So I rolled out of bed not really quite sure what to expect, toddled into the bathroom, had a wee and got the scales out from under the bathroom cabinet. Then I stood on them. Then I realised I hadn’t turned them on. Eventually I got the reading and I have lost just about 2 pounds (an ounce or so off if my maths serves me right, I’m better thinking in kgs but the numbers look far too high so I’ll stick to stones and pounds for weight!). Happy with that.

We have had a pretty good start to the week food-wise. We had porridge with blueberries for breakfast and a stirfry with wholemeal wraps for lunch. There was a little bit of an incident with the chilli which means we’ve also drunk plenty of water! We weren’t very organised for shopping and haven’t planned out our meals for the week but for main meals we’re thinking quorn chilli, greek salad, pasta and tomoato/veg sauce, tuna on quinoa and a home made chicken curry. For breakfast we’re not that adventurous and tend to stick to the same stuff every week so there will be scrambled eggs, mushrooms on toast, toast with peanut butter, cereal, porridge, pancakes. We’ve been trying to make our own snacks and puddings etc so we still get a treat but have a bit more control over what is in them! We have great recipes for courgette and dark chocolate buns and for home made cereal bars and whenever we have left over bananas I dig out mum’s banana loaf recipe. For the coming week though we have a load of rhubarb which we really need to do something with. Ideas other than rhubarb and apple crumble (did that last week) are much appreciated but I think Kath also found a rhubarb cake recipe.

So as you can see we are not going all out diet to shift the weight. We’ve tried that and we last about a day before giving up grumpy. We’re just trying to make slightly better decisions and take a bit more control. We’re also drinking less. Not that we ever really had much alcohol but we did often nip to the local and have a couple of pints or share a bottle of wine at the weekend and then have a beer or a glass of wine every other evening or something. Now we’re mostly not drinking, not religiously or obsessively, just thinking about it before opening a bottle. Having said that we’ve just bought a load of wine on a supermarket offer on the basis that the offer was too good to miss and we don’t have to drink it just because it’s there. It will last us a long time – so our reasoning – we shall see. Of course we will have to think about nutrition etc as the runs get longer and if we’re serious about this training lark we will have to cut out the booze completely and that is the plan – but, as they say, one step at a time.