A Mother's Ramblings

One of the suggestions that my Sister/Cambridge Diet Consultant made when we first talked was that I should get an inspiration outfit. The idea of an inspiration outfit is that I buy something new, something that I want to wear, something which inspires me to lose weight and to continue losing weight until I'm at my goal weight/size. The outfit is supposed to be something which every time I see hanging in my wardrobe inspires me to try hard that day to stick to my diet, to walk and exercise more. It's supposed to inspire me, I'm supposed to want to buy it, hence why it is called an Inspiration outfit.

The third week of the Cambridge Weight plan saw me start in high spirits. At my weigh in I had only lost three pounds, but my husband said to me losing three pounds in a week is brilliant and my Sister had believed me about the weight gain over my period week... so we were looking forward to the week end where hopefully I would lose the five ish pounds I normally put on AND lose some extra weight because of being re-motivated. And I was motivated again. All week, I was thinking about small goals and achievements. Like, how when I get to 13st 3lbs I'll no longer be considered Obese, just fat.

Anyone who has been following my Pinterest account, or pictures on Instragram has probably noticed that over the last couple of weeks I have been pinning and posting a tonne of pictures that have something to do with General Conference. The question I'm being asked by most people however is; What is General Conference? Well. Okay. Right.  To explain this, I need to explain some other stuff first.

Apologies if you have come for any ideas about meals this week, because this week we're eating really oddly and we really don't have any ideas about what we are eating! Yes, I know that it is Easter Weekend, but honestly with my diet going quite well I don't want to curse myself and yes I am going to be eating a little different as of Sunday but for reasons that will be clear later this week, but we aren't doing anything overly fancy this week! This week I'll be going on to Sole Source + and this is where you get to eat one 400 calorie meal a day in addition to the Shakes. So expect some instagram images of my meals this week.

BB has been desperate to buy the game Pie Face, but we just hadn't got round to it. A couple of weekends ago, my Mum saw a version called Splat, for £5. So she got it for him and we had fun playing a few rounds together. These pictures were from the last round, where the Children got me to put a LOT of cream on the arm. Thankfully it missed me but it did get Big Boy!

It wasn't a very good morning. I was tired after doing blood tests overnight on BB, (he's throwing out some odd numbers at the moment and he still isn't back to recognising lows when he's asleep) and to make it worse, my body had decided it hated me and was doing it's best to kill me for lack of gratitude for the recent egg it had produced. Thanks Joy Reactor So, like I said, it wasn't a very good morning.

Week Two on the Cambridge diet was tough, I'm not going to lie. I mean, for a whole week (week one), I'd been good and refused everything to eat apart from the meal replacement shakes. To someone like me who is a total foodie, this was really hard. I mean, you've seen pictures of my Salads in the past right? I make great Salads. Healthy Salads. Low Carb and low calorie Salads. Surely just one little Salad wasn't going to kill me right? The problem is I knew that one Salad would lead to one bite of Pasta. Or one bite of Potato. Or one bite of something that looked tasty and smelt amazing, And one bite generally leads to another. And another. Then BAM! Suddenly the stone I lost in the first week was going to be put back on. I didn't want that to happen, so I tried to stay strong. I was hungry, I was cranky, I was emotional, I was craving Chicken (seriously Chicken?!) and worst of all I couldn't poop. Well, that's not true. I felt like I needed to po...

Every morning, after the Children have got up, washed and dressed and are finally ready for School we start our Morning Scripture Study. We had tried doing it before they got dressed, but the Children are a little like me and need a little time to wake up before they are ready to face the day, let alone ask and answer questions based on things they have read or watched. At the moment, we are studying the Book of Mormon and we'll have finished by Easter and then we're going to move on to the New Testament, then the Old Testament and we'll finish the year with Doctrine and Covenants. This was just the order that I pulled the slips of paper out of a hat rather than any clever order or with any plan in mind!

I'm so proud of the Children this past week, they have been champions in coming up with meal ideas that are easy to make so that they can help out more taking turns to make meals and an added benefit of this, it's been balanced meals which are also good value! I know the Children have been discussing about how they can help me with my diet and I think that this has been so thoughtful and generous of them as I haven't asked them to make any special allowances since the first week when I was trying to break all my habits at once! So, this is what we are eating this week.

Every Easter, it seems that my Children get Chocolate Eggs left, right and centre. A few years back I was proud of this, people wanted to give my Children a treat because they are adorable, well mannered and because they are loved. However. Daddy and I were talking and we realised that it almost seemed that the Children forgot the real meaning of Easter and were instead thinking on it as an indulgent Chocolate fuelled weekend. Which for us as Christians, it isn't. Oh hang on, before we go any further. Top Ender, if you are reading this post then stop RIGHT NOW . This is your last warning, you know I will know! Right, now that's taken care of, on with the post.

For the last couple of weeks I have generally been in an excellent mood. Even for me it's been a brilliant mood, I mean seriously you know how everyone always thinks of me as being happy all the time? For the last couple of weeks I have made that me look like a normal person. Everything (Touch Wood!) has been going well, I've managed to keep up with the majority of my household chores, I've had quality time with my Family, I've completed several small projects, I've started running (well walking faster than normal) again and I've lost a lot of weight. I've started wearing Make Up everyday again. I hate what it does to my skin afterwards but it does give me an undeniable glow. And before any more people ask me, I'm not pregnant.

At the moment I would say that I know Big Boy better than he knows himself. We are together so often outside of School, I'm in School a few times a week in either my role as a Parent Governor or as a Parent Helper and of course BB doesn't yet have a filter and so tells me absolutely everything. Sometimes this backfires on me however, not only does he tell me everything about his School friends and his hopes and fears I also get to hear about every episode of passing gas. Anyway. This of course means I know quite well how BB is doing within School and when it was announced Parents Evening was coming up, I was quite tempted not to put my name down. I mean, what is the point? I know where BB needs to improve, I know where BB is strongest, I know because I'm there and I see it. Guilt got the better of me however and I put my name down for an appointment. The way the Parents Evenings are set up at BB's School is that you should aim to get there around ten minutes early. ...

When my Mum went to the Hospital for an appointment a couple of weeks back, I went for a short walk to see if I could find any Cows. I don't know why either. Anyway, I didn't find any cows, but I did find this beautiful 13th Century Church.

A couple of weeks ago, I was making an evening meal for BB when I got an email from PayPal. They had noticed something suspicious on my account and wanted me to check it out. The problem for me, was that I wasn't sure if this email was from PayPal, I mean generally the spam emails telling me that my account has a problem get marked as spam, but every so often I get a dodgy one and I have a giggle. This one however seemed legit. And so I logged into my PayPal account on the PC (I'd opened the email on my phone) and checked out what was happening.

I wasn't going to do weekly round ups or anything like that with regards to this diet, I thought that the occasional mention would suffice, especially when I hit certain milestones. You know, like how losing a stone in a week is a milestone. However, this week *you* my dear friends have taken it upon yourselves this past week to email me, DM me, send me texts and PM's to ask me questions about the first week on the diet, so here is how I survived Week One and be warned there are a few details that you might not want to know! I apologise now too, this is a long one.

As many of you know, I'm a member of The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints or as we tend to be called Mormons or LDS. Within the Church, we are encouraged to spend together one evening a week together in Scripture Study, Prayer and having a bit of fun. We call this evening Family Home Evening, (FHE). Now, don't get me wrong. This doesn't mean we don't do Scripture Study any other day, in fact my post from the other day will prove that we don't! It also doesn't mean we don't pray together on any other day of the week, we do and multiple times a day too. It doesn't mean that we can't talk to each other, or have fun with each other any other night of the week. All it means is we have one evening a week where we don't schedule anything else. Pure uninterrupted family time.

It turns out that we really are eating cheaply this month. So far I've purchased fresh fruit, milk and of course some veggies, but generally the Children are helping me clear our the Food Storage! The good thing about this (apart from the saving of some money!) is that I'm also able to get a little more creative in creating tasty meals using the ingredients I have on hand! Even if I would be happy to just eat Cheesy Beans on Toast with Chives every night. So, with all this in mind. This is what we are eating this week.

(Spoiler Alert : It wasn't) A couple of weeks ago, Top Ender had the day off School.  Well, it wasn't a day off really.  It was a day for the Teachers across the School to meet with the Parents of the Students in their form groups for a Parents Consultation. You can read all about it in Top Ender's Consultation Evening . This is the story of that day.

I'm on a diet. Yeah, I know I've said that so many times in the past it's almost unbelievable. However. This time I actually wasn't going to blog about it. I wasn't going to mention it on Facebook, I wasn't going to Tweet about. I wasn't going to even put a single image on Instagram. I didn't want people to know officially that I was on a diet, until I'd reached my goal weight, or I was a lot closer than the eleven/ten stone away that I was at the start of this diet. In part it was because I was worried what people were going to say about me being on this diet. The diet I've chosen, is the Cambridge Weight Plan, (CWP), and well it's rather extreme as far as diets go as it is what is known as a Very Low Calorie Diet, (VLCD). On the first step, a step known as Sole Source, you just drink these special Cambridge Diet Shakes three times a day (Four for some people, and I've been told if I need four on any particular day then it's okay...

As you know, here in the AMR household we love our cartoons and BB and I are big fans of the DC Super Heroes. It was only once Top Ender saw some of the action filled animated series of a group of Girl Super Heroes finding out about their unique powers and forging friendships that she began to see the appeal. Luckily we are all now fans! Don't me wrong this series isn't just for preteen girls, there are a range of characters that everyone could see themselves in or aspire to be like... a character for everyone if you will!

Since Top Ender moved to Senior School, I've learnt a lot more about her. I've learnt that she's actually really smart. I mean seriously, really smart. So smart we had to go to a special evening at her School to learn how to help her. I've learnt that she is as determined and stubborn as I am and doesn't easily back down from a fight or from situations that she finds herself in. I've learnt that she is the sort of girl that Grown ups enjoy being around, enjoy having as part of their lives, like to encourage her to be the best that she can be, And then I went to the Parents Consultation.

Just a word of advice to any other Diabetics out there, or those who love someone with Diabetes. Don't bother buying sweets that are marketed towards Diabetics, generally they are high fat and quite calorific. They still affect the blood sugar levels, they are BLINKING expensive and even worse they most often have a laxative effect on those who eat them! If it's a treat you are after, then get a "normal" product and enjoy it! Just make you sure you do so responsibly!

I love Mother's Day, not because I get gifts or a card or because the Children are extra nice to me. I love Mother's Day because for one day a year, people don't look at me oddly for wanting to spend time with my family. They don't look at me oddly because I won't to tell the women in my life that they have had an impact on me and have made me a (hopefully) better woman. This year, Big Boy was up super early as he was so excited to give to me the gifts and card that he had worked so hard on. Big Boy got up, went and opened the curtains downstairs (normally my job!) all before coming back upstairs and trying to quietly creep into my bedroom to check with Daddy if it was okay to wake me up. What BB didn't know however, was that I was already awake and had been for about an hour. After a brief cuddle in bed, BB bounded off to his room to hunt out the gifts that he had hidden for me. He was so happy when he presented them to me and I was too, because these gift...

Like I said last month, every so often I share on Facebook, short tales of funny moments that have happened in my life, because as we all know, I apparently live in a British Sitcom. These things are things that don't warrant a full blog post, but I've decided that I'll collect them together in a blog post and post once every month so that we'll never forget these stories which make us laugh so much and hopefully will make you laugh too!

I have jokingly been telling the family that since we ate fish everyday in February (well actually that isn't true, there were a few last minute changes to the menu and we didn't eat Fish on Mondays) that during March we're going to eat Vegetarian everyday... Whilst I would love to do this, I think Tops and Daddy would revolt and well Daddy does a lot of chores around the house so I need him on side. I'll just wait until later in the year! This month however, we are going to be trying to eat on a VERY tight budget. Why? Well, because we can. I'll explain more in another post, which will probably go live tomorrow. Now without much further ado, here is what we are eating this week!