Why Does the Yummy Stuff Always Have the Most Calories?

My mum came to visit last week, all week long. Delightful.

It turns out though sadly enough, that my mum is a really bad influence on me.

As if those hellions at Cadbury weren't making my pursuits to unearth my abs difficult enough with their yummy and delicious produce (the bars intended for my giveaway are sitting less than 2 metres away from me and screaming EAT ME!!!!! as I type), but I will NOT succumb.

Pause for essential brushing of teeth. Cheers Pammy!

Having my mum here is such a rarity that I totally and happily justified to myself that it was more important to spend time in her company than to exercise. I can exercise double the norm when she's gone I told myself. So all week I exercised just once.

I also justified eating all kinds of things I really shouldn't have because it would have been beyond antisocial to hang out with my mum and not consume 4000 calories every day.

I even only trekked to school to collect Thomas twice, terrible, considering that walking is my fallback exercise when I am slacking off. My mum recently had a bladder/bowel prolapse fixed and is still in take it easy mode so I used her recovery to justify driving to school. After all it is a huge novelty to be picked up from school by Nanny. I couldn't have deprived my child of such a novelty. That would just have been cruel.

My failure and regression dawned on me midweek and I figured I could either get my life in order right away or wait until my mum left. The glutton in me speedily decided it would be far more worthwhile to just start anew when she left.

So I even managed to squeeze in a trip to the Krispy Kreme drive through in Manchester (which my friend Becky told me about in response to my KK post) during our evening out for Rob's birthday and followed it up with a scrummy Lamb Bhuna. Perfection.

Mum is gone now (we miss you!!) and reality blows. Our house is still stocked with goodies galore from her visit but I have to turn over a new leaf and start again. I feel both tired and grumpy from lack of exercise coupled with sugar detox.

So here is to the start of the beginning and fingers crossed no more slip ups.

The Cadbury Conspiracy

I am off the wagon.

Last week I only exercised 3 times though I did do the hike to school 6 times.

Remember how I said I broke my chocolate purchasing habit?

Well it seems in these times of financial hardship Cadbury just couldn't survive without my custom.

So those bigwigs at Cadbury must have had a top secret important meeting to discuss how to entice me back.

I was out shopping recently and saw the unfamiliar wrapping so glanced to see what is was....

My first instinct was yucko!

Why ruin some perfectly delicious Cadbury chocolate (and I mean the the REALLY good British stuff not that other stuff that masquerades as Cadbury in the USA) by inserting cranberries and granola? A travesty.

But then fast forward to Friday evening and a trip to the in laws house and in response to a request from his grandson for treats my father in law (a chocolate lover/devourer) returns with an entire box of the new pretend healthy chocolate bars, as well as some others that he gave to the kids.

He offered me a bar. I was intrigued and it was free so I took it.

It would have been rude to refuse, right?

Sadly, it was delicious.

So in an attempt to maintain his own waistline he asked me to do him a favour and sent me home with 6 more bars.

Six bars that barely lasted me until Sunday lunch.

In my somewhat weak defence Cranberries are actually a super food and just think of all the good I'm doing my urinary tract.

Plus with the rate I am devouring them I am assuming I can now count cranberries as one of my five a day.

I guess every cloud really does have a silver lining.

The Best Advice Ever Courtesy of Pamela Anderson Lee

I know that those who know me well probably imagine (and rightly so considering my track record) my quest for fitness was a flash in the pan and that now I am much more wisely investing my time sitting on the sofa with my feet up eating chocolate bars with such frequency that I must be sadly misled that they are fat free (if only, right?). What other explanation could there be for the lack of progress reports in my endeavours to be Looking Fine by 2009?

Truth is I just didn't want to bore the world (or myself) with monotonous posts on a weekly basis saying essentially the exact same things.

Here cometh the truth:

I still adore my cross trainer. Truly. I can watch TV and do my 3.5 miles in the cosy comfort of my very own bedroom every single day. Well maybe not every single day because that was a tad OTT so I have settled on 5 days a week, which is a 500% improvement on the rest of my life.

I can both see and feel the progress I am making. My abs aren't so far away anymore. Yippee! Not that you'd be able to tell in a million years of course because my body is currently hiding beneath numerous layers of clothing in an effort to combat the hideously gloomy wintry weather.

I have a disease. The extra 1.5 miles I do on the trek to get Thomas from school has become something of an addiction. One day Rob was going to collect him and I actually persuaded him to walk so I could go along too and another day I had to collect him in my car because Rob needed me to be back quickly and I actually felt both sad and disappointed that I couldn't walk there. Such thought processes cannot be healthy surely? There is just a massive sense of achievement about hauling my newly toned backside up a hill whilst pushing a 2.5 year old toddler. It just makes me feel like superwoman.

On my last trip to the supermarket I broke my biggest bad habit. I didn't buy any chocolate. Getting the kids in bed and devouring chocolate has been a massive part of my routine since day 1 of Thomas sleeping through the night. My little well deserved celebration at having survived another parenting day. I decided now if I am hungry in the evenings I can have an apple (talk about being indulgent) or at best a bowl of cereal. Lucky me!

But this week I came across the best advice ever whilst reading a magazine when I was supposed to be working. The unlikely source of the advice? Pamela Anderson Lee.

Major paraphrasing here but she said in essence if you feel tempted to eat something you shouldn't and will regret it later, go brush your teeth, and I have to agree with Pammy here (which is something I never imagined saying) but it works a treat. I couldn't even consider eating those crisps or drinking my Dr Pepper when my teeth were freshly clean and minty fresh.

Try it, it just might revolutionise your life.

But if it doesn't blame Pammy, not me!

The Week I Fell in Love With My Cross Trainer

The unlikely has really occurred.

I actually enjoy exercise. (Those are 4 words I never imagined ever typing!)

Dare I say I even look forward to it? Seriously.

Obviously after the first 2 minutes I am cursing myself for torturing myself so but I carry on regardless!

Me and my pal the cross trainer have truly become BFF.

Out of 12 days I have exercised 9. Giving myself Sundays off (it being the day of rest and all) and Saturday I was up for London at 5:15am so by the time I got home at 10pm I was destined for one thing and one thing only.....sleep!

I have been trekking 3.2 miles a day, which my new Europe-ised mechanical friend informs me is 5KM. I even walked one day to get Thomas from Nursery School which adds a couple of extra miles to my tally too.

My goal is to walk and collect him every single day, but with the seasons changing my greatest desire right now is hibernation.

I am no longer wheezing myself through exercise and the following two hours like a 60 a day a smoker. I think I may actually be getting fitter.

I am feeling toned and have more energy. As for my abs they remain MIA.

I know they are in there somewhere and I am not giving up until I find them.

Operation: Abs Reclamation

Have I ever happened to mention that I am 5 feet 10 inches tall?

And that I have pretty consistently weighed 125 pounds my whole adult life.

(You have got to love good genes, thank you gene pool!)

And that I have never been on a diet.

(Courtesy of a super zippy metabolism)

And that I have never had to cruelly convince myself that Diet Coke is just as lovely as the sugar and calorie loaded Regular Coke.

And that as far back in life as I can remember I have eaten at least one bar of chocolate per day (except whilst pregnant with Thomas when I abstained for the whole pregnancy, but that is a whole other story) but generally more.

You hate me right now, right?

Well times are a-changing, sadly.

When I had Thomas I was back in my regular clothes the very same day (thought to be fair I didn't have to resort to maternity clothes until the 32nd week of pregnancy). A fact that was utterly disgusting to most people, apparently some people find it deeply offensive if you effortlessly get your figure back post baby.

In contrast, when I had Eli less than 12 hours later I was back at home and my mum came to visit and truly one of the first things she said to me was 'Well looks like you'll have to do sit ups this time'. (Yes, I am still holding a slight grudge about it in case you're wondering).

I did do sit ups in a bid to locate my abs that were seriously MIA.

But I quickly got bored and gave up. Sit ups it turned out weren't really all that fun and progress was made painfully slowly indeed.

But then something truly appalling happened.

My metabolism rudely started to slow down.

Not drastically by far but enough to make me realise that if I wanted to continue to live a lifestyle filled with regular coke and chocolate bars I might actually have to get my backside off the sofa and raise my heart rate above 60 bpm occasionally.

An incredibly painful conclusion to come to for one with a serious allergy to all things exercise related.

Then Jen posted a challenge on her blog:

I was in total agreement that it was a terrific idea and that I would simply cheerlead from the sidelines (because we don't generally have cheerleaders here and Bring It On made it look lots of fun).

Then Rob and I were getting ready for a rare trip to the cinema actually together for once (I know, crazy!) and I tried on a top that I hadn't worn in a while and looked down and saw my stomach, the stomach of Carol when she is 3 months pregnant. Sadness and hormones quickly turned to horror.

Horror induced a chain of reactions that had me committing to reclaim my abs, ASAP!

So I invested in one of these contraptions which frankly I can't help but feel looks like some apparatus worthy of a torture chamber but it will help me in my voyage of abs reclamation.

Being 5 feet 10 inches and 125 pounds I have always looked healthy and dare I say fit? Truth is though courtesy of my metabolism I haven't had to endure regular exercise since leaving school. My fitness levels are no doubt on a par with 80 year old's worldwide.

The energy my boys have has no limits and I owe it to them to be fitter. Day 1 of reclaiming my abs 15 minutes in I was almost victim of death by asthma attack. But moving on to day 3 I already feel much fitter and better. But with about a gazillion long miles to go.

When I am huffing and puffing and breaking a sweat and my new mechanical best friend is informing me I have successfully burned an entire 97 calories, suddenly that chocolate bar doesn't seem so tasty.

And truthfully I don't know whether to be overjoyed about that or depressed.