(Another) update on the fitness regime.

I’ve been unusually silent on my fitness regime recently, so it’s probably about time for an update.

My fully catered, hideously expensive diet is paying off, and over two months I have lost about a stone in weight. For a while I didn’t do the diet foods regime because we had lots of social events on and it would have been wasted. And I have probably drunk more wine that I ought, but by and large I think that sort of weight loss in a slow sustainable way is pretty good.

Over the same two month period I have started doing more exercise (the dog walking, as I blogged the other day) and even over my non diet ‘break’ I didn’t put any weight on due to the extra exercise. So I am hoping that when I do exercise and dieting at the same time, I will lose even more.

I have two more months of my catered diet to go, and a goal to lose at least another stone, which will bring me down to the weight I was when I got married in 2003 and hopefully reduce my blood pressure into the bargain. Then I am hoping that with what I have learned about portion control and ‘good’ foods, I will be able to cater for myself and lose even more. I would dearly love to be ten stone again (until I was almost 30, I weighed eight stone but that may be somewhat unrealistic!).

I am on a promise from The Hubby that if I lose enough weight to bring me down to my goal of 10st 10lb, he will buy me a pair of Armani jeans. I don’t think he realised they cost about £350 when he made that promise, but he’ll have to stand by it now, because I’m going to do my utmost to achieve it.

I’m also determined to have a bikini body by the time I go away at the end of the year, and if that could be by the end of September I’d be even more pleased. I haven’t worn a bikini for donkey’s years (probably pre baby) but there’s no reason why not if I can lose my fat belly – I mean, God! The sights you see on the beach and I wonder why I’m worrying.

Apparently you can see the weight loss so far in my face, which was a surprise to me and rather motivating. I knew I had several chins to rival any idol of the Buddha, but I had no idea they had got so bad as too be commented upon. Clearly, they had, and now some of them have gone. Never mind – chin up darling, all of them!

I’m now hoping that the knees and back hold up for me to continue with the walking. It’s a real test, and ideally they will strengthen so that I can do even more and tone up the saggy areas which have embedded themselves due to lack of exercise over the past few years due to injury. I’m not sure what I’ll do if they give way, seeing as we don’t have health insurance any more and I’d be dead before the NHS got round to treating something like that. Resort to crawling, I suppose.

So wish me luck with the next two months. There will be a week’s break in late September when I go on holiday (yes, again!) but apart from that I should be able to focus with few distractions.

Here goes…..

Coco has settled in!

Coco the puppy is now an established member of the family and four times the size she was when she arrived. She appears, apart from the physical scars, to have got over her trauma of a couple of days ago when she was attacked by the neighbour's Staffie and be all well and good.

Yesterday, she finished puppy classes and by all accounts ought to now be able to sit, down, stay, leave, heel and come. Ought to be able to.

Coco is a thug! At each puppy class, she mugs a cute little cocker spaniel pup called Norman and terrorises a fluffy golden retriever called Orla who, being of a nervous disposition, wets and poos herself whenever this happens. Nothing I do will stop this behaviour; putting Coco into the ‘calm’ position, keeping her lead tight, giving treats, nothing. She is obviously intent on being the leader of the notorious  RH1 Doggie Gang (although of course Staffie down the road is presumably Boss Dog now, and sees his position being threatened).

Yet she has endeared herself to us in more ways than we could imagine. Despite the mess, smells, need for a vast amount of equipment and the trouble she has caused. The sheer delight with which she greets you when you have been out, her enthusiasm for games, her little character traits and idiosyncrasy and her simply gorgeous face all conspire to make her lovable.

The other weekend we took her round the local agricultural show, not without some trepidation at how she would react. But we needn’t have worried, she was an absolute star and even though it was socialising in a big way, loved every minute and new experience. Only two things worried her – the fox hounds en masse, and the motorbike display team. It took hours to go round; it’s unbelievable how soppy most people – including grown men - are about Labrador pups and every few steps someone would stop me and say “Aw, cute! Can I stroke your puppy?”

The one thing we haven’t yet cracked is her relationship with the moggies, all of whom continue to view her with suspicion. She, on the other hand, sees them as an untapped source of play and amusement and chases after them at every opportunity. She has had several scratches on the nose, none of which have deterred her, and the cats have resorted to slinking in at night for food and only coming in during the evening if it’s very cold or inclement. We need a good snap of cold weather to force the issue, I think, when the cats want to weld themselves to the radiator and the dog is too tired after a long walk to do anything about it.  

I’ve never really thought of myself as a doggy person, although I’ve never been anti dog. Lots of people think I am, but what I really don’t like are ill disciplined and badly behaved dogs. That’s why we have gone to puppy class, and our fault haven’t practised as much as we should have (these classes aren’t really for the dog, who takes longer than an hour to learn a new behaviour, but for the owners to learn the skills, gestures and behaviours to train their pet in their own time). In the coming weeks we will have to reinforce the good behaviour and standard responses that Coco needs to embed, as it’s a longer term ambition to be able to take her everywhere with everyone. She won’t jump up, eat food from the coffee table, scratch, bite or do any of the things which p**s people off about other people’s dogs. She will have exemplary behaviour as befits a Surrey Dog!

She already knows that the ultimate punishment is to be ‘sin binned’ which basically means being locked in her puppy cage for outrageous behaviour or failing to follow instructions. She hates it!

My daughter is looking after her when we are on holiday, and I am going to leave her a written sheet of instructions! She will also have to learn the commands and discipline instructions as consistency is very important. And no lazing in bed until noon, she’ll have to get up and do the early walk or clear up massive piles of poo!

When we come back Coco will no doubt have morphed into a wild wolf!

Time flies!

We are almost a week into September, and it’ll soon be Christmas!

This coming weekend is the read through for panto (oh, yes it is!). I am hoping for a good turn out; it’s a great script, we’ve picked some cracking music and the annual pantomime is for me the highlight of the theatre’s calendar. It will be colourful, noisy and hectic, and gone in a flash (literally, as far as the Genies are concerned!).

It’s unbelievable that we have got to the panto season already, though. It seems not long ago that I was away at Easter and not even considering the niceties of rehearsal schedules, community songs and the appropriate dimensions of a dancer’s bra top.

Someone once told me that the older you get the quicker the time passes and that certainly seems to be true. Each year it seems to go quicker and quicker, and events creep up on us and pass more swiftly than the year before. Of course that can’t be the case, after all 24 hours is always going to be the same 24 hours lengthwise or worldwide chaos would ensue, but it does seem like it and I don’t know what to do to slow it down. At this rate, in another few years things will have finished before they have begun!

Mentally, I don’t feel any older than I did in my late twenties. I think I make better, more considered and less judgemental decisions now and my experience in dealing with other people and situations means I do things differently, but in my mind I am still slightly alternative and non conformist. In reality, I am probably a typical middle England Tory living in an increasingly unrealistic fantasy world. But the real difference is in my physical capacity, which is definitely reduced.

I went to bed at 8.30pm the other night. The combination of dieting (which saps your energy anyway), extra walking with the dog (actually all walking with the dog is extra because I didn’t do any walking at all before) and just the pace of life are getting the better of me. I am looking decidedly haggard, or at least I think I am. The Hubby, bless him, always tells me I look beautiful but he’s a consummate liar about that sort of thing and will say anything to make me feel better (ie stop me whinging) so I have to take it with a pinch of salt (either that or he really thinks so, in which case he’s deluded and should be committed).

Does everyone feel like this? Or have I been unlucky and allowed myself to get into an unfit, overweight and isolated state and my chickens are coming home to roost?

If other people feel like it they don’t let on, so perhaps I just don’t have any backbone and ought to pull my socks up and have a stiff upper lip (a few slightly confused metaphors there, but you get the drift). I’ve always been a cope-er, but at the moment I feel like I’m sinking. Or maybe this is the state that everyone goes through when they try and do something about their health and get fitter, because doing exercise knackers you and then you don’t have any energy for anything else until you are fit enough not to need to do the exercise in the first place? It’s always been one of life’s paradoxes that the more you exercise, eventually the more energy you have.

I’ve obviously got some way to go! And lets hope that I don’t arrive before I’ve set off.

Hungry - why do we sometimes get the munchies?

I had the serious munchies yesterday.

I had them all day, and it played hell with my will power and my ability to stick to my diet.

I have done very well over the past few weeks, and have lost around a stone in weight. I have roughly another stone to go, and I am feeling relatively confident that I can make it. Munchies aside of course.

What is it about some days that you simply feel starving all day regardless of the amount you eat? I blame my hormones (well I am the right age and I might as well, they have such a bad reputation any way) but surely other people feel like this and they can’t all be hormonal?

My chosen diet at the moment does as much as it can to help by providing a daily snack which you are supposed to save up for your ‘weak’ time of day and by permitting you two daily fruit snacks as well. Yesterday, I had my breakfast, my morning fruit, my lunch with permitted soup plus an allowed bread roll and a yoghurt, my afternoon fruit and my savoury snack and by late afternoon I was still starving! It was ages until dinner, and I am was in serious danger of buckling under the smell of the fast food as I entered Victoria station tonight. I almost had to go home with a peg on the end of my nose!

I am using a diet from a company called Diet Chef, which is essentially a fully catered diet using old fashioned calorie counting as its basis. And it works. You get an allowance of 1200 calories a day of which they provide approximately 800 in a pre prepared breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack. You make up the remainder by plenty of fruit and vegetables and a small amount of carbohydrate. There is plenty of choice (you get to pick your month’s meal selection yourself from a set of drop down choices) and without exception everything I have eaten so far has been tasty. The portions are smaller than you would cook yourself, but reasonably filling. You can have the odd night off (for instance if you are out with friends for dinner) as long as you don’t do it too regularly. All in all, I am quite impressed. It’s just as well, because I had to sign up for four months and it was expensive.

I have tried numerous other ways over the years from Atkins (which did make me lose weight but I got terrible wind, constipation and bad breath) to detoxing (which is just weird) through very odd pills which 'cleanse' your colon and stop you absorbing fat to Weight Watchers (where I was hungry ALL the time and which, judging from the lardy women that attend their meetings week after week, doesn’t work long term). None of them were terribly successful and all of them, in their own way, were unpleasant. I didn’t stick at anything longer than a month.

I have been doing this for almost seven weeks now, so my weight loss is averaging just over 2lb a week, which is the recommended amount if you want to keep the weight off long term. I have another two and a bit months to go (I can’t afford to do it for any longer) to get down to a goal weight I haven’t seen for about 15 years. If I can do it, I am promised a pair of Armani jeans by The Hubby.

Now that we have the dog of course, and now that she is old enough to go out for walks, I hope to accelerate the rate of loss by taking her out daily and for at least one long walk at the weekend. She is still a baby and can’t walk for hours, but an hour’s play in the field will be an hour longer than I would have done before. It should help me lose weight, tone up my thighs and calves, tighten up my belly muscles and improve my heart. A lot is riding on this, so it better bloody work!

It's like having another baby!

The new puppy is running us ragged. Already, after two weeks of her being in our home, she has wormed her way into our affections and become part of the family. It’s just like having a baby again.

She is settling into our routine well, and we only had the night time crying for two nights. For the first two weeks someone was almost always there during the day with her as well, and it is only this week that she has had to manage for one or two days on her own. The first day she cried pitifully when we went to work (so my daughter tells me, as she was trying to sleep upstairs after a heavy night). The second day she cried only a little, and this morning she didn’t at all.

She is getting used to it all, even the cats who she is desperate to play with. Needless to say, the enthusiasm is not for the moment being returned. However we haven’t actually had any rough weather as yet so the cats are able to live in the greenhouse and sneak in at night for food and water. All three have reacted with varying degrees of mistrust towards Coco, and one of them will now sleep in the lounge during the day as long as puppy leaves her alone. Another will come in quietly for a nibble of food and then leave, but the last one won’t come near unless she knows puppy is shut away. It will take some cold weather and lots of rain, when they want to be warm and dry inside, to force the issue but we’ll get there.

Toilet training is more problematic, as we aren’t there all the time. By and large the number twos are done on newspaper by the door, but she does have a tendency to stop and have a wee wherever she happens to be, which is a tad inconvenient especially when you step in it! There is going to be one very smelly dirty rug going to the tip when she is eventually trained, I suspect some time next spring when she is eight or nine months old.

Despite being a cutie, she is also a nipper and any unshod feet are treated as fair game. Boy, it hurts! We are trying to use the dog manual’s recommended solution of yelling loudly then turning our back,and she is starting to get the message that biting is not acceptable. But I think her teeth are hurting her, poor little soul (again, just like a baby) so we are doing our best to find teething toys to play with.

We have bought a very nice kennel which she will eventually live in outside (and no, it isn’t cruel – she is a working dog and already loves being outside) where she will have much more freedom when we are out at work, will be able to keep warm and dry  and where it won’t matter too much if she makes a mess. We have secured the garden with yards of wire fencing so she cannot escape. Like everything else it will take getting used to and some adjustment, but she is a fast little learner. She’ll be fine.

It is incredible and very touching how much she likes people, and when you are there with her she is never far from your side. I sit at the dining table and work, and she sleeps under my chair. I sit and watch the TV, and she is at my feet (usually trying to bite them – see above). I am cooking in the kitchen, and she is around me all the time. I am jobbing in the garden, and she is mooching round my feet. She’s always there, like a little shadow. Maybe that’s what we should have called her – shadow!

But Coco is a perfect name for her. Apart from it’s play on the word cocoa, which is exactly the colour she is, she is a very stylish little dog with a pale blue leather collar that is covered in diamante (yes, I have blinged her up) and is very pretty. Coco Chanel herself couldn’t have wished for a better pet, but seeing as she was French she would probably have gone for a stupid little handbag dog instead.  

But already we love her, and we wouldn’t be without her. And our lives have changed immeasurably for ever!

Coco has arrived!

Well, the puppy has arrived. After having been an exclusively feline household for many years, we have a chocolate labrador retriever. Called Coco.

This little brown bundle of feet and belly has come into the house and totally taken over. We have had to create a 'den' by fencing off part of the lounge, acquire masses of equipment I simply had no idea about and enrolled her in the local vet's puppy club for her vaccinations, microchipping and eventually, to be speyed.

I had no idea that puppies poo'd so much! At just shy of eight weeks old, she isn't yet house trained. She has a designated place within her den where she is supposed to do anything she needs to do, and sometimes she does. We try and take her out into the garden when she has eaten, had a sleep, first thing in the morning and last thing at night. She has treats when she performs appropriately, but so far she is having trouble getting the hang of it (particularly with where she should have a wee) and it is very difficult to identify the  signs that she needs to go. Apparently puppies do go frequently and when they are very small, as she is, they don't have any bladder control at all and when they need to go, they need to go NOW. So you don't get much warning to clip on the lead and take her out back. We have had several accidents, and I haven't cleared up so much poo in years.

It really is just like having a new baby and having to teach it the basics. I always hated potty training then, too. I suspect it will be several weeks before she really gets her head round it and by then, I will be questioning my decision to get her.

Sunday night was her first night away from her mum and siblings (there were seven in the litter) and she cried all night. We gave her a hot water bottle and a towel which we had rubbed all over her mum's back so she had a familiar smell close to her, and a ticking clock which sounded like a heart beat, but it didn't make any difference. She really does have a very piercing whine, punctuated by little high pitched barks. I sleep wearing ear plugs, so I wasn't too bothered, but The Hubby tells me she started at about 11.30pm and continued until he got up in the morning, starting up again when he went out for work. I bet the neighbours loved that, but at least it gets them back for all the times they have woken us up by yelling at each other all the time or when their own dog used to cry outside the house all day while they were out at work and had locked him in the garden.

The vet has suggested that we leave the radio on low as sometimes that can soothe a lonely puppy, so we'll try that tonight. I wonder if she is a Radio Four or Radio Two girl? But what I will not do is bring her upstairs with me; she has to learn that she is not the leader of the pack and cannot go where she wants just because she makes a fuss. Of course I don't want her to be distressed, but rules have to be established from the beginning. Similarly, she will not be allowed on the chairs.

Today, she has been to the vet and had her first vaccinations, been microchipped and had a worming tablet. I have flea treatments to give her in the next few days, and she has to go back in two weeks time for her second jabs. It's all go!

I have a feeling that my life will be significantly different from now on. Coco will dictate our timetable and lifestyle if we let her, although while she is a baby it is very difficult to do anything which doesn't allow us to meet her needs. She will help get us fitter by having to be walked, and most likely, once we get over the first few weeks, bring us an amazing amount of joy.

I'll let you know.

Woof, woof!

For the first time ever, we are about to become dog owners.

A cute little puppy dog called Coco will be joining us on Sunday 22^nd July. She is a chocolate Labrador Retriever, and is part of the de-stressing and keep fit plan to ensure I reach my retirement years.

I’m not sure what the cats will think of her, having always lived in a canine free environment. Fortunately, Coco will not be phased by the cats as there are a few where she was born, which is a sort of stables cum farm cum shack in Hurst Green. But the moggies have had ten or more years of exclusively feline pampering and attention, and their noses may well and truly be put out of joint. I’m sure they’ll get over it, especially when the weather turns nasty and they want to be indoors next to the radiator.  

It has taken weeks of debate and heart searching before making the decision to get a puppy. Can we afford it? Are we at home enough? Will we walk it enough to stop it getting fat? Will we manage to teach it to be well behaved? Should we get a small dog which could fit in and out of a large cat flap and so have a bit of freedom during the day? All these questions and more have been debated ad nauseam and in the end we just decided to go for it (well, I did, and took the option of just going to see the litter and then telling The Hubby what was happening – it’s OK, he’s used to it!).

I must confess to being slightly apprehensive about it all. I have always been a bit of a couch potato and whilst The Hubby will take his turn at the walks (especially, I hope, at 6.30 in the morning) by and large it will be me doing quite a lot of it due to the number of hours he works. But in a way that’s a good thing, as it will force me to walk instead of slouch in front of the telly; there’s no way I want a barrel shaped dog and I need to get a bit fitter and lose more weight.

Coco is a cute little thing, and although I know she won’t stay a small, fluffy wriggling bundle of feet and belly for long she will still be a very pretty dog. And Labradors are such good family pets I’m sure she will fit in with the cats, grandchildren and our fairly hectic lifestyle. She will come to rehearsals, come shopping and go out with us at the weekends.

I am, of course, going into retail mode for said new pooch, and purchases have so far included a pale blue soft leather and diamante collar and a glittery puppy harness. She will look like a right woos walking down the street in them, but as she won’t know anything about that I don’t care – I like them! It is incredible how much stuff you can buy for puppies and dogs, some of it stuff I never dreamed I’d want or knew existed. Beds, fancy leads, vitamins, grooming tools and treats are just the tip of the ice berg. And the multitude of choice for food is quite overwhelming.

Coco joins us on 22^nd, and I can’t wait. She will be spoiled rotten by all of us, although the toilet training may tax our patience for a while and I’m sure she will cry at night. All the best puppy books tell you to ignore the crying, but if you see me with shadows under my eyes and a haggard look for a few weeks you will know why!