Thinking Slimmer - One year on

It was about this time last year that I started on my Thinking Slimmer journey. I can't remember the exact date but I know it was early May as we were going away on holiday to Rome for a week. I remember wondering whether this was a wise move - starting a new weight loss method at the same time as going to the land of my favourite food. Surely a recipie for early failure?

But the thing is Thinking Slimmer is different. Really different. No foods are banned and there's no diet to follow. All you have to do is set your goals, listen to the Slimpod each night for 10 mins and record the positive changes that you notice each day in the handbook that comes with the Slimpod. Sounds to easy and good to be true doesn't it?

I remember noticing changes almost from the first day. We were sitting having pizza for lunch in a beautiful little piazza in Rome when I noticed that I felt really full up and didn't want to eat anymore. This had never happened to me before with pizza! I think my husband thought there was something wrong with me, I have always finished all my pizza - it's my favourite food.

Other strange things happened - I didn't spend the whole week hankering after gelato and finding any and every opportunity to have one, as I did the last time we had gone to Italy. I had it once all week, savouring every mouthful and that was enough for me. Something was definitely changing.

So a year on what else has changed for me?

* I have control over food, it no longer controls me. I eat what I want to, when I want to but I no longer think about food all day long. I stop when I am full and eat only when I'm hungry. This might seem obvious to anyone who's never had a weight problem but after years of eating in response to feeling happy, sad, bored, tired, angry - you name it - this has been a huge breakthrough for me

* I have become a runner! I have dabbled with trying to keep fit in the past but nothing has ever 'stuck' like the running now has. I am active every day and run at least 3 times a week. I have also found yoga which I love and is a perfect complement to my running. In the last year I have run 5 races a 5K, 10 mile, half marathon, 16 mile and the big one - the London Marathon.

* I have met some fantastic, inspiring people who have supported and helped me along the way.  I'm now very happy to be able to 'pay it forward' by providing support to other people just starting out on their journey through the online communities that Thinking Slimmer provide.

* I have dropped two dress sizes, 18 inches have disappeared from across my body and the scales say I've lost 1 stone and 4 pounds. I feel as if the scales owe me around half a stone but as we all know the scales are a rubbish indicator of how your body is changing, especially if you exercise a lot. I think the camera is a better indicator of progress as these pictures show..

This is me waiting to take part in my 5K race back in June 2011

And this is me waiting to run the London Marathon 2 weeks ago

The best thing about all this is that I know these changes are permanent. There's no diet to fall off, there's nothing to fail at and even if for some reason I wasn't able to exercise I know that my body would then regulate my food intake and stop me from gaining weight.

The key to Thinking Slimmer is goal setting and having completed the London Marathon in size 12 running gear and smashing my fundraising target I have met all the goals that I set myself back in October. So I need some new ones

* To fit into my size 12 pink coast dress by June 9th so I can wear it out for my marathon celebration meal with my friend Lisa. The dress now does up but feels a bit tight so that's my focus for the next few weeks

* To fit into my skinny grey jeans in time to take them on our holiday to New York on June 16th. At the moment they *just* about do up.

* To run 10K without stopping on May 27th in the BUPA 10K

* To take at least 5 minutes off my current 10K time of 1 hr and 13 minutes by July 8th when Darin and I run the British 10K together

* To be able to touch my toes with straight legs by Christmas - I suffer with tight calves and hamstrings and have never been able to touch my toes. This one is going to take lots of yoga, stretching and time!

I think that's enough to be getting on with for now!

Thinking Slimmer - an update

Today something happened which had you told me about a year ago I would have laughed in your face. My Thinking Slimmer and running journey has been featured in BodyFit magazine

To say I'm chuffed would be an understatement and it made me think about how far I've come on my Thinking Slimmer journey. With the London Marathon less than two weeks away I thought it would be good to review my progress towards my current Thinking Slimmer goals.

Goal One - to train for and complete the London Marathon 2012

Although the marathon itself is still 12 days away I know that I have trained well and done everything I could have done to put me in the best position to be able to complete the race on the day. I have never been concerned with how long it will take me, as a first timer this is all about completing the distance, enjoying the experience and finishing with a smile on my face.

I know now from the training that I have done that I will definitely finish on the day, even if I have to crawl the last few miles. That's an amazing feeling for someone who only started running around this time last year.

Goal Two - to be wearing size 12 running gear by the time of the marathon

This one gets a great big tick. I now have a couple of running tops and two pairs of running capris in a size 12. On the day I will be wearing a size 12 top underneath my charity running vest.

Now the crazy thing is that I am still pretty much the same weight as when I ran the Great South Run back in October - give or take a few pounds. But these photos ought to illustrate the change in my size

This one was taken back in October at the Great South Run.

And this was taken last weekend at the Kingston Breakfast Run

The scales haven't moved but I am most definitely smaller!!

Goal Three - To raise £1250 for the Docklands Settlements and meet my Golden Bond pledge

Not all goals with Thinking Slimmer have to be weight related and this one isn't. I have a charity place for the marathon and as part of that I have pledged to raise £1250 for a small East London charity that does community support work in the area that I live.

Thanks to the generosity of family, friends and colleagues my current fundraising total stands at £1180. I am just £70 away from my target with several people who have promised to sponsor me still to donate. I am very confident that I will reach my target, so much so that I have raised my target by £250 and now hope to raise £1500 for what I think is a really worthwhile cause.

So, if you're reading this and have a couple of spare pounds that you could donate to help me towards this new target then please visit http://www.justgiving.com/Rebecca-Jones12 and donate securely online.

So I am on track to achieve all of my current goals by marathon day. I've already started to think about what comes next but that's for another day.

For now this is all about the next 12 days and getting to that start line, fundraising target met and in good shape ready to run the London Marathon 2012!

Ban the scales aka BMI is Bulls**t - a Thinking Slimmer update

It's been a while since I posted about my Thinking Slimmer progress. I am still listening to my Slimpods most nights of the week. While I feel that my relationship with food has changed completely I am very much aware that as my training steps up a gear I am likely to get more hungry and that could be a trigger for me to start eating more than I need to. I know that as long as I listen to my pods on a regular basis that won't happen.

So over 8 months into my Thinking Slimmer journey how much weight have I lost now? The honest answer is that I don't know and I don't care. I haven't weighed myself in weeks and I have no intention of doing so anytime soon. I have banned the scales!

So what has caused me to fall out of love with the previous measure of my slimming success that I have held so dear for so many years?

Quite simply because they have the power to change the way I feel when I step on them and most of the time it's not been in a positive way. I refuse to give them that power any longer.

I started Thinking Slimmer back in May 2011 and since July I've been measuring myself once every month or so. In the last 8 months I have lost a total of 16.2 inches across the whole of my body, including a whopping 5.5 inches from my tummy. That's a lot of inches and means that I've lost nearly 2 dress sizes.
Despite the fact that I have been getting smaller there have been months gone by when the scales have not moved at all. There are lots of reasons why this might be the case but it's probably mostly explained by my increased muscle mass due to all the exercise I've been doing.

Even though I can feel my clothes getting looser and that my wardrobe now contains lots of clothes in smaller sizes, stepping on the scales still had the ability to make me feel like I wasn't making any progress.

The final straw came just after Christmas. I'd weighed myself and was pleased to see that I'd not gained any weight over Christmas but was still not happy with the number that I saw looking back at me. For some reason I decided to calculate my BMI and was horrified to find that despite all the inches I've lost that I am still classified as obese on the BMI scALE.

Yes that's me, in the picture on the right, wearing a size 14 dress and classified as not just overweight but obese.

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't look at that photo and see a slim person yet - I still want to lose more inches and will be happy once I've lost another dress size. But to be classified as obese is just wrong in my opinion. No wonder so many women in this country have body image issues.

So that was it for me and the scales. They went in the cupboard and they're not coming out again. It's all about the inch loss for me now. I have just ordered my 'target dress' in a size 12 and although it won't fit me just yet it will by the time we go on holiday in June. Thanks to Thinking Slimmer I can say that with confidence.

That's a better feeling than any number on a set of scales could ever give me.

I'm a runner up!!

One of my previous posts was about Thinking Slimmer the company behind the revoluntionary Slimpod. This is a completely different approach to weight loss - there's no dieting, no pills, no shakes or weird and wonderful potions involved. It's based on a technique called Cognitive Hypnotherapy and all that's involved is listening to an mp3 download for 10 minutes a day.

It's changed my relationship with food forever and if you're interested in giving it a go there's currently a free Christmas Slimpod of offer. All you need to do is 'like' the Thinking Slimmer Weightloss page on Facebook and you'll get a discount code to use on the Thinking Slimmer website

Back in November, Sandra the founder of Thinking Slimmer announced the Thinking Slimmer Loving Life Awards. Sandra asked people to enter and tell her how the Slimpod had changed their life. Thinking Slimmer success is about a lot more than weight loss - I've heard stories of people overcoming health problems and achieving things that they never thought possible, much like me and my running. There would be 2 winners, one man and one woman and three runners up. The judging panel would award the prizes based on who's story they found the most inspirational.

When I saw the mail from Sandra I umm-ed and ahh-ed over whether or not to enter. My weight loss hasn't been spectacular compared to other people that are also using the Slimpod. I've had a slow and steady weight loss which has been a bit frustrating at times and on its own certainly wouldn't win any awards. But I re-read Sandra's mail and thought about my running. If you had told me this time last year that I'd be training for a marathon I probably wouldn't have believed you. So I decided to submit an entry, thinking that I had nothing to lose by doing so.

Today I had an e-mail from Sandra to let me know that I'd been awarded one of the 3 runner up prizes - I am really delighted and proud to have been chosen. It's quite something for me to think that other people find my story inspirational.

I was also really pleased to find out that Darin McCloud, who I ran the Great South Run with was chosen as the winner of the men's award. Fantastic news for him and thoroughly deserved - he's completely changed his life this year, lost over 5 stone in 10 months and if you're interested you can read his story here - it really is inspirational

The Great South Run - it's a bit of a long one!

I ended my last post saying that if it hadn't been for Thinking Slimmer then I never would have taken part in the Great South Run and I shall pick up that story from here.

One of the keys to Thinking Slimmer's success is that it gets you to set yourself goals. Your goals can be weight or dress size related but it also encourages you to set goals around things which will become easier or more fun to do as you lose weight. It won't be any surprise to know that one of my goals is around running.

Having completed the 5K in June, I had set myself a goal of taking part in a 10K race by December 2011. One day having got back from a training run I tweeted something about how I'd done and got a response from Sandra asking if I'd like to join the Thinking Slimmer team that were taking part in the 10 mile Great South Run in October. One of the other 'Thinking Slimmers', Darin McCloud that I've mentioned previously, had set himself this goal and the Thinking Slimmer team had decided to support him by joining in.

Now 10 miles is quite a lot further than 10K but I do like a challenge. So without thinking about it for too long I accepted Sandra's invitation and set about training to run 10 miles rather than 6.2 a whole 2 months earlier than I'd intended to!

I actually really enjoyed the training, it was great to keep up with how others were doing and share stories of how we felt in the run up to the big day. Each Sunday as I went out for my long run I was breaking into new territory, running further and for longer than I had once ever thought I would be able to. The day I completed my first 10 mile run is one I'll never forget - I was so proud of how far I'd come and it gave my confidence a huge boost to know that I would definitely complete the distance on the day.

So, on Friday 28th October my husband and I left London for Portsmouth for the weekend so that I could join the 23999 others running the race with me on Sunday. We enjoyed looking around Portsmouth on the Saturday as we'd never been before

However, as Saturday progressed I started to feel a bit under the weather and by the time I went to bed I had the startings of a miserable cold. I was so cross - months of training for the race and I had to come down with something the night before!

On Sunday morning I woke feeling quite under the weather. If it had been a normal Sunday I wouldn't have gone out on my long run but I decided that it was just the start of a cold and I wasn't going to let it spoil the day. So at just after 9am we found our way to the Charity Village where I met Darin for the first time in the flesh. It was great to meet him after months of chatting on Facebook and Twitter - he looked so different to some of the photos that I'd seen of him - he'd lost so much weight!

As the clocked ticked down to the start of the race we made our way over to the starting area for our wave. I started to feel quite nervous. I knew I could do the distance but I'd never taken part in anything this big and as I wasn't feeling 100% I was worried about how I'd do. We lined up for another team Thinking Slimmer photo - we'd now been joined by Trevor as well

The final member of the team to arrive was Lorraine, Darin's diabetic consultant who had been the person to suggest to him that he should take part in the race. As I said to her later, at about mile 8 I think - "this is all your fault then?"

At just after 11.15am our green wave set off, by this time I was excited and ready to run. By a stroke of luck I managed to see my husband just before we went over the starting line and it was lovely to have a last minute smile and cheer of support from him.

We had decided that we would use a run/walk strategy for the race. Running for around 10 mins and then walking for one to recover. I was a little apprehensive about this as I'd never tried it in training but Lorraine assured me that it would help me to achieve a better time, so I went with it.

The first couple of miles were really crowded, the atmosphere was brilliant with the crowd cheering and people hanging out of their windows waving and shouting encouragement as we went past. The route took us through the historic dockyard and past HMS Victory where there was even a brass band playing!

After about the 3rd mile, I realised that we were a little ahead of Darin. I think Lorraine and Trevor must have agreed between them that she would run with me and that Trevor would run with Darin because before I knew it she was asking me what time I'd like to aim for and encouraging me to pick up the pace for a bit.

We got to the 5 mile mark in a good time, I was feeling OK and the run/walk strategy was definitely working. We pushed on through mile 6 and I was amazed when Lorraine told me that we'd got to the 10K mark in an hour and 14 mins, 6 mins faster than I'd ever managed in training.

Mile 6-7 is when it started to feel tough for me, my legs felt tired, I could tell I wasn't well and I think the early pace started to take its toll. But we pushed on through to mile 8. At this point the course takes a turn out onto the seafront. We were greeted with a wall of wind and rain coming straight into our faces. It felt like running through treacle. The hardest mile of the whole race without a doubt.

By this time I was exhausted, I just wanted the finish line to appear in front of me, but I was given a massive boost when out of nowhere my husband appeared by the side of the road, cheering me on. He took this picture, the smile on my face is no reflection at all of how I was feeling at this point!

Before my longer there was suddenly only 400m to go and Lorraine was encouraging me to give it everything I had. I crossed the finish line in 2 hours, 1 min and 58 seconds - over 6 mins faster than I had ever run in training. I was elated, relieved and exhausted all at the same time.

Lorraine and I collected our water, medals and goody bag and we made our way back to the Charity Village to meet our other halves and find out how Darin and Trevor had got on. After a very welcome cup of tea and a banana from the lovely people in the Diabetes UK I saw Darin coming across the field looking pretty much how I felt. He'd done brilliantly - it was an amazing achievement and his friends and family were obviously brimming with pride.

I want to say 'thank you' to Darin, Sandra, Trevor and Lorraine. Without you I wouldn't have taken part in this race, proved to myself that I'm capable of running 10 miles and had a fantastic experience. Most of all I want to say 'thank you' to my husband, for being so supportive of what I'm doing, for carrying my bags in the rain and for magically popping up in the crowd, cheering me on at exactly at the point I needed to see him.

This is me, home showered and changed in the T-shirt and medal. Tired and achey but very proud indeed.

Thinking Slimmer

I can't get too much further into my story of how I have come to be training for a marathon without talking about ThinkingSlimmer

I came across this revolutionary approach to weight loss back in May and and able to say with no hesitation that it has changed my relationship with food forever.

I have 'struggled' with my weight for as long as I can remember and have tried many different diets to try and lose weight. Weightwatchers, Slimming World, calorie counting - been there, done it. I've been through cycles of starting something new, doing really well for a few weeks then dropping off 'the wagon', getting disheartened and putting the weight back on again. I think it's a something that a lot of serial dieters can probably relate to.

Thinking Slimmer is totally different. It's not a diet at all. There's no counting of calories, sins or points, no good or bad foods and no humiliating public weigh ins.

At the heart of the Thinking Slimmer approach is the Slimpod, a downloadable mp3 track that you listen to for 10 mins a day, ideally before you go to bed, for 21 days and then for as long as you need to after that. During those 10 mins Trevor Silvester, the founder of the Cognitive Hypnotherapy technique talks to your unconscious and magically changes the way that you think about food.

Within days of using the Slimpod I found that I was thinking about food a lot less and only really when I was hungry. I also found that I was able to stop eating when I was full and leave food on my plate, something I had never done before. Day by day I noticed more and more changes to my relationship with food and soon enough the scales started to show the impact of these changes.

Since June I have lost over a stone in weight, a dress size, 4 inches off my tummy and most importantly I have lost my obsession with food. I still eat whatever I want and really enjoy my food but I am now in control.

One of the other great things about Thinking Slimmer is the support that's available. Sandra Roycroft Davis, the founder of the company makes herself available to answer any questions that you have on Facebook and Twitter, or via the Thinking Slimmer website. She's incredibly supportive and an all round lovely lady who clearly cares about the people who are using her product.

I've also met fellow 'Thinking Slimmers' and they have some fantastic stories to tell. From the inspirational Dawn aka The Moiderer who has shrunk from a size 22 to a size 14 to the amazing Darin McCloud who has lost a staggering 5 stone in six months

I have a lot to thank Sandra and the rest of the Thinking Slimmer community for. Not least that if it hadn't been for them that I would never have thought about taking part in the Great South Run. But that's another story for another post on another day!