PigPog

• The ATV Ident
• Rock legends getting flanned…
• … one of them being Robert Plant.
• Phil Collins dressed as a flower and stood in a bucket
• Lenny Henry gwappling his gwape nuts

It could only be TISWAS!

After another fun week of what felt like a far more self-indulgent version of the Food Optimising plan, I wasn’t expecting a grand result on Monday night. But that’s exactly what I got – another 3.5lbs off! This takes my overall total weight loss to:

5 stones, 4.5lb or 74.5lb or 33.79kg

This is after a week which included chocolate, jam, clotted cream and wine. This, friends, is where the Syns come in. As I mentioned when I began this journey back in April:

>All the foods that would be considered off-limits in conventional ‘diet’ thinking are rated by ‘Syns’, and you get so many a day.

I had been avoiding using most of my allocation of Syns, thinking that the less I had, the more weight I’d lose. That worked for a while, but soon enough natural cravings for the usual treats kicked in, and I had to find a way of managing them without buggering up my progress. So, after speaking to my consultant, Saint Frankie the Magnificent, I found out how many Syns I could have per day and started planning them into my daily menus. It’s so wonderful during a rough day at work to think that there are a couple of shots of Jack on the evening’s menu! It’s an excellent way of making sure there are no feelings of deprivation, there’s no such thing as ‘bad’ food, and it makes the whole thing easier to live with. That’s very important for those of us who are going to be doing this for a while.

The trick, really, is to have the Syns, have the Healthy Extras and all of that, but to make sure the mainstay of the food is fruit and vegetables. Forget 5-a-day. Try 10. The more the merrier. And, of course, to make sure there’s at least 30 minutes of activity a day. Which reminds me, I’ve still got a stack of housework to get through before Hubster returns from another day at t’mill… so I’ll leave it there for this week.

Hoping for another good result from Mr Scale on Monday. Until then… the journey continues!

We had our usual walk by the canal today, and I did a bit more playing with monochrome when we returned. I took this photo of grass for the pattern and contrast, so it was a prime candidate for black and white:

The last part of our journey is by street, and this chimney pot caught my eye – an H in the sky:

I used The GIMP’s Chanel Mixer to change the image to monochrome, then added colour to turn it to something resembling sepia:

The H-shaped pot itself looks better in the sepia version, but I think the brickwork looks a bit unreal. Maybe it would have been better with only parts converted?

Okay then Mr Brogan, here’s one from your list…

Ten Guilty Pleasures

• Biopics – I love watching films about famous people. Especially when they’re really compellingly bad. Remember the movie of that godawful book Wired? That’s about the worst I’ve seen, but there’s also been really cheesy ones about John Lennon, Karen Carpenter and The Monkees.

• The Monkees – pure pop. Nothing more to say. Michael Nesmith was the first hat-wearing guitar player to catch my eye.

• The Associated TeleVision Ident – I can’t really explain this one. Maybe it reminds me of a time when TV was good and life was simpler, or maybe that the colours were cool, or maybe I still get excited because hearing that tune means The Muppets will be on in a minute.

• Marmite – Yep, definitely in the ‘love’ camp here. I adore the goopy stuff.

• Dipping Kit Kat Fingers in Tea – A habit I’ve unfortunately had to give up for now, but since 2-finger Kit Kats are fairly low on syns, I might have a dip again soon.

• Lush – One of the few stores you smell before you see. I love their bath and shower stuff, especially Happy Hippy and Karma.

• Life on Mars – One of the best TV shows ever. Loved it.

• Snorgling – Have you seen my husband’s hair lately? Probably not because his avatar is about three years old, but take it from me, there’s so much floof, I must snorgle it!

• Slash – Michael Nesmith might have been the first hat-wearing guitar player to catch my eye, but he was by no means the last. The man I occasionally refer to as The Lovely Mr Hudson rocks as hard as he ever did and he’s fantastic live (even though I only saw them for 20 minutes because I was too damn unfit to make it through the rest of the show).

• Doing List Posts inspired by The Brogan – Nuff said. Just be glad I decided not to tackle all 100.

43Folders has just relaunched using Drupal. It’s looking really good so far – Merlin drafted in a few people who actually know what they’re doing with Drupal, where PigPog just had me and a poking-stick to try to make things work. If you’re into productivity pr0n and GTD stuff in any way, I’m sure you’re already a big fan of Merlin’s site, but it’s certainly worth going and having a fresh look.

On Saturday mornings I like to stop by our local Boots to have a sneaky weigh-in just to get an idea of how things are going during the week. We were shopping in Taunton this morning, so I nipped into the Boots there expecting to find the same kind of digital scale that sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t. This, however, was a big flashy city centre store so the scale had to be equally big and flashy.

I think they hired a relative of Optimus Prime. This thing had flashing LEDs, hand grips, a card slot for members of the Boots Pharmacy Weight Loss Programme and a loud booming voice.

Yes, a voice. A feature the scales at Slimming World fortunately lack. I chose to find out just my weight and my BMI and began feeding this beast my change.

“Insert more!” It boomed. I began to feel slightly queasy at the thought that this same voice would shortly be announcing my weight across the store. “Stand still!” I whimpered my compliance as the LEDs flashed up and down the column ahead of me and the screen displayed my results.

The weight loss so far seems to be ticking over quite nicely, but what did surprise me was my alleged height. I’m very much enjoying and appreciating the loss of inches, but I appear to have lost height. Since when was I 5′ 4.9″? I could have sworn I was 5′ 6″! I must admit, I’ve only ever guessed my height, so I suppose I could have been an inch or two out. Never mind.

If anyone has been and begged for mercy at the feet of the Boots Scale of Doom, I must reassure you that the scale at Slimming World isn’t like that at all. There’s the bit you stand on, and a little separate panel that sits near the consultant. There are no booming voices, no large screens, just you, your consultant, and Mr Scale. And in comparison to the second-cousin-half-removed of Optimus Prime over at Boots, Mr Scale is a pussycat. So if worrying about how that first weigh-in at group will be is putting you off joining, take it from a regular… it’s a walk in the park. Really.

Back in a couple of days with the results of this week’s proper weigh-in, until then… the journey continues!

Well, I’ll be jiggered… after a week of fret and panic that I might have started going backwards in my weight loss journey, Mr Scale had a nice surprise for me last night. 3 and a half pounds off! I was honestly expecting a gain, what with hormonal inbalances and sudden cravings for frankfurters and scones. So here’s where I’m at so far:

Five stones, one pound or Seventy one pounds or 32.2kg

w00t! Loosening up and allowing a few syns to creep in hasn’t done me any harm at all. I’m very mindful of running away with this idea and spending every day down “The Teapots” munching cream teas, that wouldn’t work at all. But having the syns has turned my thinking from “can’t have this, can’t have that” to “ooo… what can I have?” – having an allowance to ‘spend’ makes the whole thing more interesting, and easier to live with.

So. Time to set a target. I have my official targets (set by myself – Slimming World let you make that decision yourself at your own time), but I want to set an unofficial one. I want to have lost 100lb by Christmas. So that’s 29lb away. Bring it on.

The journey continues!

Just a quick update, because I’d like to sleep soon, but we’ve now got all the categories in place as we want them. All the old content is now in the wrong categories, but most of it doesn’t matter anyway. The main section headings are at the top right of each page now – Do, See, Us. The old Photography content has been moved into those pages for now, but still needs a fair bit of work to tidy it all up.

The really big difference for us, though, is that we’re not trying to be a comprehensive guide to anything now. We’re just covering what really interests us. It probably means that PigPog will become a bit more personal home page than it has been recently, but maybe that won’t be such a bad thing. If we’re only writing about stuff we actually care about, we’re likely to write more, and better. It will probably mean more photos, too, since that’s more our area now.

I climbed these buggers. Every single one of them. Without stopping.

Hell yeah. We walked 3 and a half miles that day, and although it didn’t translate into a whopping weight loss last week, I’m still very impressed with my progress. This walking malarkey is starting to be fun.

Photos taken with Panasonic Lumix.

• Quick random thought — come November 26th, how many people in the old Dome are going to be sitting there saying “I paid £125 for this – they’d better do Stairway“?

Your own, your very own… and his haircut, Arthur. Taken by yours truly with the Nikon D40.