My two boys in Red Square, Moscow

Looking forward

Yesterdays food was ok...
I had a pot of instant couscous and roasted veg... 220 cals
I also had 2 banana's and some chocolate whilst I was at work, and then home made curry when I got home. I was glad I froze it because after 9 lessons I would have ordered takeout for sure!

Yesterday went well. I was a little worried about going back to work after having such a lot of time off, but everyone was really cool. All 9 kids had been practicing and it was great to know that I they would be ready for their exams in March.

Today I have 4 new pupils. WOW! The first is a lady who had a knee op who wants to use her time off to the maximum advantage. The next 2 are a couple of boys who have had lessons before but must have moved to the area and need to resume their studies, then I have a regular that has changed from Saturdays, then I have an old pupil coming back into the fold. She took her grade 6 with me and also some preparation for her A level music performance and then stopped in the summer to concentrate on her studies. Now she has been given a place at uni, but she needs grade 7, so we are going to get that cracked now!

So At the moment DS is doing his Maths lesson and I am kind of getting my head ready for work. I have to remember to take new notebooks for the new pupils and a selection of graded material to give them something to do to ease them into my regime and a little bit of preparation on a personal study I have.

I am at present sitting in the classroom with DS and between us is his half finished breakfast in a bowl. It is some kind of chocolate pillow style cereal we got from France. I am not joking, but it smells EXACTLY the same as baby poo. That yogurty new born baby poo made of pure milk.

I was sitting here getting wafts from the past when I realised what it was. I had forgotten that smell, but isn't it funny that the minute you smell it (even after 9 years) you start to look around for the wipes and a new nappy!

I haven't had anything to eat today, and frankly the baby poo cereal has kind of put me off to be honest. I am going to make something to go in the oven for dinner when I get home so that I don't order take away again as I might be tempted if there is nothing ready to eat when I get home. I am going to make a lasagne. YEAH! Easy peasy and nice to eat with my band.

Right, have fun chaps!

A Virtual Weight Loss Gadget

Hi everyone. My name is Adriana and I developed the virtual weight loss gadget you see on the right sidebar. Isadora has kindly let me spout off about it here.

Although we've had this free virtual model for people to put on their website sidebars for a while now, just two weeks ago we got accepted as a gadget in iGoogle.

So now anyone who wants to try it on their own private iGoogle page can do so.

We are hoping to get some comments from people about the gadget. It's meant to be a fun tool for weight loss inspiration in that it shows what you might look like at your heaviest weight, current weight and goal weight.

One reader recently complained that the gadget makes a 100 pound woman look good in a red dress. This is something we need to fix very soon, as currently the images only go down to a BMI of 18, and everything below that looks the same. We definitely don't want to encourage thin people to try to get even thinner and are very aware of the serious illness of anorexia. (Update February 2008: We've made this change now.)

We realize this virtual model is simplistic and there's little people can add on it to make it look more like themselves. But our mega maniacal hope is that if enough people like it and use it, that we might qualify for Google's gadget seed investment program. At that point we would receive the funding to develop this model into something much more versatile and exciting!

There is one other virtual model that we are aware of and this is much more sophisticated than ours. It's called the My Virtual Model and it was developed by a very successful company that employs over 100 people. (See my overview of My Virtual Model on Squidoo for more info). One day we'd like to compete with My Virtual Model ! ;-)

I hope you have fun trying this gadget out and would appreciate any feedback.

Celebrity Diet Secrets

The Daily Mail has an entertaining article today about celebrity diet secrets. These celebrity diet tips are taken from the The Black Book of Hollywood Diet Secrets. They list the tips alphabetically. Here's a couple of examples;

A IS FOR ASPARAGUS: Celebrities live on it. It's a natural diuretic, it diminishes bloating and is on every Hollywood insider's must-eat list. Actor Owen Wilson never misses his daily double dose of asparagus and parsley.

B IS FOR BLUE PLATES: Why? Blue is the least appetizing color for human beings and studies show when you eat from a blue plate you eat less.

E IS FOR EPSOM SALTS: By bathing in these, you can actually-soak away the pounds

But despite all these entertaining tips, the main secret lies at the bottom of the article where the author says "These women don't skip the gym - ever. If they have to get up at 5am to start filming, they will get up at 3am to work out."

Check out their article about celebrity diet secrets here.

Back to the grind

Hello all. Back from France and in a pretty cheery mood.

Have not weighed myself or bothered with what I have been eating AT ALL in any dieting sense but have gained just 2lbs since 12th December. That is really good news and a boost for my confidence in the band.

I have not been sick for the last 5 days as I finally (DOH!) realised that I do in fact need to chew everything to a paste before I swallow. At times this has even found me hawking up an errant piece of food out of my throat before the reflex swallowing happens just in case, which I am proud about.

So I have been to Russia and France and eaten out every day and drunk wine every day too and only put on 2 pounds in nearly a month.

Now I am back to England and back to normal food hopefully I will start to see that shift downwards.

I have sworn of the booze because its just pointless wen you are trying to lose weight. I have also sworn off takeaway meals too. They are loaded with fats even though it looks like they are not. So I am gonna make a lot of meals on a Sunday to freeze for eating when I get home from work in the evenings and am too tired to cook.

Financially I am totally back to normal and we even managed to get DS one of those Nintendo Wii things. I couldn't believe it when we were looking around before Russia and they said they were sold out! Whats that about? Anyway, we got one in France! HA HA. So although we were prepared to go Wii hunting and DS was on a serious mission to find one, we didn't have to look further than Cite Europe as they had one there. Also it was only £200 so saved a load on the UK price too. So if you want one, go to France!

So DS is happily being a maniac in the front room waving white controllers about with his Dad. He had already bought 3 games for it before we went to Russia so he was so excited about finally getting it back to blighty yesterday that we had to set it up the moment we walked through the door and let him have a go or 12!

We also got loads of bargains in France in the clothes department. Seems they now cater for larger lasses and I bought myself a nice pair of sweat pants. I have taken to wearing them around the house and, I never though I would say this, but its really comfy doing that! Also DH got a couple of new pairs of track suit bottoms which were actually the correct leg length! He always wears his trousers out at the heel because they are always too long. But obviously French men must be shorter than your average UK bloke, so he was chuffed.

DS spotted some really nice jumpers too and there was so much more selection in the boys department that there is in the UK. Seems that French kids like to look smart sometimes (or rather their parents don't just accept them looking like scruff budgets) and they had a great selection of smart casual stuff.

Next time we go I will be more prepared. I could only fit in about 20 packets of coffee pods, but they were only 80p per packet of 36!!! I LOVE coffee and I use maybe a packet of coffee pads in my machine every couple of days. Not senseo, or anything like that, just standard coffee pads. How can they charge £3 in the UK? Its sickening. I usually buy them on the Internet from Belgium, and I thought that was a good deal at £120 a pack of 18. Next time, its actually worth me popping over to France to get them!

So anyway, back to band land... I have NO PAIN, NONE! I am totally fine in every way. I have been swimming and down water slides and walked miles and even done things like *shock horror* scrubbed floors and fed the cats without getting a sore gut!

Its amazing to be pain free.

In fact its hard to imagine the pain I was in now and how tired it made me.

In light of this, I have taken on 5 more pupils and am now working 5 days a week - Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. I am pleased that my pupil taking her Grade 7 Piano exam at the end of last year passed because I was so worried that without the regular lessons I had ruined her chances, but she passed really well! I am so proud of them all.

Now I can start to get on with my life and start feeling better about myself and hopefully get on with losing weight the way I should have been last year.

So onwards and upwards!

Shout out to D over in Aus - Have fun and hope you had a good journey hun! Will miss you!

Acomplia " Best Weight Loss Pills" of our times?

Acomplia, goes by the generic name Rimonbant. This is being considered as the best weight loss pills and is the new anti-obesity drug of the future. Apparently it can reduce weight and help people quite smoking. In addition, Acomplia increases the levels of good cholesterol (HDL) in the body, while reducing the triglycerides (bad cholesterol).

Recently we have come to know that Acomplia functions by blocking a cellular receptor (CB-1) found in the brain and fat cells (which is involved in people experience pleasurable sensations and therefore leads to cravings). Acomplia blocks this receptor and decreases cravings, which helps to curb appetites and stop tobacco cravings. It is generally advised not to take Acomplia for over a period of two years.

The claim of being the best weight loss pills ever (fat burning pills) is a big claim. It is believed that Acomplia suppresses appetite and the longing to overeat. It can be used not only as a weight loss pill but as a smoking cessation drug as well and we know that both of these are associated at some level.

Studies have shown that obese patients treated for one year on the highest dose of Acomplia (Acomplia 20 mg) per day shed an average of 19 pounds and lost 3.5 inches of waistline, researchers showed, while 39 percent lost more than one-10th of their body weight while taking Acomplia. Acomplia also boosted levels of "good" HDL cholesterol in the blood by 27 percent. You can see why this would brand the drug to be the “best weight loss pills (fat burning pills) of our times. The results of this study are not verified but sound promising.

Like all other diet pills it Acomplia may cause some side effects. Dizziness, nausea, irritability, depression and restlessness are some of the adverse side effects of Acomplia which occur in the initial phase. These should gradually disappear with the regular use of the drug. Benefit to risk ratio will favor Acomplia's positive effects on weight loss, smoking cessation, and its aptitude to maintain a healthy cholesterol level, blood sugar and blood pressure.

Precautions if you decide to take Acomplia:

Do not take Acomplia:

1. If you are (hypersensitive) allergic to rimonabant, or any of the other ingredients of Acomplia or Zimulti
   
   
2. If you are breast-feeding
3. Take special care with Acomplia
   
   

Like always tell your doctor before you take this medicine especially :

1. If you have impaired liver

2. If you have severely impaired renal function

3. If you are currently being treated for epilepsy

4. If you are less than 18 years of age.

There may be some additional side effects of this drug. Acomplia is being considered as the best weight loss pills of out times. Only time will tell if these claims are true but definitely for now this sounds promising.

Craving Sweets or Alcohol?

If you crave sweets this may mean you have a vitamin deficiency and that if you ate more of certain foods it would be easier to quell and drastically reduce your craving for sweets.

Naturopathic medical doctor Colleen Huber says that if you crave sweets, what you really need are nutrients such as chromium (so eat more broccoli, grapes, cheese, dried beans and chicken) or carbon (eat more fresh fruit) or phosphorus (eat more chicken, beef, liver, fish, eggs, nuts, legumes) or sulfur (eat more cranberries, horseradish, cruciferous vegetables, kale, cabbage) or lastly tryptophan (eat more cheese, lamb, raisins, sweet potato and spinach}.

If your particular sweet craving is usually about chocolate, you are probably craving magnesium. Curb your desire for chocolate by eating lots of raw nuts and seeds, legumes and fruits.

See a very interesting list about various food and alcohol cravings and how they are related to mineral or vitamin deficiencies.

The art print above is by Jean-Baptiste Simeon Chardin