55kgs.

Apart from the Paul McKenna tape that I'm using to help me sort out my thinking and behaviour around my "food, exercise, body, health issues," I'm also doing a wonderful cognitive therapy program called The Beck Diet Solution. I plan to review both these programs later in the year, but I just wanted to mention right now a great little exercise that I'm doing today which I absolutely love.

Over the past few week I've been working on my Hunger Scale. Which is something I really didn't know about until McKenna and Beck. To get more details on the Hunger Scale download this great pdf from MIT Medical: medweb.mit.edu/pdf/hunger_scale.pdf Anyway, I've been working on eating at 4 and stopping at 6 as opposed to my usual of eating at 1 and stopping at 8 or 9. Now I have an idea of what portions sizes put me at a 6, I'm working on strengthening my ability to stop at 6 when I'm in eating environments that I can't control, i.e. when I eat away from home. To do this I write down what I'm going to eat for the day and at each meal I put twice as much food on my plate as well as add a few other foods that are not on my plan but are tempting. Then with all these choices on my plate I have to select and eat only the food and quantities I've predetermined I'll be eating and leave the others.

The point of the exercise is to build up my "resistance muscle" as Beck calls it = my ability to resist eating foods just because they are offered to me, just because they are on my plate, just because they're available, just because they're free, just because .... I'm to repeat this exercise as often as I need to until I can say no consistently to treating myself like a human garbage. So far so good.

In other news, the resistance belt on my elliptical machine came off last week. :( My husband put it back on and tightened the thingies that hold it in place, but it came off again when I increased the resistance from level 1 to level 3 :( He's going to try fixing it again but is quite busy at the moment and just doesn't have the time.

In the absence of my elliptical I decided to get creative with my morning exercise and use the steps that lead to my kitchen for my work out. I figured, I'd just step up and down one step for 1/2 hour and swing my arms while holding some light weights. OMG!!! Killer workout!!! BUT left me with a pulled calf muscle :( So I've had to reduced my exercise routine to daily walks until the pain in my calf subsides, which it is just beginning to do.

Good thing though that I'd bought a new pair of running shoes last week before my calf injury. My current pair is about 8 years old and as I have osteoarthritis in my knees, I really wanted shoes designed for high impact will lots of cushioning to protect my knees as much as I can when I'm power walking. Who knew that buying running shoes was such a science? I went to this great little store in Camden Town and they did all sorts of tests on me including putting me on a treadmill and videoing my feet. I was in there for quite a while, but the end result is that I got a pair of great shoes (above) that make me feel like I'm floating on air.

Oh almost forgot. Lost 900grams/2lbs this week, so I'm now 81.2kgs/ 179lbs. Yay!!!