Can I get “Lean in 15”?

I feel like I am finally in a good place. After the last few years of ups and downs, my head feels straight and I feel like my life is about as together as it has been since I was a kid. There is just one thing niggling away at me and it cannot be ignored. My weight. Its something I haven’t been happy about for a fair few years now, more noticeably since meeting my boyfriend and getting into my mid thirties (lets just blame the boyfriend though). As I have said to you before, I like food, not just because I am a greedy pig, I love going out for dinner, I love cheese & crackers with red wine on a Sunday night, I love a huge bar of chocolate when I am feeling hormonal. I also love booze, I love it a bit too much sometimes. I think, as a lot of people do, I drink to get drunk, not so I can act the twat or turn into a monster, both of which could potentially happen, sometimes both, but to feel relaxed,  feel confident and mostly to not be the only sober person as drunk people are really bloody annoying.

My love of food & booze was bound to catch up with me sooner or later, along with my disregard for exercise (I once joined a gym, had the induction and went home and ordered a chinese takeaway, never to return, I had to pay for a full year too) So I have decided this year something has to be done. I am bridesmaid for my best friend later this year and I will also be getting married, hopefully next year. I have a black bag full of clothes, some with the labels still on, that do not fit me. I’ve tried weight watchers & My fitness pal, which do work but I just feel like I am constantly thinking about what I can eat next and calculating points & calories, I find my conversations and thoughts revolve around it. “God, Sandra is eating that cake, it looks lovely but its got to be at least 350 calories” BORING!

Last year I joined another gym, I wanted to maintain my fitness after the marathon, no weight loss there either, although I did think I was training so I needed to eat & drink to fuel my body, turns out indian takeaways and wine werent great for this. I joined with a friend and they offered us a special on personal training so we took it. I have never worked so hard in my life! It was pretty much all interval training, which if you don’t know what that is, it’s where you exercise for say 1 minute at a high intensity, then rest for say 2 minutes. I really enjoyed this way of exercising and I felt like I had more of a workout doing this for 30 mins that I did from 2 hours of running. One day she was asking us about what we were having for dinner, my answer of cheese on toast didn’t go down too well but I complained that by the time I got home from work, I didnt want to be slogging over a dinner for ages and I hated salads, she mentioned a cook book I could buy where there were healthy recipes that could mostly be made in 15 minutes, yeah righto! I said I would look it up (whilst eating my cheese on toast)

The following week, whilst on the internet at work, trying to avoid work as much as possible, I remembered the cookbooks so I looked them up. As it was payday and I cannot possibly go without spending as much money as possible, I went onto Amazon and ordered it. Lets see what this is all about.

When the Lean in 15 book arrived, I flicked through it half heartedly, not expecting to see anything I liked, I decided to get the old post its out and stick them on the pages of the recipes I liked. Well I pretty much ran out of post its, so I decided to have a read at the intro, see what this bloke had to say, I mean he was alright looking but can he string a sentence together? Now I never read intros to books, especially not cookbooks and especially not lengthy ones like this, but I was reeled in. The whole explanation made perfect sense, when to eat what and why, don’t get on the sad step (weighing scales, which in my case is more a sadistic step) some was obvious but the way it was explained just clicked in my head, I was excited to start! Sadly for me, my shitty willpower got in the way and although I bought the other two books I didn’t manage to start before Xmas BUT, as annoying as it may sound, I came back from the xmas holidays feeling refreshed and revived fully ready to kick myself up the arse, because soon its going to be a lot smaller.