A bit rushed, but not all that disappointing. I feel 14 again.

Hi guys! 

Let's jump right in this week, shall we?

CARLO'S THIRD WEEKLY WEDNESDAY WEIGH IN!

So here we are again. This past week has been a good week diet wise actually, I even went to the pub last Friday and only drank water! (Though this does have more to do with the fact that I am poor, but payday tomorrow, WAHEY!)

Haven't been snacking either; I think my only slip up has been the Kitkat Chunky that I sneakily munched last night, so all in all I have been a good boy (Hear that Santa? Yeah, you heard me.)

So, without further ado, let's get cracking:

LAST WEEK'S WEIGHT:

203lbs

(14st 7lbs/92kg)

WEDNESDAY WEIGH IN:

201lbs

(14st 5lbs/91kg)

GRAND TOTAL LOSS OF:

2lbs!

OH HALLELUJAH PRAISE THE BABY JESUS! Well that's an astounding result I believe!

In 3 weeks I've managed to lose 4lbs and therefore have succeeded in losing between 4-8lbs before Christmas! Ah, Christmas. Now this next week is going to be the big test isn't it? Because tomorrow night I am off out for my friend's birthday, Saturday is my work Christmas do, then Sunday I have my first Christmas dinner, followed by another on Monday and then the big proper one on Tuesday! Though what with driving about and whatnot it's only on actual Christmas day that I will be able to drink so I suppose that's a kind of (very well hidden) blessing.

Now, I'm not too sure what's going to happen with next week's blog, I am going to do a Christmas one, and may do a separate one for the weigh in, but at the moment I am not 100% sure, so I'll just wing it and see how things go along.

But, in any case, I hope all 3 of you that read this have a fantastic Christmas, I hope you get very drunk and embarrass yourselves by causing a scene and I will see you when we're all sick of the sight of stuffing and gravy.

PEACE AHHHHHHT.

(before I go, here's the most unintentionally funny Christmas song you will ever hear, this is my gift to you:)

It's the remix to ignition, hot and fresh out the kitchen, also a Weekly Wednesday Weigh In that is totally bitchin'

Oioi!
So, it's been a week since my last post, and how much of an amazingly exciting week it has been!

So, as some of you may know, I have been learning to drive on and off for about 4 years (had a 2 year break in the middle for some university drop out times) so it was rather exciting when i finally went and attempted my practical test on Tuesday. I was incredibly, amazingly nervous, which is weird because I had just done an hour long lesson and completely bossed everything so I am obviously quite competent when it comes to being behind the wheel (well, I'm no Lewis Hamilton but I'm very safely out of the "oh-look-it's-George-Micheal-going-into-the-front-of-yet-another-Snappy-Snaps" zone). My examiner was called Bob, who was very friendly and we spent the first ten minutes of the driving round chatting about me being a Greengrocer and, in classic British fashion, how the weather was shit.
And then came the manouvre.
Now, usually, a turn in the road for me is so easy I could almost do it with my eyes closed (except you can't do it with your eyes closed because that's probably illegal), but for some stupid reason  my nerves got the better of me and I decided that what the manouvre really needed was more speed, so I ended up bumping the kerb whilst reversing and then did some sort of Strictly worthy waltz around a parked car that left me with a brain full of "FUUUUUUUCKFUCKITYFUCKFUCKIVEFAILED" whilst I then had to endure about 20 minutes of waiting to be told that I stuffed it royally. After the turn in the road debacle I decided not to talk to Bob anymore, because as harbinger of my forever a pedestrian doom I didn't like him much after that. So when I pulled back into the driving test centre carpark and he turned to me, and my instructor, the lovely Tina (whose services you can find by inquiring here)was stood outside the car with her fingers crossed I was actually quite prepared to cry.
But then, something amazing happened....

I ONLY WENT AND BLOODY PASSED FIRST TIME, DIDN'T I?!

So yes, that was most, exciting. Bloody well done me. 

So now I am free to tear up the streets in my lovely little car. Ladies and gentleman, may I present to you: ELAINE!

And I think we are all in the same mind here: what a sexy beast.

So yes, that is the excitement of that. So to celebrate I went over my friend Charlee's house, drunk a whole bottle of vodka and about a billion liters of tango and haven't felt not hungover until right at this very moment, which is why I don't have high hopes for the:

CARLO'S SECOND WEEKLY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY WEIGH IN

So baring all the boozing in mind, I'm going to predict that I've either put on weight, or stayed the same. (Also, I had a massive burger the other day because I was watching Diners, Drive-Thrus and Dives and they made an amazing burger that I had to try out at home.) Here we go:

LAST WEEK'S WEIGHT:

204lbs

(14st 8lbs/92.5kg)

WEDNESDAY THURSDAY WEIGH IN:

203lbs

(14st 7lbs/92kg)

GRAND TOTAL LOSS OF:

1lb!

Now I know last week I wasn't happy with a pound loss, but this week, because I genuinely did think I would have put on weight, this is a nice surprise! So all in all, quite a good week.

Right, I have to go off and jump start my car, so if there are no more blog posts I electrocuted myself and left a fat corpse behind (gutted, pulbearers.)

Until next time, here is the little ditty that I now you were humming when you read the title: ciao!

GET READY FOR IT, HOLD ONTO YOUR HATS!

Hey guys, well here we go, the moment we've all been waiting for! Welcome, ladies and gentlemen to:

CARLO'S FIRST EVER WEEKLY WEDNESDAY WEIGH IN

AND LET ME TELL YOU, IT'S A DOOZY! OH MY GOD HAVE WE GOT SOME SURPRISES AND AMAZEMENT IN STORE FOR ALL YOU LUCKY READERS!

......Oh maybe not, it's just my weigh in, but come on guys! Let's try to be excited, shall we? Everyone excited? Good.

I'm not too sure how this feature is going to go down down, but hopefully after a few weeks it will have some sort of exciting formula to it... Maybe. But I suppose we should really get jiggy with it, so here goes:

LAST WEEK'S WEIGHT:

205lbs

(14st 9lbs/93kg)

WEDNESDAY WEIGH IN:

204lbs

(14st 8lbs/92.5kg)

WHICH IS A GRAND TOTAL LOSS OF:

1 sodding lonely pound. 

What a bummer. I was hoping for at least 2lbs, buttttt I suppose at least I didn't step on the scales and see that those 6 large glasses of wine had decided to reap yet more revenge upon me and make me gain weight.

This is not the exciting first weigh in that I wanted, but, to quote myself from the first post:

"A rate of 1/2lb loss a week is apparently the healthiest, so using that I should be losing 4-8lb a month:
By Christmas 2012 (1 month from now) I should be in the region of 201-197"

 And what with 3 weeks until Christmas, I am most likely going to fall between that weight bracket, so hopefully, all shall not be in vain and I will not have to spend Christmas crying hysterically whilst shoveling stuffing into my face with my hands during the Eastenders Christmas Special (don't judge me - I don't pick to watch Eastenders, it's what my step-mother will put on).

But yes, this has been a bit disappointing hasn't it? To make up for the damp squib of a celebration here's a picture we can all agree is pretty exciting:

 Yes. Well I'm off for a slice of toast..... and a cold shower. 

Tom Daley, Mariah Carey and an unfortunate grape incident

Hello everyone! It's now officially December and so I think that even the biggest Scrooge's among us are starting to feel the slightest bit of "OHMAGAWDSANTAISCOMINGGGG" mania. Decorations are going up (or, if you live with my Mother, they've already been up since the middle of November), the tins of incredibly overpriced biscuits and chocolates are being cracked out on living room tables everywhere (how does everyone else manage to get to the strawberry cream ones first?), and, most excitingly,  it's now acceptable to whip out this bad boy that I have to skip past on my phone for all the other 11 months of the year:

And I think we can all agree, that is, what they call, A TUNE.

Usually I find the most exciting part about this year is that, because it gets darker early, the hours within which it is socially acceptable to drink get longer ("it's 5'clock somewhere!" is my favourite "don't judge me" line). But alas, this year, due to all this trying to lose a bit of weight malarkey I am going to have to forgo all the excitement of cracking open a bottle of £3.99 Rucio wine at half 4 in the afternoon.
That being said, I do have a bit of a confession to make. You see, I went out on Saturday night, primarily to go and see the Christmas Fayre they have started putting on in the town every year, and secondarily to go to the pub and meet my friend's sister who was up from the shires of Devon.
Now, I finished work at 2pm on Saturday, and I planned to nap for a bit and then set off to the Fayre around 7 to have a look at all the overpriced, home made organic hand washes and pretend that I look interested in them, whereas in actual fact the only way they'd get me to part with my hard earned greengrocer dollar would be to be selling Tom Daley (I picked him over Tom Hardy because you just know Daley would do anything for a fiver and to have his picture taken), after which I would then go to the pub, have one glass of wine and then retire to bed ready for work the following morning.
What with all that being planned, I was quietly confident that that was how it would all go and it would be a bloody marvelous evening, fueled mainly by festive cheer. Well it got sent down the creek without a paddle when we arrived at the Fayre at half 7 and it had all been packed away and there wasn't a homemade organic candle, nor even a mince pie (not that bothered abut the last bit, not a fan of the mince pies, which, as we know, are lies wrapped in pastry) in sight. And so, we headed to the pub, which then turned into two pubs, and my one glass of wine turned into six large glasses of wine, accompanied by two shots of Apple Sours and an exploit I barely remember whereby I got the number of someone I went to school with and attempted to sext them with wine brain. Which is completely magical and appropriate behaviour, I'm sure you would agree.

So yes, that evening didn't go according to plan. On top of that festive binge, I also have not even once attempted to go jogging since the first trial, but in my defense the weather outside is frightful, and the fire is so delightful (but don't let it snow, because I hate the stuff). Butttttttt, in good news, I have done well with the whole not stuffing my face full of cheese, biscuits and crisps so the eating is on track - in fact, the My Fitness Pal app keeps telling me if I keep eating like I am I will become malnourished and die ("I'm one stomach flu away from my goal weight!") Which leads me to believe, seeing as I really don't seem to be eating much less than I was, that sometimes the app is full of shit. It seems impossibly hard to eat 1800 calories a day, I keep having about 500 left after everything I've eaten during the day, and almost feel as though I should snack on a bag of sugar to make it up. Or, maybe, that is their clever little ploy to keep you using the app, because if you aren't a fat blob you won't use the app and they would get no money from their adverts. Hmmmmm.

But anyway, fingers crossed that all goes well for the upcoming (drum roll please:)

Cheers, YouTube.

*ahem* FINGERS CROSSED THAT IT ALL GOES WELL FOR THE UPCOMING, FIRST EVER, SET TO BE A WEEKLY THING:

CARLO'S WEEKLY WEDNESDAY WEIGH OFF

WATCH AS CARLO TAKES ON A SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST AS MAN GOES AGAINST FAT, HOMO GOES AGAINST UNFABULOUS FLAB, AND A BORDERLINE ALCOHOLIC GRAPPLES WITH HIS POSSIBLY GENETIC DEMONS. 

So yeah, that will be happening on Wednesday. Good stuff. Please feel free to weigh in with me and share your triumphs, or even if you've accidentally swallowed a hammock of cheese and gained six pounds, it's all welcome over here.

See you all Wednesday!

SOME CARLO STATS:

Jogs to date: 1

Miles jogged: 2.44

Mad collies, that think I'm a sheep, encountered: 1

Christmas Fayres missed: 1

Large glasses of wine drunk: 6

People from school I have unsuccessfully attempted to sext: 1

Times I have listened to All I Want For Christmas Is You during the writing of this blog : 12

The first three miles are the hardest...

Well, actually, I wouldn't know. Because my chosen route was apparently only 2.44miles. Butttttt still, a 2.44mile jog/power walk/longingly staring at every bench and pub along the way is better than doing nothing I suppose!

Whilst on my jog I encountered many people walking their dogs, which is fair enough because I was jogging around the bit of Burnham that is mostly used for dog walking. I just have one question, who in their right mind just let's their dog, that's off the leash, run up to someone whilst jogging, without even attempting to get the dog to come back to you? I mean, I don't really like dogs, I was scared of them throughout my entire childhood and am still not very happy about them being around now. I don't mind it if they are slightly friendly and quiet, but when this collie thing came bloody charging up towards me, barking its head off, I thought "oh great, I've only worn these trainers and track suit bottoms once and this is the outfit I am going to die in."
My youngest sister is severely autistic and if we go walking with her and there's a dog, she freezes, or will almost scratch you to bits trying to cling onto you for dear life. And so many times I've heard my mum berating people for letting their dogs off of the lead. I just don't see why you have to when other people are about - or other dogs - aren't you worried your dogs going to be mauled by a chav's mastiff or something?

Hmmm...

Anyway, back to my topic of jogging aha, it was alright, I alternated between jogging and power walking using streetlights as my guide and this helped me keep quite a good steady pace. I forgot my bottle of water though (ROOKIE MISTAKE KLAXON) so I had to deal with a mouth drier than Ghandi's flip flop for the majority of the jog :(

Tomorrow I think I will set out earlier, water bottle most definitely in hand, and see where I can add that .66 of a mile.

Well, that's the ice broken I suppose.

Jogs to date: 1
Miles jogged: 2.44
Mad collies, that think I'm a sheep, encountered: 1

So, what's going on here then? (Besides the cheese eating and the crying)

Hello Internet, it's nice to meet you. May I take your coat? Please, sit down, have a bit of cake.

Ah, cake. Do you know what? I don't even like cake, to be honest, but recently I seem to find myself having eaten a bit too much of it. Along with too much cheese, too much pasta, too much bread, too many packets of crisps that are meant for sharing, and, essentially, too many meals in one day.

It didn't always used to be like this, when I was secondary school and right up until I was about 17, I was thin, very thin. In fact, one of my secondary school teachers actually thought I looked quite malnourished. Which... was probably true, I used to not eat all day during school and then only have my dinner when it was served about 6pm and then not eat until the same time the next day. Also, I was getting an awful lot of exercise seeing as I would routinely bunk off school most days to evade homophobic bullying and go on walks into the countryside that were miles and miles long.
As a result, by end of year 11 I looked like this:

Not actually a transvestite, I was holding a "Bookworm Bash" (a sort of schoolboy/schoolgirl party where essentially all of us just came dressed as slutty schoolgirls), honest. Bloody killer legs though I think you'll agree.

But to put in perspective actually how thin I was:

Not exactly a glowing picture of health?

But I thought I looked amazing, and I went to college looking the same and I was never short of any male attention so I felt that I must have obviously been doing something right. However, even though i had been drinking with friends since about the age of 15 (naughty, I know), I had never drunk on a regular basis, nor drunk anything of any great volume.

ROLL ON THE 18th BIRTHDAY. On my 18th birthday, I bunked on college, and with my boyfriend at the time in tow, set up shop in the local Wetherspoons from around 9am, with various of my college friends joining me when they had breaks throughout the day. That was my first taste of actually being able to buy my own alcohol and have whatever I wanted.
The Halloween of the year of my 18th birthday (which is in March) I looked like this:

Soon after my 19th birthday, I was starting to stretch buttons on my old shirts:

On the actual day of my 20th birthday, I had rounded out quite significantly:

And on my 21st birthday party night, I was even popping out at the back:

No wonder my ex cheated on me with a plumber with dreadlocks.

And so, now that is only almost 3 months until my 22nd birthday. I am determined to do something about it. 

With the help of the My Fitness Pal calorie and exercise counter app (PRODUCT PLACEMENT KLAXON. I'm not getting paid for this endorsement, but if someone at that company wants to pay me, then bring that cash to mumma) I hope to shed all this beer retention weight and by my 23rd birthday be a bloody svelte and amazing looking young man.

At the moment I weigh 205lbs (which is 14st 9lbs, or 93kg). I stand at 5ft 11inches and I am giving my goal weight as 154lbs (which is 11st, or 70kg). So this will, HOPEFULLY, be a total loss of 51lbs/3st 6lbs/23kg. 

A rate of 1/2lb loss a week is apparently the healthiest, so using that I should be losing 4-8lb a month:

• By Christmas 2012 (1 month from now) I should be in the region of 201-197
• By my 22nd birthday (3 months from now) I should be in the region of 185-173
• By time of my summer work holiday (7 months from now) I should be in the region of 177-149.
• By the time of my 23rd birthday (15 months from now), if that trend continues, I will be malnourished, and in need of cheese and pasta. Or dead.

Now, I am fully aware that these can be seemingly quite unrealistic goals, I can fully imagine myself getting to my 22nd birthday and still hovering around 197. Even just typing out those supposed "goal weights" has made me want to wish time away so I can actually see what I look like.

But losing weight unfortunately, as we all know, is not a quick fix (unless someone is offering to pay for me to have some lipo, I would be ALL OVER that), so how am I going to give it a go? Well:

• CUTTING OUT ALCOHOL. Well, let's not be silly, I will still drink at Christmas, and probably have a couple on birthdays and such, but there will no longer be mid week drinking, drinking alone whilst watching TV  drinking every week at the pub, buying a bottle of vodka saying "oh it's ok because it will last me all week" and then not having any left the day after, drinking with my mother (which is the killer), because I seem to only drink water all the rest of the time when I am not drinking alcohol, and I seem to have a proper laugh throughout the scarce times I'm not drunk, so maybe water will be the magic ingredient to my success? 
• CUTTING DOWN ON THE SHIT I EAT. Though, to be honest, I don't eat that much. It's just that have a horrific control over portion size and I eat meals at very funny times due to working evenings in the week. I most certainly need to cut back on the cheese and pasta though. (EVEN THOUGH OH MY GOD I CAN'T EVEN IMAGINE A LIFE WITHOUT THEM.) According the the My Fitness Pal app my optimum daily calorie intake is 1810. So not much room for cheese anyway.
• GETTING A BIT MORE ACTIVE. Beside the every so often rolling around in my boyfriend's bed I do, (believe me, there could be a lot more of that), and being on my feet all day and the barely a half mile walk into work (I'm a greengrocer at a local supermarket, I spend my days looking at veg and lifting boxes of it, which, when I started, seemed like enough of a work out on it's own), I do not do any exercise. I briefly took up jogging, but promptly slipped on ice, hurt my back and never tried it again. Until now. I plan to jog 3 miles a day, until that becomes too easy (getting a bit ahead of myself, I know) and then increase it so it's challenging. And maybe, just maybe, after New Year I will be able to quit smoking and be able to afford the gym. I mean, surely it's full of hot men so my eyes can get a work out too?

If you're still reading, and I haven't lost you completely, I just thought I'd say a bit on why I've turned this little venture into a blog.

Basically, I've been wanting something to blog about for ages. I love writing, but I've become a bit slack at it because I haven't written anything apart from constant lists of veg and fruit in the last 2 years. 

Also, I need a kick up the arse to lose weight if I'm honest, and it would be nice to be able to talk to other people that are battling the bulge as well. because yes, ok, the My Fitness Pal online community thing is alright, but it's full of people doing really well and not cheating and making you feel a little bit shit if you haven't got up off your arse in 3 days and so, instead of showing them wrong, you run to the kitchen and cry whilst eating a whole block of Red Leicester. 

Maybe no-one will read this, but I suppose most blogs are mainly like a diary, a way of talking to yourself without seeming like you're totally batshit mental. Hmmm....

As a word of warning, the majority of these early posts, until my internet in my room is actually sorted and my pc is brought back from the dead, will be from my phone, so I am sorry if everything ends up all over the place and there are pictures randomly placed left, right and centre. 

OH, AND I ALMOST FORGOT:

If you wish to add me as a friend on My Fitness Pal, you can find my profile here.

And if you wish to read my tweets (of which there are BLOODY FAR TOO MANY EVERY MINUTE OF EVERY DAY), then you can do that here.

Well, guess I shouldn't be sat here for any longer, let's all get up and have a bit of a cheeky jog, shall we?