I’M not quite ready for the catwalk, but I’m strutting around like a peacock (or should that be a peahen?) after the first week of my sponsored diet.
Well, wouldn’t you be if you’d got rid of 2.4 kilos of greasy blubber? That’s 5.3lbs less than I weighed at the start of my battle to shed at least 35lbs.Exactly one week later, on Wednesday January 17, I stepped on the scales at my local Beauty and Wellness Centre near Guardamar del Segura on - quietly confident that I’d shed at least a couple of kilos.
OK, I admit I had nipped onto my very unreliable bathroom scales at home to get an inkling of where I was up (or down) to. And they had told me much the same thing.
Privately, I had been hoping to lose 3lb in those first seven days. In reality, I lost 5.4lbs. The joy of that achievement was countered by finding out later that I was still marginally over that horrendous 200lbs landmark...albeit by just a couple of ounces.
So, how did I change my eating habits during the first week? Well, basically I just ate less. I have never been a big fan of weight-loading carbs like chips, pasta, bread and fried rice but if I like something, I will happily have a second helping. And it’s rare for me not to clear the plate.
I also love chocolate and biscuits...but the only sweet thing to pass between my lips now is me whistling the Welsh national anthem. Well, trying to anyway!
Anyway, despite the joy of Week One, I’m not getting carried away. (‘That’s because it would take four men to lift her’, did I hear someone say?’)
I still have a mountain to climb to get myself back into some sort of human shape (yes, I feel like a cross between Mrs Blobby and the Michelin Gran). But nothing will stop me now - not least because I have an extra motivation.
My 13-year-old granddaughter Daisy, who suffers from Crohn’s Disease, spent last week on six-hourly doses of morphine in Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool after being admitted the previous weekend in severe pain. The hospital's top Crohn's specialist has now indicated that she requires surgery to remove the part of her bowel that is causing the pain - and it is likely to be carried out next week.
The surgery is the latest setback in a chronicle of suffering and lost childhood as Daisy enters her third month off school. While Crohn’s is currently incurable, researchers are working to find an antidote - and I want to help them to help kids like poor Daisy.
Those 2.4 lost kilos have provided a new platform from which to continue my Up and Down Campaign, as I think of it. The Down is where I want my weight to go and the Up is to raise at least £500 for CICRA, the Crohn’s in Children Research Association, through the JustGiving.com
To sponsor me, just go to https://www.justgiving.com/Donna-Gee
Published in The Courier (www.thecourier.es) January 18, 2013
