How to lose 40lbs in a year

My New Year's Resolutions last year were to stop biting my nails, to be less shouty with the children and to lose 3 stone (aka 42lbs). Well, my nails are still bitten to the quick but I did manage to shout less (not congratulating myself too much there - having both children in full-time education helped enormously) and, as you may have guessed from the spoiler in the title, I lost 40lbs. Not quite the 42lbs I'd aimed for but it still translates as 4 dress sizes, which is really quite significant. ("Really quite significant" is of course hugely underplaying the pride I feel in this achievement. A more realistic description would be "yyyaaaayyyyyyyyy!!!!! I'm slim! slim, I tell you!)

This weight-loss has not gone unnoticed by friends, family, or anybody who knows me. And do you know what is the thing I am asked most often? It is "Have you been trying to lose weight or...erm...?" The alternative to 'trying' is never vocalised and at first I thought people might be wondering if I had lost loads of weight through some kind of illness, but since they invariably then say "you look so well!" this was clearly not the case. And I finally realised that they are hoping I am going to tell them that weight loss is actually terribly easy once you know the magic secret. So I do tell them the magic secret: hunger + sweat = weight loss. And their faces always drop.

Because the truth is that losing weight is, in fact, really quite hard. The theory is simple enough - you eat less, you move more, you lose weight. Back in March 2011, I tried moving more when I started running (using the Couch Potato to 5k programme - highly recommended by the way). I could see my body changing but I wasn't losing weight. So I moved a lot more - I did hooping, cardio tennis, ballroom dancing. All great fun but the scales still didn't budge.

The penny was starting to drop so I added in some eating less - you know the kind of thing: cutting out sugary snacks; eating less fat; yada, yada. My portions remained the same and .... you've guessed it!... the scales didn't budge. So I eventually joined Weightwatchers and the scales finally started to oblige.

Don't believe the Weightwatchers advertising puff. Believe me, if you do Weightwatchers, you will know that you are on a diet. For the first 4 months I was hungry for 19 hours every day. Truly. But eventually, I got used to eating so much less, and now only feel hungry at the normal times. And I have only 7lbs left to go to reach my ultimate dreams-come-true target.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that losing a lot of weight is a serious commitment to make. It's especially hard to do when you have small children because it involves making time for yourself. This is not trivial. You have to be selfish - even a 30 minute run never takes only half an hour. If you don't want injuries, you have to warm up and cool down. The time all adds up and we all know that mothers of young children do not have time to spare. And this is where I do have a magic solution to offer.... and that is Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred! (NAYY)

This is a flipping brilliant DVD for the reluctant or time-starved exerciser. It takes just under 30 minutes to do, including stretching, and as long as you take the DVD out of the sleeve, put it in the DVD player, and follow Jillian's instuctions, it really will work. Or at least, it did for me. Not on its own - I like to vary my exercise regime so as to reduce boredom and injuries - but when you need a short burst of indoor exercise, Jillian's 30 minute workouts are the business.

Not least because they helped me to realise that exercise can be fun.

I know lots of mums who run. I suppose I can see why - it's free and it's effective, but by golly, it's dull. I never really took to it. The good news is that there are lots of other forms of exercise that are nearly free and much more exciting. For example, I do taekwon-do with James, so we get some family time while working out. It also helps his coordination and confidence so we all win. Zumba is great fun and very social and not hugely expensive either. Ballroom dancing won't get me thin, but it's fun to do so, why not? My husband has lost 3 1/2 stone using a stationary bike. Now THAT is dull, but it's working for him and I think that's the key. Find something(s) that work for you and suddenly, exercise becomes to fun part of losing weight and keeping it off.

So there you go... how to lose 40lbs in a year! But what would any gloating weight-loss post be without the before and after photos? Truth to tell, I don't have many before photos. When I was fat, I hated having my photo taken. By December 2010, I tipped the scale at 'obese' and I wasn't queuing up to have pictures taken of that. But Nigel snuck one in....This is from our summer holiday 2010. As you can see, I'm not slim. But I still managed to add another 8 or 9lbs before Christmas 2010.

Christmas Eve 2010. That's actually a fairly flattering picture by the way - thanks Nigel!

And now for the after. Again, I'm not so photogenic that I like having my picture taken, but in the interests of inspiring other mummies, here goes....
As you can see, still a bit of a way to go - 7lbs to be precise - but I now feel as though I can eat cake in public without people tutting at me (yes my slim friends, people - even some fairly rotund people - do audibly tut when they see fat people eating cake in public. It is not helpful.)
And I finish with a different kind of 'before' and 'after'. The above photograph is of a coat I made in winter 2009/10. It was a fab coat - swingy and flattering, from the Ottobre Salma pattern, and it fit me beautifully and got loads of compliments. It was also size 18 to 22. I hated it. I could now fit two of me in it. So out of the 3 or so metres of fabric, I made this beautiful formal coat for Laura. It's also an Ottobre pattern. Now this coat, I unreservedly love!

Credits Thank you to Maria who dragged me to cardio-tennis in January 2011, thereby making me realise that I was quite frighteningly unfit, to the guy who developed the C25K programme, to Jillian Michaels and Weightwatchers and all those people who complimented me over my hungry journey for the last year. Especially thanks to my darling supportive husband. I couldn't have done this without you. Mwah! Mwah!

Upcycling is the new black

I have decided that I love upcycling! I'm not entirely sure how it's defined but it seems to have more to do with turning something you don't want into something you do want, than with separating your glass and plastics from your tins. And it also seems that everybody is doing it.

Folksy, the UK handmade goods website, have organised an upcycling competition in collaboration with Sue Ryder Care. Sue Ryder kindly provided free goods from their charity shops so that the ingenious Folksy folk could turn them into beautiful items to be sold at a charity auction in aid of Sue Ryder. Since Laura needed a new winter coat, I decided to buy an adult one from a charity shop and hack it down to size. Well, it took me a long time to find a suitable coat (most adult coats have a lot of seams & pockets and they would have seriously got in the way), and in the meantime, I found these... A lilac bed canopy (or mosquito net as my husband calls it) for £2.95 and, from the same shop, an embroidered polyester chiffon shawl for £1.

Together, they screamed 'pettiskirt!' at me.

I wasn't sure if it could be done with the soft net of the bed canopy but it was worth a shot. And it worked! I didn't have the ruffler foot but I suspect it would have been redundant anyway - the net was already fairly tatty and the prongs on the foot would probably have split through the holes. So I gathered the tiers and fluff the traditional way - by stitching a long seam and pulling on the bobbin thread to gather. It didn't take quite as long as I'd expected though I had run out of enthusiasm for tulle long before I had enough fluff. I have also learned my machine is not a fan of sewing net. It did the job fine but it complained and grinded and clanked its way through it. I tried fiddling with the tension but couldn't get it to be happy. If anybody has any tips on this, I'd love to hear them. And if you'd like to see the skirt's listing, then it can be found here.

Laura just adores the skirt and keeps referring to it as 'her' skirt. I have explained that it's going to be auctioned off to help some poorly people and she says 'yes, OK,' but I suspect the message isn't really getting through. Good job there's another one waiting for her in the spare wardrobe! Although even I have to admit that this one is way nicer than the white one I did earlier.

And in case you were wondering what happened about her winter coat - here it is! I had to use two coats in the end, but they made a divine coat for her when lined with some beautiful fleece print I got off Ebay. So even if I don't win one of the competition categories (and I'm aware that the competition is stiff!) the Folksy Upcycle Challenge has indirectly helped keep Laura warm and cute this winter.

And finally, an action shot with the skirt. She's not much good at twirling yet, and I'm still not great at photography, but I think you get the picture!

Sleeping Bag tutorial

This was meant to be the A-line pinafore tutorial but the wheels fell off slightly when I tried the nearly-finished toile on Laura today and realised it was going to fit her much bigger friend. I thought I was adding ease to the pattern - it turns out I was adding two whole sizes. Whoops! So, back to the drawing board and the tutorial will be posted just as soon as I've tweaked the pattern so that it fits!

In the meantime, I found one of my son's old sleeping bags in the wardrobe yesterday and remembered making one for him a couple of years ago. He was so wedded to his sleeping bags that he wanted to continue using one despite having grown out of the 18months to 3 years version. You can get these bags for age 3 to 6 years, which is the next size up but these are hard to find and harder still to finance. I found a couple of winter-weight ones in an NCT sale and used these as a template for a nice light summer one for him. Which he only used twice but that's another story.

Anyway, if you'd like to save some money by making your own third-size sleeping bags and if you are a slightly-more-than-novice seamstress, then here's what I did:


I drew around the original bag on a piece of wallpaper. You won't need to do this because I have made a rough template for you which you can transfer onto wallpaper using the measurements given. I haven't included seam allowances and the measurements don't have to be completely exact - this is a sleeping bag, not a couture jacket! It is probably easiest to draw the centre back/front line first (118cm) and then draw the rest around that line. I've put both the back and front necklines on the same pattern but you will want to make the back pattern first, then copy it onto another piece of wallpaper (I just cut out the template and drew around it - like I said, it doesn't have to be exact to the millimetre). The measurements are not hugely clear from the pictures so I shall list them at the end of this post.

You now have two paper patterns, neither of which has any seam allowances.

To make the sleeping bag I used one old flannelette sheet for the inner layer (in US terminology, a flannel sheet) and an even older cotton one for the outer layer. By using old sheets you are not only recycling, you are also removing the need to pre-wash and pre-shrink your fabrics (generally a must-do when you are sewing two different fabrics together). For winter-wear, you can use terry towelling for the inner layer, or even have two cotton sheets sandwiching a layer of batting.

Cut out the back first. Fold the fabric in half lengthwise and iron it. Then carefully place the pattern with the long straight centre-back line on the fold. If using scissors to cut out, pin the pattern in place. If using a rotary cutter, you only need to hold it in place with pattern weights or coins. The next picture shows the cutting lines in pink. You don't need to leave a seam allowance on the necklines or armholes. Obviously there is no seam allowance along the fold

For the front, you place the long straight centre-front line along the grain of the fabric. When you cut out this piece you need to leave a seam allowance of about 3cm along the centre-front line. This is so you can insert a zipper. By cutting on the folded fabric, you get the two pieces you need to form the front.

I first attached the zipper to left and right fronts of the bag outer using the centred zipper technique, before seaming down from the zipper to join the outer left and right fronts. I then seamed the same length on the inner left and right fronts and pressed the seam open, right up to the neckline - this was so that I could sew the inner to the zip later on.


Then I assembled the inner and outer bags separately by joining the shoulder seams and then the side and bottom seams in one operation. Do this for both bags. I didn't bother top-stitching the seams because time was very short, but I did press them. I then put the two bags together, with the wrong sides facing each other. I cut some binding for the armholes and the neckline simply because I never have bias-binding around when I need it. I attached the binding going from front to back and then I handstitched the inner to the zipper. The original bag had a small length of elastic sewn to the inner about 12cm under the armholes to gather the bag in around the child's waist. My son wasn't keen on this so I omitted it from my version. I can see, however, that the bag would be warmer with the addition of the elastic so I leave that one up to you. If you do want to add it, cut two strips about 10-12 cm long, centre them across the side seams and attach using a 3-step zigzag.


To pretty it up I cut out some Thomas the Tank Engine motifs from some quilting cotton in the stash and appliqued them onto the bag. This is what I generally do when I am anxious that my son will like something I've made for him.

Measurements (these are all for ONE HALF of the back or front of the bag!)

Bag length - 118cm; width at bottom - 28cm; armscye - 18.5; shoulder seam - 11.5cm; neckline width at top - 6cm; neckline drops 1.75cm at the centre back; front neckline drops 11cm from back neckline to bottom of v.

Any problems or suggested improvements, just email me or leave a comment.