Happy happy...

Back after a fabulous weekend away I was a little trepidations at getting on the scales this morning. We arrived up at the house on Friday night to lovely cooking smells as Wastrel was cooking up a delicious chilli. There were 10 of us for dinner and it was no mean feat considering her family had just departed that morning and both her and SAM were a little hungover and exhausted for entertaining a different 10 people the night before! I was mightily impressed with them both, I must say. Dinner was delicious and there was good chat and wine. I have become something of a light weight when it comes to alcohol as I don’t drink so much or so often any more, so I made sure I only had a couple of glasses so as to not over do it. (There are also a large number of calories in wine, which is not good for those of us watching our weight!). The chilli and rice was very filling so I didn’t feel that I was being virtuous when I had just a small slice of cake and single spoon of ice cream – I’m not sure I could have fitted more than that in! More chat and gift giving made for a very lovely evening and as we were all pretty knackered a fairly early night as we all toddled off to bed around 11:30-midnight! Oh, so old…

On the Saturday we were all up fairly breezily and out of the house by about 11 to go for a walk. We wanted one that was around the hour/2 hour mark and coincided with a pub for lunch. We had been recommended a pub (the Meikleour inn) by one of the neighbours and it had been suggested that there would be two walks for us to do – one to a Neolithic dyke and the other down to the river. When we got there, we found the first walk and set off. It was very flat and fairly pleasant, but nothing much to write home about. We did walk for about an hour, but it wasn’t quite the sort of walk we had been expecting. On enquiring at the pub we found that there was no second walk as you couldn’t get down to the river due to it all being private property. Bah! We had a little wander round the village (including taking in a very odd little craft fair that, in Flâneur’s words, smelt like a jumble sale). In the end we decided just to cut our losses and go to the pub instead, and get lunch earlier than intended.

It was a perfectly pleasant pub, with a nice local ale (which, to the scorn of some of the others, I had in a half shandy!), and the food was nice enough. I think those of us who went for the more traditional pub grub – the fish, the scampi, the burger – had a better eating experience as the meat for the others wasn’t quite cooked how it was requested. I had the battered fish and chips, which was very lovely, but a little naughty while I’m trying to lose weight!! Saturday afternoon and evening was then spent playing games before eating yet more food. They had got a lovely big bit of pork in to roast, and it was delicious (especially the crackling, hmm….). Having had a fairly big lunch I did make sure I just had a little of dinner, rather than a greedy amount, but I think I ended up not applying this to the roast potatoes. Which were yum. Ah well, in for a penny… HMcM had made a cake – her first – so we had that for dessert with yet more of the ice cream (which I passed on. Not the cake, I had cake and very nice it was too).

The real killer of Saturday night though was the booze. I haven’t drunk that much wine for a very long time… We were playing poker (10 of us again!) and my glass just kept getting refilled. And then there was whisky… Oh my poor head. I did not bad in the poker, getting in to the final four with Coco, HL and Wastrel. Coco and Wastrel had A LOT more chips than HL and I, who were down to our stake and about a pound. I had decided that I was going to just play with the winnings and not my stake when I got up to that amount, but a fit of bravado, a stupid thought and too much wine made me go all in on a pair of 9s and I lost it all to Wastrel… Ah well, it was fun and I don’t regret it! We didn’t get to bed until around 3, 3:30 and even though I had stopped drinking wine around midnight and had been drinking plenty of water all night, I felt pretty dreadful yesterday. It didn’t help that I barely slept due to alcohol headaches and period pains, but I have not been hungover for a while and yesterday I remembered why not. Urgh. Last night Flâneur and I went to bed at 9 (asleep by 10:30) and boy was ever an early night needed! I also haven’t slept through the night for a few months now, and it was bliss! If only I didn’t need to be totally exhausted to do that…

But, as yesterday was supposed to be a weigh in day on this challenge but I was away from my scales, I did it this morning. As I said, with a little trepidation after the excesses of the weekend. I was more than delighted when I saw the results:

X-2 stone, 9 lb and ¾

Hurrah! Happy happy happy… This officially means that I have lost a grand total of 1 & ½ stones over all so far, since starting all this in March/April of last year. Woo hoo! It’s taken me ages to get to this point, but it’s great to see it finally drifting down rather than the dreadful plateau I had been used to of late. It also means that so far in the challenge, after 2 week, I have lost just over 3 pounds, which whilst not being as much as I would like, is a really good start.

Off to the gym tonight, got to keep up the good work! (Especially as the weekend’s calories are probably just taking their time to distribute round my body!!).