So here are my 6 photos that I have to take for my DDPYOGA progress. I had to take more pictures recently due to my slight "pause" in my DDPY journey, as I had gained quite a bit of weight. I don't like these photos but they are there to serve a purpose. I can look back to them & notice what a difference has been made on my journey, even if the scales don't say the same thing.

I'm slightly later than I expected to post this blog entry as it has been total chaos here. The run up to Christmas was hectic & I have been in a hell of a lot of pain, so I have not been able to do many workouts. I have now got the DDPYOGA NOW app now running on my iPhone & iPad & there are some great updated workouts on there. You can find out about this on https://www.ddpyoganow.com The cost of the app is $8.99 per month but it has been worked out to cost about 30 cents (whatever that is in GBP) per day, so for me it works out much better than paying out over £5 per week for Weight Watchers (which did absolutely nothing for me) or Slimming World (which worked for a bit then tailed off). 
I have done a fair few diets in my 40 years of life & tried numerous slimming aids. The best one I ever had was a drug that was prescribed for me by my GP, which was Reductil. I lost over 2 stone in weight as it curbed my appetite but it was sadly withdrawn from the drug licensing due to some people getting nasty side effects. I'm still not fully in the mindset for eating super healthily at the moment, as I love food so much. I used to be a chef, so eating yummy foods started my ever increasing weight gain. Its true what they say, never trust a skinny chef, as they obviously don't have the same love of food as the rest of us ;)

Anyway, time to confess what my weight has been up to. I weighed myself on Tuesday 29th December & my weight is 213.4lbs. I can't remember what my last weigh check-in was, so I'm hoping that I have lost some.

Grant & I are planning on doing 2 DDPYOGA workouts tonight, as we want to end the year 2015 in the manner that we started the year in. We did a workout just after midnight on 31st December/1st January, so we will do one workout before midnight & one workout just after midnight, to ring in the new year.

I shall hopefully find a way of putting my starting-point photos on here soon, as I'm not very technically minded & I keep forgetting to try putting them on.

I have to be honest here & admit that I have only done 2 and a bit workouts in the last week. I have been struggling badly with pain & I have an added new complication of water retention causing my feet to swell up. I think it may be down to the gabapentin medication that I have been taking for a while, so I have an appointment to talk to my doctor about this next week. I'm constantly exhausted too which may be down to the gabapentin or it may be to do with my underactive thyroid.

The DDPYoga workouts that I have done are:
Stand Up - 30mins 16sec
Strength Builder 2.0 - 43mins 34sec
Energy 2.0 - incomplete

On the positive side of things, I think that my weight gain over the past couple of weeks may be down to the water retention. So once that has gone back to normal, I will be happier with my weight.

As per usual on my journey to lose weight, I have gained 3lbs this week. In the past this would have really annoyed and/or upset me but I'm used to that crap now. My body is seriously screwed up when it comes to losing weight. I have PCOS, an underactive thyroid & I'm on medication (Gabapentin) that causes weight gain in many people.

I have eaten some "treats" this week but I have also been pretty active. I'm currently doing a DDPYoga Advent Challenge, which is where we do a workout per day from the DDPYoga beginner or advanced DVDs. Each day is drawn at random for the workouts. So far I have done:
Stand Up! - 30 mins
Energy! - 21 mins 
Red Hot Core - 12 mins (of abdominal hell)
Fat Burner 24 mins
Red Hot Core - 12 mins
Double Black Diamond - 1 hour 5 mins 

You may have noticed that there are only 6 workouts listed & that we are on day 8 of the challenge. That is because I had 2 days of absolute horrendous pain due to a fibro flare up, which may have been triggered by me pushing my body too far when working out every day & also that I had my flu vaccination done the day before too.
Tonight the workout set is either Below The Belt or Energy! plus I could add on Wake Up if I want to. I haven't decided on what I'm going to do yet.

Well my plan of doing the DDPYoga advent challenge started well. I started on December 1st by doing Stand Up! workout & on December 2nd the workout of the day was Energy! I decided to add on a Red Hot Core workout, as I felt that I could get away with another 12 minutes on top of the 21+ minutes that I had already done.
I don't know if it was just me overdoing the workouts on Weds night or a combination of my body reacting to the Flu jab that I had on Weds too. Either way, I was in absolute agony for most of the night & all day Thursday with a huge fibro flare up. So I had to miss out on last night's workout, which was a choice of either Below the Belt or Stand Up!
I'm still in a whole world of pain but I know that I will lose motivation in this challenge if I don't do a workout tonight. The workout that has been set is Fat Burner, so that's a pretty good one to do for people of all levels.

I'm going to be sorting out some more photos for my DDPYoga Now app, so I will share them on here afterwards.

So here I am, one week in to my journey. I must admit that I haven't done any exercise this week but I have been trying to cut down on my junk food addiction. I had a wonderful strawberry & cream mille-feuille cake/pastry item yesterday as a treat.
The good news is that I have gone down from 214.8lbs to 212.4lbs in a week (yay!) despite my cake yumminess yesterday.
Today, Grant & I start on our DDPYoga Advent Challenge, which one of our DDPYoga family created on Facebook. Each day from December 1st to December 24th we will have a randomly drawn workout to do for the day. Today's challenge is (beginner) 'Red Hot Core', which at 12 minutes long seems an easy choice but its certainly not lol. The other choice is (intermediate) 'Stand Up' which is quite a challenge of a workout.
I'm not sure which one I'm going to do yet, as we shall be doing our workouts after the kids have gone to bed.

So, I have taken my measurements, which I am not happy with but I know it's a starting place.
My measurements are as follows:

Chest (under bust) 94cm
Chest (across bust) 113cm
Waist (widest part) 115cm
Hips (under c-section overhang) 118cm
Bicep (left arm) 37cm
Thigh (left leg) 65cm
Calf (left leg) 41cm

I will update my measurements every 30 days or so.

I know that I have let my health go astray but now it is time to deal with it. I have a few conditions which make losing weight really difficult. They are PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome), Hypothyroid & I have chronic nerve pain as well as spine & hip problems. I used to be very active & just before I found out that I was pregnant with my youngest son, I was on target for gaining my black belt in kickboxing. Sadly the pregnancy took much more of a strain on my body than it should have done. I tried getting back into kickboxing but I soon realised that I was able to do pretty much everything in the classes but I would be barely able to move for the next 4 days due to the pain.

I have taken part in Tough Mudder 3 times now and this year's event was to be my very last. It was a memorable way to celebrate my 40th birthday, by getting muddy, cold, wet, squeezed through a very small channel (my personal idea of hell) & electrocuted, as well as many more obstacles. How I managed to complete the 10-12 mile course is beyond me but I did.

I have my brain still thinking that I can do whatever I want when it comes to sports etc. but sadly my body has different views. This is a strange concept to me, as usually people have the physical ability to take on a sporting challenge but their minds tell them that they can't do it. I have to tell my brain to shut up quite a bit, otherwise I do too much, then can't function for days.

This it the start of a looooong journey.......

So here I am. I'm at my heaviest weight that I have been for a very long time. A bit of background about me, then we are set to go blogging.
I'm 40 years old, sometimes I feel much older due to pain but mostly I'm mentally in about my mid 20s. I'm a busy my to 3 wonderful boys, aged 16, 11 & 5. My two eldest boys have disabilities & my youngest son is a very active & cheeky beast. 
I have always done some type of sporting activity for every decade of my life, until now. I used to be a figure skater as a child, a rugby player in my 20s & 30s, then onto kickboxing from my 30s until a few months ago. Unfortunately I have had to retire from sports like the above due to my health needs. I have struggled with chronic nerve & back pain for the last 16 years & it has steadily gotten worse. Because of this stopping me from talking part in sports & running, as well as the medication that I take for an underactive thyroid and nerve pain meds, the weight has steadily piled on.

My only form of exercise that I can do now, is my beloved DDP Yoga, which I have been doing for a few years now but life got in the way a few times. This is my way of being accountable to myself. I intend to do my DDP Yoga at least 3 times per week. I am also planning on tracking what I eat & drink on the 'Map my fitness' app.

Thank you for reading this far & I hope that creating this blog will help inspire others to lose weight. I'm now off to weigh myself & take measurements of my body, so that I can see any changes in my body shape, even if the scales don't say much difference. I really hate scales lol.