Shape Up Sunday - Week One

I think it's safe to say my first week has not been the best of starts. Having started back at work full time (then having to reduce my hours again after just one day!) I've been pretty exhausted and fitness has taken a back seat while I'm still recovering from my illness. It's pretty gutting since that was the area I was keen to improve on the most, but I feel like next week and can start to push myself a little further. But, at least I did manage to lose some weight!


This Sunday's weight: 9st 11lb
Start weight: 9st 12lb
Total loss: 1lb

So it may only be a pound off this week, but at least it's a pound in the right direction! Although my workouts have been pretty much non existent this week, my diet has made a vast improvement. Aside from one meal out with my sister, I've been sticking to healthier foods. Most of my evening meals have come from old favourites I used to cook when I was following the Slimming World plan. One of my all times favourites is this really simple chilli recipe, which serves four people:

Spray some Fry Light into a saucepan and brown off 500g lean mince beef. Once browned, add in a beef Oxo cube, one chopped onion and chopped red & green peppers, stirring for a few minutes so that the ingredients are mixed. Next, add in one tin of kidney beans and one tin of chopped tomatoes, again mixing for a few minutes. Then you add in 1 tbsp chilli powder, 1 tsp oregano, 1/2 tsp sweetener, plus salt & pepper, turn down the heat and leave to simmer for 15-20 minutes. Once done, serve with whatever you want to eat it with - I usually go for boil in the bag rice or a jacket potato. The recipe can be frozen, as long as it's consumed within a month. As there's only two of us in our home, we usually save the other half of the recipe for a day when we don't fancy cooking from scratch.

I bought the new Slimming World magazine at the start of the week for some new meal inspiration and some weight loss motivation. I found some really nice new recipes, including a delicious shepard's pie I can't wait to try, but unfortunately I wasn't so great at planning this week and didn't make a note of anything I would need before I went food shopping. I wandered around Asda picking up anything remotely healthy looking, with no idea when I was going to eat it and what with. Luckily I managed to make it work this time but I won't be making that mistake again. Tuesday is our weekly shop day, so I fully intent to sit down tomorrow and make meal plans for the week and make a shopping list around that.

Snacking wise I've been very good this week - no crisps or chocolate in sight! It's mostly been graze snacks and fruit that I've been munching on, and I think I may have found a new favourite graze snack! Super Berries contains lingonberries, cranberries, blueberries & green raisins, and claims to be good for your immune system, which is good for me whilst I'm still covering. It didn't look the most appealing when I received it in my box, but the mixture is delicious. I've had so many good things in my graze boxes recently that it's really encouraged me to snack more healthily. I even bought myself a chocolate bar to keep in the fridge and snack on a couple of squares at a time, but so far I've not felt the need to go near it!

Although I haven't felt well enough to do too much exercise this week, I have for the past couple of days been trying out the above routine, which I came across on Instagram. It's taken from the PopSugar website, which since finding this workout I've had a little nosey at, and it's got lots of great tips and routines on there - I'd definitely recommend checking it out. I felt like this was a nice gentle way to break me into exercising again but I definitely want to find something more challenging next week - fingers crossed I'm feeling up to it!

So that was my first week - not the greatest but I've started making some positive changes already. I'm hoping with a little more forward planning and some more workouts introduced, I'll be able to achieve a 2lb weight loss next week. If you're currently on your own weight loss journey, let me know how you're getting on and leave any tips in the comments below.