TwitFit Club - So it begins

With the arrival of the new year comes the obligatory resolutions about losing weight, being healthy and dieting. Well, 2013 is no different and a few of us on Twitter have teamed up to motivate each other and provide helpful little tips and tricks. Go team!

This TwitFit Club will be the same as your average diet club but without the inconvenience of having to go to meetings and handing over a fiver each week. It's just a bunch of people with similar goals helping each other out. 

At no point will you ever have to disclose your weight and your level of participation is entirely up to you and can vary from week to week depending on how you feel and how busy you are. You can follow whatever diet or fitness plan that suits you most (personally I will doing the Slimming World plan). No embarrassment, no regime and no pressure. 

I will be documenting my weight losses each week and have chosen Wednesday mornings as my weigh-in time. Obviously with any diet you have good weeks and bad and there's no shame in putting on a couple of pounds after a big event or bad week so I'll be documenting that too. If you want to do the same then let me know and I'll create a chart. I've been dieting for exactly 7 days and today was my first weigh-in. The scales were particularly kind and said I'd lost 5lbs. Not a bad start but the first week on any diet is always the most successful and delivers the biggest loss so I'm not expecting anything quite as dramatic next week. I'm happy to admit that I'm quite worried by the prospect of sharing my losses/gains as the various medications I take have some adverse effects. Eek!

Charleynew lost a fabulous 3lb this week. You can find her on Twitter. 

I'll start off TwitFit Club with an easy recipe for guilt-free chips that are very popular on the Slimming World plan. If you happen to be following that diet then these chips are syn free on a green day. Even if you're not following it, these chips are delicious but don't have all the fat that come with the deep fried variety. It's a well researched and documented fact that if you deny all treats you're more likely to fall off the wagon. Armed with this recipe you'll be less likely to make an impulse purchase at the chippy on the way home after a bad day at work.

Ingredients: Potatoes, Fry-Light oil, salt and vinegar. 

Method: Peel your potatoes and cut them into chips. Thick cut chips work best. Par-boil your chips and drain well. Spread them out on a baking tray and spritz a few times with Fry-Light. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes at 200 degrees. Season with salt and vinegar. Devour. If you want them a bit crispier you can cook them for longer. 

So, if you want to join in, share a recipe, offer an exercise tip or if you want to take part in the weight loss monitoring - get in touch and let me know. I'm especially interested in calorie burning stats ie how many calories a 30 minute bike ride burns. If you've got any particular requests, share them here and maybe somebody will be able to help you out. 

Liebster Award

I was tagged to do this post (called the Liebster Award) by Penny from Lillies and Love.  It's just a bit of fun but I rather like this kind of thing and it's a way of getting to know people better. 


The Rules
- The nominees must link back to the blogger who awarded them
- If you are nominated, write "11 Random Facts" about yourself, then answer the 11 questions the awarder wrote for you 
- Make up 11 new questions to be answered, then nominate 11 other bloggers to take part. 

I'm going to have to cheat a bit here because I don't know 11 other bloggers well enough to tag them. Penny has tagged a couple of people I would have so I'll have to skip them but I'm going to tag three bloggers and leave it up to anyone else if they want to take part. You can say I tagged you, don't worry I'll back you up. 

11 Random Facts About Me...

I have a phobia of turkeys.

I used to be addicted to Extra Strong Mints and would eat up to 5 packs a day.

I was once an extra in a tv puppet show and had to get covered in pretend poo.

Cliff Richard accidentally touched my bum at a funeral.

I have been boycotting McDonalds for over 9 years.

I have had a kidney transplant (thanks for the gift, Mum!).

It's my life ambition to one day own a tank full of axolotls. 

My favourite food is, and always will be, pizza.

My favourite colour is purple.

I've never had a filling in any of my teeth.

I used to drive a white car with black cow spots painted on it.

My Questions From Penny...

- How old are you? - I'm 27 but I will be 28 in three weeks time (yikes!)

- What are your favourite boys and girls names? - Opal for a girl, Harry for a boy.

- If you could have any career, what would it be? - When I was a kid I always wanted to be a scientist. I think my inner child still wishes this was a possibility! 

- Who are the three people you consider your heroes/heroines? - Eddie Izzard, Richard O'Brien and Terry Pratchett. I actually wrote a blog (here) on it a while ago. 

- What has been the proudest moment of your life so far? - Surviving renal failure. I got pretty close to giving up a few times.

- What ambitions do you have? - To own a home with Rich. Oh, and to have a tank full of axolotls in it of course. 

- Do you have a lucky number? - The superstition says that 13 is unlucky for some but I've always found it to be a good luck charm.

- If you won £17,000,000 on the lottery, what would you do with it? - I'd buy a house for Rich and I, pay off all the debts for both our families and friends, make some donations to charity and travel the world. I'd also set up my own charity that specifically helps young transplant patients funding the costs of their education, holidays and deposits for homes. 

- If you could spend 2-weeks anywhere in the world, where would you go? - I'd love to go to Japan. I'd spend a few days in Tokyo and then the rest of the time I'd travel the country looking at the natural beauty of the land.

- What is your favourite film and television programme? - My favourite film has absolutely got to be Rocky Horror Picture Show. It's hard to pick a single favourite tv show but I'm especially fond of cheesy American crime dramas like CSI, Castle and Criminal Minds. 

- If you could only read three books for the rest of your life, what would they be? - Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett because it's my favourite book from his Discworld series, Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet and Allan Ahlberg because it reminds me of my childhood, Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien because it's an escape into a fantasy land and can be whatever your imagination wants it to be.

My Questions For You Lot...

- How old are you?
- What is your first memory?
- Who would play you in a movie of your life?
- What is your favourite book?
- If you could only eat one meal for the rest of your life what would it be?
- Do you have any hobbies?
- Where is your favourite place in the world?
- Do you have any interesting scars?
- Do you have phobias?
- Do you have any pets?
- Pirates or ninjas?

Ok, so here are my tags:

Rachel from Things that make me go aagghh!

Jeni from Make up for the Morrissey fan

Scott aka Scooshmeister

Charity Begins At Home

I've wanted to write this post for a long time but I've never gotten around to doing it. I've been put off because charity is a tricky subject and getting the right tone is tough. It's considered bad taste if you loudly broadcast all the things you do for charity, doing nothing at all is frowned upon, it gets a bit preachy if you bang on about it all the time and avoiding chuggers on the high street has become a new sport. Yikes.

Almost a year ago I decided that I would only support local charities. Having been a corporate whore for many years and working in the legal sector, last year I got a job with a charity. It's not a front line charity nor is it run by donations. Our purpose is to help other charities and we are funded by the council as well as other organisations like the Big Lottery Fund. We provide free services to other charities such as helping them with their constitutions, finding them volunteers, organising forums and networking events for them to attend, we offer training in subjects such as writing bids or tenders and we also loan them expensive equipment they cannot afford to purchase or hire from elsewhere (eg laptops, projectors etc). We aren't the only charity like this, there are at least 290 similar charities in the UK. Each one helps local charities offering a service in the town they are based. 

Anyway, the point is that the moment I started working there my eyes were opened. I was suddenly made aware of how many small charities and voluntary organisations there were in my area and how hard it was for them to help people. These charities don't have monthly direct debits from countless residents across the country, they don't have high profile advertising campaigns and they don't have thousands of sponsored events taking place. What they do have is staff who believe in the cause they are working for, volunteers giving up their time to help and a huge sense of community spirit. 

I never really understood what 'charity begins at home' meant and I've probably still got it all wrong but for me, at this moment in time, it means helping the charities in my home town. Instead of sponsoring people to run/cycle/climb on behalf of well known national charities, I've been donating the money locally instead. One person I spoke to through work recently told me that their charity's annual income is £2,000 a year. A whole year! I used to earn more than that each month and it's probably less than what some of the big charities spend on a single airing of a tv advert. 

Money reserves at charities has always been an issue for me. I was once told that Oxfam always had a reserve of £30 million for advertising. I have no idea whether that information is true or accurate but I do know that it set off a seed of doubt in my mind about where the money goes for every major charity. How much is spent on advertising, staffing, building maintenance and general expenses? Some of it seems so wasteful. I've never been keen on sponsored gimmicks either. The 'raise £2.5k and go on a jungle trek' concept doesn't sit well with me. If you happen to have taken part in one of those events, please don't take it personally. I'm not saying it isn't a good cause or that it wasn't hard to achieve I simply mean that having to raise a minimum amount to make it worthwhile for the charity to let you go ahead with it seems a bit of an odd idea. 

These days I prefer to make donations of objects rather than money, that way I know that whatever I give is going to reach the people who need it rather than being used to fund an advert. It's a happy coincidence that supporting local charities makes my preferred method of donation even easier. The Foodbank always need new food supplies,homeless shelters/dry houses always need bedding clothing and toiletries, pet rescue homes always need bags of kibble. Of course it's not always feasible to make anything other than a monetary donation but if you give £10 a month to a national charity, that pays for someone to stand in the street with a clipboard for an hour and half while they try to convince other people to sign up for monthly donations. The same amount of money goes a lot further when you give it to a smaller charity staffed entirely by volunteers. 

You will be amazed at some of the charities in your area and the services that they offer in your own community. One of my favourite discoveries is the animal charity here that offers a scheme where dogs help children who struggle with reading. The idea is that kids may find it embarrassing to read aloud in front of their peers or family but not in front of a dog as it won't judge their abilities. 

I'm not saying that you shouldn't give to the larger charities, that would be ridiculous. I'm just saying that for me, it's not how I want to do things anymore. Obviously I still buy a poppy for Remembrance Day, put some coins in the Comic Relief buckets and round up the extra pennies on my shopping whenever I'm asked and I also still support the national charities that have a personal meaning to me. But, if you ask me to sponsor you to grow a moustache, run a marathon or stay off the alcohol for a month please don't be offended when I congratulate you on your efforts but give my donation to a charity who needs it here.