You may wonder why I have called this blog, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, well the simple answer is, thats the three things I felt before I left my bedroom this morning.

1.Woke up at first alarm: This is GOOD, especially as this is my first day back at school after the holidays, and I have gotten well used to going to bed after midnight and then getting up at 9am.

2. Had the lovely cup of coffee my husband left me before he went to work (half an hour earlier, but still warm enough to drink) - VERY BAD - this was a lovely milky latte, which although may taste like a dream, does not bode well for day 3 of my diet!

3. Got undressed to go for my shower and caught sight of my body in the mirror - UGLY! What on earth made me put a 3ft x 4ft mirror in my bedroom? Llwelyn Bowen and Co have a lot to answer for - it may well make the room look bigger, but it also makes my bum look like the size of Jabba the Huts (and my stomach no better to be honest)!

So that's why the name of this blog is at it is - for no other reason than I was too tired to think of something imaginative and quirky. Its been a long day at school, my diet is killing me, and I am 2 days into my alcohol free promise, so happy I am not!

As you can tell, there are two things that rule my life at the moment; work and diet! It used to be children, husband and diet, but the kids have grown up to that age which all parents hope for; still young enough to live at home, but need little if any care (except feeding!), and the husband, well we've been married long enough for him to know to stay well away from me when I am on one of my many diets or alcohol breaks!!!


I have always fought with my weight, the battle has lasted all of my life, sometimes I have won, but sometimes the scales have had the last laugh. Even through my pregnancies (put on 3 stone with each), the children's early years (one spoonful for them, two for me!) I managed to put on, then lose the pounds as often as Jordan changed men, but then I decided I wanted a career and that was my downfall, my undoing, my journey into the realms of size 16, big knickers and self imposed social isolation (well who wants to go out when you are only 4ft 11 and weigh 13 stone)!

How can a career be the cause of weight gain you may ask? Well let me tell you!

It began the year of the millennium; the year that the world was supposed to end at 00:01 on 01/01/2000, the year I made a New Year resolution; the year I decided to become a teacher!

I was 35, a stay at home mum, happy, content, a lady that occasionally did lunch, but something nagged at me, something was missing! MONEY! Being at home was great, I liked looking after the children and my husband (he literally had the best lunch boxes in the world), I LOVED hoovering (yes, mental illness was considered), and I danced around when I ironed - I was a proper SNOW WHITE (minus the birds circling my head), but we were also broke!One income was just not enough to provide what we wanted or needed! Yes, we could manage on Back to Basic food and Ethel Austin clothes, but after spending the third summer camping in Wales, in the rain, in a tent, with 3 kids (including 1 nephew)  and 2 dogs, I knew things had to change;  that if I wanted to escape to sunnier climates, where I could relax on a beach with a tequila sunrise, then things would have to change; I had to start contributing to the household income!

This, as we say in school, is the build up, the build up to telling you what caused me from going from a 35 year old, 8 stone, size 10, stay at home mum, to the 46 year old, 13 stone, alcohol obsessed, stressed out career woman I was when I  awoke this morning!

BUT, I will leave that for my next instalment, as I think the whole, sorry story could take a while!


Love

Rebecca