Gemma's Back

Had a fun day today meeting up with a friend Gemma who has been away on hols. We went out to lunch at Pizza Hut which was yummy!

It's been ages since I've worn anything half smart, what with being in Nepal and being an unemployed bum lol so I had to scour the back of my wardrobe to find something half decent. I found a few pairs of jeans that I had all but forgotten about and were way too small for me. Imagine my joy when both pairs fit me perfectly! It's a good job actually as since I've started loosing weight most of my old jeans don't fit me anymore, which is a fab feeling. It gave me such a spurt on to know that my new healthy eating / exercise is working. Sometimes you really need a boost like that I think. Gemma even asked if I had lost weight without me mentioning my efforts at all so it's defo working. Overall it all seems to be coming together nicely.

I was so inspired that I took the dogs out for an hour long walk to exercise off some of the pizza!

Recipes

Hey, well I am trying hard to stick to my healthy eating even though I don't always manage it! I have had a few slip up's since I've been back from Nepal and it's kept my weight at 11 stone exactly.

I have found an excellent book from the library, it's a recipe book with high energy foods but with a low GI so they aid weight loss, health and vitality.

So far I have tried one recipe out of it - the Morning Muffins and I thought they were really tasty. The stats per muffin are:

kcal - 212

fat - 5g (0.6g saturated)

protein - 5g

carbohydrates - 39g

I will give you the recipe if you fancy trying them out but one word of warning - it says to use chopped apricots and it really does mean this. I forgot to chop mine and so some muffins ended up with whole dried apricots in them and some ended up with none! Not ideal.

You will need:

170g dried apricots, coarsely CHOPPED

170g unsweetened museli

250g self-raising flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

250ml unsweetened apple juice

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

100ml honey

1 large egg

A 12 hole muffin tin lined with 12 paper cases

This recipe makes 12 and takes 12 minutes of prep time.

-Put the apricots, muesli, flour and baking powder in a large mixing bowl and stir.

-In a separate bowl, mix the apple juice, oil, honey and egg.

-Fold into the dry ingredients, but do not over mix.

-Spoon the mixture into the paper muffin cases.

-Bake in a pre-heated oven at 190C (375F) Gas 5 for 20 minutes, until golden and risen.

-Remove from the oven and serve immediately, or transfer to a wire rack to cool.

-Store in an airtight container for up to 3 days.

This was a really easy recipe I thought and the muffins do taste great if you like that sort of thing. I realise it's not for everybody though as only me and my Mum actually liked the one's I made. I like to have one for breakfast every now and again as they are quite dense so nice and filling.

The author of the book is Rachael Ann Hill and her website is http://www.rachaelannehill.com/ there is loads of info on this site about diet, fitness and health and you can check out the best-selling author section if you want a link to her book.

Another 2lbs Down

Hey All,

I've decided Friday's will be my weight day. Before Nepal I was weighing kinda randomly with no structure but I've decided now im back to do things right and only weight once a week. As yesterday was Friday I weighted and I was so happy to see I had lost 2lbs more! Im now 11 stone exactly.

Im still amazed this is working to be honest as I haven't started the gym up since i've been back and I was wondering if that would be a mistake. All I have been doing so far is controlling what I eat by:

Cutting out butter.

Making sure I eat 3 meals a day rather than snacking on fatty foods.

Only snacking on fruit between meals.

Making sure I eat a healthy wholegrain cereal each morning.

Keeping an eye on the calories in foods.

Drinking less sugary drinks and drinking more water.

If I find the weightloss slows or stops them I will probably go back to the gym but since I don't have a job at the moment im trying to avoid that expense where possible. Instead I have been walking wherever I can, even taking the stairs instead of lifts lol.

Back from Nepal

Im back!

I had a great time in Nepal and guess what - I lost more lbs! I really can't believe it but im 11stone 2lbs now which is nearly a stone lighter than when I started. Im double shocked that I managed to loose extra weight in Nepal, especially as anyone who's been there will know that their stable dish is Dal Bhat (kind of a curry).

I wasn't really thinking at all about what I ate over there since I didn't really have any control over it. We did a fair bit of moving around with the volunteering so the only thing I can think of is that I must have been doing more exercise without really noticing (the best kind of exercise if you ask me).

Anyway whatever the reason im really happy and just hope I can keep it up now im back home.

The pic is the view from the monastery where I was teaching English, it was a beautiful place as you can see. For breakfast everyday at 6am we ate monk break (kind of like pita bread) with butter and jam, then at 12am and 6pm we had Dal Bhat each day alongside some lovely very sweet tea, so you can see why I was sure that if anything I would have put on weight!

Nepal Calling

Hey All,

Only 2 more days until I leave for Nepal now! I have been keeping up with the gym and swimming and eating healthily so I feel like i've prepared myself as much as possible. Im not really sure what it's going to be like out there as i've never been anywhere like it before but this just makes it all the more exciting.

I am feeling a little tense at the lack of control I will have regarding what we will eat (oh this shows how far I have come!) and the fact that I wont be able to get to the gym but im hoping the general activity of volunteering abroad will keep my in ok shape at least. I've heard they eat a fair amount of curry's over there and I do have to admit im looking forward to trying real curry's from Nepal :-) and im sure even have a go at cooking them ourselves.

xx

More Cracking News

I have now lost half a stone! Woohoo :-)

Im so happy about this people. Since my last post i've decided to take more drastic action and have joined a gym, which i've been going to every other day and swimming in the days in between. It's a dramatic increase in excercise for me but actually im loving it. I used to go to a gym before and I had forgotten how satisfying it can be to get your arse working!

It's taken me 10 days to loose the half stone which I was even surprised at, I had expected to loose a few lbs at the most. I don't expect things will carry on at this speed but it's nice to get a really big kick start.

To help things along even further im eating roughly 1000 calories a day. This might not seem like much to some but as pretty much everything I eat is now healthy its plenty for me to be going on with.

Few lbs Shifted

Good news I have shifted a few lbs with my detox :-) im chuffed to bits. I feel like this is the kick start that I needed and im now determined that more lbs are to follow!

As it was Sunday yesterday we went to a beach in Swansea and walked for miles so I feel this will have done some good as well. However this might have been counter balanced by the slightly unhealthy picnic we had, but hey ho, you have to live as well I figure and it was a fun day out. We took our 2 dogs and they were so funny in the water!

Detox

The weight loss is not going as well as anticipated and im not totally sure whats going wrong as im defo eating alot healthier than I was. So in light of that I have decided to try and kick things off with a detox.

As of today I am having a few days of only eating fruit and drinking water (apart from the first essential cup of coffee in the morning), or fruit tea. So far it's only 10.25 so it's going alright at the mo. I had a bowl of sliced nectarine, strawberrys and cherrys for breakfast which was yum but I can tell I will get fed up of it pretty quickly. Plus fruit never really fills me up, im always left with that slightly tummy rumbly feeling, especially with apples for some reason. But then I guess the point of a detox isn't to feel full all the time.

I just hope it works and that I start to shift some lbs pretty quickly!

Criminail!

More bad news all - I have criminail. Im sure some of you have seen the adverts 'don't be a criminail, get curanail' http://www.curanail.co.uk/ For those that don't know, suffice to say I have a fungal nail infection on my big toe.

I hot footed it out and bought some Curanail as soon as I realised (£19.99!) but due to my nail varnish obsession I might have had it for sometime and not realised. The box says it can take up to a year to heal but luckily it's only a once weekly treatment so shouldn't be too bad to keep up with.

I highly suspect I caught this from a friend I was staying with recently who had a fungal nail infection AND athleats foot but she swears blind it's not contagious. All I can say to that is hmmmm, sounds like a pretty big coincidence in that case.

I got chatting to the lady in the chemist who sold me the Curanail and she was merrily telling me about her own fungal infection and how she had had it for yonks but not treated it yet! Apaprently she was waiting for winter when she didn't have to wear open toe sandles etc and so could go without the nail varnish. I don't know about you but as soon as I realise I have something like this then I want to get rid, sharpish!

Eating Healthly - No Weight Loss!

I cannot believe I have to report this but after all my eating healthly for a few weeks now there has been no further weightloss. I really can't even believe this. maybe I haven't always been that hot on the excercise side of things but I have been eating so much more healthly than my normal diet! I actually was feeling better in myself as well and even managed to get a pair of old boots on that I hadn't been able to do up until recently due to my fat legs but clearly things arn't going as well as I thought, damnit. I had avoided weighing until recently as I had thought that if I weighed too soon and hadn't lost anything then it would put a downer on things for me - well this is exactly what has happened :-(

Week Days - Better

As I suspected yesterday and today have been much better diet wise. Yesterday I managed to get on my bro's MyGym which I find such a work out! I didn't manage to do the whole hour video but im going to hopefully build it up over time until im flying through it. It says to do that workout every other day at the most so I have given it a rest today but I have managed to keep my calorie intake fairly down. Today I had:-

Breakfast - shredded wheat
Lunch - salad and a handful of blueberries
Dinner - chicken stirfry

Sunday No Better

Well yesterday went even deeper downhill after I wrote on here, it seems to be that if I start the day off wrongly then I can't get back on track. My brother made muffins in the evening, cherry / blueberry and choc one's and I had 2 blueberry and 1 choc! Outrageous behaviour.

As today is a Sunday I started off with my normal shredded wheat breakfast again and then lunch is always larger on this day so we had a cooked dinner with brownie choc pudding. Ah well, whole weekend is a write off by the looks of things.

Weekends Bust

Weekends seem to be the downfall for me. I started off well with my normal breakfast of shredded wheat but so far it's only gone downhill from there. I went out to lunch with family to Weatherspoons http://www.jdwetherspoon.co.uk/ and had the gourmet chicken burger which included all sorts of nice things like bacon and cheese (eeck) and even came with a pint of Fosters! From there I have been home for about an hour and already have had a jaffa cake and a pack of crisps, the only saving grace might be that jaffa cakes are one of the less offensive biscuits and the crisps were low fat. Does anyone else do so well througout the week then bomb on weekends??

1lb Down!

Woohoo I have lost my first pound! I am not 11 stone 13lb's (I think there are 14 lb's in a stone right?). I feel chuffed to bits that I have shifted the first one and hope that many more are to follow.

I have cut right down on the amount im eating and have almost totally cut out all sweets / choc / cakes / crisps etc and actually I feel much better for it already. Im eating a bowl of cereal every morning and a proper one at that not something along the lines of coco pops. I never used to eat breakfast before but if I did it would have been something rubbish for me thats for sure.

Better News

Hey All,

Well I think things might be on the up, slightly anyway! Since I last wrote I have been giving the excersise / healthy eating a real good go and actually it's not that bad. I just weighed myself a few mins ago and I was still 12 stone but I do feel a little healthier and am glad im managing to stick to everything so far. Hopefully soon some weightloss will follow!

xx

BMI Way To High

Well today brought with it a bit of a blow. At the end of this month im hoping to go away for about a month and so decided that I would like to go back on the pill so that I could run 2 packs together while I was away and not have the worry about periods on holiday. However horror of horrors was told my BMI is too high for the normal combined pill and so I have to have the mini-pill! This would be fine but there will be no running 2 packs together on this or rather there will as thats how it works. I asked about periods on this pill and apparently they are unsure what could happen, some women have normal periods, some have irregular and some have none at all. Interesting to say the least and I guess we will have to see how it goes.

Was so depressed about this high BMI thing that I have done no excersise today and have eaten a choc au pain - not good.

xx

Excercise

Hey All,

Well now that the dentist situation is sorted (im down for a checkup on the 8th Dec next, just like a normal visitor hehe) im turning my attentions to excercise. Im currently 12 stone and about 5f3 so as you can probs tell thats a ridiculous weight to be, for those that are usure thats a size 16 in clothes. 16 is supposed to be the uk average size for women but im not convinced about that, and anyway if it is them im pretty sure lots of them are taller than 5f3.

Ok so to begin with my bro is really into his gym / excercise stuff (God know's why I didn't get that gene) so he showed me his My Gym and the excersise vid that came with it - here is a link if anyone is interested - http://www.asseenontv.com/prod-pages/my_gym.html im not sure if this is where my bro got his as it does look slightly different but is the same sort of thing. Anyway the cardio video is what I was really interested in, it involved lots of step up's etc and used the weights on the My Gym in between so seemed to have the best of both worlds.

I first tried this 2 days ago and omg was it hard! You really don't realise how unfit you are in everyday life until you try something like that. I was sweating almost as soon as I started, my face was bright red, I could feel my heart pounding and I could barely breath, I was in a bit of a bad way to say the least. The vid went on for an hour and to be fair I did get about 3/4's of the way through but obviously was doing the easiest option, both on the weights and following the easiest trainer (you choose one of two paths - easy or hard).

Lets hope it gets easier! xx

Hygenist Appointment

Well this was by far the worst appt so far but actually I do exaggerate and it was fine as well. The hygenist was called Debbie and she said that the dentist had asked her to do a cleaning without local and without happy pills just to see if I could take it so they knew how to proceed in the future.

The scraping around my teeth felt very strange! But it was more an unfamiliar feeling than actual pain, I had gotten so used to having everything done under local that it was unplesant to feel anything at all lol.

Anyway I think it's something thats totally bearable in the future so i've made an appointment with her for 6 months time now and im totally on the road to normality which feels great!

Next I really would like whitening done but im going to have to wait until I get a job for that!

4th Dentist Treatment Appointment

Well I've finished my al my treatment woohoo! I had the bottom left cleaned last week and again no issues :-) Once again the injections did twang a little bit but all very bearable. Honestly I don't know what I was worried about for all those years.

Believe it or not I do have another appt on Wednesday with the hygenist but this is just a general 'this is how to take care of your teeth' appt. To be honest im a bit gutted that I have to drive all the way to Bath for this appt but there again I suppose it does show they really do everything they can to help you at this dentist that I have chosen.

At the end of my treatment the dentist did say that if I knew anymore scared people that I could recommend them to him and they would be happy to see them. This is something I would defo do anyway, they are absolutly brilliant there. Im not sure whether this is a little sad or not but I have bought a little thank you card which im going to post once I have completed this appt on Wed. Anyone who is as scared as I was will know how grateful you can be to a dentist who has taken away that fear after so many years!

3rd Dentist Treatment Appointment

Hey All,

I had my 3rd dentist treatment appointment yesterday, this time I had the bottom right hand side of my mouth cleaned. Everything went fine again and I had no worry issues before I went in. I will say that the numbing injections did hurt a little more this time but you do have less of them! The dentist only injected in the very back and at the very front this time for some reason. As for the cleaning, I did feel a little bit of the poking around towards the middle of the right hand side, could be something to do with having less injections maybe? Not sure but either way it was bearable stuff.

Afterwards it does feel a bit wierd in my mouth, the dentist did say it was a fairly deep clean and that a bit of pain would be normal. It feels more jagged than anything at the front where there the most work had to be done but he reassured me that the top half of my mouth gums had sprung back nicely and that there is no reason to think that the bottom half won't be exactly the same, yay.

One more cleaning appointment to go now on the 2nd June and the hopefully I will be able to be ranked amongst the 'normal' dentist goers, if there is such a thing lol.

2nd Treament A OK!

Great news! My 2nd dentist treatment appointment went really well :-) I had the filling and the top left of my teeth cleaned which was a bonus as the dentist had expected to have to do these in two seperate appointments. The whole thing went brilliantly just like last time. As I hadn't felt any effect of the happy pills last time the dentist suggested taking them about an hour before the appt this time (as opposed to half hour before), I ended up taking them 45 mins before the appt. I still don't think I felt any effects but I felt calm, although I think this is because I quite like going to the dentist now still can't believe I can say that).

If anything I felt the numbing injections even less this time and I was expecting them to be worse as I had to have them done right in the front where I was having the filling done. I got chatting to the dentist about my experiences when I ws younger and said that I liked the fact that I didn't get sent back out into the waiting room to wait for the numbing injections to take effect, which my old dentist used to do. He explained that by doing them slower it not only hurt less but by the time he had finished they were already starting to take effect, so a few moments after finishin, he just had time to put the TV on and we were away!

I have my next appt on Wednesday now so that will be a cleaning of one side of the bottom of my mouth. Quite looking forward to it! xx

2nd Dentist Treatment Appointment Tomorrow

I have my 2nd dentist treatment appt tomorrow at 2.30. Like last time im not sure which part of the treatment im having, will either be clean or filling but we will have to wait and see. Like last time im not really worried about what it turns out to be and this time I know what to expect re the numbing needle injections. I don't think it will ever be a nice thought, having needles stuck in me but it defo doesn't fill me with fear like they used to. I will check in tomorrow after my appt, fingers crossed everything goes as well as last time xx

Still Not Weighed

I still havent been on the scales since my last post but I do feel like ive been eating alot healthier so im giving it a few more days then hopefully I will have lost some lbs.

I spoke to my bro yesterday who is currently in New Zealand doing conservation work, he is thinking of travelling to the US / Canada next and asked if I wanted to go along with him! How exciting :-)

Unable To Face Scales

Well I haven't weighted myself today because im unable to face it. I spent quite alot of time aound my Grandmars scanning in golden oldie family pics and she fed me choc bics and coffee all day. In total today I have eaten:

1 x tunnock
2 x toast with chopped tin tomatoes
1 x white bread role with cheese and tomato
1 x echo bar
3 x fruit and nut bics
2 x jaffa cakes

Ahhhhh More lbs

Well I managed to PUT ON some lbs while I was in Cov! Im sure I shouldn't be surprised by this as all the late night extra comfort eating (couldn't let recently single friend comfort eat by herself) and extra alcohol did not help but still! I was practically eating nothing in the day time while she was at work so I foolishly hoped this would counter balance the extra calories. It seems eating healthily and regular excesise might be the way forward after all, more's the pity. Am now 12 and a half stone, outrageous. Can only get better from here surely.

On the plus side I did learn how to cook a brilliant and tasty thi green curry from scratch! My friend is a great cook and seems to love teaching people so thats a bonus, I cooked it for everyone once I got home again and it was a uge success :-)

Back Home

Hi All,

It's been over a week since my last post because I had to pop up to Coventry to stay with a friend, she is in the process of splitting up with her husband.

Will pop back later with a proper update post xx

Mum's Dentist

Yesterday I went with my Mum to her dentist and wow am I glad I did my research before I chose my own! It was not a nice place, don't get me wrong im sure the dentists were lovely but I did not get a good vibe from the place. The doorway was small and pokey and inside was really cluttered and felt like it needed a coat of paint at least. *shudders*

In comparison my dentist has a lovely practice, it's brand new and has a nice and open reception. Im so so glad I did my research!

I Did It!

I am feeling on top of the world today people because I went to my dentist treatment appointment yesterday and it was great! I felt fine leading up to it but just in case I had a last minute freakout the dentist had given me some happy pills (can't think of the technical term) to take a half hour before my treatment. I was supposed to get to the office half hour before and take them in the waiting room because I had never taken anything like that before and they wern't sure how I would react. However I was a little late so I took them in the car on the way over (it's ok I wasn't driving). I waited for these dream pills to kick in ....an waited .....and waited lol but I didn't feel any effect from them. Apparently it can be hard to judge the dosage to give someone if they have never had them before so it the effects can vary greatly.

As it turned out though it didn't really matter as I was still feeling fine about going for the treatment :-) The dentist was really nice, he checked I was ok to go ahead even though the pills hadn't had an effect and he asked if I wanted to do the filling or the cleaning today. I didn't really mind at this point so he said since the filling was so tiny we would go ahead with the cleaning at this appt and work up to the filling.

I had LS injections so that I would feel anything and im so happy to say these were fine! He is going to do the cleaning in 4 seperate visits so that I don't have too much to go through each time so yesterday I had the upper right side of my mouth done. The whole thing was such a breeze that I can't believe I was so scared of the dentist for all those years! The injections did take a while but the dentist eplained this was because theyare less painfull if you do them slower so he had no complaints from me there! I did feel tiny little stings at times but in no way was it unbearable :-)

I mention in an earlier post a dental fear forum that I had been visiting and I remembered a poster on there had said that he didn't close his eyes when having injections done because then you are cutting off one of your senses and focusing more on the others e.g. the feeling of the needle in your mouth! So, and I was so proud of myself here, I kept my eyes open and even had a sneaky peek at the needle to reassure myself that it wasn't some massive scary thing!

The whole thing didn't take long at all and was such a breeze. Im so so chuffed that I now have a dentist and can have treatment, it's such a weight off my mind. For so long my dental fear was this awful thing hanging over my head, always worrying me slightly, now I feel free! I actually feel like there is nothing I can't do at the moment :-)

I still have another 3 cleaning appts and 1 filling appt to go but im honestly not worried about it! Yay.

Dentist Appt Tomorrow

Hey All,

Tomorrow I have my first treatment dentist appt in years! Funnily enough my sister also has a dentist appt tomorrow to have her braces off. She is so excited about this, she's had them on for 16 months so it's going to be wierd but amazing to have them off. She is also going to have amazing teeth now andit really makes me glad that I decided to go for my treatment too, I would hate it if she had fab teeth and I didn't!

I other news my weight loss is going not so well. We had takeaway chips last night and I had a bar of Galaxy, I think it's going to take a few days for my head to get around the fact that I need to eat differently now. Has anybody had any success with weightloss products diets out there?

As it's Sunday today that always means a big family dinner day so im expecting today not to be great on the weightloss front also. I will keep you all posted though!

First Healthy Breakfast

Today I had my first healthy breakfast on my weight loss regime, I had a bowl full of strawberry's. Im feeling pretty good about this at the moment but I really hope I don't snack on anything bad for me bow before lunch!

Weight

Well I just weighted myself for the first time in ages and im 12 and a half stone! That's about half a stone more than I thought and is sooo not good. I really need to start the weightloss asap.

Any ideas on what works people??

Appt on Monday

Well all I have my first denist treatment appointment coming up on Monday and im still feeling pretty much ok so far :-) I still can't believe im saying that since I was such a reck not long ago. I don't know how i'll feel whe im actually on the way to / in the appt bu im just glad so far so good. I jus hope that when they come to give me the injections that I dn't move my head away like a wimp, fingers crossed I don't anyway! But if I kept still when I was a kid im assuming something takes over you and you don't move in case they end up dragging the needl across you mouth or something horrific like that! But anyway like I say, I assume if I could keep still as a kid then I can keep still now.

In other news I am officially now going to try and start loosing some weight! Im not sure exactly how much yet but im going to try and eat alot more healthy and do much more excersise. Im actually looking forward to that to, I feel like im on some sort of roll now bodywise :-)

No Reply :-(

Well I had no reply from the Bristol dentist, I couldn't face calling them so I asked my sister to email as well but sure enough the same thing happened, no reply. Looking back now though this might be a blessing in discuise as, after airing my issues to the forum one of the admins posted a link to another dentist in Bath that dealth with scared people.

I sent a similar email to them and receved a reply almost straight way saying that they had an appointent the next week and to give them a call if I wanted to book. That seemed to be all the encouragement I needed and I then fel able to give the receptionist a call and book an appointment! OMG it was scary and I could acually feel my heart beating but luckily I got throught it, yay!

The week leading up to my appointment wasn't as bad as I thought. I was expecting everything from not being able to sleep to not eating, everything but actually I had none of that. (Shame really on the eating thing as I could do with loosing a few lbs lol).

The appoinment itself was ok as well! The dentist was lovely and before I knew it I had been in there 45 mins and had been told I needed a clean and 1 filling. I was so happy that I didn't need dentures that the rest was a happy blur!

Anyway my first treatment appointmet is coming up in a few weeks and I actually feel fine about it so far! :-)

The Dentist Saga Continued ..

So one day I was sitting around wondering how I was going to overcome this particular hurdle when I happened to Google dental phobia. It was one of the best things I have ever done! I found a forum site dedicated to people who felt exactly as I did, check it out here if you have any of the same issues - http://www.dentalfearcentral.org/forum/

This forum was exactly what I needed as the main probem I had in all this was thinking that I was the only one who felt this scared of the dentist. This site is full of people who were as scared, or if not more so than me! I couldn't believe it, it let me breath a big sigh of relief thats for sure. I didn't sign up straight away but began reading some of the peoples posts and in some cases it was as if I was writing myself, so similar were our issues.

Eventually I did create an account and set up my own thread listing some of my worries and actually when I got to thinking about it it did seem like my fear of the actual dentist had lessened over the years and instead I now was more scared about what I would need done because I had left it so long. There were scary stories on dentalfearcentral about people, some of them quite young needing dentures :-( That soon became my new fear.

Anyway I started to think that maybe I could book a check up appointment but I specifically wanted to find a dentist that someone on the forum had tried out first. Luckily that have a dentist recommendation section so I started looking through that, but there didn't turn out to be that many from my area, only really one in Bristol which was a sedation clinic that knocked people for absolutly all treatment. I wasn't toally against this however so I popped them an email and crossed my fingers that they would reply sooner rather than later!

Hi and Welcome!

Hello all and welcome to the first post of my new blog!

I have never had a blog before and it's quite exciting, like a strange form of self indulgent therapy :-)

Anyway I wanted to start this blog as i've had a touch of upheavel lately and thought this would be a good way to organise my thoughts.

Firstly a little about myself - I recently got made redundant from my Sales job which I had been working at for about 8 months. I had moved to that job straight from another one in Sales and o had been having a bash at this sales lark for about 3 years in total and it was ok, I didn' love it to death or anything but as jobs go it was fine. About 12 of us got made redundant in total and it was a fairly horrible time at the office, people crying and gibbering in corners and the like and I can totally see their point, mortgages still had to be paid, kids fed etc. But for me it really wasn't so bad, I lived at home with my parents and didn't really have any big expenditure that I couldn't immediatly stop. Besides, I had long been feeling that I would maybe like to try something different, these feelings wern't strong enough to leave a nice job but they were defo there and so I thought maybe I could see this as an oppertunity amongst other things.

The first thing to note, is that I haven't immediatly been looking for a new job, since for the mo I had nothing else to concentrate on I thought that I could dedicate my time to something that I had been wanting to crack for sometime and that was my horrendous fear of the dentist.

Now anyone who's ever been terrified of the men with the masks and tooth picks will know what I mean here and the rest of you wont have a clue. I don't just mean I was a little scared as in feeling slightly gittery just before an appointment, I mean so mind numbingly terrifed that I didn't go to my appointments! Not since I was in my early teens as best guess (can't tell you exacty when as my mind has blanked that particular period of terror out).

It's a terrible thing being scared of the dentist. At first you block the whole dental world out completely, stop thinking about them and just walk away from the conversation if anyone show signs of mentioning this scary world. You tell yourself that you will go when you get toothache, which is sure to happen at some point as you hear about it all the time from fried or on TV or whatever. BUT what about when this doesn't happen? And don't get me wrong here im very very very glad not to have had toothache in the past however long it's been since my poor mother stopped dragging me to the dentist but you do start to wonder how you are going to get yourself there with the absence of sharp, head shacking pains that would defo act as an incentive. Answers anyone??