Ah, exercise.  I’ve blogged about it before.  I love it most of the time, I love the way it makes me feel (afterwards, post-shower when I’m lying prone on the sofa) and I love having no flab.  It’s been quite some time since I had no flab, more’s the pity, such are the perils of having so many flipping children (I love them really).  But I have a new determination.  I never completely lost all of the vast amount of weight I put on with child number 3 before I was pregnant with child number 4.  And now, three months after number 4 was born I have a stone to go and I’d like it to be gone by Christmas.  Christmas 2010, that is.  So in order to make sure I can’t worm my way out of it with lame excuses like “I only got 9 hours sleep last night, I’m far too tired”, “my feet are too cold” or “the dog ate my treadmill” (although I think that one’s a doozy) I’ve decided to document it here for my readership.  I expect the two of you feel honoured.  And in order to make it more interesting I have a little wager with an old school friend.  We both want to lose a stone so the first one to do it wins. The loser buys a certain Mr Kev Gower half a pint of low alcohol beer.  Lucky boy.  For some reason he said he might not turn up to claim his prize.  I know, I can’t fathom it either.

In order to make it properly official I have photographed the (slightly horrifying) reading on my scales, complete with my bony, veiny feet to prove it’s genuine.

I’m sure you’ll agree they’re lovely looking feet.  And that I really should paint my toes now that I can reach them again.  I’m aiming to be a mere 10 stone by the end of this and a size 12.  Or maybe a 10.  It’s so long since I weighed that little I can’t remember how it sits on my 5 foot 7 (and a half) frame.  Whatever, though, I’m hoping that it will give me far more wardrobe options.  I have a heck of a lot of clothes and most of them are boxed up in the loft because they’re too small.  This makes me sad.  I also have a gorgeous dress that my lovely friend Sarah bought me as an early birthday present after I went on and on and on and on about it for about 2 weeks.  Anyone would think she wanted to shut me up or something.  I love this dress and I want to be able to wear it in confidence WITHOUT spanx, so this is part of my challenge too.

I plan to achieve this miraculous weight loss by exercise and not a lot else.  I don’t do dieting.  But I do like a bit of running, have an excellent book of simple resistance exercises (known as Scary Woman Book), some really good DVDs presented by a seriously emaciated but very toned woman (known as Emaciated Woman DVDs) and a boxset of 4 Zumba DVDs on order.  Hear that, Mrs Ashton?!  It should give the neighbours from the street behind a good laugh as they watch me prancing about my back room while they stroke the cat they catnapped from us some months ago.  Bastards. As long as I can get time every day to get some of all that in I should achieve my goal.

I should, however, make a little confession.  I’m still breastfeeding number 4 and am likely to continue doing so for some time.  This possibly gives me an unfair advantage.  I have also set myself a challenge to eat no cake, biscuits, chocolate or sweets for a whole month.  A month!  3 days in and I crave nothing else.  This challenge is not weight loss related but rather to prove to myself that I don’t NEED sweet treats to live.  But I have the sweetest of sweet teeth and if there is anything nice in the house I will have inhaled it before anyone else gets the chance to even have a taste.  I am an absolute pig and I need to be stopped.  I fully expect that a side effect of this will be the disappearance of a couple of pounds but when the month is up I imagine I will be cramming my face with chocolate éclairs, doughnuts and anything else I can find so that weight loss will be completely unsustainable.  And if you think I’m giving up pies, fry ups and chippy chips you’re sadly mistaken.  So I’m off for a 3 mile run on the treadmill.  Well, maybe after I’ve had a cup of tea.