In which I stop eating cookies, and miss them terribly

I am firmly of the belief that the only thing more socially offensive than bragging about one's own weight loss is having a fit of the evangelicals and trying to talk everybody else into a fitness binge too.

So I won't be telling you that I finally returned to my pre-both-babies weight..... ahem. (Feel free insert some applause here. Not that I need it, I'm proud enough as it is.)

And I won't be telling you how I did it. Unless you keep reading, in which case I hold no responsibility for your impending boredom or a sudden urge to have a set of rock hard abdominals. (Your choice who the abs belong to. I prefer Mr A's myself.)

It all started when I saw my friend Leah, looking smoking hot and strong just a year after having her twins. Twins! And she was so healthy and vital and powerful! I wanted what she was having, so I did what she did. I ran home and signed up for the Michelle Bridges 12 Week Body Transformation. You've probably seen it around the place, heinously over-advertised in the odd one or two million places.

If you're good at following instructions, 12WBT is simple. Just chug along following the recipes and doing the exercises she gives you for every single day, and bam! Success. Well, with a few speed bumps. There was a random bean and legume week in there that was a struggle (for Mr A, too. But for different and more gaseously scented reasons.)

Of course, it probably would have been wiser of me to do the program at an easier time. Having a move and Christmas in the middle was a major derailment of the diet train. And the exercise train. It was a pretty big crash, actually. And there was ham involved. Succulent, delicious ham.

But by New Years all the ham was eaten and the brandy sauce had lost its lustre, so I decided to be delightfully conventional and start again. (Luckily, more recipes had been unlocked on the site by then too - no more beans for me!) I mixed in some Zumba and kettle bells too, because obviously fitness fads are only popular because they are extremely effective. (You're all just lucky this isn't an in depth review of Crossfit. I'm holding out on poor Mr A, he's a boots and all convert.)

Despite the enthusiastic exercising, I suspect my success was mostly due to counting calories. (Of course, there's an app for that. And in this case, it's free: MyFitnessPal) Now I have the hang of it, I'm actually shocked at how much I used to eat. My two daily, deliciously large, double-choc, post dinner cookies were the equivalent of what should have been half my day's food. Never mind the afternoon cake...and the huge meal servings...Mien gott! No wonder I couldn't shift the last few kilos! It's a wonder I wasn't the size of a house.

And so here we are. Goal weight: achieved. Next stop? Quite possibly super-fit. Or a relapse into cookie-queen. We shall see!