Barbara Taylor and her partner Richard Grubb, both aged 36, are working hard on a sponsored slim to raise money for little Shelby Macguire, of Hemel Hempstead, who has cystic fibrosis.

In her blog Barbara documents how their diet is going.



Hello everyone!

Well, it's been two weeks since we 'officially' started dieting. We joined Slimming World and we've been sticking to it (well, almost).

In our first week, Richie was sure that he wouldn't lose anything because you can eat so much on this diet, so he was well chuffed when we had our first weigh in and he'd lost 7lb!

I lost 7lb, so I guess that's not too shabby either.

Shelby's mum Louise is turning out to be a great support.

I was on the phone to her for more than half an hour one night when I fancied a Twix, but she talked me out of it.

Anyway, after our initial success, we had a few drinks on Friday night and as I was feeling a bit the worse for wear on Saturday, I followed that up with a big helping of shepherds pie.

We've been really good the rest of the week though. Last night Richie lost a pound but I put one back on!

We know what we've done wrong so we'll have to be even better this week.

Since we've appeared in the HeraldExpress, we've had loads of people coming up to us in the street offering words of encouragment which has been great.

However, there's also a downside. Some helpful individual has told my slimming consultant that we've had five (yes, five) take-aways delivered this week.

Just for the record, we love a take-away, but we really haven't. We had one, two weeks ago, which we saved our "syns" for.

So, that's it for now. We're starting this week with a renewed vigour (and a personal trainer) so next time I write hopefully we'll be quite a bit lighter and maybe on our way to being a bit fitter!

We'd just like to thank anyone that's already sponsored us.