As Lisa alluded to in one of her previous posts losing
weight for me has been a slow process over the last 12 months. Whilst I have lost (and regained) weight
throughout my life for some reason in February this year after a great family
holiday I knew that this was my time……….
I believe that losing weight and living a healthy life is
all "in the mind". To lose
weight and keep it off you need to have the right attitude. If you consider it a "chore" then
more than likely you won’t succeed. You
need to turn it on its head and think of losing weight and keeping it off as a
positive experience, think of all of the energy that you will have, what you
will be able to do with your family and how great you will feel!
Maintaining a healthy weight is for life, therefore,
anything so significant doesn’t come easy.
I set myself very small targets of losing 2 kg a month. I also gave myself rewards after every 5kg loss;
a massage was one of my favorites (funny though 5kg losses seemed to come
around fairly quickly so I then started banking my rewards). I also set myself a regular weigh in day
(Monday morning for me) to ensure that I stayed focused and on track. Whilst it’s not always healthy to focus
solely on weight for me whilst I was losing weight this was an important
motivator. I record my weekly weight in
a diary so that when it all seems a bit too hard I can look back and see how
far I’ve come – this seems to provide encouragement in itself.
Surrounding yourself with people who are also interested in
health and fitness has been really helpful.
I started going to the gym with some girls from work and we now try and
encourage each other to keep going no matter how tired we feel or how busy we
are. My new attitude to exercise is
doing something is better than doing nothing.
Whilst I try and exercise 6 days a week I must admit it’s not always for
as long as I would like or as intense as I know is recommended – but for me
consistency is the keys. Even on rest
days I try and do something active, going for a leisurely bike ride with the
kids, or taking the dogs for a walk.
These types of activities are what I call my “incidental exercise or
bonus exercise” which all adds up on the long run to a healthier me!
My attitude to food has also changed. Fortunately for me I had a pretty good
knowledge of healthy eating and being the cook in the house meant that I could
control what food we had available. At first I had to be really strict with
what I ate and did significantly reduce the amount of carbs that I was
eating. My eating has changed now though
as without the extra weight I am able to exercise at a much higher intensity
which means I need to eat more to maintain my energy levels…..Food is a science
but my advice would be not to get too hung up on it (remember this is for
life), just try and eat healthily most of the time.
In summary the most significant thing for me that has
changed to allow me this time to succeed with my weight loss and health goals
is my attitude. I feel positive about
this change and have come to the realisation that it’s for life! Don’t be too hard on yourself if you “slip up”,
just get back to it tomorrow.
Now to keep or give away my larger sized clothes is the
question???
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