Healthy Me – My Choice of Regime – A Recap

Hey all, do you remember when you first start doing something, and you’re so totally absorbed by it, you know there’s no way you can possibly fail?

I do. I read my first post the other day. I wish I felt that level of enthusiasm now.

So I’ve decided to organise my thoughts, revisit my initial enthusiasm if you like.

IS THIS A DIET?

I have a diet, you have a diet, we all have diets from the moment we are born. When I was born my diet was breast milk, at my worst it was 3 or 4 takeaways each and every week.

To me ‘diet’ is the word given to our food, regardless of what that food is. I have had a bad diet, I am getting back into enjoying a good diet, so as I will always be eating, for good or bad, I will be on a diet.

To me the word diet doesn’t mean the same as it used to. I would in the past have linked ‘diet’ to a short term fix to try and lose weight. Now it’s simply a word.

WHAT I AM DOING

When I first started this particular journey, I stated no regime really appealed to me, and boy are there a lot! There’s the magic pill that guarantees you’ll lose loads in a very short amount of time, there’s the regimes that tell you to cut out whole food groups – Nope I love all my food too much. And for that reason, I can’t do the meal replacements like Slim Fast either. There’s fasting regimes – not for me, my life is so chaotic at times, I can’t be ruled by times. There’s teas, soups… all guaranteeing great success. There’s slimming clubs, ie WW and Slimming World – I’ve tried both. I had success with Slimming World a few years ago, but came off the boil and decided £5.95 each week was too much money to lose when I wasn’t gaining anything from it. For others, and I follow loads of you, their regimes work. Mine works well for me.

So I decided to follow the NHS guidelines, ‘eat less and move more’ this would be the way forward for me. Having not long bought a house, I really wanted to keep the financial burden as low as possible.

So I’m working towards a healthy lifestyle. In order to do this I am working on two things, and very soon to be working on three things:

• Changing my diet from not so good to healthy and nutrient rich
• Exercising
• And shortly – stop smoking

Of course, I’ve found throughout last year that there are ways I can improve my diet as I go, and I’ve been encouraged with fitness levels I had achieved. I’ve also been quite lucky insofar as when I have a ‘bad’ week, I haven’t felt like giving up, MOST of the time 😀

WHAT IS MY REGIME?

I’ve used NHS as much as possible to figure out what to do, most of it is commonsense, and most of us already know it all, but I do find the NHS website a fantastic source of information.

DIET

• Eat as little processed food as possible
• Eat 200g of natural, unroasted/unsalted/unhoneyed a week (I have 40g each week day)
• Eat lean meats
• Eat at least 6 portions of fruit and veg every day
• Eat a variety of fruits, veggies and nuts to get as much nutrition as I can
• Take 3 portions of dairy every day (a work in progress I can’t seem to master)
• Cut down sugar in hot drinks (i used to have 3 teaspoons of sugar per cup, I now have 1 teaspoon of halfspoon sugar)
• Have healthy drinks, so more water, less teas and fizzy (a work in progress – sparodic success)
• Make healthy or healthier choices when out
• Eat 2 portions fish per week, 1 of which is oily
• Eat 1 Vegetarian/Vegan meal a week

EXERCISE

The NHS recommends we work our bodies to a minimum of 150 minutes moderate activity per week, 75 minutes of vigorous activity per week, or a mixture of the two. And that we get some resistance/strength training in as well.

I am in a slump at the moment, but I have to say I was really pleased with my progress up to the end of the last year. For a fatty who had no interest whatsoever in exercise (in fact my main concern for years was that I didn’t want to waste my life doing exercises), I found the more exercise I did, the more I wanted to do! Don’t get me wrong I’m never gonna be a fitness fanatic, but feeling the benefits is a great motivator.

For my exercise, bearing in mind my refusal to part with cash, I was over the moon to discover youtube! I found cardio programmes, step programmes, strength programmes, even zumba programmes which I really did not mind using!

And of course there’s just plain old walking!

I started very small, doing a 10 minute step programme each evening, and as time went on I looked for the other programmes I use and build up my times and stamina.

• Exercise every week day
• Go for 1 decent walk each weekend

OVERALL TARGET?

• Walk at a pace of 3.5 miles per hour without being knackered
• Be fit enough to get up (and down) Snowdon, Wales in August
• Run up stairs without being out of breath and joints hurting
• Get to 11 stone (70kg/154lb)
• Hoping 11 stone will be a UK size 14
• Wear nice clothes
• Have good fitting bras!
• Feel good inside and out
• Healthy lifestyle fully adopted as natural
• Get to a point where I don’t weigh but let my clothes guide me

WILL I SUCCEED?

Who knows. I believe I will, I did well up to the end of last year, I’m slowly but surely getting back to the healthy lifestyle. So I believe I absolutely will, but life has trials and errors 🙂

There were good weeks and bad weeks last year, but overall, until everything went tits up, I was losing on average 1.5ish lbs each week, I am more than happy with that. It is a healthy and sustainable weight loss.

I currently weigh 15stone 5lbs (2lb loss last week). I have 27 weeks before I go away to Wales, so that will be 39lb if I keep myself motivated, that will get me down to 12 stone 7lb. I’ll be fitter and healthier than I ever remember being.

But of course, there will be rougher weeks along the way, period week is always a sod! There will be birthdays, Easter, celebrations. And there will be the weeks where I don’t lose weight, and I’ve no idea why not, there will be the weeks where I lose more than I should possibly expect and am elated, and there will be the times I put weight on and I absolutely know the reason for it, and still can’t help being disappointed!

But this is life, things happen. To my way of thinking, there is absolutely no reason to let this transition rule everything, life will continue to throw curve balls now and in the future, the good times are meant to be enjoyed.

HOW WILL I HELP MYSELF TO SUCCEED

This is a long haul – so true, so I have a bad week, I’m currently 22lbs lighter than I was when I first started last summer, and that’s with the last few bad weeks. This really is the long haul, I will remember that one week does not take away all the good weeks. I will remember to DRAW THAT LINE and start again.

Accountability – when I started the blog it was with an aim to be honest with myself and provide insights to others on similar journeys, my thoughts on this have changed, I still want to be fully honest, and if I provide inspiration on the way, that’s amazing, however now accountability is a huge benefit to writing my blog posts – there are people who actually read me, I don’t want to fail for me… or them!

Preperation – Oh my, this has been such an amazing thing to get to grips with, Paul and I have pretty much the same foods each week, dinners are never a problem providing we’ve been shopping, and as for our day time food, we usually get those prepped on Sunday, that way it’s all ready for us to take in the mornings. No diverging from the path!

Track food – yep – good, bad and ugly all gets listed on my nightly post! Sometimes I do have something I regret, but it all get’s logged.

Follow others – It never occurred to me when I started my blog that I would end up following anyone, to be fair, I didn’t really understand blogging (still don’t :D), and yet there are loads of wonderful people out there, all on their own journeys, all with their own perspectives, loads of tips, encouragement, advise and kindly words! I love following you guys! Your all great!

Take measurements – I have this problem where I simply don’t see the difference the losses make, I keep meaning to take my measurements and never get round to it. This time round I’ll start taking and recording my measurements!

AM I READY?

YES – I do feel refocused! So glad I wrote this post.

I’m ready to go, I mean there is a bag of crisps recently discovered in the cupboard…. BUT yes, I’m ready to get myself healthier and fitter!

Thank you for reading 🙂