A mini anniversary
Today's Weight 208.5lbs (Can you believe it's still TOM!?!)
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Today is my 12 week anniversary – 84 days of following a sensible, balanced diet (wholegrains, lots of fresh fruit and veggies, complex carbs, ‘good’ fats and going cold turkey on junk foods), exercising regularly (45+ minutes cardio at least 5 times a week) , drinking plenty of water (2+ litres a day) and generally trying to whip myself into better shape.
And how has it been so far?
Well, surprisingly not that bad. If I’m being completely and totally honest, I have to confess that I haven’t found it a struggle at all – at least not so far!
So what have been the difficult parts?
Top of the list is probably getting sufficient exercise. Sometimes (an understatement!) it’s the last thing I feel like doing, and I have to really give myself a stern talking to, and FORCE myself to just quit whining and get on with it. I guess I’m just not one of life’s natural athletes. I don’t mind it when I’m actually doing it, but it’s the thought of doing it that is so hard sometimes. (Oh my god, I just realised I sound like my mother-out-law talking about sex! Heh heh..) So yeah, that’s been a bit of a struggle.
What else has been hard? I guess forcing to myself to be patient and see the bigger picture has been hard for me, because in all aspects of my life I’m just so bloody impatient! I want results and I want them NOW, and the thought of it being months and months until I’m in a healthy weight zone is sometimes hard to accept. This impatience is something I must get to grips with (and I’m trying, honestly!), because failure to see quick enough results has been behind every one of my previous diet derailments. I’m buggered if I’m going to let it scupper me this time!
For the first few weeks I went a bit doolally, using Excel spreadsheets five times a day to figure out when I’d have lost 10lbs, 20lb, 30lbs etc…how soon I’d get to goal if my loss was 1lb/1.5lbs/2lbs each and every week etc. The day I caught myself counting the number of peas on my plate was the day that I decided enough was enough! I had to force myself to just relax about the whole journey, and try to cultivate a more chilled approach. (Ssshhhh, keep it quiet but I had three more peas today than I did yesterday. Heh heh - only kidding!).
What else? Oh yeah, well allied to the above, is the difficulty in gaining (and maintaining!) some perspective when the scales just will not behave themselves and move in the right direction. On several occasions I’ve been tempted to throw the perfidious, soul-destroying things out of the window, but this is another area that I’m working on being chilled about. I weigh myself every day, and I’m trying to take the rough with the smooth – I seem to lose for a couple of days in a row, maintain for another couple of days and then gain for a day or two before dropping again. It’s so weird to study your body’s rhythms and fluctuations! Perhaps seeing myself as some sort of laboratory rat will take the sting out of the days when the scale is being uncooperative.
So those have been the hard things. Exercising is hard, maintaining my sanity and a sense of perspective has been hard. As for the rest of it - easy peasy!
I’ve discovered something about myself in the last 12 weeks – I actually LIKE dieting! Not in some dysfunctional, desperate, anorexic sense – but I DO like the buzz that successful weightloss brings. I guess it’s all about feeling in control. What I think I’m going to really struggle with is when the loss slows down as you get closer to goal. Oh, and maintenance. I have this horrible feeling that maintenance is going to be a BITCH!
