Being an inspiration
I'm starting to have something weird happen. People are starting to tell me that I inspire them. It's hard to wrap my head around because really what I am doing is correcting something that I was doing wrong for a long time and yes, it's a herculean effort but I feel like I shouldn't have gotten this way in the first place.
However, I've had a couple of people at work tell me how they see how well I'm doing and have started doing their own weight loss thang. My personal trainer has asked me to mentor someone else because she feels the girl really isn't taking in what *she* says because she's never been in the position of having to lose a crap-load of weight. This girl emailed me and basically told me that she was trying to exercise, had cut portion size and was restricting carbs. Her husband tells her she basically has to eat nothing but steamed fish, chicken and vegetables to lose weight.
She wanted to know what I'd done so far and did I have any advice. This is my email to her.
I started my concerted effort at weight loss at around 120kg (I think I was getting up to around a size 22/24). (It could have been more - I got scared of stepping on the scale once I hit that!). I had tried diet and exercise before but not for very long and not very successfully. (Hello Atkins diet, hahahaha!) I had a couple of things happen at once that made me finally see that I really had to do something about my steady incline on the scales and I don't know, something just switched over in my brain and I found that it was actually possible this time. I guess it's funny, no one really ever said to me hey, you're getting too big and we're worried so I thought maybe people didn't "notice". It's only now that people are telling me that they were worried and they're happy I'm making changes and I'm like, where were you before??
Of course, would I have listened to them before or would I have just gotten upset?
I'm now around 90kg and a "normal" size 16 - I can clothes shop in "normal" stores and don't even have to buy the largest or baggiest thing on the rack which I don't think I've been able to do since I was about 18!!
Everyone is different so I won't try to tell you that what you are doing isn't right for you but what I can tell you was what really helped me which was to record food intake and to vary my exercise. Nothing ever has worked like doing that has. I joined the Biggest Loser online club because they have an online food diary that I can just fill out at the beginning or end (or during if I change my mind about what I'm going to eat!) of my work day and it works out the calories for me and gives me a total. I couldn't believe when I started recording my food how easy it was to go over the number of calories that I would need to stay under to keep losing weight. You have to reduce your intake by about 500 under the calories needed to maintain weight so my current aim is around 1400 a day (which gives me a little leeway as the maximum I could go to would be about 1600).
Calorie counting and recording everything you eat is BORING, don't get me wrong. What I try to think about is the fact that I won't have to do this forever and as I record all my food intake and get more savvy about how much I *can* eat during the day it will get easier. When I'm at a point where I am maintaining I'll have a pretty good idea of what I can eat during the day to not go overboard.
Exercise wise - I'm seeing my trainer once a week, then I'm doing a Yoga once a week and go to a little gym 2-3 times a week where they run group training sessions. (You work out alone but you have a trainer give you what you need to do for the session for an hour and they monitor how you're going during that hour). I'm not sure what exercise you are doing outside of the trainer but I found that seeing her and the only other exercise I was doing being walking just wasn't making the difference I needed. I also got a couple of home workout DVDs for when I don't get a chance to go out. I just find actually following a set-out routine and going to classes means I work out longer/harder than I normally would.
So, my current goal is around 70kg where I'll be in the healthy weight range for my height but not a stick (which I don't think will be possible for me because the women in my family are curvy!) and I've reached that place where I have less to lose than I have already lost which is more motivating than anything else has been. I need all the motivation I can get at the moment because of course when I started my weight loss was steady but now it's a struggle!
The biggest thing was getting variety in my food and actually making food that other people could eat so I didn't have to make separate meals for myself of feel like I was missing out. I didn't want to have to eat boiled fish and brocolli and I've invested a lot of time and experimentation in coming up with a lot of staple tasty things that I can eat that don't look or taste like "diet" food. I buy a lot of food magazines and work has a book club where I've gotten a lot of cheap recipe books so I can make sure that I'm not eating the same thing over and over again because that has always been my stumbling block. I would go for the unhealthy option purely because I was sick to death of eating the same thing day in and day out.
I still eat carbs. I'm a complete carb junky and am living proof that you can eat carbs and still lose weight. :)
However, I've had a couple of people at work tell me how they see how well I'm doing and have started doing their own weight loss thang. My personal trainer has asked me to mentor someone else because she feels the girl really isn't taking in what *she* says because she's never been in the position of having to lose a crap-load of weight. This girl emailed me and basically told me that she was trying to exercise, had cut portion size and was restricting carbs. Her husband tells her she basically has to eat nothing but steamed fish, chicken and vegetables to lose weight.
She wanted to know what I'd done so far and did I have any advice. This is my email to her.
I started my concerted effort at weight loss at around 120kg (I think I was getting up to around a size 22/24). (It could have been more - I got scared of stepping on the scale once I hit that!). I had tried diet and exercise before but not for very long and not very successfully. (Hello Atkins diet, hahahaha!) I had a couple of things happen at once that made me finally see that I really had to do something about my steady incline on the scales and I don't know, something just switched over in my brain and I found that it was actually possible this time. I guess it's funny, no one really ever said to me hey, you're getting too big and we're worried so I thought maybe people didn't "notice". It's only now that people are telling me that they were worried and they're happy I'm making changes and I'm like, where were you before??
Of course, would I have listened to them before or would I have just gotten upset?
I'm now around 90kg and a "normal" size 16 - I can clothes shop in "normal" stores and don't even have to buy the largest or baggiest thing on the rack which I don't think I've been able to do since I was about 18!!
Everyone is different so I won't try to tell you that what you are doing isn't right for you but what I can tell you was what really helped me which was to record food intake and to vary my exercise. Nothing ever has worked like doing that has. I joined the Biggest Loser online club because they have an online food diary that I can just fill out at the beginning or end (or during if I change my mind about what I'm going to eat!) of my work day and it works out the calories for me and gives me a total. I couldn't believe when I started recording my food how easy it was to go over the number of calories that I would need to stay under to keep losing weight. You have to reduce your intake by about 500 under the calories needed to maintain weight so my current aim is around 1400 a day (which gives me a little leeway as the maximum I could go to would be about 1600).
Calorie counting and recording everything you eat is BORING, don't get me wrong. What I try to think about is the fact that I won't have to do this forever and as I record all my food intake and get more savvy about how much I *can* eat during the day it will get easier. When I'm at a point where I am maintaining I'll have a pretty good idea of what I can eat during the day to not go overboard.
Exercise wise - I'm seeing my trainer once a week, then I'm doing a Yoga once a week and go to a little gym 2-3 times a week where they run group training sessions. (You work out alone but you have a trainer give you what you need to do for the session for an hour and they monitor how you're going during that hour). I'm not sure what exercise you are doing outside of the trainer but I found that seeing her and the only other exercise I was doing being walking just wasn't making the difference I needed. I also got a couple of home workout DVDs for when I don't get a chance to go out. I just find actually following a set-out routine and going to classes means I work out longer/harder than I normally would.
So, my current goal is around 70kg where I'll be in the healthy weight range for my height but not a stick (which I don't think will be possible for me because the women in my family are curvy!) and I've reached that place where I have less to lose than I have already lost which is more motivating than anything else has been. I need all the motivation I can get at the moment because of course when I started my weight loss was steady but now it's a struggle!
The biggest thing was getting variety in my food and actually making food that other people could eat so I didn't have to make separate meals for myself of feel like I was missing out. I didn't want to have to eat boiled fish and brocolli and I've invested a lot of time and experimentation in coming up with a lot of staple tasty things that I can eat that don't look or taste like "diet" food. I buy a lot of food magazines and work has a book club where I've gotten a lot of cheap recipe books so I can make sure that I'm not eating the same thing over and over again because that has always been my stumbling block. I would go for the unhealthy option purely because I was sick to death of eating the same thing day in and day out.
I still eat carbs. I'm a complete carb junky and am living proof that you can eat carbs and still lose weight. :)