New Year, New Start v20.17

Posted January 1, 2017

And in the words of Coldplay, “I’m going back to the start”.

Wow! Where did 2016 go? Looking back at my blog now, it has been almost a full year since I last published a post. Empty road to upcoming 2017 against the big cloud

There are many reasons for this that I won’t bore you with now but, in a nutshell, 2016 has been a bit of roller-coaster year for me: I took the plunge of leaving a job with working conditions that were making me miserable. After a brief career change, I’m back working in the same career but in a different place and I’m much happier for it.

The upshot of my turbulent 2016 is that my weight loss efforts took a nose-dive and my weight has crept up pretty much to where it was when I first walked through the door of Weight Watchers over 13 years ago. I spent some of 2016 giving myself a hard time about this before realising how pointless that was. I’ve been doing a lot of work around personal development and being more accepting of myself and I came to realise that I simply wasn’t in the right frame of mind to focus on losing weight for the majority of 2016.

Thankfully, I’m in a much better place now and I feel ready to take the bull by the horns and get my body to where I want it to be. Whilst the numbers on the scales and my reflection in the mirror may suggest that I’ve gone right back to the start of my weight loss journey, I realise that this isn’t actually the case. I’ve got a lot more of the tools and skills that I need to lose weight than I did when I first started out on my journey – I’ve just wandered off course slightly.

As I’ve been glancing through my previous ’new year’ posts (here & here), I’ve asked myself “What is different this time around?” I’m not sure I know the answer exactly, but I do know that I’m really looking forward to getting back on course this time round, which is a bit of a strange feeling. I feel as though I’m really ready to make sustainable changes this time. This has got me thinking about seeing the whole ‘back to my start weight’ as a positive: I’ve been thinking back to how successful I was when I first stepped on to the Weight Watchers scales and how I acheived that success. This has given me the reassurance that I can do it.

With this in mind, as strange as it may sound, I’m quite looking forward to stepping on to the scales at my weigh in tomorrow. I know I’ll have put on weight over the Christmas period, but there’s no point in berating myself for. What’s done is done. The thing I’m really looking forward to though, is marking my successes over the coming weeks and months as I work to make my body fitter, healthier and stronger. I can remember how fantastic that feels, and I’m keen to feel that way again.

I’ll let you know how I get on tomorrow and what my plan of attack for the week is.

Thanks for reading,

FFF

How are you feeling about your weight loss journey as we head in to the new year?

New Year, New Start v2.015

Posted January 3, 2015

Filed under My Progress

At this time of year, many of us make resolutions of things we are going to give up or start doing in the hope of improving our health, appearance, job or quality of life.

Setting goals and self-improvement are all well and good. However, for many of us, the setting of resolutions for the new year is often followed by the failure to stick to those resolutions.

I had been thinking about setting some resolutions for 2015 when I read an article about this topic in which many things rang true for me. I have said for the past 12 years that this will be the year that I reach my goal weight and I never have. This has resulted in 11 years of me feeling like a failure and being critical of my body and my appearance.

Enough is enough. It’s time to stop putting it off.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

So this year, I am going to do it. I am setting myself some specific goals to reach by a specific deadline.

I’m heeding the advice about ‘taking baby steps’ and so I’m giving myself a full year to reach my goal. This works out at 0.5lb per week so is more than achievable. I’m also taking on board the idea of phrasing my goal positively rather than negatively: it’s necessary to talk about how much weight I want to get rid of (not lose, I don’t want to subconsciously try to find it again!) but I’m going to focus on how good I’ll feel when clothes start fitting me better and going shopping for an outfit makes me smile instead of cry. I’m also going to think about how good I know I’ll feel on the inside when I’m eating well and exercising.

I’m going to have a visual reminder of my progress by putting a bead into a jar for every 1lb I shed.

So here are my initial goals:

2 weeks: Complete week 2 of the Couch-to-5k programme

6 weeks: 3lb total weight loss

12 weeks: Run 5km non-stop

1 Year: Reach Goal Weight (-26lb)

I’m going to set other short-term goals as I go to help me to stay on course and I’m going to make sure that I plan how to ensure that I stay on track on a daily and weekly basis. I’ll also be thinking of new ways to reward myself for my progress.

Back to Blogging

Posted January 2, 2015

Filed under My Progress, Uncategorized

Wow! I can’t believe it’s been nearly 6 months since my last blog post!! There are many reasons why but I won’t bore you with them. Suffice to say that while I’ve been away from the blog, I’ve

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

been on a fabulous holiday and landed myself an exciting promotion. And my weight and body issues have remained about the same.

My weight has been up and down over the past 6 months and is currently up. I’ll post my stats after the dreaded post-holiday WI on Monday but as I was 12st 7.5lb before Christmas, I’ll just be happy if I haven’t tipped into the 13st bracket.

As with most people at this time of year, I’ve been reflecting on my progress (or lack thereof) towards the goals I set for myself last year. I’ve read some interesting articles on some of the reasons why people tend to fail at their New Year’s Resolutions and so I’m using these ideas to come up with a plan to help me to achieve my goals in 2015. More on that in the next couple of days – I promise it won’t take me 6 months to come up with them 😉

Happy New Year