Today, I am celebrating my 1 year achievement of Operation Get Fit No Excuses. This year has flown by in what now seems like the blink of an eye.
In January 2018, I decided to do something about my ongoing health issues. Every day, I was experiencing extreme heart burn, reflux, and vomiting several times a week because of my food choices, lack of exercise and my weight. I knew that if I didn’t do something now, I was risking my future health as I aged. Being in your 40s gives you a much different life perspective than being in your 20s or even 30s.
So, on the 10th of January, I started walking. The first week, it took me 20 minutes to walk about 1\10th of a mile. I was extremely tired and aggravated about how long it took and how tired and sore my body was. But, I also felt proud that I had begun to try and take a more active role in getting healthy and feeling better. Now, I can complete that circuit in less than 5 minutes at a normal walking speed.
Throughout the year, I experienced ups and downs, lack of motivation, depression and longing for foods that I knew weren’t good for me to eat. But, every time I weighed, I saw the progress from my hard work and commitment. I kept a picture diary, along with a measurements diary to track my progress each month. This is another tool that I used as self-motivation.
I started posting videos and weekly blogs about my journey with all of the triumphs, down times, good and bad emotions that I experienced. This helped keep me motivated and accountable in a way. I felt that if I didn’t keep going, I would disappoint myself but also all of you that tuned in weekly to read about my adventures of that past week.
Along with adding exercising to my daily routine, I changed my diet. Over a couple of months, I changed my diet to a vegetarian based diet. It has helped me in so many ways. Along with not eating meat anymore, I cut out or replaced all sugar with Truvia, I cut out fried foods, limited my sweet, changed any bread I eat to whole grain or soy, and limited my carbs as well.
Did I make these changes all at once? No. It definitely took trial and errors to see what worked for my body and what didn’t. What would make me happy and what I couldn’t stand. Over a couples of months, I found a balance in my diet that worked for my nutritional needs but also kept my stomach and taste buds happy as well.
As a precaution for my changed diet, I started taking a daily multivitamin, vitamin D, vitamin C, Turmeric, and Fish Oil. These help keep my system balanced and boost up minerals and vitamins that my body needed.
As the weight started coming off, my clothes got much smaller, I could obviously see the physical changes to myself. But, what nobody tells you is that your brain will have to catch up to what your eyes tell you is true. What do I mean? Even now, 1 year into my healthy lifestyle, I still have a hard time thinking that my body will fit into my jeans. Every time I wash clothes and pick them up to fold, the first thing I think is that they are so small. In reality, they aren’t that small, they are average. I’m definitely not a size 2. But after spending my entire adult life fat, my brain is still trying to mentally and emotionally catch up with my new reality.
I have been asked numerous times what type of exercise I do and what did I eat or if I follow some trendy or weird diet. I honestly just found a balanced diet that worked for me as well as exercises that I liked and could do at home or went for a long brisk walk outside when possible.
I try to exercise a minimum of 6 days a week with 1 rest day. I can say that I don’t always meet that goal, but I do try. Many times, my epilepsy or just life got in my way and I wasn’t able to meet my work goal for that day. When that happens, I would feel guilty at first, but taught myself that stuff would happen and it was better to just let it go.
Now, I try to go for a long brisk walk outside once or twice a week and the rest of the time, I follow several YouTube trainers. I mix up my workouts every day so that my body never gets used to a certain routine and I continue to burn the most calories I can for exercise. I also strive for doing a minimum of 30 minutes a day, with at least 15 of that devoted to cardio of some kind.
A few months ago, my knees started hurting from doing so many high impact indoor workouts. Instead of not exercising, I found many great videos that you can do seated. Now, I will do seated cardio one day, standing cardio the next, toning and strength training the next and always keep them rotating. This is the best routine that my body responds to. Will you be the same if you follow my example? Maybe or maybe not. If you are on your own fitness journey, you will have to find that sweet spot that works for you between diet and exercise.
One of the things that I have also learned from my year long fitness journey is the importance of support. I know many people aren’t lucky enough to have a loving and extremely supportive partner like I am. For those of you that don’t, I encourage you to find groups that make you comfortable to post about your own experiences with weight loss and get and give support to those that may be in a similar situation to yours.
So, now for what many of you have been waiting for, and may have even skipped to here to see. My 1 year results!
Here I am on my first day. I weighed 207 pounds (93.8 kilos).
Now here I am currently, 10 January 2019. Exactly 1 year from when I started and when I took the pictures above. I now weigh 150 pounds (68.4 kilos). I have lost a total of 57 pounds (25.4 kilos).
Many people ask me if I will continue to lose more weight or am I happy now. I have to say I am happy where I am now, but if I lose more weight, it will just be a natural process and what my body wants to do. I am maintaining my normal diet and exercise routines and will see what happens with that this year.
Thank you all for staying with me in 2018 and I hope to see you stick with me as I continue my journey to living a healthier lifestyle. If you find that you need support or inspiration, please contact me and I will be happy and proud to try to help get you motivated in the right direction.