Health and fitness kick

Well, I’m on day 20 of my ‘lose my ridiculously gained extra weight’ health and fitness kick, and although the exercise is going well, and the eating has definitely improved, I don’t feel I’m seeing much in the way of results yet.

According to my scales (they might be rubbish and totally out, but as long as they go down in the right direction that’s fine), I’ve got just under 4 stone to lose to get to a weight I think I could and should be able to maintain.   That would also get me back into my size 12 clothes, if not 10-12 on top.  Let’s face it, without doing the dancing I used to, I’d never be able to get to or maintain anything lower without eating ‘nothing’ on an ongoing basis.

So far, I’ve lost 6lb.  Bit of a shame, as I’d have thought I’d have lost that in the first week before then reducing that to 1-2lb a week, but obviously my body’s decided it didn’t want to do that.

I’m logging everything I’m eating on MyFitnessPal app, have been exercising each morning for 20 minutes, as well as a bit of walking some lunchtimes with my Fitbit coming in handy.  20 minutes doesn’t sound like much, but when it’s ‘30 day shred’ and she claims 20lb off in those 30 days, you’d expect to see some impact fairly quickly.   I’m going to struggle for half that going on performance so far.  The improvements I have seen so far are:

• feeling good about exercising – because it really does give a boost especially doing it early in the morning, and
• more streamlined arms – 30 day shred does do a lot of arm stuff, whereas it’s the bottom part I really need to get worked on.  It’s also helped by having a tan this year from all the hot weather!

So far, I’ve not really noticed my clothes getting baggier.  Even my jeans which had got a bit too tight, aren’t any looser yet.  So much for toning up!

I’m not convinced by 30 day shred yet.  It seems a lot of people have injured themselves doing it, and it’s definitely not good on the knees.  Yes, it makes you sweat lots and makes you tired doing it, and I’ve done 20-30 minute exercise programmes before which have got results, but we’ll see when I finish the 30 days.  Plus, what are you meant to do afterwards?   Repeat it all?

I shall stick the 30 days, then move on to my Beach Body workout that is hard work, but I know it delivers noticeable results within 3 weeks.  Plus I like the way it’s focused on 10 minute sections that you can pick and mix, including a yoga section which is good for a ‘day off’ and stretching.

As I have to exercise early mornings before N gets up, it means I can only do short exercise programmes.  This morning it did fail somewhat with a break half way through when I had to go and find out what the screaming ‘mummy, want a cuddle’ was going on about.  N had spent an hour last night screaming the same so not sure what was going on.  I’m hoping this evening is a better bedtime.

So, I had to bring him downstairs with me while I finished my exercise.  The last time he was in the same room as me ‘exercising’, was when he was a lot younger and I was on the wii doing a dance game of some sort.  He spent a lot of time laughing and trying to stop me.  Most off-putting.

Today he was entranced by the crop topped, super fit women on the screen (thankfully he didn’t watch me huffing and puffing and turning a beetroot shade.  During the killer plank jacks, he seemed to notice me bobbing my backside in front of him and said “mummy got pyjamas on’.  Hmm, workout trousers and top, not pjs.  At least he sat nice and quietly watching until I’d finished, then while I was stretching during the cool down he came and sat next to me for a cuddle.

It’s almost 3 months until my friend’s wedding, so that’s my target to lose 2 stone, with the rest ideally by Christmas.