My Weight loss journey

I lost 10 kilos in 2 years – I can’t believe that when I read that in black and white. It’s kind of a shock. I honestly can’t believe that I was at my absolute heaviest weight 24 months ago. The actual amount that I lost is just a number. The truth is that I didn’t think I could lose any weight. I really felt like I’m just not meant to look healthy and toned or even pretty.

It was actually nothing to do with food and exercise but how my mind was perceiving both of them.

This post is not to brag or teach you how to lose weight or even to put you off exercise. It’s simply to talk about my journey and my experience of losing weight and also my process of building a better relationship with food and exercise.

My journey is personal to me and all of us are different in our health journeys in life. Please remember that.

What I’m writing this post for is to say that it was a real-life rollercoaster. There were times when I got frustrated and times when I just flat out gave up. The beginning was messy but now that I’ve come to the end of that weight initial loss journey here are my learning points.

Willpower and relying on it only works so long.

Back in the days of working for advertising agencies I would go to the gym for 6am and exercise until 8.30am before heading to work. I would do mostly running and weights machines. The thing is I hated going to the gym, absolutely HATED IT. I only went because I was so focused on the result. Back then the result was to be toned. Nothing else and certainly nothing about having sustainable long term health. I wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing to my body in the process. Then after work I would go back to the gym and repeat the exact same workout. This habit became ingrained into my brain and I did this 3 times a week for over a year. The result that I was in the best shape of my life physically in terms of muscle tone and flat stomach etc. But there were cracks. My skin started breaking out and I was beyond irritable and I couldn’t enjoy food without intense guilt. I wasn’t enjoying the process of getting in shape. It became a torture process. I certainly didn’t understand how people could enjoy working out and eating healthy.

 The thing I’ve changed in my life now is that I focus on how food makes me feel and I listen to my body. Not all junk food makes me feel bad and not all fruit or vegetables make me feel good. Its been a journey to find foods that I like the taste of and that don’t make me ill or give me some kind of allergic reaction. I now have reached a point where I know my food preferences and have a daily diet that keeps me feeling energetic. There are days when I pay a LOT of attention to calories and macros and days where I ease of and eat more intuitively. It’s a constant learning process and one that is never fully complete. And that’s ok. Your body will change and adapt and heal. If you allow it to.

I know plenty of people who follow different diets and food regmins from Keto to Paleo to veganism and all the things in between. The issue for me is that I like all foods in variety. I also enjoy more than the occasional treat (ice cream, crisps, pastry you name it and I’ll happily eat it haha). My mantra for eating is if I really want to eat something then I will. BUT there is a difference between eating because I want to eat versus trying to fill a void like boredom or frustration or tiredness etc.

Focus on what you enjoy!

I love pilates, always have and always will. As much as I wish I enjoyed HIIT workouts for the short intensity and burst I just find them too gruelling on my joints. Short workouts are great but I find that I like the longer slower paced workouts. I like to ease into them and focus on improving my posture and knowledge of how the body works. It’s fascinating to me that the human body can endure SO MUCH.

Food isn’t the enemy

I used to think that there were foods I needed to eat in high volume and that provided that I ate those or consumed them in my diet then I would be “guaranteed” to lose weight fast and it would be easy. In theory it worked. I started consuming more fruit and veg and making smoothies and then increasing my uptake. The problem was that I was only doing it because I read articles on how it was the best thing for weight loss. With each new article I would try something different. And it wasn’t for a period of time, it was constantly a changing process from one new fad superfood to the next. I wasn’t listening to my body. There is such a thing as over consumption of a good thing. I definitely spent a lot of time researching and googling the best foods and superfoods for weight loss. All of this to say that there isn’t one magic food to eat that will speed up the process. You need to eat balanced, and you need to get your vitamins and minerals. There is no short cut. It takes time to figure out what you like the taste of, what makes you feel energetic and then combine the two into reasonably sized meals. It’s a constant journey that evolves.

Calorie counting and macro analysis is amazing in doses!

I started working with a nutritionist and she calculated my calorie goal for the day along with the amount of protein, fat and carbohydrate I needed to maintain in grams. It sounds very granular and at first I was thinking that this level of detail was going to be overkill. The result? I found that I could eat MORE food, hit my protein and carb levels and was also able to enjoy food that I love like curry and rice. All without feeling guilty! I didn’t halve portions or tell myself “I’ll be good and have a treat tomorrow”. To begin with it felt alien to me to not just focus on calories but also on the exact proportion of carbs and fats and proteins that I was eating. But once I got used to meeting my requirements and including my favourite things I began to see this as a very sustainable way to eat well and maintain a healthy body. Getting in shape then became something I could work towards in my own time.

I can see a visible connection between my energy level and what I consume. It’s sort of a positive feedback loop. When I eat well I can move more and I have more energy to sustain myself mentally and physically through the day. That doesn’t mean I can’t eat chocolate or crisps. It just means I can limit them. Eating well is about listening to the body and respecting it as a machine, not treating it like a dustbin that needs to be emptied when it gets too much.

Exercise is something I do as an extra

I used to see exercise as a form of punishment. If I had eaten an extra ice cream I would make myself do 20 push ups.  This created a hate-hate relationship with working out. I didn’t associate it with building a stronger body or with having an active life. I came to associate it with pain and torture.

Now because my eating habits are less extreme, I come to exercise with curiosity and to see how my body can develop and grow. I don’t do exercise to check off my list of tasks. Occasionally it may feel like that but overall it generally doesn’t. I find I’m much more of a student now when it comes to pilates. I look at an exercise and look how my body moves to perform the range of movements. I challenge myself but I don’t push myself to injury!

For example when I first started regularly working out I would do one pushup a day. I now can complete about 5 pushups with perfect form and then another 5 with my knees on the ground. They don’t scare me as much as when I was constantly pushing my body to burn out. I genuinely love how my body feels after I exercise and the endorphin rush is always worth it. I also enjoy having nice workout clothes from Popflex Active (one of my all-time FAVOURITE exercise brands)

Weighing scales are REALLY useful

I know that many people advise to ditch the scales and focus on how you feel. BUT for me I like the routine of weighing myself every week. I get on and I tell myself “whatever I weigh today is not permanent and I can improve it day by day”. I won’t allow myself to hate myself for whatever number the scale shows. I also like another thing.

I use a FitTrack smart scale. Why is this important? It doesn’t just measure my weight. It also tracks 16 other things: namely body fat percentage, BMI, muscle mass, bone mass, BMI and Metabolic age. All of these pieces of data really help to give me a full picture of how my food and exercise impact my body. I use the data along with my journal to ensure that I eat balanced and feel good. Both are important to maintain a good level of health. I’m no personal trainer but if I’m not feeling peaceful then it will never matter what I weigh and how in-shape I might be. Inner peace is not worth losing for ANYTHING!

Lastly – I enjoy my food

I look forward to my three meals a day, and I also snack quite a bit. But I’m more intentional about my snacking. I make sure that I don’t go over my calorie amount for the day too much and I try to journal through how I’m feeling. I also pay attention to any illnesses or immune diseases. My current routine is to eat three meals a day and have 2 snacks. I then drink 1 litre of water daily and this works for my body. It’s taken me about 2 years to get to this place of peace with my diet and my body and I am beyond happy. I get curious and I try out new recipes in the kitchen and I’m excited to see how my general health and fitness journey progresses in the next few years.

If you want to start your own health and fitness journey or are stuck on your current one – message me. I can help you get started on really being happy with your body whilst also working to reach a happy healthy ideal end goal. It doesn’t have to be gruelling or something you dread!