Switching off the auto pilot ...

Well I've maintained my resolve and had a really good two weeks of eating well and exercising 6 session per week.
My weigh in day today has me at 102.9kg. Giving me 2.6kg off for the last 2 weeks. Pretty awesome. I'm chuffed.

 Image via here

I'm so glad I didn't let the minor gain from 2 weeks ago drag me down. If anything it made me stronger and more stubborn to get it off for good.
I have been having more and more thoughts about my food. Of course ... my whole day is thinking about food glorious food. What I can have what I cant have. Eat clean, go more protein, cut the carbs, cut the calories.

There is so much advice out there, it just makes it all so bloody overwhelming.
So one week I'm low carb high protein, next week I'm clean eating ... Don't know if I'm Martha or Arthur.

I know that in the grand scheme of things all of these programmes and eating plans are good, so even though I'm switching around and not really settling on one it's still progress. Not like I'm flicking between bad habits and good, it's all good. but maybe I should settle on something, just so I can stop obsessing about food so much.

I like all the principles of clean eating: no white stuff, heaps of fruit, veg and protein, only the good carbs etc etc ... but as you can see there ain't no sugar in there. Throughout all diets actually a reoccurring theme for our current times is that sugar and refined carbs are bad. Used to be that fat was bad, but now we all know about good fats and bad fats. Well with sugar, there are no good and bad. Just bad.

When I think back to weight watchers days, there appeal is that eating is about balance. You can have the odd chocolate bar or glass of wine so long as you eat in moderation. A whole block of Cadbury Turkish Delight is prob not a good thing but 4 squares is not going to undo all your hard work and at the same time you still get a little treat for the day.

I had a little sit down chat with Lisa today, planning some forthcoming PT sessions and she said 'you can exercise till your black and blue but if you go home and eat shit your wasting your time'.

Harsh but true I think.

I know that I'm getting fitter, and my heart muscle is grateful, but really ... I'm going to gym to lose weight!
So it's what I needed to hear. I need to stop kidding myself that going hard at gym is gonna make me the 80kg person I want to be.

I keep thinking if I weighed 80kg how much easier would it be to squat or tricep dip off the bench or chest press my own body weight. If there was 22.9kg less of me I could push it so much harder and how would I get to being 22.9kg lighter quicker ... stop eating all the shit.

I love my chocolate, I love cakes and bready delights and when I think of an all or nothing approach whereby I eliminate them completely they suddenly occupy my mind 24/7 so I think for me, I have to allow them a little. A little bit in moderation just to feel I am not some deprived chic on a diet that everyone feels sorry for.

I'll make sure my calories allow for it, I'll portion control and I'll be in charge.
I think that's the most important thing. I sometimes mindlessly eat these things when I'm not even hungry.
I'll just go, apple muffin on that tray, yumm. I do love an apple muffin. Next thing I know I'm eating the apple muffin!
What the ... I've had breakfast and morning snack, I'm not even hungry ...muffin be gone.
See, mental. Not in control. Someone else has my remote control and keeps pressing auto pilot.

So time to take back control. Eat well, eat nutritionally, allow for yummy snacks but be in charge of what they are, how big they are and when they are consumed.

Image via here

Something that I read in one of my brain training books was that as humans we are conditioned for rewards and when we see that apple muffin it triggers the reward center of our brain. From previous memories we know it's fluffy, soft and sweet. We sense it melting in our mouth like a buttery sugary explosion and we want to relive that sensation over and over again.
So if we want to retrain our brain we need to become aware when these objects activate our brains reward response and rather then allowing the normal progression of see treat, buy treat, eat treat, we need to consciously acknowledge the trigger ...say yumm apple muffin, I love apple muffins ... then we need to detour our brain from its hard wired response and say, as much as I love apple muffins, You know what! I've had breakfast I'm not even hungry I'm going to head home and get started on my jobs for the day.

Or insert what ever follow up sentence serves you in your situation. It might even be, jeez I love an apple muffin but you know what I'm aiming to lose 1 kg this week so I'm going to eat an apple instead.

So knowing all these things about how my brain gets it self into auto pilot and just makes it's own decisions I think I have come to the realisation of what my next step in this journey needs to be.

I need to take back control of my food choices and own them.

Onward and upward.
Have a great week,
Jay x

Getting up and going ...

Well I had a minor set back last week as I had a gain on weigh in day.
I did the usual 'why, why,why, thing even though I suspected I might have a gain.

My suspicions were not because I'd had a bad week, on the contrary I had an awesome work out and food week.
But what I knew was that I'd upped my weights and done 3 pump classes, I was premenstrual and the day before weigh in I was out and about all day so I didn't workout and I didn't drink my water leaving me a bit bloated, retaining some fluid.

My gain was .5 which in the grand scale of things wasn't huge, but a plus is always scary.
It's funny because when I entered my weight into the online food diary I'm using on calorie king.com it always gives you a little summary of your week and mine said 'don't be disheartened by small gains, ask yourself have you upped your weights, where are you in your menstrual cycle and have you been drinking your water?'

 Image and Calorie King site: click here

All the questions I knew the answers to. A nice reminder though, that despite all our hard work sometimes a gain will creep in on the scales.

Once upon a time, reason or no reason, a gain would be enough to make me say to myself that it was not working and it was time to quit. But my resolve is stronger now and a minor setback tells me that i just need to persevere and continue doing all the great things I have put in place for the success of my long terms goals.

I have no doubt that this Fridays weigh in will have me right back on track and to make sure I haven't skipped a beat with my workouts. Saturday was cycle, Sunday was my rest day and today was my 6am start.

Getting up and going in the mornings is so bloody hard, especially during winter. It's pitch black and this morning we were at 5 degrees. Brrr.
But I have set a permanent alarm on my phone to wake me 5.30 every Monday and I tell myself that Monday is the only day I do such an early workout so just get up and get on with it.
I always have to push myself to get up and out that door, but once there I'm warmed up within 5 mins and an hour later I'm walking home feeling so alive and ready for the day, before my hubby and kids have even woken up for the day.

Today and every Monday really, I have burnt a huge 700 calories before the street lights have even switched off and the day has begun.
Such an awesome way to start the day and the whole week for that matter.

Looking forward to weigh in this Friday.
Hope you have an awesome week,
Jay x

Figuring out what's working ...

Weigh in day today and I'm down to 104.7 woohoo. 

 Image via: here.

That's almost 10kg gone, and so much closer to my goal of getting under 100kg ... hoobloodyray!
I had a huge loss this week of 1.7kg. Well huge for me, as I'm usually a .5kg loser.

So of course I have had to sit back and analyze a little, as I do, to see what it was that may have done the trick this week. In retrospect I think it's not one thing I did or didn't do, more-so a combination of a few things.

Firstly, I have upped my workouts.
After my little rant on the last blog post about how doing the 80/20 thing of being good 5 days of the week and having the weekends off just doesn't work for me. I decided to test the theory of working out 6 days and having one day rest.
What I was doing before was actually having Thursdays off gym (so I could be a good mummy and do reading at school) as well as making the weekends gym free.
I was telling myself that I'm walking my preppy to and from school everyday ...collectively 80 minutes of walking a day for me, so that should allow me Thursdays off.

 Me walking in my spiffy, new runners.

Reality is, that all that walking is 10,000 steps a day for me, which is what is classed as a NORMAL amount of activity. You know ... normal for all those peeps who work outside of home etc ... so really that just puts me at healthy, doesn't rank me as someone going above the minimum daily movement requirement to actually be loosing weight. So yeah, maybe i was lying to myself a bit about how hard I was working!
Anyways, I picked up a cardio workout on Thursday and also added a pump class on Sunday. Giving me 6 days of working out. I also changed things up a bit to make sure I was getting 3 cardio sessions, 3 weights sessions and my yoga class. Which means some days I stay longer to fit weights in as well as cardio.

 Image via here

O.k so what else. I have still continued with eating extra protein.
I'm trying to have protein at every meal.
Nuts, yogurt, eggs, meat, fish, legumes, protein bars or shakes. Sorta dropped off on the shakes and protein bars only because they are a bit expensive but really there are plenty of readily available good sources of protein that I don't need to depend on them.
I have also maintained having breakfast and morning and afternoon snacks. So I'm seemingly getting more food in. Better quality food though, so it seems to be working.

Lastly ...sleep.
I ran out the Valerian tea and was hesitant to get more as it was really hard to have drink such a foul smelling tea every night. So I went 4 nights without and fell back into my restless sleep, tired day mantra aughhh...
I gave up on that pretty quick and decided I need to head back to the health food store. This time I was going to try the Valerian tablets. I saw Blackmores and Natures Own had sleep remedies too so I took them all up to the counter for assistance. The lady recommended the Natures Own saying one of her reps who is also a naturopath swore by them. So who am I to disagree.

 

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 Supposedly it has something in it to make you not only get to sleep quicker and sleep deeper but also to make you wake feeling refreshed. Imagine that, waking up ready to face the world well rested. That would be awesome.
 I have been taking it for 3 days now and each day I am feeling progressively better. Not waking up with a headache and feeling less like I have a constant cloud hanging over my head.
The girl at the gym desk even said gosh you're perky today... woohoo, must be working.

So yeah, I think they are the few big things of note.
Sleeping better, eating regularly, having protein at every meal and working out 6 days a week.

Oh and ... I totally forgot. Stressing less.
How could I forget that one. Something one of the trainers said during the week was stress less. As it has such a hold on you and really holds you back from accepting your new life and the changes you are making.

 

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Now as you can imagine telling a stress head to stress less is just dumb.
If I could I would for sure, but it's somewhat inbuilt. A safety mechanism of sorts. I can't say it always serves me well, but it is so ingrained I wouldn't know where to begin.
So... I downloaded a meditation app and have done that twice this week.
I have also changed my inner dialogue from 'why aren't I losing weight faster' to 'I'm doing the best I can for my body and even if I only lose .5 a week that will still add up to a substantial amount in 6 months or a year so its all good' and if I reached for chocolate or cake I did a count of my calories for the day to see if I had room for it then ate it and thought, 'yum just what I was in the mood for' ...instead of my usual immediate guilt and thoughts of 'well you've blown it again'

So they were biggies I think in helping my head stress less so that my body could make some progress. Letting go a little, I guess, of the berating negative comments, cause they sure as hell weren't serving me.

Well considering it has all worked in the last 2 weeks, I shall maintain status quo and keep on keeping on and you never know I might just get to 99.9kg before end of July after all...and if not I WILL get there real soon.

Jay xx