If you have been reading my blog you will know I have been working on my health and wellbeing over the last 15 months. I thought it was timely to pause and review how far I have come from this time last year.
Celebrate
I remember when I first started at the end of Feb 2018 – the thought of losing 50 kilos seemed monumental. Instead of getting caught up on the big numbers I chose to focus on 5 kilo increments.
On WW I started on 42 points a day which looking back now seems like quite a lot of food but then I weighed 162.7 kilos. As your weight drops your daily points drop accordingly and now my daily points are 23. My weekly points of 42 remain no matter how much weigh I lose. Initially, I would only occasionally dip into my weekly points. Now that my daily points have dropped, I am using these weekly points. Five weeks ago, I reached a milestone when I lost 55.2 kilos.
Seven weeks ago, was the first time I had a sense of deprivation. Looking back now I think this was more a reaction to the stress of what level four meant and the fact my weight-loss slowed down. I felt like I was walking in mud!
When I lost 55 kilos I found myself thinking “but I still have 30 kilos to go”. Rather than taking time to pause and celebrating my achievement I was ignoring what I had accomplished. I realised I could change the feeling of deprivation by switching from the blue plan to green which after a few days I did. My daily points increased to 30, and I was much happier. I realised it was important to look at what I had achieved since losing 55 kilos.
I wrote a list of what losing weight had meant to my life and these were some of the things I wrote:
Increased energy.
Loving relationship with my body.
Improved mobility and flexibility.
I can sit on a chair and not worry that it can hold my weight.
I no longer need an extension belt on a plane.
My body is stronger and I am the fittest I have ever been.
My quality of life has improved tenfold.
No longer pre-diabetic.
Improved and consistent relationship with exercise.
Sleep apnoea symptoms have decreased.
My body no longer feels cumbersome.
A spring in my step.
No longer had sleep deprived.
Writing a list helped me shift my perspective and allowed me to refocus and to pause and celebrate at what I have achieved! I realised I need to pause and celebrate more when I reach a milestone goal. Instead of looking at what I still have to achieve! A week ago, I switched back to blue and am enjoying it!
Exercise
While I couldn’t sustain the level of exercise, I was doing pre lock-down, I could change what exercise I was doing at home. While I was still keeping active, I was doing too much yin-based exercise and needed to balance it with more yang based such as walking. Sounds easy enough however, I have a negative mind set around walking because of the inclines in our area. I had to get my head around this and just do it! While I may have resisted walking it quickly became something I did three times a week. It surprised me at how my weight loss and increased fitness made walking the inclines much easier compared to this time last year. However, the biggest benefit to the walking was to my mind-set. It helped me get out of the house and feel less cooped up.
Sleep Apnoea Update
On March 23 I had my home study test for sleep apnoea. Finding out we were going into level 4 Lockdown in 2 days-time was stressful it was unfortunate my sleep study coincided with a crappy sleep. My results turned up a month ago and revealed my symptoms dropped from severe to moderate and my neck measurements reduced by 7.5cm. While these results were impressive, the recommendation in the report is that I still use the machine.
New Goals
As part of the changes I set myself some new goals to work towards;
- I am celebrating my total weight loss of 60 kilos by 31 July 2020.
- I weigh 99.9 kilos by the 31st of August 2020.
- I am 85 kilos by 31 March 2021.
- I have reduced the number of apnoea’s I have. (31 March 2021).
I wrote a list of five things to serve as a reminder and decided to share it in the hope it may inspire or help you on your journey.
Let me know in the comments something you are proud of achieving.