It’s been a week since 21 Days of Accountability finished… and what a week it’s been! My life is still slightly out of order as I help my husband recover from surgery. It’s Wednesday now though, so that means it’s weigh in day.
This week I managed to drop 1.2kg. Another week, another kilo gone. I’m happy! I wasn’t sure how I’d go seeing as things really have been hectic here. Nowhere near as hectic as what Christchurch people are currently going through though, I’m sure. The earthquakes they’ve been having since Saturday morning are still going and making things worse for people. My heart goes out to them.
I lost 5cm off my body this week, making it an even 100cm gone from my body. Isn’t it crazy how the body works! It just did exactly what I wrote about in – Day15 -Take Measurements post. Drastic changes in measurements last week when I only lost 100grams and barely any movement this week when I dropped over a kg.
This week I had a moment. I have a pair of jeans I bought right before I got pregnant with Boston. For the past, well, who even knows how long I’ve been trying to put them on… it’s been a while but my news is; I buttoned them up this week! It’s not enough for me to go out and wear them in public but just a few days ago I couldn’t even get the the two sides near each other. Hopefully in a little while they fit perfectly again. Buttoning them is a huge feat for me. I’ve been searching for jeans since the beginning of the year and not found a pair for my body. Fitting into my nearly new (four sizes smaller!) ones again will take away all that pent up anger over not being able to find a great pair.
This is another really good tool in weight loss. Using clothes to monitor progress and getting a little thrill when you reach a new milestone (seeing as the goal is still so far away).
I’ve also noticed that I’m starting to look a little different. More like me. That’s always a good thing.
My life should be returning to normal soon enough, until then I might be a little bit quiet. In the meantime I’ve heard of a lot of you out there taking up the 21 Day challenge and that makes me really happy! Keep up the great work everyone. xx
Take Measurements.
Yes, more monitoring. It’s a never ending thing. Dropping the weight takes a lot of planning and monitoring, if you haven’t already noticed…
Well, it does when you’re not doing a quick fix and you go about it on your own.
Obviously the scales tell you how much weight you drop and Jillian from The Biggest Loser would hate me for saying to not just focus on the scale (that’s kind of her job right?) BUT as a regular person trying to get in shape sometimes you just need something to give you hope. There will be times when you need reassurance that something is actually happening. Measurements are great for that. Especially in the early days when you can’t see much of a difference at all.
In saying that, don’t focus only on measurements either. The two should work together. I know from past experience that some days when you lose a small amount on the scale, your measurements can drastically change and sometimes when you only change a few cm’s on your measurements you can drop a massive amount on the scales. For me it’s just something I find interesting to watch and review.
So on Wednesday’s, when I share with you the results from measurements, this is what’s getting measured.
Neck
Chest
Abs
Waist
Hips
Thighs
Calves
Biceps
So today’s challenge – start monitoring. I’ve shown you how to monitor your food, weight loss and now your measurements. I’ll do a post about exercise soon. Trust me, monitoring helps!
Guess what, we’re past the half way mark! Although I’m yet to perfect living all my ideals I can definitely say what I’m doing is a vast improvement on what life was like just 2 weeks ago.
I’ve moved past the planning, moved past the starting and now I’m up to the part where I have to monitor what is going on in my life on a daily basis.
So today I’m showing another new BFF of mine, my food journal. (pictured above)
In it, I record the time I eat and what I eat. I originally had it with a Planned column and an Actual column. Side by side. The past 11 days though, I’ve just written my actuals because it takes up less room. I might go back to both columns though.
Now I know we’ve got a menu that shows us what to eat 5-6 times a day BUT the menu is just a guideline to help make it easy for me to eat regularly, it doesn’t document what actually gets eaten, putting regular eating into practice (for me) is a bit harder.
Using the food journal I’m able to pinpoint what makes me feel good, what makes me feel guilty, what bloats me and figure out why on certain days I’m hungrier than others.
I record everything, the good, the bad and the downright ugly.
It helps me see exactly where I’ve improved as well. At the start my first meal times were after mid-morning, now they’re becoming earlier and earlier as I work on getting enough sleep. It’s easy to see when I need to kick myself in the butt and pay more attention.
So the next challenge – try a food journal, it’s a bit of effort but for me it’s great insight on my real habits.
