It's been way too long since my last post. Months, in fact.
It all started with attending the Royal Highland Show and catching COVID. Not too seriously thankfully and other than being in the lungs for two or three weeks after, no lasting side effects for me. For sure a bonus to have escaped relatively unscathed. The home delivery from the supermarket contained ice cream, pizza and other comforting things to see you through a spell stuck at home.
In that spell I also went to a music festival and just set out to have a good time (and when you're in the same field as Shawarmarama, Pizza Geeks, Tony's Really Good Chips and more you'd better believe that I made the most of that).
Either way, I put some weight on. Returned to the football in Glenrothes and for two out of the following three weeks I failed to register a weight loss. Not good, as I've always been overly self critical.
Either way, the Dundee Man V. Fat league started up last week and this week I registered a weight loss of close to 1.5kg. The scales there read 16st dead, the scales at home 15st 13.5lb. Feeling back on track and ready to go further.
It's so easy to let setbacks kill off any momentum you've built up. It's what always scuppered me before in previous attempts to lose weight, but this time things do feel a bit different. Here are a few things I've learned to do this time around compared to last one.
Don't make excuses, but do allow context
There will be a lot of people who will say things like "You keep making excuses for yourself" or "They're lying to themselves". It's easy to take comments along those lines as that person not believing you, irrelevant of outside factors that may have hampered your efforts. Instead try to take it as "Be real with yourself"; could you have done anything better? How much did the outside factor play a part to your result?
It may well be the case that 98% of what went wrong outwith your control was what resulted in you being unable to eat healthily or get in plenty activity. Don't be hard on yourself if that's the case, but there's still nothing wrong with working on that 2% to get yourself going again.
Record EVERYTHING.
I keep a daily record of what I eat, how many portions of fruit and veg I have, how much water I drink and how much activity I do. I use the step counter on my phone as well as My Fitness Pal for this. I also weigh myself twice a week.
If you make a change in your diet or your activity that works well or leads to weight gain then you can noy only spot it earlier, but you can look to see what you've changed in your activity or diet to have caused that. You can then incorporate it more if it's healthy if you're getting good results or vice versa. Remember, there are times that you'll have a weekly gain for the reason of "just because". Again, see above - if you can reflect on the week and you've done what you can, don't beat yourself up about it.
Take a moment to see how far up the mountain you've climbed
If you've had a difficult two or three weeks and feel like you've hit a tough patch, don't panic. Look at how far you've come since you started to make the decision to change your lifestyle. You've done it before, and you can do it again. Getting momentum to begin with is tough and takes conscious effort but once you're up and running it gets easier. Old photographs, looking at how much body fat or weight you've lost and even having a couple of items of old clothing that are now loose and don't fit can all be good motivation. Below are two photos; one of myself in 2019 at John O'Groats, and the other last month when taking the dog for the walk. Seeing the difference in the two is a good reminder that I'm so far down the path of getting to a healthy body weight that it would be silly to get back into old habits.
Accept where you are, and focus on your next step
Similar to the first point, but it stands on its own merit. If you've had a bad day, don't let it become a bad week. If you've had a bad week, don't let it become a bad fortnight - and so on.
If you've made some bad decisions with activity or food or drink, then it's done and in the past. Go and go out for a brisk walk if you can, cook something healthy for your next meal, resist that snack you might have had before. Every journey begins with an action - make sure your next one is a good one. Then the next. Then the next. Focus on it one step at a time.
Comments
Post a Comment