Happy New Year

So HAPPY NEW YEAR !!! I hope you all had a fabulous 2011 and I hope everyone has an even more brilliant 2012! :)

I have decided that this is the year to lose the blubber, I will never again be as fat as I was last and that is a very motivating thought. From TODAY on I am on a 'Diet' (I hate that word, it makes it seem to temporary) I want a long lasting, sustainable change so maybe I should call it 'My Little Revolution'.

Since today is the day that I begin I will spend the day getting organised and putting together my game plan. Firstly I am changing the name of the blog to the weight I actually wish to lose. Its my goal to post something on the blog every day to stay motivated, I may post something from today that I found interesting, my measurements, weight, consumed calories, burned calories and steps as well as photos. I probably wont do all these things everyday and I cannot promise that I will post everyday, but I really would like to. I would also like to add up my food in weight watchers points just to see how much I am getting in this way.

Little Goals and tasks I want to keep up and achieve:

- Drink lots and lots of green tea
- Take Cinnamon and Apple Cider Vinegar Supplements
- Drink Slimatea
- Don't go to Sleep too late
- Don't Eat  too late
- Do 20 000 steps a day
- Exercise twice a day
- No added salt
- Take the stairs in my apartment building

My main goal is to lose the weight by the end of August 2012, that roughly averages 1 lbs per week. In August I will be going to NYC for a fun trip with a fried so that is why I chose that date to begin my diet. The full diet will begin tomorrow as I like staring on a Monday, but today is me explaining everything and getting my food and everything planned out and organised.

And so begins My Little Revolution....

3 week stall

So I was pretty down this week due to my fluctuating weight and lack of exercise. This had a very negative impact on my eating pattern. I think I ate quite healthy, however there was a lot of grazing and some over eating. So I decided to hit up Google and get some research done. Trying to find an active solution to my problem always get me motivated.

I have also been looking into various other blogs, which are an amazing source of motivation and inspiration. There is something about reading other similar experiences to your own that gets me all fired up. I think its the idea that we're all human, we're not perfect. We'll get there if we keep moving. It doesn't matter how long it takes.

So I have found amongst my research that there is such a thing as the three week stall. It's probably not a 'thing' but its happening to me and its nice to see that im not the only person that this is happening to. Usually I would get disheartened and give up, but reading about others with a similar situation makes me want to try harder.I found this blog that peaked my interest, where people are having similar issues.

I lost quite a large amount of weight at the beginning of this diet and it just seems to have halted at this point. I put it down to my body realizing that its not going to get the usual amount of calories and slowly adjusting to my new lifestyle. I'm pretty sure my first weight loss was just water anyways. Apparently weight loss grinding to a halt and people even gaining weight at this point is quite normal.

Things I can do to bring back the weight loss-

-Do the same I have been doing and wait for my body to adjust

-More intense exercise

-More frequent exercise

-Exercise longer

-Check that I am eating enough calories and that my body isn't in starvation

-Change my diet to increase my metabolism

-Change the type of exercise im doing to build more muscle and increaser metabolism.

- Eat less and more often

- Keep a closer eye on the calories i am consuming

-Drink more water

- Eat less salt

-Eat less carbs

-Weigh self less and at the same time every week

With all the above in mind I will try and just be aware a lot more about what food I put into my body. One of the steps Im going to take is to set up some mini goals for myself, break down the chunk I want to achieve, such as weekly and monthly goals and of course an end goal.

So keep in mind for next week, exercise more, track food intake religiously and plan my goals.

Im feeling much more positive already. :)

GOALS

I want to lose 25lb by June, that is 14 weeks from now, 3 and a half months. So my goal is 1.7 lb per week. So every month I would like to lost 7.8 lb.... :) By:

March 1^st I weigh 125 lb

April 1^st I will weigh 117 lb

May 1^st I will weigh 109 lb

June 1^st I will weigh 101 lb

I will try and lose 2lb every week, but I will be happy with any kind of a loss :)

Ouch

I am soooooo sore! I decided to try out Clare Nasirs boot camp video on Sunday!!!! And I'm still sore today! Its Wednesday now :o. My legs are killing me. And because of this I haven't done any more exercise this week, its just too sore and I don't want to do any damage to myself.



I just wanted to kick this week off really well, being good and doing exercise. But no luck, I cant exercise and my food intake at the moment is not being tracked as I eat the same thing every day. :( Just generally sick of eating the same food all the time and sick of not exercising, and sick of going between 126.4 and 124.8 all the time :(

I just hope that I can figure out a new meal plan soon and that I wont be as sore and get my exercising into gear.

Tools and such, the grity work

So armed with my research I went to tackle the issue step by step. Starting with the beginning. My plan is to go from 134lb to 100lb. This means losing 34lb in a healthy and sustainable way. So taking a leaf from Debra Moorheads book I decided to go and check how many calories I would require to maintain my goal weight and to just eat that many every day. This would already train me into eating the way I should continue to eat for the future, greatly reducing the risks of gaining back the weight one I go 'off' the diet.

The fist thing was check my BMI, I wanted to know where I stood and what weight I should plan to be at. So I went to lowfatdietplan and looked up the chart. Its easy to read where you are and where you need to be to be in the healthy category.Currently my BMI is around 27 and I need to weight in the neighbourhood of 100lb-125lb to fall into the healthy category.

So I checked what my daily calorific needs were for my target weight of 100lb with two websites, shapefit gave me a recommendation of 1511 calories per day and freedieting gave me a daily amount of 1338 calories. So for the sake of restriction I am going according to what the freedieting website has calculated. It easy, just put in your gender, height, age, weight and activity level.

For activity level I put 'deskjob' because that's why I do, and I do no exercise around that. I think that because I do not want to fail at this I want to succeed I don't want to overload myself with too much too soon. So for now I will tackle food until I am confident I can take on exercise. I am taking baby steps towards a new lifestyle.

Armed with this new information I decided that from now, until I lose all the weight I will write down EVERYTHING. I need to keep track of every biscuit I eat, every drink I take. And I made the decision that I could not cheat until the diet is over. When I cheat I usually relapse into my old habits.Writing everything down will teach me exactly what to eat and what not, what foods I can afford to have more of and where I need to be careful. Also using calories will allow me to eat whatever I want, but if it is a high calorie meal I will go hungry for the rest of the day. In the case that I do slip up and over eat I am not allowed to give up, I must get straight back onto the horse and forget that it happened.

For now, the first few weeks this is the plan, try to get used to the calories, see what works, make meal plans see what doesn't work and tweak it. Eventually I will add in such things as better foods and exercise. This will evolve and come with more research and time. For now I have a big task ahead of me, wish me luck.

Reasons Reasons

Wow! Time really flies :o its Thursday already!

The last time I posted was Monday, and I don't think other than work I have accomplished much at all. I get so tired after work I just wanna sit down, have dinner and watch TV.

But any who here I am ready to tell you how I am getting on. Well I shall start at the very beginning on how I got this little project on its feet. First I scoured the Internet for information (a solid two or so weeks of research). I considered how I was going to tackle this weight loss thing in a way that this time I would not fail. I read about diet pills, researched fasting, Weight Watchers, LipoTrim, gym's, eating disorders, calorie counting, Atkins, the cabbage soup diet, the 'beyone' diet. I looked up EVERYTHING!

Guess what I found out?

None of it matters. None. Not even a little. Sure all the above are helpful tools for weight loss. But the thing I found was that if you are not in the right frame of mind, or are doing it for the wrong reasons all of the before mentioned diets and weigh loss methods mean nothing. Sure you can lose weight, but you will gain it back. So first thing is first. Why am I trying to lose weight?

Well I have been average weight (within my BMI) all my life, until I went to college, in 2006. Over the next four years of college I gained weight, not a huge amount, but enough to bring my BMI to 27 (over weight). To be honest I don't think my weight is an issue at this point (from a physical health point). I am merely just overweight. But emotionally it is effecting me a lot, my self confidence is shattered. I feel that I have no will power, and I feel ugly. Since I am only 4ft 11" tall, those extra pounds really make a difference.

I want to lose weight to get back my confidence, to feel sexy and healthy!

I want to lose weight as it has gone up at a slow but constant pace for the last four and a half years. If I don't do this now. I never will.

I did this very thorough research in a bid to not allow my self to fail again, I have tried many of the above diets and failed everytime. You wanna know why? Because of my mind set, I would say things like 'Sure I'll eat like 500 cals a day until I lose the weight and then Ill go back to normal'. This does not work, first of all, I never got that far to lose all the weight I wanted to, but also I never really wanted to diet. I just wanted to go straight back to fries, pizzas and soda.

This time my research has let me a different direction, I am going to have to make changes that are permanent, that I can sustain. There can be no such thing as 'I'll go back to normal' this 'diet' (for lack of a better word) is the normal! That is why I have made my journey so public. I cant do this alone, I don't want to. I want to have people follow my progress, to encourage me but also to let me know when I'm not doing enough. I need support, encouragement and tough love! So I urge you all who read this, to comment and tell me to do this and to see it through.

Lipotrim

Lipotrim is a total food replacement program, for the duration of the program you will not be eating anything other than what they give you. This will cost you about the same amount of money that you would usually spend on food a week. In the first week you can have 3 different milkshakes, chocklate, vanilla and strawberry, or chicken soup. After the first week coconut and peanut flap jacks are introduced. You cant eat anything else and you can only drink water, tea (no fruit tea) and coffee (of course without sugar, milk, or lemon). Actually you have to drink 4 pints of water or more a day.

You get to have three shakes or soup in one day, which changes after the first week to either three shakes or soup a day or two shakes/soup and a flapjack. The program controlls exactly what you eat, giving you the grangtotal of around 400 calories a day, the program is desighnted to then let the body consume the rest of the energy it needs to run from your stored fat. This is how you loose the weight. Once your body is burning fat it is in ketosis, this is when you lose the wieght, make sure you are carefull not to eat or drink anything you are meant to at that time, especiall citrus, which interrupts the process.

Every week, on the same day you will go to the pharmacy to get asessed by the pharmacist, this is where you will get weighed and also given your new supply of a weeks worth of lipotrim. This is very handy because it allows you a time where you can ask a professoal about some of the questions you may have and it also keeps you on track.

Week 0

Hi guys, I'm going to begin this blog by tracking my process of weight loss using the Lipotrim total food replacement program which you can get though pharmacies. I started about 5 days ago, so I'm going to back track and start at the beginning. I decided to go for this diet because I have tried to loose weight through healthy eating and exercise before but every time i gave up, since i lose weight very slowly i can become very demotivated, on a positive note, i also gain weight slowly. This diet suits me because instead of being told just to eat certain things i cannot eat anything other than what is given to me. I prefer this because i find it easier to follow, and i can be stricter on myself. In the last week my BMI indicated that i had just crossed the thresh hold into over weight, so now i wish to get back to a healthy weight just on the lower end of my BMI. My weight from before I started college.

here are my measurements:
Age: 23
Weight: 125 lb
Goal Weight: 105 lb
BMI: 25.2
Height: 4ft 11"

Neck: 31.5 cm
Shoulder: 100.5 cm
Bicep: 28 cm
Chest: 92.5 cm
Waist: 75.5 cm
Thigh: 56.5 cm
Calf: 32.5 cm
Hips: 97 cm
Belly: 88 cm

* I will have these measurements at the end of each week to let you know how i am getting on.

So I know this was probably a bad idea, but I went out for a huge last meal the last night before I started my diet. It was amazing we had lots of mexican food and for dessert deep fried ice cream and deep fried pancakes. It may be the last one for a long time :(

Goodbye Blubber!!

My Mission is this: