I'm ready

Our little break was just great. As much as I love having visitors and family staying when we are away it was also lovely having the Bach to ourselves this weekend. We left Saturday morning and stopped of in Masterton to get a few groceries and have lunch. I also found a book sale!! I always have a book on the go so any bargains are a big hit with me. We got to the beach mid afternoon. Our days there were lovely sunny days with a bit of a sea breeze (well apart from today when it turned nasty). We had loads of walks and three of the four days I hit over 10,000 steps!! A real achievement for me as this was done with just a couple of really enjoyable walks and just moving a bit more. So we have come back all refreshed and raring to go.

Over the past week or so I have done a lot of thinking about what I want and how I have been mucking around and have been for some time. Various reasons for the mucking around but the main one really is the difficulty I had trying to lose the last few kilos. Maybe mucking around isn't quite right, but I've stopped trying hard if that makes sense. If you’ve been reading for a while you will know I gave getting to goal some really full on attempts. Then I felt as if my life was being lived around what the scales were saying, I would try hard and they wouldn’t budge or go up, or I would have little losses, then gains again. It was all becoming like a constant nightmare with worrying and really frustrating. Then I thought it was time for that to stop, to enjoy where I was - then I got to the stage where I thought best idea was to stop weighing. I knew I gained weight over Christmas and holiday time and my assessment at the gym a few weeks ago confirmed I was up 1-2 kilos from my lightest weight. Not too major but I don't want it to go any higher.

So thinking about it I’ve learnt a bit along the way:
Even when I’m not being on track, even on the days when I may be eating more than what I need – I’m coping and managing making better choices AND I’m striving to increase my exercise levels.
To stop weighing daily!
Most important to me - I’ve learnt that this time around I’ve finally succeeded in making changes to my life and they are permanent ones.
This is not a diet but a change I've made to reach a goal and have a healthier body.

Even though not at goal weight I’m feeling really positive about how far I’ve come – past experiences I was either on a diet or eating what ever I felt like. I didn't learn anything from my previous attempts at losing weight.

Strange thing is that when I started this journey and it was all about losing weight! The exercise ended up being started purely to assist me to lose weight. Then I found I needed not only to watch my food intake, I needed to exercise. Then I discovered and I'm still discovering that exercise is not something to dread. It can be enjoyable and also challenging aiming to increase the intensity. I feel better, my body hasn't got the aches and pains it used to have (well not so many). If I haven't been to the pool for a few days, I can really feel the stiffness coming back in my back, hips etc. I've got more energy.

So…………. now I’ve made these changes, now I’m back into the gym, now I’m changing and increasing the exercise I’m doing and succeeding, now I’m making better food choices - I've thought not if only I can get both tracking and exercise going along hand in hand – it could finally work for me!! So it’s time for me to make a real effort to complete what I’ve started and I’m ready to give myself a huge push to get there. I want to, I’m ready, I’m sick of mucking about, having good days and not so good ones. I feel that I’m doing extra exercise, moving more so if the tracking came to the party I could start to see the results.

Yep I know you’ve heard it all before, but I just feel different about it all now. It’s all about me being able to get the right balance in my life to achieve what I want, I’m pretty close, I’ve learnt a lot the past couple of years and I’m going to give it my best shot to get there.

I'm also not going back to how I was worrying about scale readings, obviously I want them to go down but will not be going back to obsessing about weighing daily - a monthly weigh in is a far better option (for me).

Watch this space….