Motivate Me to Lose Weight

Losing weight isn't hard. It's keeping the weight off, once you've lost it - that's the hard part. We are not out to lose weight - that's just a happy side benefit. We are out to change our behaviours from ones that allowed us to gain weight in the first place, to behaviours that allow us to shed those pounds and to keep them off. 

Main | There's no need to crash and burn if you do it right »
Saturday
Sep192020

Do "fad diets" work?

Good question

I think I've tried just about every single one of them over the years. Some of them worked, some of them didn't, and after studying nutrition for a while (I am not an accredited dietitian BTW) I can honestly say that for me - it can't be a - go on a diet, lose some weight - stop dieting and hope for the best anymore. 

For me, and lets face it - for all of us, our diet needs to fit our particular lifestyles. I am not a crossfitter or a training athlete, I exercise daily for a number of reasons, one is so that I can get to 90 and still be able to stand on one leg and put my knickers on. There are many other reasons of course - I want my legs and butt to look better, I want to get into my smaller clothes and I want to bolster my mental health. Getting lost in some physical activity can take me away from the stresses and strains of the day and into my mind and my body. As a result I work better, my writing is crisper and my clients get a better result than had I sat on my rear end and not moved. Something I have been guilty of while working a full-time job in an office environment.

To be honest - being made redundant earlier this year has been amazing. Yes I was one of the many people impacted by redundancies due to Covid-19 - but I've had a personal business for a few years, so when it happened this year, we turned the pipeline on. (www.perthresumewriter.com.au)

Having to change routines - drastically - made me look at other areas of my life that weren't working. 

I had made the decision at the start of the year that I needed to do something about my girth. Sitting down for most of the day meant that I had gained some weight, but I knew that to get rid of it again I needed to look at both the diet and the exercise.

Working from home meant that I could do more exercise, and I did that through adding sets of weights between each client job that I was working on. 

So what was left was the diet. I no longer needed to buy stuff for my kids as they had both moved out of the family home into their own places. With only myself to buy for, I needed to look at what had worked in the past and what I could hope would work now - older, hopefully wiser. So I looked into the nutrition and have come up with my own version of protein / keto / Mediterranean. My diet is very colourful with adequate protein and good fats - olive oil and avocado. 

While the weight loss has been slow (deliberately) I am now in at least 2 sizes smaller clothes and I take fortnightly photographs, something I have never done on a regular basis before.

I got on the scale and saw that I was hitting numbers I haven't seen in a while which is pretty awesome. And the diet is easy - it's my way of life. 

p.s. I've just bought a blueberry bush for the garden