Monday 5 March 2012

You 1st have to love yourself

This a statement I have heard so many times, if you want to lose weight you have to love yourself. Now for me as an overweight person, or fat chick as I often say the thought of loving myself was just horrible, I hated myself, I was fat, disgusting, lazy, useless, no good etc etc. These thought patterns were/are constant in my head and they are the words I use when talking about myself, so how can you love someone that is such a bad person, because that is what I thought I was.

What I realised today is that every one of those things I think about myself, the way I was defining myself, the things I was using to rate how much I loved myself are things I am/do not actually who I am. Loving myself is about who I am, my actual personality. The problem is that for such a long time I haven't use my personality to gauge my worth as a person, I am not really sure who or what my personality is.

Once I realised that to love myself is about my personality not about how I look, I was some what dumbfounded at the simplicity of it and yet this is something that has held me back for such a long time. me being fat doesn't not define who I am, the fact that I have empathy say so much more about me. Now while this statement may be simplistic, I am not so sure putting it into action will be quite so simple. So I am going to start with a list of the personality  traits that I really like about myself.

Sunday 4 March 2012

Weightloss is such a head game

Well it is now the start of the 3rd week with the transformation challenge I am doing at the gym. I do 2 sessions of heavy weights each week and then 2 classes, boot camp, a session run by the gym as part of the challenge and then a couple of walks. I am finding this generally fits in well with my life and I don't mind doing all of these things. Although I must admit, last Tuesday was a Tabata class, and I had nightmares about it and didn't sleep very well for about 2 hours before hand, and if I am honest I can't really say I am looking forward to it this week, but oh well lol.

So everything is going quite well, food is not to bad, I am doing 6 meals a day, protein and omega 3 at every meal, then bulk with veggies or salad or fruit at every meal. I am slowly getting my head around this and Simon has been great and made me some muffin things with flax and protein in them with no sugar. It is nice to be able to have a treat and know you are not undoing all your good work. I am only drinking decaf coffee and herbal tea, although I will have the occasional tea when out at friends. Water I am trying to keep to 3 ltrs a day, but this I really struggle with.

Exercise is going really well, I am now up to 210Kg on the leg press and 120 on a single leg press, I increase my weights every week and keep pushing myself. Arms are slowly improving but I find them a much bigger struggle than I do legs. I am finding that in my classes and also boot camp, I am able to push myself a little further each time and I am getting stronger at pushing thru, although I don't always manage as much as I want to. On Saturday we did the 1000 steps, something I haven't done for a few months now, and I ended up cutting about 20 mins off my time, even with adding the extra track to one tree hill at the top. So proud of that effort, although I still think I can push harder, my average heart rate was only 127ish. When I got to the top of the stairs one of the amazing girls who is also doing the challenge, Sandie, was waiting at the top for me, she was cheering me on and telling me to run, so I ran the last little bit. It meant to much to me to have her there cheering me on.

I am losing weight, in the 1st week I lost 2 kgs and was really happy with that. So I thought I would do a sneaky weigh in on the weekend and was so happy to have lost another 1.3 so I was 130.8, then this morning I am back up only having lost .6 this week. I can notice already the change in my body shape and the increase in definition and yet my head still struggles.

Losing weight is not an easy thing, and motivation doesn't last for very long, and there is always that horrible little voice, Mr Chatty in the back of your head telling you to give up and stop. It is so easy to fall down and not get back up, having to fight these things every days is often really hard and draining. I want there to be a big pay off, I want it to happen quickly, I want the reward. Simon said to me today but this is a for life thing, and I said that's fine, it wont matter when I am thin, I will be able to do it and not get frustrated as I am not doing it to lose weight then, not sure if that will be the case when I get there but that is how it works in my head. Again I am letting myself be defined by a number, I am struggling with the fact that I am being so consistent with my exercise and so good with my food and it is still not happening quickly.

So today is one of those days where I am feeling less that inspired and less than happy with where things are, but that doesn't mean I am going to stop what I am doing, I will keep working, I will keep my chin up. This is where the mind comes in, for me I have to really pull myself up and focus again on the improvements in my life and also my body, I have to actually remind myself of how far I have come, not how far I have to go. When I am doing my best and pushing myself then that is all that matters.

I am proud of the fact that I can now just let these emotions be there, know it is ok, I am frustrated, because this is something I really want, and I can just let it flow over me. I will not let it overtake me or derail me, I will not let these emotions have my power. I will keep on keeping on, pull those big girl pants up and push harder.