Newcomers
Hi all. I am nearly one year in, to a journey to lose weight and not die early from some obesity related disease. My original weight was 128 kg and 11 months later I am now 101.8 kg, so 26.2kg lost. My goal is 75kg by next October 2010. That is a loss of about 500g a week, which is very do-able and sensible I believe. I decided to do this with no pills, no gimmicks, no surgery (again fear of dying on the table and fear of bankrupty for forking out $$ I dont have!). As Liz says, it is a simple equation energy in and energy out.
I have been inspired by Liz's Utube video since I began and often refer people to it. I still go back and watch those legs just shrink! To that end, I have had pics taken of me, so that one day too, I can inspire people as Liz has inspired me.
I have 2 blogs that go more deeply into how I have done this. one at blogger and one on livejournal, both called girlwhoclicked.
However in summary / catch up mode. I "clicked" that I HAD to lose weight to live. I seriously thought I was going to drop instantly dead of a heart attck one day very soon. According to statisics I read, 1 in 4 women, do exactly that - no warning - just bang you're dead..(and it happened to a few people I knew). So I knew this was a real chance to happen to me and I even had some pain in the chest and arm one day. Doctor did an ECG and said it was only a panic attack (but I was not panicked?). I took these all as BIG signs, that I needed to get my act together. So I did.
I started with walking and going to Les Mills Pump 2x a week at Hauraki Fitness centre in Ngatea, about 20 minutes from here in Thames as I enjoy group fitness to music. I also ate to basically the NZ guidelines for the food pyramid (which was a huge reduction in food and portions for me, I was eating way too much). I was just eating for the sake of eating and I loved my wine, too much of that..
So now one year later, I eat very well, good clean healthy food, low GI, no processed food, no takeaway food, no junk food (look at all those people lining up at McD's to buy a heart attack - "would you like thighs with that?". Arggh! - and feeding it to their kids..(better get off soap box now..)
Last year I also digested every word on this site about losing weight and adopted the claorie counting at fitday.com as per Liz's suggestion. That worked too. now I kinda know what I can eat, after a year of it, so I dont use it anymore, but it was good for months when I was learning what to eat and how much, and when, to eat.
I have started doing some cardio interval training, basically power walking up the hills here for 20 minutes or so a day. This is intense cardio and boy does it kick my butt. I have done it 3x a week for the last 3 weeks, ate well and done 2x a week of pump and lost nearly 3 kgs. So this is working very well for me.
I am just about to start a new and exciting 'online' challenge. I am in a six week program from gosleeveless.com, which will be personal training online with nutrition and workouts etc daily. It's a big committment, but I am ready for it! The blog at blogger, is to record my daily exercise, food and comments, so it will be blow by blow.
So you can see I have been quite obsessed with losing the weight and have restructured my life around it and been fairly rigourous, becasue it felt like a life or death thing. Now I have learnt many many other reasons to lose weight, so I have multiple motivators, not just that fear one that started me off.
All the best to everyone, you can do it, if you just do it..!
