Making A Start Progress Update

I promise this isn’t one of those evangelical first week of the New Year posts about how I’ve resolved to lose weight or get fitter. I made that decision way back in November!

Anyway, now as good a time as any to give you a progress update since then. I’ve learned quite a bit along the way and am finally feeling like I’ve achieved something this week.

Featured Picture

That’s a picture I took of the moon last night as I went out walking with himself. He gave me a new FitBit and a pair of runners for Christmas. Both of which I was hoping for. Clever fella altogether.

Weight Loss

Since Christmas Day I’ve lost 3kg. I hasten to add that it hasn’t been plain sailing and I didn’t lose weight up until that point. That is down purely to me not balancing what I was eating against what activities I was doing. One was in excess of the other.

Fitness

Actually not that bad at all. The chest is a little bit rattly every now and again but I’ve not had to go back on steroids for my asthma and that is a brilliant sign that things are going in the right direction.

The High Point

The first day of Couch-To-5K when I got started and thought, ‘wow, I can actually do this’.

The Low Point

15 minutes later when the voice on the app went ‘you are half..way’ and I may have cursed out loud a lot.

The Best Things In Life Are FREE!

Apps that I’m using include C25K, FitBit (this will work with your phone if you have gps enabled whether or not you have an actual band), MyFitnessPal has the best food database I’ve found for tracking calories, and Strava for tracking my ‘runs’ (yeah I know they’re really walks but sure I’ll keep on dreaming).

I’ve also busted out the cooks’ weighing scales and I’m measuring my food so that I can be sure that I’m eating what I say I am. Whereas before I may have measured things by eye… *cough*

Time

This is my biggest investment. I’m allocating about 1 hour a day to a walk/run/hobble around.

Best Tip

Get a companion support to you or invest in decent headphones and a stonkingly good playlist. Maybe find your local running group who may have beginner 5k courses running at this time of the year.

Giving Up Anything?

Nope! Heck no. I still enjoy chocolate, the odd G&T, and everything else that I love in life. I just factor that into my calories for the day and make sure that I have enough to spare.

What Have I Learned?

There’s no point in trying to increase your fitness to lose weight unless you are careful about what you eat too. Measuring by eye is not an effective tool. 🙂 It has become far easier to do this now that I have my partner-in-crime coming out on the walk/runs with me. He’ll probably leave me for dust when we finally finish the C25K programme but at least there’s somebody else around to encourage/cajole me out of the chair to get some exercise.

What Next?

One foot in front of the other. That’s as far as I’m prepared to go. This is not a big mad ‘fitspiration’ thing. You’re not going to see loads of pictures of me with a sweaty face or weird poses filling your newsfeed. Every now and again I might share a milestone through the year. I might not. I’m slowly changing my lifestyle for me. xxx

Disclosure: The original making a start series on this blog was sponsored by SafeFood in November 2017, however I used this as a kick-start to genuinely make a change to my own lifestyle. This content is not sponsored.