I’ve been gyming it like mad

Since the start of my new fitness regime two weeks ago, I have been back at the gym. I manage to get roughly 40 minutes in before work in the mornings. As i felt slightly unfit, due to the lack of gym activity for a few months, I started on week 1 with just 2 days and then on the second week I managed to get a 3rd day in. It’s my aim now to stay at this rate and try and get three 40 minute sessions in a week.

I do however feel that I need some advice. I would love to have a session with a trainer to see what I should be doing and trying to make the most out of my 40 minute sessions. I try and do 15 minutes of cardio and then the rest weights. I focus the weight activity on the legs one morning, arms another and then on the third morning all body. Not very accurate, but that’s what I’m hoping to sort out soon

I really enjoyed my extra long session today as I had the day off work and so spent an hour working out. I ran for 15 minutes on the treadmill and also did 10 minutes on the cross trainer. I then went downstairs and did some weights, focussing on my legs and stomach and then made my way home for a nice long, warm shower.

There was this really weird and annoying guy in the gym today though, he stood at the treadmill and turned the speed right up so that it was scarily fast and then jumped on and ran for a couple of minutes at a time, with stops in between. He looked in real pain and was totally out of breath. It can’t be good, can it?

I was running at approx 8km/h and managed 2km…now I’m not sure how good that is, I suspect it isn’t very good, but it felt the right speed and I was sweating loads.

Any tips/ideas on what I should do in the gym to maximise weight loss and increase body toning, welcome!

I’m back and so is the weight

I’m back again, it has been almost 9 months since my last blog entry and since then I have managed to put all my weight back on again. Two weeks ago, I was back at 100kg. It took a long while to put the weight back on, I managed to keep it off right up until Christmas and then it was a downward spiral from there. One excuse from another. I’m not totally sure why, apart from the eating and not going to the gym enough, I don’t really understand why I let myself get back to my old weight?

Here are some of the reasons:

- Lack of motivation due to long work hours: I now have to go to the gym three times a week before work, so that means early mornings and getting ready quickly in the morning to get to work on time. I could go after work, but I just wouldn’t have the energy.

- Cold weather: throughout the winter months, having to wake up early while it was still dark was a big struggle. I also go to bed quite late, so sleeping is important to me.

- Losing sight of my main aim: I let others things get to me, I started to get back into old habits and eating comfort foods to supposedly ‘help’ me after a hard day’s work. I also didn’t set myself an actual weight loss target, I think that was also a problem.

- Getting too many weight loss compliments from everyone: My boyfriends parents, my family and friends were all noticing my weight loss. Losing 10kg did make a significant difference to the way I looked, but it also gave me more confidence, so I started wearing jeans again and buying more fitted clothes. But deep down, I knew it wasn’t enough and I couldn’t see the person I wanted to be yet in the mirror. I should have just been happy with what I had managed to do already and how far I had come along, but I started to get down about it and gradually lost interest and lost the will to succeed…what was the point?

There were other reasons, which I will touch on when in my future entries, but there were also lots of positives that came with the weight loss.

I started back on my fitness and weight loss regime two weeks ago, Mon 7 April. I will now start planning my comeback and will document all.

Wish me luck!

FFF

The New Me

Wow – it has been a long time since I ventured anywhere near this blog. Mostly because I have been extremely busy with a new job and adjusting to working full time hours and also because I have been going through a weird patch with my new eating/living regime and didn’t feel proud to write about it. I went through a period of being the same weight for over two months and finally, last week, I weighed myself and I have reached my first goal – I now weigh 90kg

At the start of all this, I said to myself that I should really try ot lose 10kg and get to 90kg and I will be much happier about myself and life, and guess what? I am!

The biggest differences you can see are in my face, neck and belly. I also have more defined collar and neck shoulder bones – which I love. Everyone has noticed the change and are asking me whether I have lost weight! That is really strange and I am finding it quite awkward to deal with. In one respect, I used to hope I didn’t look that bad before I lost weight and therefore am finding it hard now as people say that they have noticed a change. I will blog about this in more detail soon as it is an interesting aspect that I think needs to be explored further.The next weigh in is tomorrow, so watch this space! I can’t waut to get in the 80s!

New job, new gym and new fitness programme.

Yes…finally, I have managed to start losing weight again. It has been a good few weeks now that my weight has stayed the same and I had been sporadically going to the gym. I had a really busy week last week and only managed to get to the gym twice. I am on track to go three times this week but we’ll see what happens I suppose.

I had a great workout at the gym today. My day started well with me getting lots of chores out of the way and event though I set off late, I decided to walk to the gym. It is a good 30 minutes walk but as the London weather is so lovely today and I wasn’t in a mad rush, I though I might as well enjoy the walk and it always doubles up as a warm up. I was like the cartoon character ‘Road Runner’ and was speeding my way towards the gym listening to some amazing music (The Cure, The Raconteurs, LCD Soundsystem and many others). I was weaving my way round slow moving people and over taking like a power walking champion! I had worked up quite a good sweat by the time I arrived at the gym.

It was quite busy today with the same guys that usually hang around there during the day. They love watching themselves in the mirror and watching all the girls. It’s quite funny when I catch them looking at me or other girls while we are on various weight machines, they can’t resist!

I did 10 mins on the bike, 5 minutes (really fast) on the rowing machine then went over to the weight machines where I did more or less 3 rounds of 20-30 reps on most machines. I then finished the session with a 15 minutes on the treadmill, 10 minutes of that I was running. I felt really pleased with myself and am looking forward to the rest of the week’s workouts….in my NEW gym!

Yes! I joined my new gym today as well, it is just down the road so it’s better for me to go to the gym before/after work. I went in and sorted out all the payments and had my picture taken for my card and booked in for my induction, which is on Wednesday. After that, I can then meet my personal trainer for my 6 week workout plan. It’s all very exciting, I can’t wait to have a plan to work to and hopefully see better results. I will let you all know how it goes.

I also bought my first pair of jeans in 5 years! Yes, I feel absolutely amazing these days and my confidence has increased and my body has started to change with he weight I have started to lose. As a result, I thought I’d try a pair on today and I loved them. So I am going to see what my boyfriend thinks and if he gives them the thumbs up too I’ll keep them.

I also forgot to mention, I got a new job! I underwent a whole series of interviews and tests last week and I got the call saying they want me for the job. I start in two weeks, hence why I decided to swap gyms. I am going to have to start buying some new clothes for my new job – I need to look the part I am also aiming to lose more weight before I start, just to give me that little bit more confidence for my first day, wish me luck!

I have been gyming it…I promise!

I know, I know, I have been awful lately in updating my blog. I must admit though, some of that has got to do with the fact that I have been really busy and haven’t made it to the gym as often as I usually do. So you could say I’ve been slightly ashamed and also not so motivated to write because of it. I have also stayed the same weight over the last 3 weeks, which isn’t brilliant as I was hoping to keep losing weight but at least I didn’t put any on.

It was back to normal last week though, I managed to get to the gym 3 times and as I hadn’t been going too regularly for two weeks before that, I decided to take it easy and did a full hour but reduced the weights slightly and the reps.

I did however have a great session at the gym today, I walked there, which took 30 mins fast walking, and then I did a full hours workout with a mixture of cardio and weight training. It felt great and was really motivated on the treadmill too and managed 15 mins fast running. So I am very pleased with myself for that.

Watching the London Marathon on Sunday made me think about whether I could possibly start training and actually run a marathon…I’m not sure if I want to though, it does look really hard! I do know that when I really want to do something, I always do it…so I need to think this one over first! I know two people that have run the marathon before and I know my dad was going to do it a good few years ago but we moved to Iran so he missed the chance. It would be fun and I would really feel like I would be achieving something. I’ll keep mulling this one over I think before I make any commitments, I still need to get a lot fitter first, maybe that should be my initial goal.

I want to start swimming toom I used to love swimming all the time and I am really good at it. There are just three issues I have with swimming: 1) the water, it is always filthy with thing floating about in it 2) i don’t like wearing a swimming costume in front of other people. I mean, we don’t normally dress down to a thin slither of a cloth on an everyday basis in front of other people and so I find it hard to do that when at a swimming pool too. 3) waxing! I would have to have my legs waxed all the time! Now, all those girls out there that have Mediterranean skin and are blessed with lovely dark leg hairs!!! Yes, you know exactly what I’m saying!

It’s still all on track!

I am back online! Yes, the broadband has been connected and I am back on my laptop on the couch writing this! It’s bliss.

I couldn’t weigh myself this Monday, I was staying at my parents’ house and would you believe it…they don’t own a working weighing machine! I also forgot to weight myself on Tuesday morning before I went to work, so a few days late, the results are in, I have lost about 1lbs/0.5kg which I am ecstatic about! I really thought with all my eating halva, biscuits, icecream and drinking beer last week I would have put weight on, but luckily I managed to keep moving and behaving myself with food portions. I also only went to the gym once as I was extremely busy, so it is a relief to know that I can still lose weight even if I’m not on top form.

Managed to get to the gym this morning, I had an excellent workout. I started on the bike and did 10 minutes warm up on the aerobics trainer workout and then did 5 minutes of fast rowing on the machine. Moved over to the weights section and worked my way through all the muscle groups doing reps of 20-30 x 3. It was excellent because I was really working my muscles throughout the weight training section and I had worked up quite a sweat throughout. I then moved over to the step machine and trained on the ‘fat burn’ workout for 15 minutes whilst watching a Poker tournament on tv and listening to some brilliant music on my ipod. The time just flew by as I was totally engrossed in the poker tournament because my brothers taught me how to play over the weekend. I love it!

The weekend went well…I went to a Tapas bar with my family and we ate loads of gorgeous spanish food and I had a scrumptious desert which I shared with my brothers and my parents. This is new for me as desert was only ever mine! I can’t believe I did it really but the thought process in my head was that I was still a bit peckish after the tapas and one of the chocolate and fudge ice cream deserts was screaming out at me so I ordered it and then I asked for extra spoons for everyone! Not bad aye!?

I am hoping to get to the gym on friday although my boyfriend has the day off and one of our friends is down from Norwich so I may be distracted.

I am going to cook a gorgeous roast chicken tonight with oven roasted carrots and  potatoes.

Like a Rolling Stone

I have just got back from the gym after a great workout. My weigh-in wasn’t that brilliant today, I lost 0.5kg/1lbs which is better than nothing but at least I am now on the 15 Stone mark! After weighing myself this morning, I felt a bit down, after my success the last few weeks and having gone to the gym 3 times last week, I expected a better result. I know that I still need to cut down my portions at dinner time, I am usually so hungry by the time we eat dinner, I eat too much. So I still need to work on my portion sizes and I also need to find some healthy meals to cook throughout the week to keep the weight loss working.

I have also been thinking that as I usually do a mixture of cardio and weight training in the gym, I may be building muscle which is heavier than fat. So if this is the case, in time, I should gain from having more muscle as it increases my metabolic rate and I will need more energy to to everyday things and in turn lose more weight! So, I can definitely feel my thigh muscles getting more defined and my calves. After the weigh-in this morning, I checked several websites to see what it says about gaining muscle and weight loss and they confirmed what I was thinking. Now I just need to work on different muscles in my body and make sure I use them all otherwise I could injure myself. I think I need to buy a book or find a website with information on the right way to weight train. Any ideas anyone?

I cam across this website this morning whilst looking at weight training and understanding how muscles work. I found this ‘Muscle Game’ quite fun: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/body/index_interactivebody.shtml

I am finding it quite hard to be happy today as I really did expect a larger weight loss – but I keep thinking about how well I’ve done and how proud I am going to be once I’ve reached my target weight (which I haven’t set yet). I was listening to Bob Dylan on the way back from the gym and the lyrics to his song ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ made me think, in particular the section below:

“When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?”

And that is how I feel, I have got nothing to lose by carrying on this healthy lifestyle and I have started to share my thoughts and feelings online here with you all and I would have so much to lose if I gave up and went back to how I was 5 weeks ago…so I will keep going and will do my best to make sure I lose a bit more weight next week!

Bob Dylan – Like a Rolling Stone

__________

20 minutes fast walk to the gym

10 minutes on bike

40 minutes weight training

15 minutes cross trainer

5 minutes stretching

10 minutes walk with heavy shopping home

Total: 1hr 40mins

Pump up the jam

Well, as you can see from my stats, I lost another kilo last week (2.2lbs). I am thrilled that I am still losing weight and not having to starve myself silly or make any drastic changes to my life. Once I have lost a substantial amount of weigh I’ll try to explain more about my philosophy to food.

I only went to the gym twice last week and the second time was useless. So this week, now that I am feeling better, I have been working out harder in the gym. Monday was great, I really went for it and spent quality time on all of the machines. I ran on the treadmill for 20 minutes and I even enjoyed it. Since my weight has been decreasing my confidence has been increasing and I think the guys in the gym are starting to notice.

I had one guy keep watching me throughout my workout, he kept looking at me and trying to get my attention. But when I am in the gym, I am very moody and try to keep quite focused, so I wasn’t paying him any attention. At the end of my workout, he came over to the water fountain where I was filling up my bottle and he started chatting me up along the lines of…”I don’t like other people’s mouths on that thing bu I’d like it if you lips were on that water fountain…kissy kissy”!?!?! I hate it. I have always had attention at that gym but I just don’t like making friends as they seem to interfere with my workout and start trying to teach me things etc. I wouldn’t mind if it was just about fitness but some guys are only talking to you to try to chat you up and that’s not what I go to the gym for.

Today’s workout was great and again I really enjoyed it. It seems the weeks where I have lost weight, I seem to be more motivated in the gym and also in deciding what to eat for lunch and dinner. I did have a piece of cake and one of my work colleagues leaving party yesterday but I was truly wanted it and it was a real treat. I have therefore worked out harder today in the gym than usual and am feeling very pleased with myself.

The real difference I see in my eating habits these days are that I just eat what I want and whenever I want but only when I am hungry and I also try to make better decisions about what to eat. Since my talk with my boyfriend, I have realised that I just don’t want sugary, fatty foods as they make me unhappy. Now that doesn’t mean I don’t get tempted as I do, last night I was desperate for something sugary/chocolatey as I was feeling a bit down (money problems) and I just wanted to sit down and mindlessly stuff my face with chocolate. But I didn’t and the feeling soon passed.

I didn’t see the same annoying guy in the gym today…luckily and I also haven’t seen my french friend P for while either. Now I’ll leave the story about P for another time but it started with him giving me un-asked-for advice on how to use one of the weight machines and ended with him sitting on my legs!!! Yes, I even had to change my gym times because of P.

This song is great to work out to…running man all the way!
Technotronic – Pump up the Jam

The Jean Genie

Wow…I have had a good start to the week. I have been so busy that I haven’t had a chance to write for a few days.

Since last writing we have managed to find a new flat! Woo! And we are also in the process of planning to pack, we haven’t got round to packing anything yet but we have made a start at clearing out some old books we didn’t want and I have been taking bags of them down to the charity shop this week.

Over the weekend, we went to a fancy dress birthday party (theme: 1960s) and I dressed as a 60s air stewardess. My boyfriend was dressed as Che Guevara (he died in 1967) and we had a great time singing karaoke and dancing. Now I was discussing this with my boyfriend that, I’m not a massive fan of fancy dress parties. I’m not sure if other overweight people agree with me but my theory is this: We hate it because we have to wear clothes that we aren’t comfortable in. Now when I mean comfortable, I don’t mean that they are easy to wear with nice soft fabrics, I mean they are the same old clothes that we know we can fit in and hide all the bits we hate. My usual, comfortable clothes are always a pair of black tailored trousers (usually a wide fit as to not cling to my thighs) and a top and cardigan. Now, I hate my black trousers, but they are the only thing that I think isn’t going to show off my thighs or make my arse look massive – I am so fed up with them that one of my goals for losing weight is to be able to fit into jeans again and look good in them!

Now the pressures that are associated with going to work everyday and wearing black trousers are that people start to think you only have one pair of trousers and wonder what’s wrong with you. No one has ever said anything to me but I know they are thinking it and wondering why I never wear jeans or skirts or different coloured trousers. I have three pairs of black trousers that I wash regularly so that I always have a fresh pair to wear, but I feel so embarrassed and can’t wait to fit into different clothes and start experimenting more with colours. Summer is always the worst time for black trouser wearers as it is always so hot and black absorbs the heat and you simply look stupid walking around with black trousers and a cardi. Now, every summer I overcome the ’showing off my upper arms’ thing in public, but it is always a struggle. I don’t know if it is just me or whether other people have had this experience, but as soon as you wear a short sleeved t-shirt, people seem to start looking at your upper arms and noticing that they are big! I hate it.

So, anyways, back to fancy dress parties. The reason why I enjoyed this fancy dress party more so than others was because I have now lost 4 kgs and I am starting to feel changes in my body. Good changes. And my confidence is starting to increase. So I wore a really cute, below the knee, black skirt and a tight, slinky black top with a 60s patterned neck scarf and a thick shiny purple alice band. I was told several times throughout the night that I looked amazing, sophisticated and chic…so that gave me a boost and my boyfriend kept telling me how sexy I was!

The same night, there was another woman at the party that I know who is also overweight. Although we haven’t talked about it I know that she is uncomfortable with he weight as she shows all the signs. She wears the same jeans and big leather jacket whenever I see her and just changes her t-shirt which is always a dark baggy one. I could tell she hated the fancy dress party as she had tried to accessorise with 60s things rather than wear something that looks 60s. She wore the same jeans, t-shirt and black leather jacket and just wore a pair of sunglasses and put some jewellery on that looked almost 60s. I have been thinking about it since and am so happy that I am trying to make changes. I don’t ever want to be a slave to my weight again, ever!

Hopefully, it won’t be long before I get into a pair of jeans, I can’t wait. I used to wear UK size 16 jeans and I looked good in them, so I only have to go down one clothes size, as I am currently UK size 18.

That reminds me, I need to decide on an ideal weight for me so that I can aim for it. I’ll look at some websites and see what they suggest is the best way of working it out. I know that in clothes size terms if I can get down to a UK 14-16, I’ll be really happy. If I can lose more that would be a bonus!

David Bowie – The Jean Genie, Live:

Don’t dilly dally on the way

After a brilliant start to the week, Tuesday went really well. I even went to the cinema and didn’t fancy eating anything there…I was very proud of myself after walking straight passed the popcorn and chocolate, it felt great not to be in need of something to eat whilst watching the film.

I am feeling a bit under the weather today and so I was really tired all morning, but I went to the gym today, after setting off late I had to catch the bus to the gym and once I got there I realised I really wasn’t in the mood for it at all. I tried my best and spent 10 minutes on the bike and then was on the treadmill for 20 minutes. I then just couldn’t muster up the energy to do anything else, so I made a pact with myself to walk home instead and also go to the supermarket and carry some heavy shopping home with me to make up for my dreadful attempt at working out in the gym.

I’m not sure if I’m the only one that feels like this, but when my schedule delays, I can’t seem to get motivated to carry on regardless and the gym is one of the things that always gets pushed to one side. Although, I must say, I do always have in the back of my mind, the aim of at least 2 days at the gym. So there is still hope for Friday. The walk home was great and the weather was gorgeous so I definitely made the right decision. I have just had a long soak in the bath whilst reading so it has helped me feel a bit better.

One of my work colleagues and friends is having a leaving do tomorrow and we are all going bowling and karaoke. So I am aiming to lift some heavy bowling balls and burn some calories on those bowling lanes tomorrow night. Oh and watch out, I might even let the diva out when singing karaoke!

Oh and we’re still looking for a flat. The one we saw on Monday night was perfect but the landlord just won’t budge when we tried to bargain for the monthly rent. Shame, because we would have been great tenants.