Fitness (whole pizza in my mouth)

With the New Year comes the inevitable promise to be more healthy and to shed the extra few pounds (or stones) that you’ve put on over the festive period (or since you’ve been with your boyfriend).

Now I’m not going to sit here and preach that I know what I’m doing, far from it. Having a qualified PT as my other half though, does help a little, but I am just as new to actually looking after my body as most.

My main problem isn’t necessarily the amount that I eat, or the meals that I’m eating, or even snacking throughout the day when I’m at work. It’s the sweets, chocolate and crisps that I hoard in my room for lonely Sunday nights when I curl up in bed with a book or Netflix. Breaking the habit and my mild addiction that I have to sugar is going to be the hardest part of ‘getting fit and sexy’ for summer.

I was also diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) 2 years ago. This was after I’d put on 3 stone and was doing everything in my power to shift the weight, to no avail. After a tearful visit to my GP, including a nurse practitioner just telling me I was greedy, I was finally told that it wasn’t my fault. That doesn’t mean to say it’s easy for me to accept that I can’t help my weight fluctuating, despite being on medication to help it.

It is demoralising looking in the mirror and seeing no change after a week of working my arse off in the gym, and yes it does make it hard to drag myself out of bed at 6.45 on a Monday morning to get my butt down the gym. But, without perseverance, there cannot be results. Keeping my motivation up and staying away from the leftover selection boxes I have in my room, is proving to be difficult, but I am taking small steps to help me along the way.

Last week I joined the Sunday meal prep gang. I trundled down to Tesco’s, got my chicken, sweet potato and veggies and spent the evening cooking lunches for the next 3 days (not sure my chicken would have lasted through to Friday). The finished result can be seen below.

Knowing that I had my lunches planned out for the week took off some of the pressure. It means that I don’t have to spend forever looking at the back of food packaging to see whether it’s got too much of this or not enough of that in it. It also meant that I would know that what I was putting into my body was healthy, nutritious and well balanced.

Another tool I’m using to help my motivation stay up is using a fun little app called ‘Fitbod’. It’s cost me about £35 for the year, and plans all my workouts for me, as well as telling me how hard I’ve worked once I’ve finished. This means that I’m not just pinging around the gym trying to figure out what to work on today, constantly doing the same workouts or not being able to keep track of progress easily. It has several different training features, meaning that once I have my general fitness to where I want it to be, I can move on to the toning option and start sculpting my muscle a little more with different exercises/weight.

Making these small steps seems to be helping at the moment, the chocolate may tempt me a few times a week, but it’s not the constant that it was before. Once I’m at a stage where I’m happy with the progress I’ve made, I’ll go back to having cheat days, and stop looking at the healthier options on the menu every time I go out for dinner (not to say I won’t be if it’s not cheat day). I mean who wouldn’t want this Philly Cheeseburger from Red Dog Saloon!?

I think the main reason that I’m posting this is as further motivation to keep going. The more people I tell that you have goals that you want to achieve, the more likely I am to actually follow through with them. So here’s hoping that 2019 is the year I get my abs back, and they stay for good!