12 week body challenge

I've decided to start up my blog again. I was feeling at a bit of a loose end with the challenge being extended until July. I have come to the realisation that I will always need to be consciously aware of what I am doing. I will need to monitor what I do if I literally want to have my cake and eat it too. And that is what I want to do. I want to have the best of both worlds, in moderation. I want to be healthy for the majority of the time and incorporate exercise into every day. But I also want my occasional pizza and bacon on Sunday mornings. And for the most part I've managed to do that quite well.

The date to start the challenges has now finished. So the winners are either doing the challenge now or have done the challenge in the past year and a half. One of my fellow participants (and now good friend) Carol has joined for another challenge, even though she's already looking fabulous! She wants to lose another few kilos though. I too think that I would like to lose another few. I still want my goal to be at 75 kilos. I have given myself a 1 kilo buffer, so if I go over 76 then I have to cut out anything naughty and reign it in until I am back to 75. I'd like that to be lower though. I'd like my highest to be 75. I also want to weigh 75 no matter what time of day. I weigh in in the mornings, after a wee and whatever else I can expel, naked and not fed. If I get to the finals though, we may do weigh in in the evening after consuming 2 or 3 meals and drinks. So I need to be at the weight I want to be to get me up to 75 if you know what I mean?

The local gym that I am at advertised a 12 week challenge. It was lovely filling in the forms, saying it was more for physique than weight loss, saying that I was a little bit experienced instead of a gym virgin. They didn't use those words but I know you get what I mean! It's perfect timing as it takes me through nearly to the end of the rapid loss challenge. Instead of twiddling my thumbs and hoping the weight stays off I shall now have a plan of action to be fit and fabulous (and 50) by the end! It's extra exciting because the last day of the challenge is the 9th of July which is the day of my party to end all parties 50th. So instead of sabotaging myself (as I did at my 40th by not only putting weight on that I had lost, but getting totally shitfaced and not remembering it at all) I am improving myself and will feel great instead of embarrassed that I had let myself go yet again.

I am doing this challenge with my friend Eloise. We went on Friday to have a body scan and a photo taken. This is where I realised that I needed to weigh in at 75 later in the day. It recorded me as being 79.4 kilos! When I weighed in the next morning my scales said 77.4 so I knew I was still over what my buffer was meant to be. Probably because I had done the ridiculous thing of saying to myself I was starting a new challenge so I may as well be Miss Piggy for the week. I know it's ridiculous and no doubt a few of you are laughing too because you've done it too! Butter chicken the night before first weigh in so you can have a great loss in the first week? Yep, me too! Anyway, it also showed that the clothes and coffees and breakfast can put a couple of kilos on too. But that's ok, it's just the beginning of my 12 weeks so I'm pretty happy to have some room to move. As I plan on getting the excess weight off, and maybe a tad more, it's just a guide to what's what. It's amazing how much detail it gives, from the muscle and fat distribution to the circumference of all the body parts. The trunk includes the boobs so I'm telling myself that's why mine is so high! Here is  my first scan. We do another at the end for comparison.

I am a creature of habit and one of the things I like about the gym is that now I know all the things I do. I can increase them as I see fit, and I do often, I know the staff and a few other members and I am confident that I can do all the exercises. This morning I was shitting myself with all the new exercises! I had a list of them to do with names like dead bug and kb goblet squat. I had no idea what any of them meant, just that they sounded scary. When we did them though it really wasn't that bad. I am stuffed, don't get me wrong. But broken down there were basically 6 different exercises, 10 of each x 3. So we did a circuit. Mine was a bit more modified than Eloise's. She's 27 this year and loves to exercise. I'm 50 this year and don't! So with things such as the back lunge she had weights in both hands and I leaned a hand on the bench to stop myself from falling over. In pushups (something I've never really done) she went down quite far, I went down a couple of cms I think!  Still, I did what I could and I'm happy that I did. Lots of room  for improvement. Another friend of ours, Anne, was there too so she joined us for a few of them. And I still added in my rowing, a few minutes on the treadmill and the crosstrainer. Not bad for somebody who just joined the gym in November! Instead of walking home Eloise gave me a lift because my legs were so wobbly!

I think we're going back tomorrow. It's pretty achievable. There are exercises for 3 days a week so if I want to do my other workout I can go on other days and do that too. So I'm back on track and feeling better about it all. I am even considering doing some sort of work in the weight loss industry so deciding what to do next in my study. Some sort of motivational coaching for older women would be right up my alley! Here's a photo of my gorgeous friend Eloise and I.