So easy
I've been reflecting a bit today on how far I've got, and the main thing I keep on realising is how easy it's all been.
Maybe not easy, but easier than I expected. I really don't seem to have had to change much about my life to get results. Most of the time it still seems like I'm eating fairly similar stuff to what I was always eating, and that the exercise I'm doing isn't even hard.
And then I look back to this time last year, and realise that my work outs would have killed me then - even the ones I do on "easy" days. Walking at that speed would have been hard, let alone doing it on level 20 hills on the treadmill for half an hour or so. Running for 5 minutes at a pace that I now consider a slow jog would have been enough to make me collapse in a heap or fall off the back of the treadmill. I wouldn't have been able to move the weights I lifted this morning. But my fitness has improved day by day, and I've never made a big effort to do a lot more one day. A little more each day adds up over a year.
And the same with my eating. I've never made huge, wholesale changes to my diet. I started out just trying to be sensible, and slowly trying a healthier option every so often, then if I liked it incorporating it into my diet on a more regular basis. Whether that's new recipes using foods I already ate or being a bit more adventurous with my choices, there's nothing hugely different in my diet now, just in more balanced quantities. So I still eat fruit and I still eat chocolate, but I now eat more fruit than chocolate, unlike before. A series of small changes really adds up over the course of a year, but so slowly that it doesn't really seem like a change.
I sometimes get amazed that in the first 8 months of doing this I lost a grand total of 9lb, and I've lost 52 in the 5 since then. I fell off the wagon a bit in the first spell, but it was important start. I started making changes that would really make a difference at a later stage. By the time I cranked things up in March I'd built up my fitness enough to be able to actually work out properly, and I'd started thinking more about what I eat at every meal. I never realised in that first spell what a change those new habits would make when they had the opportunity to kick in.
Since March it's been so easy. Everything was in place, and something just clicked. Suddenly it hardly seemed like an effort, and the weight started to fall off. It's hard to explain, and it's sometimes even harder to believe. Other people tell me how well I'm doing and ask how, and I sometimes feel like a fraud for doing it so easily. But then again, maybe I'm not. Maybe I need to realise that I do deserve this, and that I have worked hard, even if I don't realise it.
Maybe not easy, but easier than I expected. I really don't seem to have had to change much about my life to get results. Most of the time it still seems like I'm eating fairly similar stuff to what I was always eating, and that the exercise I'm doing isn't even hard.
And then I look back to this time last year, and realise that my work outs would have killed me then - even the ones I do on "easy" days. Walking at that speed would have been hard, let alone doing it on level 20 hills on the treadmill for half an hour or so. Running for 5 minutes at a pace that I now consider a slow jog would have been enough to make me collapse in a heap or fall off the back of the treadmill. I wouldn't have been able to move the weights I lifted this morning. But my fitness has improved day by day, and I've never made a big effort to do a lot more one day. A little more each day adds up over a year.
And the same with my eating. I've never made huge, wholesale changes to my diet. I started out just trying to be sensible, and slowly trying a healthier option every so often, then if I liked it incorporating it into my diet on a more regular basis. Whether that's new recipes using foods I already ate or being a bit more adventurous with my choices, there's nothing hugely different in my diet now, just in more balanced quantities. So I still eat fruit and I still eat chocolate, but I now eat more fruit than chocolate, unlike before. A series of small changes really adds up over the course of a year, but so slowly that it doesn't really seem like a change.
I sometimes get amazed that in the first 8 months of doing this I lost a grand total of 9lb, and I've lost 52 in the 5 since then. I fell off the wagon a bit in the first spell, but it was important start. I started making changes that would really make a difference at a later stage. By the time I cranked things up in March I'd built up my fitness enough to be able to actually work out properly, and I'd started thinking more about what I eat at every meal. I never realised in that first spell what a change those new habits would make when they had the opportunity to kick in.
Since March it's been so easy. Everything was in place, and something just clicked. Suddenly it hardly seemed like an effort, and the weight started to fall off. It's hard to explain, and it's sometimes even harder to believe. Other people tell me how well I'm doing and ask how, and I sometimes feel like a fraud for doing it so easily. But then again, maybe I'm not. Maybe I need to realise that I do deserve this, and that I have worked hard, even if I don't realise it.
posted by YP at 7:17 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home