week 4 - one month of 12wbt

Week 4 is difficult.  Week 4 is where the novelty of the program is starting to wear off.  Week 4 is where you find that exercise is becoming less fun.  Organising and shopping for the meals is starting to become  hard work.  Week 4 is where  you may have plateaued a little in your weight loss or even gone backwards.  Week 4 is where you just have to suck it up and get on with it – push through it and move forwards.

The two videos this week were huge mindset lessons.  The first is about recognising old habits and rituals and changing them to new habits that will eventually become second nature. 

The second focused on a few issues.  She discussed the pressure we put on ourselves if we fall off the wagon, of assigning “bad” to an incorrect food choice and putting emotion into our food decisions.   She talked about riding the wave of emotions (and cravings) and to recognise that they will pass.  The last point was about strengthening your willpower muscle and the more you say “no” the easier it becomes and will eventually not be a decision but a habit.

For me week 4 meant that I could start exercising again.  I had the luxury of being excited at week 4 about what exercise I could do.  I have limited myself to running and swimming only. 

I joined my local gym (for 1 month) and one of the main reasons I chose this gym was that it has a 50m pool.   Not only do they have the normal classes and facilities that most gyms have but they have quite a large array of water group classes too.  They have aqua Aerobics (and Zumba), water running and adult squad training.

I have been to the squad training twice this week and I love it.  The first session was tough and received a little bit of stroke correction.  The second was a lot easier and managed to swim 2km in the session!!

I have also run twice this week – not hard nor fast nor far though.  I did my fitness test run today as the 1st km of my intended 8km.  I smashed another 20 seconds off my time – but felt like crap for the rest of the run.  I walked a lot and did some hill intervals instead of the steady pace I was intending to do.  I ended up being out for an hour and did 7km (380 cal) – so not too bad.

I worked a few extra shifts this week but the good thing was that I was prepared with a few frozen meals.  The bad was a second treat meal crept in this week with my Birthday Breakfast.  I have also been tempted by some unhealthy snacks at work too.  But in the big scheme of things – not doing to bad.

I am going to do a separate post about my weight loss on weigh in Wednesday.  But if you are interested the numbers are still going down.

Bring on Week 5.