Challenge Accepted

Posted on April 10, 2014 by admin

Rewind my life 6 weeks ago and things were very different. I was wrapping my head, once again, around weight loss and ongoing lifestyle changes. My motto was “Everyday Better Choices”. I somehow got myself into the right headspace, which in my personal opinion is the ONLY thing you need to lose weight. I don’t know where it came from and how it took over the “Evil Food Queen”, but it has so let’s run with it.

My awesome gym EnVie Woonona was running a 36 Day Challenge and a weight loss seminar, in my endeavour to keep my momentum going I opted to participate in the challenge and attended the seminar. Knowledge is power and I came away from the seminar with a new vigour, re-enforcing things I already knew and learning some new key points.

These are the things I really truly embraced:

Planning – “Proper Planning Prevents (Piss) Poor Performance” – the extra P word usually gets a run in our house, you may choose to leave that one out.
Meal and snack planning has been a major contributor to my success, it is not for the lazy or unmotivated. I personally found this more challenging than getting my butt to the gym. I have been working out for 7 years WITHOUT consistent weight loss, so exercise is never my problem. Even portions were not a huge problem, but the kitchen scales came out, and almost every morsel that went into my mouth (when possible) was weighed.
My biggest problem has always been snacking, finding healthy snacks to eat when you are on the run. Grocery shopping is hell and cooking is only fun when I want to do it and it’s usually cake. When I stop for fuel regardless of the time of day, filling the car up usually earned me a reward and the evening munchies I could rustle up some horrendous high calorie food with almost nothing in the cupboard (it’s a skill). These were the things I had to change. So my replacement snacks were hummus and carrot sticks, 1 row of rice crackers and a slice of cheese, protein ball/s*, peanut butter and banana muffins*, vita wheats with light cream cheese and a small tin of salmon, dried fruit and nuts, small bag of lite microwave popcorn (I didn’t even know the small bags existed), apple or strawberries. I know some of these choices are better than others, but compared to what I could have had, it is a complete turnaround.
* These recipes came from the EnVie 36 Day Challenge Booklet

Eliminate – My mission was to get rid of as many things in the house as I could that I would normally “go-to” when I felt the urge to make bad choices. Some people can have a square of chocolate, I am NOT 1 of those people, I am a minimum of a row at a time and could easily consume ½ or whole family block in 1 sitting no problemo. I would sometimes buy a bag of Corn Chips for a nacho dinner, very rarely would they make it to that meal. I also love and Icy cold can of coke and a coke slushy, but they are wasted calories, I will confess I had 2 coke slushy’s in 6 weeks. Alcohol was creeping up to a couple of glasses to a bottle of champagne a few nights a week and often more on the weekend. This has been stopped, now only on special occasions and I have opted to drive to some events so as to only have 1 glass or none at all. This is a big change for me.

Set Goals – Small weekly goals, mini weight goals all leading to the bigger picture. Whilst I haven’t posted my latest goals they are in my head and I will post them this week to be held accountable and measure my success. “Failure is not an option”.

Everyday Better Choices – I enjoy a skim chai latte a couple of times a week and somehow crept up to a Jumbo size, these got a major cutback to a small once or twice a week. Every time I wanted something I shouldn’t have I would think, is this better than I would normally have, ie snacks at the movies, toppings on pizza, homemade pizza vs store bought. I will admit I am enjoying making my own food as I am often disappointed with take-away and café options, it just takes planning (see above).

Mindset – as I mentioned my head is in the game (it is all the game of life), not letting things get to me that would normally derail my mindset and I will confess there have been a few things in this 6 weeks that could have easily done that, I had to deal with my problems and not eat/drink them away. End result is everyone is happier (I think).

Support – I had to ask people for support, don’t be afraid to ask. Hubby had his part to play, if he felt a craving or a desire to have something, I asked that he not share it with me. The words “chocolate” and “McFlurry” were banned from evening conversations. My problem is I am not lazy, I will jump in the car and do a junk-food run at the first mention of “I feel like…….”
Friends on weekends away and dining out have all supported my better choices. Some friends today actually apologised for having easter eggs, cupcakes and biscuits, they shouldn’t have apologise, nor their kids go without because of my food choices. I proudly said “no thanks” because I truly didn’t want any, my fear of not being able to stop at just 1 is always in the back of my mind.
The girls at the gym are a massive support network, all the staff knew I was participating in the challenge and took the time to have a chat about whatever concerns I had about nutrition or exercise. Some of them were even participating in the Challenge themselves so they could discuss recipes and meal planning, it was fantastic.

Today was my final weigh and measure for the challenge and a little bit of “Old Me” came back with thoughts of launching from this fast moving wagon to go on a binge after weigh-in (because I can recover before I have to weigh-in again, please tell me other people think like this). Instead I packed my breakfast and lunch plus snacks for the kids and took it with me to our playdate. A binge is still lingering but with more support from the girls at the gym it is taking a back seat to just carrying on with what I have learnt from the Challenge.

So here are the results:
Start                      Finish                    Loss
Weight                 112.3                     108.3                     4kg
Arm                       40                           39                        1cm
Bust                      121                        118.5                     2.5cm
Waist                    127.5                     124                        3.5cm
Hip                        137                        132.5                    4.5cm
Thigh                     64                          62                         2cm

So 4kg down and 13.5 total cm’s lost, I am pretty happy with the results and the wagon is still rumbling along with me securely aboard.

PS: I’m at pre-baby weight, woop woop.

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Monthly Challenge – Squats

Posted on March 31, 2014 by admin

The Fit Fab Forty Monthly Challenge group tackled Push-ups for March. This was the aim of the game courtesy of www.heandsheeatclean.com

Challenge courtesy of www.heandsheeatclean.com

I find push-ups hard especially on my toes but the only way to get better is to practice. At the beginning of this challenge I could barely do 10 on my toes and my depth of push-up was very very poor, more like a pulse than a push-up.

I have attempted to stick to the Challenge as best I could, I was a bit intimidated to do Decline push-ups at the gym so occasionally I would do another set of Toe Push-ups instead. I missed a day here and there, but I think something is better than nothing, life does get in the way, sometimes I would double up another day but other times I would just accept that it didn’t get done and move on. I can now consistently do 3x 10 toe push-ups still not as deep as I would like but I am definitely getting better with the last 2 days to go I can’t wait to see how many I can do when I push myself to fatigue on the last day.

I have also continued with my planking from the February Challenge and so at the end of every workout I would try to do 3x 1 minute planks which is about 4 times a week.

The April Challenge starts tomorrow and this month is Squats, I found this 1 on Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans a great blog so go on over and have a read of some of their other posts.

Don’t be April fooled by this saying May it is definitely our April Challenge.

If you would like to join the group for daily inspiration comment on Facebook and I will add you to the group.

Meal Planning – Week 3

Posted on March 31, 2014 by admin

Here is the wrap up of week 3 of my 36 Day Challenge.

This week of the Challenge the motto was “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff”. My 2 personal goals were to make good choices when ordering out and to continue to eat 5-6 meals a day. So again I did a meal plan for my dinners:

Mon – Beef stroganoff
Tue – Beef Pie with garlic peas
Wed – Chicken and bean enchiladas (Actual meal – went out for Mexican, I had 1 Fajita but then I made the mistake of looking at the dessert menu, hubby and I shared Churros)
Thur – Beef and vegetable lasagne (Actual meal – deli style salad)
Fri – Take away Thai (Actual meal – 2 steamed dumplings, Indonesian style Sate BBQ chicken, garlic and ginger seafood, small portions of each)
Sat – Catered Meal (Actual meal – Beef Massaman curry plus green beans– meal was served with rice and bread and I didn’t have any.)
Sun – Herb Crusted Lamb (Actual meal – platter with ham, rice crackers, hummus, carrot sticks – too tired to cook).

I was away from Friday afternoon until Sunday afternoon at a Scrapbooking Retreat and my previous self-imposed reputation as queen of the junk food had to be squashed. Normally I would do a shop run for copious amounts of chocolate, chips and soft drink. This time I did a shop run for little tins of salmon, portions of ham and some cream cheese and prepared the night before by making hummus and protein balls. My weaknesses tend to hit when I’m tired and on these type of weekends we stay up late, so by Saturday I am constantly tired.

Saturday afternoon 12 out of the 30 women got up from their seats and went and did a 1 hour workout session that I had organised from the girls at EnVie Fitness. Definitely felt great after that, but as I got tired into Saturday evening I buckled and had 5 small Maltester chocolates, 2 kiddie size packs of Smith’s Chips and 2 pieces of Coconut slice (evening snack provided by the venue). I felt bad about all of those choices but the deed had been done so as morning came I just had to move on and get back on track. All other meals were provided by the venue and I opted at most meals to avoid high carb options such as wraps, bread rolls and toast and keep a good eye on my portions.

Some of the evidence of what was my little chocolate binge.

Overall this week I had no Alcohol, no sugary drinks at all, it was water all the way. My few slip ups of Churros and Saturday nights little binge were disappointing but I must move on.

So food wise I would rate that I was about 75% on track and exercise 100% all 4 sessions planned were done plus the Fit Fab Forty monthly challenge of push-ups were mostly done.

My planning and some shopping has been done for Week 4 and some food is already made and portioned. I will leave you with these wise words from the EnVie Challenge booklet:

“Better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing perfectly”

Monthly Challenge – February the dreaded PLANK

Posted on March 4, 2014 by admin

I have created a Facebook group as a spin-off to my Fit Fab Forty Facebook page. The aim of the group is for members to inspire and motivate each other and to keep their fitness momentum going. Within the group I have decided to do monthly challenges, members can decide if they want to participate or not. Now monthly challenges are nothing new to blogs and I am not going to take “the cred” for designing each challenge. The world-wide-web is full of fitness challenges that someone (probably way more knowledgeable than me) has created so if I know who the creator was I will absolutely give them credit and link to their page.

The month of February was a Plank challenge that went something like this:

Day 1 – 20 seconds
Day 2 – 20 seconds
Day 3 – 30 seconds
Day 4 – 30 seconds
Day 5 – 40 seconds
Day 6 – REST
Day 7 – 45 seconds
Day 8 – 45 seconds
Day 9 – 60 seconds
Day 10 – 60 seconds
Day 11 – 60 seconds
Day 12 – 90 seconds
Day 13 – REST
Day 14 – 90 seconds
Day 15 – 90 seconds
Day 16 – 120 seconds
Day 17 – 120 seconds
Day 18 – 150 seconds
Day 19 – REST
Day 20 – 150 seconds
Day 21 – 150 seconds
Day 22 – 180 seconds
Day 23 – 180 seconds
Day 24 – 210 seconds
Day 25 – 210 seconds
Day 26 – REST
Day 27 – 240 seconds
Day 28 – PLANK FOR AS LONG AS POSSIBLE!!

At the beginning of the month I was sceptical as to whether I would be able to complete it. I will admit I didn’t follow it exactly, I always planked at the end of a workout, so as long as I worked out that day I got my planking done. So at the beginning of the month my planking record was 30 seconds on my toes, throughout the month I was planking during a gym class and apparently my form on my toes was not good so I was advised to drop to my knees and get my form better. So this is what I did. As disappointed as I was to be a “pussy” planking on my knees it is better to have good form and not do yourself an injury. If I was unable to go the distance on any given day I would do sets of planks and not finish until my total planking time was at least what the daily time limit was. So yesterday I completed it (better late than never) and my final set of planks were still on my knees – 81 sec, 53 sec, 65 sec = 199 seconds. So from where I was at the beginning of the month I would say massive improvements.

Here are some of the comments from the Group about the Plank Challenge:

“I’m thinking of doing it again next month. I like what it is doing to the body.” Kelly

“I was yelling at the stop watch tonight lol” Nicole

So this month (March) is a push-up Challenge if you would like to join the group contact me on my Facebook page and I will add you.

Challenge courtesy of www.heandsheeatclean.com

Definition of the different push-ups in the challenge:

Almost-There Push Up – Arms directly under shoulders, straight line from head to behind, core engaged and pulled in, utilizing knees

Push Up – The Classic Push Up – Arms directly under shoulders, straight line from head to behind to feet, core engaged and pulled in

Incline Push Up – Hands on elevated platform, arms directly under shoulders, straight line from head to behind to feet, core engaged and pulled in

Decline Push Up – Arms directly under shoulders, straight line from head to behind to feet, core engaged and pulled in, feet on elevated platform

The Push-up Challenge was brought to you by www.heandsheeatclean.com so go on over and check out all the other awesome challenges and info they have on their site.

I am going to continue the planking and add the push-up challenge to my repertoire.

Go hard on those Push-Ups and I would love to hear via comments if you are playing along.

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Tag Archives: challenge

Challenge Accepted

Monthly Challenge – Squats

Meal Planning – Week 3

Monthly Challenge – February the dreaded PLANK