Weight Loss Challenge 2012 Week 5

As promised I did not ask for you to make any changes to your diet or exercise regime for the month of January. However, February starts this week and so do our changes. I will only be asking for one change each week and sometimes not even. There are times when it's more important to have a couple of weeks to get a change into place before adding more. Please feel free to comment on the changes since others may be struggling with the same area or may be able to offer tips on how they are managing to make a change you are struggling with.

For our first change you may feel I am not challenging you much but it depends on whether this is something you all ready manage to do or not. I am surprised by how many people I have met who aren't anywhere close to managing this first step so let's go...

Drink water. Simple right. Every day. 8 - 10 glasses and by glasses I mean eight to ten 8 ounce or 250 mL cups of water per day. Personally I figure I'm generally up from 7am until 10pm and that means if I drink one cup every 2 hours I've pretty much made my quota for the day as long as I drink one cup as soon as I wake up and stop drinking an hour before bed. On days I exercise and sweat a lot I'll make sure I'm getting the 10 glasses at least.

Now if you aren't a water drinker you are going to have to learn to be. Water at room temp or even slightly warm is preferable since that is what your body is working at on the inside but at this point if you like it ice cold and can get it in that way just do it.

Also starting your day out before you put anything else in your body with a glass or two of water and a squeeze of lemon will help work with your body's natural urge to eliminate and detox in the morning. Start carrying a water bottle with you everywhere you go. Aim for a refillable bottle to help cut down on plastics. Put one on your desk at work, one in your vehicle, one on the counter at home, one in your purse or gym bag. Wherever you are going to be have one available and drink it. If you have an alarm feature on your phone or watch set it to ring every half to one hour and drink some water.

At the beginning you will obviously be making more trips to the bathroom if you don't normally drink much water, but your body will adjust pretty quickly to this. You can try to drink more earlier in the day and less after dinner too if you want to cut down on nighttime bathroom visits.

Another thing that can be helpful is as soon as you feel hungry or about 15 minutes before a meal or snack drink one full cup of water. This will help fill you up and can help you naturally cut down on how much you would normally eat. A recent study showed that drinking something when you want to eat and then waiting 10 minutes before eating often changed a person's desire to reach for the snack at all. Really though, this is about hydrating, not about dieting so the goal is to get the water in and any other benefit is just a bonus.

Okay, so there you go, your first challenge in 2012 that will head you toward your end goal. What is it? Say your goal again to yourself. This is the beginning. You are taking the first step to reaching the new you that you set out in your goal. I'm so excited to hear the changes. Please share with us as you take this journey. We all have our own challenges and triumphs. I'm looking forward to working alongside your new, stronger you.

Weight Loss Challenge 2012 Week 4

Well here it is, the last full week of January and you have yet to make any changes to your diet, exercise or other goals. Next week I will be asking you to make your first change so enjoy this week. Really use this week to cement the steps we've put in place for January.

1. Make sure your original goals are attainable by the year's end and are really goals you want to achieve.
2. Have your support person in place and ready to go.
3. Keep daily track of your food, liquid and exercise with calories written beside the food and calories expended written beside the exercise.
4. Make sure you've okayed yourself with your doctor.

This week you have just a few things to put into place. This week is again about intention as it was in week one. Spend this week getting yourself psyched about the new you that is about to start revealing itself through the coming months. Sit down and read your goals again. Then take it a step further. Visualize it. Imagine in your mind's eye what you will look like, feel like, act like when those goals are attained. What would a typical day look like from that perspective. Meditate on it, pray about it, whatever works best for you. If you are a person of faith, ask God to help you to achieve your goals and prompt you when you aren't doing what is best for your body.

I would also like you to either sit down with or phone your support person. Have a semi-serious conversation with them. Reveal your end goals to them and at the same time ask them to please check up on you atleast twice weekly. Just a quick call or text to make sure you are doing what you are supposed to for that week. Make sure they are aware that you need them to be firm with you, not extra kind or allowing you slack since you're just starting. They need to be your conscience when your own is trying to lead you astray with old habits.

The last thing for this week is sorting out what you are eating into food groups. Somewhere you need to be keeping track of how many grains, vegetables, fruits, milks, and meat & alternatives you are eating. To make things relatively simple this is what we are considering a serving:
Grains: 1 piece of bread or 1/2 cup cereal/pasta or 1/2 muffin/bagel/pita
Vegetables or fruit: 1 medium size fruit/veg or 1/2 cup cut up fruit/veg or 1 cup salad or 1/2 cup juice
Milk products: 3inch x 1inch x 1inch piece of cheese or 3/4 cup yogurt or 1 cup milk or 2 cup cottage cheese
Meat and alternatives: 4 oz meat (size of your palm) or 3/4 cup beans or 75g (1/2 can) fish or 1 large egg or 1/3 cup tofu or 2 tbsp nut butter

Hopefully that makes it not too hard to sort out. Feel free to ask if you're unsure of something you are eating. You may want to even go back through your past couple of weeks and see what you tend to eat on a regular basis to find which categories you eat more of and which you eat less of.

So enjoy your week. Get ready to make some changes. Slow ones. Small ones. The results will be slow but steady and something you can really look forward to living with. Since really, nothing will last unless you make lasting changes.

I'm looking forward to working with you. I know you can do it. I have. At my heaviest I was 60 pounds more than I am now. And since having a baby 5 months ago I still have 15 pounds to go to get back to my pre-baby weight. So I can definitely tell you that it is a process but one that I have been able to live by for the past 4 years without returning to my previous sedentary, unhealthy self even through a pregnancy. The one thing I can definitely say is that it starts in the mind. So start your day with your intentions firmly planted in your head. Then let's go!

Weight Loss Challenge 2012 Week 3

Okay, so you've made it through the first 2 weeks of January and as promised I have not asked you to make any changes. Again this week there are no changes to be made, but there is once again a little homework.

I'd like you to have a physical or at the very least visit your doctor so that you have a record of where you are beginning from. Make sure your doctor knows that you plan to start exercising and watching your diet and get the go ahead from them. Nothing drastic as far as diet and exercise goes but you want to know if you need to modify your plan based on your health.

The second bit of homework I hope will be fun and not too hard. If you haven't been tracking your calories along with your food journal now is the time to start. Again you can either put it into an free online calorie tracker, I've used http://www.myfitnesspal.com/ in the past or buy yourself a little calorie counter book and do it by hand.

If you aren't all ready writing down what you drink, please add this to your food journal. Cups of water, tea, coffee, milk, juice, pop, whatever. All the liquid you have every day.

Also, it's time to start recording any exercise you do. Walking, fitness classes, stairs, weights, anything extra put it down. Again many of the free online calorie trackers allow you to track your exercise as well.

Now really, that's a pretty easy week. Keep going with your food journal and I'll tell you more next week.

If you'd like to get this blog sent to you as soon as a new one is written just click the follow button at the top left and you'll be sure to keep up. Have a good one!

Weight Loss Challenge 2012 Week 2

So? Did you accomplish week 1's goal? Did you take the time to actually write down your goal for this year? If not, please go back and read last week's post and follow through. I mean seriously, if you can't get the first goal done then we need to really reevaluate what motivation you have. This is an important first step and you need to set it out in black and white before moving on to this week's step.

If you did accomplish last week's goal - awesome! Give yourself a pat on the back. I hope you read it over throughout the week but if you didn't go get it out now and read it over. I'll wait.....

Okay, so now you've refreshed your memory on what you are aiming to achieve by the end of 2012. This week you have 2 steps to accomplish before next week's blog. The first task is to start keeping a journal of what you are eating and I mean EVERYTHING that goes into your mouth. That bite of cookie, the rest of the kids' lunch, whatever it is needs to be recorded. Just like last week when writing down your goals for this year was so important so is this step. Remember, I'm not asking you to change anything about your eating, I'm just asking you to put it down either on paper or use one of the many free calorie tracking websites out there. (http://www.myfitnesspal.com/)

The second step is to tell someone about the goals you wrote down last week. The selection of this person is very important for 2 reasons. One, they can help keep you accountable and two, they can sabotage your efforts. So, for those reasons be very choosy about the person you pick. Ideally you want to tell someone who is also needing to make similar changes and is motivated enough to do it. This just makes it easier for you to be an encouragement for them as well. But if you are the type to try to skip out on exercise or have that extra dessert and your person would happily use you as an excuse to ditch their own goals then pick someone else. If you can find someone who is all ready doing well in these areas and has been through what you are trying to achieve they may be good at busting you when you fall off the wagon or cheering you on when you make it through a tough time.

So by next week's post you know what you need to be doing daily - recording everything that you eat. You also need to have your support person in place. I'll happily volunteer to be your support person if you really feel you don't have another face to face person who would hold you accountable but I can't tell if you're lying to me so it may not work if you're the devious sort :)

Until next week.

Weight Loss Challenge 2012 Week 1

Happy New Year everyone! As I said a few weeks ago, this year's blogging will be about weight loss and healthier living. I will be posting weekly, hopefully, easy tips to follow and incorporate throughout 2012 to meet your personal goals for the year. This is the first of these posts and as promised in my Facebook teaser there is to be no changes made this month. How easy is that? If you're interested read on...

So, you want to be healthier, maybe lose weight, maybe exercise more, maybe eat better. You have sketchy type goals in mind or maybe even some concrete ones. You may have smaller goals (eat less meat, add more water) or larger goals (run a marathon, become vegetarian) but no matter what goals you've been contemplating you have to actually have a game plan so that you'll actually take the steps to accomplish your goals.

For this first week of January I would like you to take a few minutes to write down your goals. Make them reasonable for you. Rather than decide you're going to lose 100 pounds this year, maybe pick something like 2 pounds per month, since slower tends to last longer and be easier to manage than crashing through only to give up a month in since you don't seem to be headed in the right direction quick enough. If you never exercise then perhaps saying you'd like to be exercising 4 days per week for 1 hour per day consistently by the end of the year would make more sense than running a marathon or signing up for a gym membership today.

I would suggest picking 3 areas of health to work on: weight loss, exercise and eating. You may have more than one goal in each of these areas but try not to overdo it. Always think less is more. You want to accomplish the goals not frustrate yourself. So as an example you may list your ideals (By the end of 2012 I want to weigh X pounds, be able to walk/run X kilometres X times per week, eat X calories per day with X vegetarian days per week and no more than X red meats per month.) This is just an example as obviously your goals need to be goals you want to achieve and make sense for you. You may want to throw in a brain challenge as well, like taking a nutrition class, cooking class, reading a how to run/strength train or add supplements book or e-newsletter. Remember if you find your goals accomplished earlier than the end of the year you can always set new ones again.

The most important part this week is to write them down. You may want to write down a long list of goals and then stroke out the ones that seem unreasonable or sabotaging until you are left with a few that seem manageable and then tweak them to make sure they are not so easy that there is no sense of accomplishment when you achieve them. Remember the goal is to achieve them in 12 months so this is no speed race. Time is on your side.

Once you have your goals written out over the next day or two then take them out every day and read them until next week's blog. Make sure you feel you really own them. They are goals YOU want to achieve and not ones you feel pressured by others to achieve. Don't share these goals with anyone, just enjoy knowing you have a secret to accomplish. Then next Monday check back in for the next step towards accomplishing your goals.

Looking forward to challenging you and me throughout 2012. Have a great week.