Let’s talk motivation. As you might already know, my friends at Fitbit are my main motivation to walk every day and do something for my health and my weight-loss. But of course there’s some other incentives that come along while losing weight as I start to feel better and look better. That’s what I call my “friendly internal motivation”.
There’s an unfriendly type of motivation though. One I experienced firsthand this week. My husband just started a new job and he invited me to come over to have lunch with him. I accepted happily to have a lunch date! I came to his new office, rang the doorbell and a thin, young woman with long hair came towards me, walking like in a movie: in slow motion, bouncing hair and gleaming smile included. Her beauty was the first thing that popped in my head in that very moment, I honestly just thought “what a pretty young girl”. But then my “soundtrack LP” scratched just like in the movies and my second thought was: “hold on a minute! she’s the one who opens the door and makes coffee for my husband?”
Mind you that early in the morning the last he sees of me, is me in my PJs and my hair looking like a lioness saying goodbye. And there you have it! This is what I call “unfriendly outside motivation”. I wonder if I have to get up at five in the morning to get ready before he even gets up? Because even though some may not agree with me, I have to put a little bit of extra effort to look good for him because if my PJs every morning are his last sight, and goes off to work to “THAT” hey! I have some competition to beat. I know I will get there and be successful one day and he won’t have to look the other way! This sort of motivation will probably beat my Fitbit friends any day!
Every year in March I go to the doctor for a general checkup (a physical). This year was no exception.
This time and after some weight loss (20 pounds so far) I have two great achievements to report. The first one was when they did the ECG the doctor came in and saw my results and asked me if I was practicing sports. He is a man (hence not so attentive to that kind of detail) and I am notorious for my yo-yo dieting so he definitely did not notice it because of my weight loss. So I was curious just by how he noticed. Instead he said that my resting metabolic rate was so much lower than last year’s, just the way it happens with athletes. He by no means tried to compare me to an athlete, but he said that my values compared from one year to another were extremely different. This made me extremely happy because I never ever practice any sports except the 3+ months I’ve been walking. It works!
The second news came a week later after the blood results came back. I have to say that I’ve never had anything that’s not healthy like cholesterol, sugar or triglycerides on abnormal high levels, but even these went down a bit. But the best news came in the form of my iron levels going up. They were always below normal And without any supplements or vitamins I have normalized them after three years of suffering very extremely low iron levels just by eating healthily and why not?: Those spinach green smoothies are really working! In all seriousness this has a wonderful effect on all the side effects I was having from having a low iron level and I am happy as can be.
Funny side note: since my Fitbit was clipped to my bra the doctor asked me what it was. I explained it to him and he was sold. For a moment I thought I should contact the company asking them to give me some incentive for being such a proactive advertiser of their product, hey I’ve sold a couple for real! I love it.
Healthy habits paying off in many ways!
I had to start writing again and not bottle everything up inside. Today was the perfect day to start. It was a real nice sunny day in which I finally achieved my 10% weight loss in my Weight Watchers meeting and I got my very much anticipated and coveted 10% keychain my “safety blanket”. It will accompany me every step of the way even though I’m not really sure I’m going to use it as a keychain because I don’t want to open myself to everyone and the words “weight watchers” are printed on it.
(Maybe in my purse as a talisman)
But after so many months of trying, 10% is off and it’s still continuing to, very slowly but very steadily, come off, and I could not be happier. I am still the listener type in my meetings, I do not share a lot and I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but it is what’s working for me.
One thing I heard is that Fitbit is going to be compatible with Weight Watchers soon which probably means that whatever many steps I take will be counted as activity points, but I’m not sure that will make a difference to me because I am motivated to walk anyway. Speaking of which, these days have been just wonderful to walk outside and since I am dog sitting this week it is a wonderful opportunity to go outside and just walk walk walk and enjoy the weather and give my walking indoors DVDs a break.
Happy spring everyone! (And raise my (water) glass to my next 10 pound goal!)
10,000 steps and never less
Jellybean10k 