What motivates me?

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!

“Bloody” good results

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!

Feeling “Safe”

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!)

Do we need a “safety blanket”?

The other day I ran into a woman I had met 12 years ago in a Weight Watchers meeting. We started our journey together and we both had similar amounts of weight to lose. So we bonded during those hard months and became each other’s motivation with a tiny hint of very healthy competition. At this time, 12 years younger, I did the Weight Watchers program pretty successfully and in a very reasonable amount of time I lost the weight I was hoping for, was fitter than ever and feeling better than I’ve ever felt before.

This woman and I finished at the same time and received the gold star to put in our “Weight Watchers 10% keychain” (for those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about: when you join Weight Watchers and lose 10% of your bodyweight they give you a keychain and then you collect a couple of charms at some milestones) the golden star is symbolic that you’ve reached a gold membership. This entitles you to go to all the meetings and not having to pay for them.

Well, I reached my desired weight and thought I was “cured” forever and so I stopped going. As life went on, I gained a lot of weight back and I have never been able to reach that goal again.

Coming back to the present: I ran into this woman and we immediately recognized each other. Upon asking her how she kept her weight off and was fit after all these years she just took out her keychain and oh boy was I surprised! What I saw made me jealous and angry at myself. Her keychain had 12 stars!!! She knew she had to keep on going every year to keep the weight at bay. She did it right, she kept it up, she realize her battle with weight was an ongoing one and she needed the support.

I on the other hand, needed the support but didn’t use it. I still have my keychain with one lonely star while she has been fit and healthy for the past 12 years and that could’ve been me. I guess looking at my star now let’s me know I could do it too.

I spoke about it with a friend and she “psychoanalyzed” it and told me that it couldn’t be healthy that it was just a “safety blanket”. But boy do I want that safety blanket! In fact I need it! This also reminds me why I hate commenting about this with people close to me. (Read my previous post)

(https://jellybean10k.wordpress.com/2014/02/21/i-absolutely-hate-sharing-my-weight-loss-journey/ )

I realize that the keychain is probably a good outside motivator (that obviously only comes in second to the feeling of a fit body)

So here I am trying to go for that gold trying to go for filling my own keychain. I hope I make it this time and then I won’t stop until it’s full! Maybe by that time I’m in the habit of being healthy. Or maybe I’ll just get a bigger keychain.

My Fitbit fiasco!!!

Yesterday I woke up and as always was trying to get my exercise done first thing in the morning because otherwise I get lazy during the day and then it won’t happen or only with a lot of extra effort. So by the time it was 10 o’clock I already had clocked in 8000 steps on my Fitbit.
At night I was invited to a party, but otherwise wasn’t feeling very well during the day so I spent long hours laying down and by the time I had to leave I only had 1,000 steps more. Needless to say I went to the party and spent a lot of time sitting down (eating of course) and didn’t walk much. By the time the party people started getting into the mood of dancing I looked at my Fitbit and it had already turned 12 o’clock so I couldn’t see how many steps I did that day! (This made me really anxious because there was a chance that it was under 10,000) I came home and immediately synchronized Fitbit and what I saw made me want to cry. In six weeks of nonstop 10,000 I reached only 9,602 steps for the first time. I cannot start to explain the horrible feeling I got and I can’t undo it. (398 steps short: that is 4 minutes walking or dancing to one single song)

I don’t know why and even though no one can see this but me, it still makes a “hole” in my whole idea to never go to bed with at least 10,000. I need to add that dancing that night gave me 6000+steps before 2 o’clock and still this didn’t serve as consolation for me.

Even though today will be a very successful day given my 6000 steps before I even woke up, my chart isn’t uniform anymore and my distress is big (insert sad face and violin music here)

This can never happen again and that is another reason why I love my Fitbit! It brings an ambition and a drive I never knew I had.

Here’s to a future of 10,000 or more and NEVER less!

I absolutely HATE sharing my weight-loss journey.

I was thinking about why I absolutely HATE sharing my weight-loss story with people. But no,no,no, not you, please keep on reading my good anonymous friends. If I didn’t want anyone to know I wouldn’t write it. I am talking about people I know personally.

During my newest and hopefully last weight-loss journey I am taking a new approach: it’s called “Workout and Shut your mouth”, but not only shutting it not to shove unnecessary foods in it (that too) 🙊but to not say a word about it. I say new because all my previous efforts had involved a whole lot of calorie counting and limiting but never combined with physical activity, and I gave all information to my family and friends about every single ounce I dropped and all the hard work involved in my process. All to no avail.

Why don’t I like sharing my experience with anybody I know? (friend or family member). Not because I don’t think they don’t wish me well nor love me ( I know they do) but because this is for me and I do not enjoy sharing my biggest struggle and weakness with people who clearly have not understood before and seemingly won’t understand now. This is not my first time around and I have proven myself that whenever people get the information that I am “dieting” they immediately used their self-appointed right to give their opinion and/or start asking me if I’m allowed to eat something, if I have stuck to my exercise routine that day or when they see something in my mouth being chewed, that is the cue for them to ask wether or not it is conducive to my goal to eat this or that. Those things are rather discouraging for me and don’t help me further. On top of it all I seem to be surrounded by people who have never really struggled with this and naturally thin people trying to give me advice is not my idea of motivation and makes me eventually go back to square one.
(Please note I said naturally thin people and am not talking about people who have struggled with this experience and are now thin, as I believe those could understand)

This time I’ve kept my mouth shut and by all means have even resorted to “lying” to get out of some situations which otherwise would have meant that I am in some sort of weight-loss quest. When people know I just don’t seem to find the right balance between being open about it and successful at it.

This is the reason why I like my Fitbit friends so much, I don’t even know where they find themselves in this big world, still they are so motivating to me without even knowing it. Then there are my favorite: weight loss bloggers: these are the people who I really like to share my story with because these people understand what I’m going through, we are battling with the same.

Because let’s be honest if you’re anything like me and you’re struggling with weight loss how many times can you hear the words “it’s about what you put in your body versus what you burn” or “you have to be more active” “change what you’re doing” or “it is so easy, simple mathematics just eat less” and the worse “you must have a slow metabolism that is the way you are meant to look”. We all know that we are not here because we want to.

So for now I’ll continue writing about it and just look forward to the day the people who know me and love me approach me and (after skipping all the ugly middle part) tell me that I look great! I really can’t wait.

Who feels this way? Or do you find it better to share?

My Fitbit update and why my insignificant loss is so very significant!

So I’m doing an update. I have used my Fitbit constantly from Christmas Day until today making it a whopping (unheard of) eight weeks nonstop!
On the first two weeks I allowed myself to get used to the gadget and often made 3 to 7,000 steps a day and called it a day. Starting on February 9th, I started a habit of going 10,000 steps or more and never going to bed with less. Sometimes I’ve had 15 to 18,000 but according to Fitbit’s website my average is 12,000. ( I live for their weekly email with my update and statistics)

I do not have extreme weight loss to report in fact I lost a very “small” total of 7 pounds (3.2kg) in those 8 weeks, but I am almost certain these are pounds of fat given that my measurements have been way more successful! I am 2% less body fat and lost a total of 3 inches (8cm) from my breast, 2.75 inches (7cm) from my waist, 3.5 inches (9cm) from my hips, 2.5 inches (6cm) from each thigh and 1.5 inches (4cm) from each arm for a grand total of 17+ inches (44 cm).

So even though I read stories of people who lose 20 to 30 pounds in two months and I know my weight loss might seem insignificant for most at best and not worth so much effort for some, I can speak about an amazing success story on my part considering my background of nonexistent physical activity. I feel better than ever and I’m going to continue my search for the balance that has been missing in my life.

One disclaimer though: for those who think that it’s become a habit and I do it with a smile on my face and thinking that I am the type who now loves to workout, nothing is further from the truth. I am still not there unfortunately. After eight weeks, it is still not a habit but an ongoing struggle I have every day. But I’m pretty sure this will change soon as I see more results and the changes are more visible.

Speaking of visible (and sorry if it’s TMI) I workout in front of a mirror very lightly clad to asses my body daily and I even had to start a web search as my thighs were getting less and less toned. Well I hope it is true they will get better, because due to all the fat moving and getting activated there have been points where I think I am going backwards in my process. But fortunately this otherwise ugly development has served as further motivation to push myself harder every day .

Hopefully I am not alone in my quest!