Well – I can’t believe the summer has flown by so fast! Well you can hardly call it summer really; the weather hasn’t been entirely summery has it? Almost time for the kids to go back to school and my eldest will be starting at Montessori this year too – I can’t believe where the time has gone but it’s time to get back to business!
Back to Business
The main thing I have seen over the summer, and more so the last few weeks, is the disruption the summer holidays seems to bring to our lives! It all seems to go back to the same old thing of getting in (or out) of the routine! Many of my members have struggled with keeping in the swing of things with the kids off school and the change in routine this brings. But fear not – September is almost upon us and routine and balance CAN be restored!
So with the whirl of summer almost behind us lets get going again and get back into the
“zone”. Its time to draw a line under any “falling off the wagon” and get organised and back into the swing of it! So first things first GET PLANNING! I have gone on about this in several of my blogs before but the reason why this comes up time and again is because it is IMPORTANT! On the whole we seriously underestimate the amount we eat (and over estimate the amount of calories we burn during exercise!). If the diary starts to slip, things will be missed off, weights and measurements will not be completely 100% and inevitably somewhere along the line this will start to reflect (or not reflect) on the scales!
It is very easy to say “I know what I’m doing” but the amount of people who have come to me over the last few weeks saying that they have not been using the diary but that “they know” they have been good with the food and the exercise and haven’t lost weight is a fairly high percentage! For those who have been able to continue using the diary religiously, and generally planning the diary ahead of actually eating the food, despite the holiday period are the ones who have continued to shed the pounds! It was only yesterday when my mother-in-law said she had a good idea of calories and she had said that for breakfast she had swapped her two slices of toast and Low-Low butter for a scone and butter – as she thought it was better for her/less calories! As we were out I asked her to point out the size scone that she would usually have (instead of her toast) and it ended up that is was one of the big café scones – the nearly 500 calorie ones!! It was only when I told her that the scone and butter she was having was nearly 600 calories – just less than half her daily allowance (as she decided she wanted to shed a few pounds) – and that was just for breakfast – you can imagine she was quite shocked!
Every so often I like to dip back in to using my diary to remind myself how it feels to be keeping track of everything – even now after all of this time, I still am amazed how quickly a few small things here and small things there adds up! On my first day of adding everything in last week I waited until the evening time to fill in the diary retrospectively, after popping in everything I had eaten throughout the day I thought I hadn’t done too badly at all – but when my hubby offered to make me a cup of tea I suddenly remembered the cup of coffee I’d had during the day. It was unusually strong, and I don’t tend to drink a lot of coffee so as it was a bit strong for me I added sugar to it (they had no sweetener in the coffee shop) BAM another 70 calories onto the food diary that I hadn’t accounted for…oh and yes of course – the lovely Italian man in the coffee shop had also given me a small cube of chocolate…oops another 40 calories for that. Suddenly my doing quite well had turned into me hitting my calorie allowance in just a small flicker of my memory (that might never have been stirred had the cup of tea not been brought up!). Cleaning up in the kitchen and finding some food from the kids is on the floor…another memory is stirred of me “tasting” one of the “very small” chicken popcorn pieces the kids had had for tea, I decide to check the box and see that it is 114 calories for 3…so that’s over 40 calories for 1 of them……….what??? I say to myself, that’s another 40 at least, especially since I also vaguely remember knocking another ½ – ¾’s of another one into my mouth when I was clearing away the plates…I suppose I thought to myself that didn’t count, but if I’m truly honest with myself, I’d really eaten the guts of 2 chicken popcorn things which is going on for yet another 80 calories that I “hadn’t eaten”. Did anything else go into my mouth for a “taste”? Honestly at this stage I’m not sure I could say! So – the moral of the story – PLAN AHEAD! If it’s not in the diary, don’t eat it! And second moral of the story…I’m not buying chicken popcorn again, didn’t realise how bad just 3 little bits were in terms of calories and fat! Ridiculous! But very nice!
With the chaos of summer done and dusted it might also be time to set yourself a new
goal in terms of fitness! Goal setting is a really simple but great way to keep on track in terms of keeping your activity levels up and fitness improving! A lot of members have been really getting stuck in to the routines in the videos section of the members area and
have been achieving fantastic results and improvement, so maybe this would be one of your new goals – to complete X amount of videos per week; or to train for a certain race or new distance, or to walk a new personal best on your favourite route, to stay on the cross trainer or bike and extra 10 minutes or extra kilometer. Whatever the goals – get it on paper, stick it on the fridge and get going!! Printing off an actual weekly plan is another fantastic way to make sure you get it done! For the members, just print our your personal fitness plan so you can easily keep an eye on it. Physically ticking off the session once you have done it really gives you a sense of achievement – and as you start to see more and more ticks appearing it really makes you feel good and gives you that boost of how far you are coming along your journey!
Get involved on the forums! Chat with your fellow members to help keep you motivated or even join in the challenge to help get your mojo back! It’s proven that those who get involved are more likely to succeed. There will be a new challenge starting up from September on wards so keep an eye out for the start of that and sign up for it! We had some AMAZING results from the Olympic challenge, with lots of pounds lost and also a lot of extra exercise done that would not have been done had the challenge not been running!
If you’ve still not stuck that old picture of yourself on your fridge DO IT NOW! It will be your constant reminder and motivation to KEEP GOING!
So with all that said – lets draw that line under what has passed, get back into the zone, set some new goals and lets GET GOING!!!
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Hannah x
