LIFESTYLE: GET FIT FRIDAY #1

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Happy Friday everyone! I hope you’re all doing really well. Following on from my previous post where I spoke about recently joining Slimming World and hoping to get fitter and healthier in 2015, I thought I’d introduce a new series on amyjanealice: Get Fit Friday. Throughout the series I’ll be posting things like updates on my weightloss (hopefully), healthy recipes, fitness ideas, workout playlists, anything relating to my journey to health basically! I love reading these posts, so am really excited to get started. I’m a complete novice at this sort of stuff, I’m not a nutritionist, what works for me might not work for you, but you might be able to pick up a few tips!

For my first post I thought I’d speak to you a little about me and where I’m at, and all about my experience with Slimming World so far over the last month. Since secondary school I’ve been a size 10; in the beginning it was on the smaller side and now I’m on the slightly bigger side and nearing a size 12. This isn’t overweight by any means, in fact a 12 is the UK average clothes size for a woman. For me though, I carry all my weight on my stomach, arms and thighs – I hate it. It means my jeans are tighter around the waist and baggier around my legs, especially with only being 5 ft 3. I also have this whole “Mike Wazowski-esque” thing going on. Not cool. I’m also super unfit. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a complete couch potato. I use public transport instead of driving my own car so I do walk quite regularly whether it’s to uni or work, and I work in retail which means I’m standing up and moving around for at least four hours every shift. Despite this, my stamina is 0. I can’t run for very long, very far or very fast and I sometimes struggle keeping up with certain exercises.  This is something I really want to work on too. 

So, to kickstart the whole process I joined Slimming World. I was quite excited in the beginning when I found out what I could eat. A lot of my fave foods are free, meaning I can eat as many of them as I want. Of course this is all in moderation; eating 9 bowls of pasta every day won’t help you drop a few pounds. There is also an allowance you can use each day for calcium and fibre and you’re given  so many ‘syns’ per day for if you fancy a treat. My go-to favourite meal/treat is currently 2 slices of wholemeal bread (one of my fibre allowances) with a tablespoon of Nutella which I count in my syns. I’ve also been living off jacket potatoes with beans and Muller Light yoghurts as these are free. Hallelujah! I won’t go into more depth about how it all works as that defeats the point of paying to sign up, but the bottom line is I’ve been eating the same amount (if not more) as before I joined.

To my disappointment, in my first two weeks I lost nothing. I gained nothing, but still after completely sticking to plan for two weeks it didn’t nothing to my weight. Embarrasingly I wasn’t doing exercise either which obviously doesn’t help but I also can’t blame it on the fact that “muscle weighs more than fat”. However, my weigh ins are at 7pm on a Monday night, after a full day of university. Now I overhear some people in group talking about how they don’t eat all day etc to make sure they lost, but I don’t agree with this. Plus, I wouldn’t be able to focus and have a productive day in uni if I didn’t eat a thing. I’m planning a few lighter meals to take with me for the next few weeks, but I’m also considering going to the meeting on the Tuesday morning.  As to whether I think Slimming World is worth it, it’s definitely changed the way I eat and the way I look at food. I was a massive crisps monster before, and now I think I’ve had around 2 packets in the last 3 weeks. Everything is homemade and not processed. So although I’ve been a bit down about the weight loss so far (2lbs in a month!), there are plenty of non scale victories I’ve had. There are also people in group who have lost 1/2 a stone in one week, so it clearly does work! I think sometimes it depends on how much you ate before, what you ate before, and how much your lifestyle has changed.

So over the next week, I’m planning on creating an exercise schedule. I bought Davina McCall’s 15 Minutes to Fit DVD, as it’s one of the top rated DVD’s on Amazon and with the workouts being 15 minutes long I have no excuse to not do it! I also want to start yoga and get into running, so if you have any tips for beginners please comment below! I also want to up my fruit and veg intake, cut down on my syns and also make sure I’m getting plenty of sleep. I’m sorry this post is super long but it’s a bit of a introduction. Please let me know if you’d like to see more posts like this, or what you’d like me to include!