gwennefarrell

So I am proud to announce that today I completed my 3rd running interval training for the week and for the first time it wasn’t torture. This week I did 3 days at 2:30 minutes walking and 1:30 minutes running. Tuesday I get to bump it up to 2:00 minutes walking 2:00 minutes running (I so can’t wait I say with sarcasm). As well, I am going to do a day of training up a hill. My legs are already screaming at the thought of doing this (said with even more sarcasm).

So this week I wanted to talk about getting started mentally before taking this journey to weight loss and getting healthier. Let’s first start with goals. My goal when I began this was simply to walk more. That was it. It wasn’t about losing weight or improving my health it was just to get out of the pandemic isolation and do something. But then things began to happen, my weight went down, my blood pressure went down, my glucose went down and walking 10,000 steps a day became too easy. So I set my first goal, let’s lose 25 pounds and get me to a healthier weight. Now that may seem pretty simple but I soon realized that while setting a goal is important it can’t be your only motivator. More importantly, setting a goal needs to be realistic so that you don’t fail simply because you haven’t achieved what you wanted. Instead, when things plateaued or went south, I just re-grouped. I reminded myself that I had been obese for a long time, I hadn’t moved in years but most importantly I had already done well since I started this. Yes, sometimes I had to make strategic adjustments to my plan (and my goals) but I learned not to beat myself up. Rather, I recognized that if it took me twice as long to cross that finish line than I had initially planned then so be it. It all became about changing mentally, finding that groove that would keep me going and taking one step at a time each day. As long as I kept going I knew I could do this. I should note, I am fortunately that I live in a beautiful city on the ocean that has a lovely promenade. Walking that promenade every day (often twice or sometimes 3 times a day) gave me a sense of peace and appreciation for the wonderful world that surrounds us. I took the time every day to say hello to each person I passed and always with a smile. Sometimes they returned the gesture, sometimes they didn’t but that really didn’t matter to me. What I was doing was for me and the occasional friendly chat with a stranger just helped immensely. The bottom line, set your goal but don’t let it deter you.

Along with goals is sometimes failures. I admit there were often days when that scale wasn’t moving where I wanted to say to hell with this, if I work this hard I should always have results. But that is not realistic, failures will happen and that is ok. For example, at one point I decided to ramp things up (a lot) and was trying to walk 20 km a day. Yes, I was successful in doing this for nearly a week and then ended up with horrible pain in one of my thighs. I thought it was related to my chronic back issues but no, it was a repetitive strain injury. I ended up having to take 3 weeks off from working out and quite frankly I was irate. However, during those 3 weeks I stuck to my healthy eating plan, let my leg recover and much to my surprise still lost a few pounds. What I learned from this is failures are ok as long as you learn from them and don’t let them stop you. I’ve had other failures along the way but I now know you take those failures and you learn from them, you don’t let them make you lose track of that finish line. More importantly, I learned that really listening to your body can help prevent some of those failures.

So, embrace your goal but don’t let them rule your overall plan. Embrace your failures and don’t let them prevent you from moving forward. Just keep going!

Another running training today. I am up to 2 consecutive training sessions of 2.5 minutes walking and 1.5 minutes running (10 intervals). What I don’t understand is why the running intervals seem 10 times longer than the walking intervals. My husband said, quit, just walk don’t run. You would think after being together for nearly 30 years he would get the fact that isn’t an option.

So what else have I learned? Well, today I want to talk about deprivation. This comes from a message from a friend who asked me if I had completely cut out things like alcohol and sugar. The answer is an emphatic NO! Those who know me know that I like my wine. But, I recognize those added calories don’t help with my journey. So, over the past year in particular I have gone days, weeks and sometimes a month with no alcohol. Really, doing training really helps as the alcohol consumption really impairs your large muscle groups. That means if I am training the next day I really don’t want the added stress to my muscles of working off the alcohol. Having said that, if I am going out for a nice dinner then HELL YES I am having a few glasses of wine. But sugar, really? Yes I still sometimes have a sweet treat but I plan ahead. When I am going to do that I reduce my carbs the rest of the day to allow me to add a bit of sugar to my diet. I should note, to support non-chain restaurants during the pandemic my family does take out every Wednesday and while most times I look for a healthy alternative, last night was fish and chips. So I prepped myself and kept to zero carbs the rest of the day.

As for sugar, I have become a master at low fat, low sugar, and low sodium desserts. Truly I make everything from cookies to cheesecake. I’m not a big dessert person but every once and a while it is a nice treat. Here’s a hint, Hershey’s has sugar free chocolate chips which can be added to anything (using a sugar substitute of course). The problem is that product is only available in the USA so I have to find someone who can get it to me. Sadly right now I am down to only 2 bags but am hoping I can get some shipped to me soon. Also if you are in BC, Charlie’s Chocolate Factory has some awesome sugar free sweets.

I don’t believe in deprivation, to me if you keep something completely out of you diet you just crave it more. Instead, find alternatives. In today’s day and age there is so much out there that can help. And in case you say, yeah but it has so many other problems you are wrong. For example, I make sugar free fruit sauce which has no sugar or substitute but is awesome for toppings such as pancakes or our favourite, cheesecake. And if you want a sodium replacement, MRS Dash can help. I know, that is so old schiik but really it does help spice up bland food.

And now, portion control. Oh yes, the standby of dieting (and I hate the concept of being on a diet). You all remember hearing abut calories in vs calories out right? For me, quite frankly screw that. I never tried to change the amount I ate. Having said that, I all of a sudden realized I was eating less. Yes, your read that right, it just happened naturally. As I lost weight the amount I ate simply got smaller. It wasn’t because that was my goal, it just naturally occurred. My body told me how much I needed to keep going. Yes, I became more cognizant of things like carbs and sugar but my body told me how much I needed to eat. Don’t get me wrong, there were times that I have eaten more than I should but to be honest there was a lot of body rebellion for doing that.

Here’s the bottom line; don’t diet, don’t deprive, don’t measure your plate. Instead, get moving, know what your body needs, sacrifice a little to get where you need to be.

I have decided I will post my blogs Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. These are the days that I do my running training and quite frankly, I have yet to find my ‘zone’ when doing running intervals. Instead, I try and talk myself out of continuing and then chant mantras to try and keep myself going. Today, I spent the training time writing this post in my head which took away my ability to think about wanting to stop running. So, if that works for me going forward then these are good days to post (or maybe some day those mythical endorphins will kick in an I will enjoy running).

I thought I would spend this and the next post talking about some significant learnings I have experienced along this journey. The first is that standard saying, this is a marathon not a sprint. You have to look at how long it took to gain your weight. It is highly unlikely that you gained significant weight in a short period of time. Why then do we search for quick ways to lose that weight? Ever searched the Web for diets? You’ll see thousands of them espousing that they will help you drop weight in an amazingly short period of time. My thoughts on those is yeah, and then I will just gain it back as quickly. So I say start with a mental change before you even begin your journey. Give yourself a realistic goal of weight loss and more importantly a realistic time frame to lose the weight. It is great to get to the final goal, but start thinking about if you get there slowly and safely you are more likely to have success in maintenance and quite frankly, what is the point of losing the weight if you can’t maintain it. I’ll be honest, that is now my ultimate goal. And guess what? If you fall a bit short of your goal the world does not stop. As a matter of fact life keeps moving forward so you need to do the same.

While the consensus seems to be that a safe weight loss is 1-2 pounds per week, at the beginning you may fall into a mindset that is a trap. If you are trying to lose a considerable amount of weight like I have (nearly 40% of my peak weight) then the start of the journey may go really well. Once I started serious walking I dropped more like 4-5 pounds a week for the first few weeks and I started thinking well, wasn’t that easy. DO NOT GO THERE! Yes, at first your body may drop those pounds quickly but remember, it has held that weight for a long time and it really doesn’t want to give it up. At first the weight may be shed fast but then your body may fight back and make some changes as it tries to protect you from starvation mode. Don’t be discouraged by this just push forward and your body will re-adjust but that likely will mean a much smaller weight loss each week (note, plateaus will be written about in a later post).

The second learning I want to discuss today is making sure you have support in place to help you on this journey. Because you are going to be working on both your physical and mental health, you need people in your corner who will support your successes and failures (oh, you are going to have failures but that is OK). I know with the isolation the pandemic has caused many of us have found creative ways to still be able to connect with our people. Take advantage of any source of contact you have whether that be calls, texts, emails, social media or virtual meetings and make sure it is filled with those that are 100% on your side. I know some who have been detractors of what I am doing (comments such as yeah, but she won’t be able to keep the weight off) and I just turn that volume down in my head and turn up the volume on those that use words like inspirational. The bottom line is I believe my success has occurred because of the mental support that I have received and I thank everyone who is in that corner of mine.

I’m going on a bit of a tangent here but above I mentioned isolation and the pandemic. Other than walking I have barely left my home in a year and trust me, it can get to you. However, I found a small way that gives me a lift each week. I have a list of isolated seniors that I have been assigned through a volunteer organization and each Friday I spend several hours phoning them and allowing them to have some form of contact. That volunteer work has kept me in the mental space that I need to be in so I suggest if you can, give it a try.

My final thought on support is having medical professionals on this journey with you. I have been very fortunate to have both my GP and my chiropractor working with me on this journey. I cannot stress enough that especially if you have any sort of health issues it is imperative that you have your medical professions involved. When I first started working on weight loss it was my GP who gave me some great tips to make simple changes to get things started. My chiropractor has helped me develop a core strengthening routine (and gives great advice on the best workout clothing) as well as reined me in when she thought I was pushing things soo far. While I love Dr Google, the reality is I don’t have a medical degree so the advice I have been given has helped me do the journey while improving my health and being injury free. If you can do that as well, your chances of success only grows. I also want to stress that while I have been removed from my medications, that was done at my GP’s direction. These medications had slowly been lowered over the past year but always on the advice of my doctor and not by me just determining I was feeling good so it was ok the change the dosages. Listen to the professionals and let them help you find your success.

My Journey With Weight Loss, The Beginning

I didn’t really set out to lose weight. I am a middle aged woman and I had been obese for a long time. But, in the fall of 2018 I had decided to leave my job and go on pre-retirement leave. I was the Vice President of a union and to say my job was stressful is an understatement. It also involved very long hours and a lot of travel. Eating happened whenever time allowed and was usually done by going to a restaurant. International travel often meant eating at strange times and no home cooked meals. So, when I left my job it was an easy change in lifestyle, no eating out and keeping my meals to a fairly rigid schedule. On top of that, my brother had developed serious health issues that put him on a very restrictive diet. To help him maintain this, I agreed to to follow his diet. That resulted in me cutting out sugar and reducing both potassium and sodium intake (you would not believe the food that is high in potassium). That 1st year went really well and I lost 37 pounds. That put me at a weight I hadn’t seen in over 25 years and I was happy. I truly believed it was a much healthier weight for me and it was one that I could maintain. But, I was still obese just not quite as bad as before.

And then the pandemic hit, what a blow that was. For the first 3 months of the pandemic I barely left the house. I also admit there was far more wine consumed than normal and the isolation started to get to me. So, last June I thought I’ve got to get out of this rut. I decided it was time to start taking daily walks and try and get myself up to 10,000 steps a day. I started small, walking for about a mile but after a week I thought, this is too easy. I then started adding more steps each day and within a couple weeks I realized I was doing 12,000 steps a day and I got on the scale. My mouth dropped when I saw the number, I had lost 5 pounds! That is when it hit me, if I kept doing this maybe I could lose another 20 pounds and get my BMI within the overweight category. Wow, I thought, that would be so great an maybe improve my ongoing health issues. And so I doubled down, increasing my walking every few days until somehow I was walking 10 miles a day most days and hitting 25,000 steps. I got myself to the point where it became just part of my life to walk 3 hours a day. In addition I added weights and core strengthening exercises to my daily routine. I have now kept that up since last summer and when I hit the 25 pound weight loss mark I decided if I came this far (62 pounds in total) why can’t I go further, why can’t I get myself into a normal BMI category and be a weight I hadn’t seen in 30 years? I set my new goal of losing another 20 pounds and just kept moving. By Christmas 2020 I had done it, 82 pounds down and my BMI was considered normal. I was so proud of what I had accomplished.

But that is not the end of the story, it is only phase 1 of my journey. As 2021 hit I realized that this pandemic was going to be hanging around for a while longer and maybe I could take advantage of it and get myself to the best place I have been both physically and mentally than I have seen in a very long time. So, I upped the ante, I set a new weight loss goal of an additional 10 pounds and that by the end of the year I would be able to run 10k. I hooked up with a fabulous running coach who keeps my patience in check as she guides me through slowly building up endurance while making sure I stay safe and injury free.

So, here I am today. I am down a total of 88 pounds with only 4 more to go. When I get to that weight I will weigh what I did at 18. 2 weeks ago my doctor removed me from my medications which just blew me away. I do running interval training 3 days a week and have yet to have any injuries. I have a very arthritic knee which has been basically pain free for months as it no longer deals with the stress of my weight. Even better, my chronic back and neck issues have not caused me a single day of pain for the last 6 months as my core has become strong and supportive.

I decided to start this blog to help motivate others to start their own journey to losing weight and getting healthy. I’ll be posting about my learnings and the things I have done to just give me a better life. I know what I did may not work for everyone but maybe something in what I write about will give you what you need to be successful in your own journey.