My 2018 journey

Just before Christmas last year I signed up with a coach to guide me on my health and wellness journey. I could have chosen a three month program, or a six month program, but I decided to go all in and I signed up for12 months! I am so glad I did!

The program was a mixture of fortnightly phone calls with my coach and daily emails from Precision Nutrition’s pro coach system. Each fortnight I was given a new ‘habit’ to follow. The food habits were:

• Eat to 80% – harder than you think
• Eat mindfully and slowly – even harder. I used an app to start with.
• Eat mostly whole foods
• Drink only calorie free beverages – also a tough one, especially with beautiful hot chocolate available
• Eat five servings of colourful vegetables
• Eat lean protein at each meal
• Make smart carb choices
• Eat healthy fats
• Plan and prep your meals

Pretty basic stuff eh?

But the programme wasn’t just about what you put into your body, it also covered:

• Setting good sleep habits
• Working out a good recovery habit
• Try to fit in 20 minutes of something that de-stressed you each day
• And some others…

The eat to 80% full and slowly and mindfully habits stayed each week and you added and subtracted the others. Most of them I have continued with, just not to the same level as when I was in that fortnight. I didn’t always succeed with the habits, but I found that quite a few of them I was doing anyway.

 The whole premise wasn’t to achieve 100% every day, but to do a little better each day, say 1%.

I went into the program with the same mindset that I did every other weight loss program that I have tried over the years. And believe me there have been so many, anything that was a fad at the time. Some of those worked, but most of them I put the weight back on. What happened this time is I learnt to have a healthier attitude to looking after me. Also, that it doesn’t matter that I don’t have a model’s physique, that I have cellulite and quite a few of my bits wobble, a LOT! In fact, I gained more than I lost – what I mean is a healthier attitude. The scales don’t really matter now. I didn’t lose a lot ofweight, but then I didn’t gain weight either. To me that is a success.

One of the things you do at the beginning is take some photos, in your underwear – not pretty, but they give you a benchmark. You also take your measurements.  And recently one of my habits was to prepare for a photo shoot, to celebrate what I had achieved. I knew that I wasn’t going to do those in my underwear, especially as I asked a good friend to take them for me.

What I wanted to celebrate with the photos was how much I had gained through the year. That was my attitude to myself and some gains at the gym. I hope you like the results as much as I do. And if you would like the photographer’s details give me a shout. Here is a link to all the other photos – https://spark.adobe.com/page/FLg4P9WH744Qn/?fbclid=IwAR1HCdNtWz_e9mjMDSWAzxE2B-du29nMdCl2x2Op3lqfBsirRcePo7zolxs 

Finally I would like to say a big thank you to my coach, you know who you are. We had some difficult conversations, some enlightening conversations and you helped me through some pretty shitty times this year.

And, if you too would like a healthier better attitude to yourself and food and lose some weight, get in contact. I won’t be using the pro coach system, but I have learnt some good stuff, and gained so much more.