Step 3 – Increasing Your Activity and Set Goals to Lose Weight

After writing Part 2, Eating Healthy without Compromising Choice, I have to clear some points up. Changing my diet was the hardest f**king thing I’ve ever had to do and it was the thing that gave me no end of troubles and stress. From going out with friends for meals or even eating Sunday dinner with the family, you have to make arrangements. It doesn’t look great leaving a massive pile of carbs on the plate, or requesting more veg or protein. It’s difficult to eat out especially if you drive so you have to plan everything. But through the pain, it gives you the initial weight loss and increase in metabolism to actually make a start with increasing your activity levels. Looking back through my pedometer stats, my average walking distance per day pre lifestyle change was under half a mile in the working week. That’s simply not good enough. My back was killing me which I wrote here: https://www.corporatedad.co.uk/health/dealing-with-back-pain-for-the-charity-trek/ and I had extreme knee and joint pain. Being so over weight meant that activity really really hurt! It restricted everything. So now the weight was coming off, I felt the need to start walking. It started as a mile round trip to get my new veg based lunches every day and well it ended up me walking across the country on a Coast to Coast hike through 120+ miles over a 6 day period raising over £7k for charity. One of the key factors in me pushing myself into hiking was the ability to track and measure my activity, compete against other through various apps and also it being low impact and a social activity. I didn’t intend on doing the coast to coast but as we started walking, I needed a goal to reach and also I wanted something inspirational for myself and my family to be proud of. Catch up on this here: https://www.corporatedad.co.uk/charity/coast-to-coast- Throughout the 6 months walking, doing practise hikes and building myself up to the coast to coast I had a dramatic weight loss at the start. I lost 18kg in about 3 months and then throughout the next 3 my weight went up and down. Now I see this be my body getting used to the training and converting all that fat into muscle. My calves were like lead and all of my body lost about two inches from everywhere. Non of my clothes fit anymore and I was the same size as I was in my mid twenties. I had amazing compliments from everyone I knew and that pushed me even more to get training. Throughout the whole time I probably went to the gym twice while I was working away in a swanky gym. It lasted about 30 minutes but it was enough. As I continued hiking, I carried more and more weight on my back including my daughter and provisions. This put me at about 16kg and I can tell you know it was bloody heavy. But through conditioning, my legs took the weight and I was able to maintain form without too many issues. Exercise doesn’t have to be boring have a look at some of these amazing locations and tell me you wouldn’t want to get out into the great outdoors. I have a very competitive mindset and can focus really well when I have something to aim for. If it wasn’t for the fact that the coast to coast was always in my mind, I don’t think I would have achieved what I did and in such a quick time. The problems that I’m facing now are due to the completion of the epic adventure. There was a period of time after where we all felt really blue. They say you should always have something to look up to and we had just done the impossible. I’m now in a very weird position where I’m not really looking forward to any particular events and my weight has slowly gone up. I’m not one for the gym so I really need the sun out and get walking with the family. I think if I combine camping with the family, we’ll be fine. Hopefully you can see that you can increase activity and weightloss by literally adding a little walk every day. I literally measured my weight every two days and it was actually quite frustrating. Just remember it’s not a race, it’s small changes that change your body into a fat burning machine. There’s going to be ups, especially if you’re using muscles you’ve never used or training. Muscle is far more dense than fat and will push the weight up. Keep an eye on our body fat measurements or if you fancy, get yourself a fancy weighing scales.  Invest in your health. Hope that helps, any questions please don’t hesitate to comment and I’ll help where I can.]]>