The 12 Week Journey begins
Earlier this week I introduced you to Laura who has just started her 12 Week Nutrition and Fitness Challenge with me. I thought it would be a great idea for you to hear from Laura and I asked her to give a short history of the issues and obstacles she has faced with previous attempts to get healthy, lose weight and get fitter.
'Since the age of 17, I can remember being conscious of my weight, my body and everything that I ate. What I struggled with the most is my love for eating on a regular basis. I have always been pretty active but there have been times when I have been lazy and have not made the effort to include eating healthily and exercising on regular basis into my life. Even as a PE teacher, I have always been unsure of the best types of food to eat and the correct form of exercise to suit my individual needs. I have also attended several gyms but found they never wrote a suitable programme for me.
When I commit to exercise, I always find myself doing the same types of exercise for approximately one month and then I get bored and I stop going. I find it difficult to think of different ways to exercise apart from running or using the cardio machines in the gym and I tend to do the same things over and over again and I get bored of the same mundane routine.
Over the years I have tried a variety of different diets including: the Atkins diet and also eating less than 1000 calories a day; but these types of diets have been extremely hard for me to sustain and I often only last for approximately one month before I got bored. I would resort to binge eating and I would regularly get fast-food or a takeaway on the way home from work. Even at the times when I have lost weight, it has not been through healthy eating or an exercise regime. I feel that a nutrition plan that involves me eating on a regular basis is extremely important for me as I will be able to continue with it for a long period of time.
Since arriving in Switzerland, I have found it difficult to control my diet for several reasons: I didn’t know where to purchase the correct types of food and due to laziness and also convenience, I ate out and I also began to pick up snack foods on my way home from work which has resulted in me putting on 1 ½ stone. The food that I have been eating has made me feel bloated, tired and sluggish and I feel it is hard to get out of a routine and break the habit when you do feel like that. The foods that I tend to resort to include pizza, McDonald’s, Burger King, baguettes, cheese, chocolate. I have also started drinking beer, which has made a significant difference to my body. When you look at my body, you will be able to see that I have fat on top of my muscle. The fat doesn’t go onto one area, it spreads across the whole of my body.
I want this nutrition and exercise plan to become a lifestyle, not just for twelve weeks. I am embarrassed about how I look physically and how I feel, but I know that making these positive changes will make a massive difference to my lifestyle which is exactly one of the reasons why I wanted to move to Switzerland. It is important to make changes to your life when you are not happy in order to improve. It would be more embarrassing to look and feel like this and not to do anything about it.
The week before I started this challenge, I indulged in a variety of extremely fattening and unhealthy foods: Chinese, Burger King, pizza and chips; and I felt horrendous at the end of the week and I was so excited about starting to eat a nutritional diet. Bex and I are going to work together over the next twelve weeks to show you that the correct type of diet combined with efficient exercise and some simple lifestyle changes can make massive differences to your body; how you feel and the best part of it is- that it can be maintained.
I feel with the fantastic motivation from Bex (and you), I will be able to do this so much easier than if I was doing it on my own. I am also excited about benefiting from Bex's vast amount of knowledge and experience on nutrition and training.
I hope you enjoy my weekly updates on my progress and how I feel and I look forward to sharing the improvements over the next twelve weeks.
