My journey to a healthy life. This is my progress:

TinaZ2018 wrote: »

Hello, everyone! This is my progress after 3 months of healthy eating and over 80h of home workouts. 3.7 kg of them were lost in the last 6 weeks since I've discovered MFP and controlled my daily eating in order to have a calorie deficit. The most significant changes are: weight - 6.3kg (@August 6th - I took the pix a few days before), waist and belly -7cm, hips and butt -5 cm, tighs -6 cm and I'm toned - I've never been. 2 more kg to go and half of my goal will be done! Beside loosing 8 kg, the other half is getting my self as toned as possible until June 2019 (this was the due date for both goals). My goal is not to follow a diet but to have a healthy and active life style.

I’ll tell you my story (sorry for the long post)… I'm still at the beginning (it's been only 3 months).
I could never really understand how I should feel good after exercising, let alone energized (at the beginning, I could go straight to the morgue after a 20 minutes session of home exercising). I read about the chemical reactions but that’s not very helpful. Anyways. Now, after 2 months, I get it. I lost weight, I'm more toned, I've gained strength, I look better, feel better and confident but the first month was pure hell.

All my life I made an art of being sedentary - brought it to perfection. And I hate sports. Above this, I LOVE good food, all my family cooks great (including me, so moving out didn't help) and let's say that my food portions were over sized in comparison with how I should have eat. Thankfully, I realized a bit late that my cooking skills could be used to cook very healthy and tasty dishes. I’m not lazy at all but when it comes to sports, I can’t say the same… I’ was 32 yo, 1.68 cm and weighted 67.8 kg. And I always disliked sports. My problem was that I was so sedentary that my ankles started to hurt for months and I also had some terrible back pains (sitting 10h a day at work..). The worst thing? I got saggy... saggy butt, saggy arms and big, ugly, belly. I felt so bad about how I looked, that I started to avoid seeing myself in the mirror. I just decided that this is not okay, is not normal and is not who I want to be. I can be better. I WILL be better.

It was very hard at the beginning. I do the exercises at 6:15PM (after work) so I was already pretty tired. But even when I felt like crying, I did my session. I had my workout schedule and stuck to it.

I know myself and how I find excuses… so that’s why I decided to do my exercises at home. This way, I can’t say that I don’t have time to go to the gym, or that I won’t go to a run because it’s raining, or that it’s too snowy to get to the gym. The season won’t matter.

To get an idea of the state I was in, I’ll tell you that for me, one push-up meant laying on my belly and only pushing myself up with the arms (cobra push-up). It was impossible to do at least a knee push-up - now I can do 15 correct ones. After 50 squats I felt exhausted - now I can do 250 and breathe almost normally. And so on. My muscles were so atrophied that I had cramps even when I was doing the moves without weights. I was a mess with no strength at all. I gradually increased the time of the sessions, the difficulty of the exercises and the weights. The sessions got from 20 minutes to 90. Meanwhile I started to think about these sessions like something that I must do, routine (like eating or a taking a shower) and didn’t perceive them as awful anymore. It might not seem much to other people, but in the last 3 months I exercised more than in the last 20 years so for me… that’s amazing.
My point is… it doesn’t matter how bad is the state you are in NOW. It matters to do something about it and make a habit of it. A good habit. No matter how slow you go, you are still lapping everybody in the couch. Also, don’t focus on losing weight. If you clean up your diet and exercise regularly, your weight will take care of itself.

My blood tests are almost perfect (according to my doctor I still have to get that cholesterol a bit lower but for me 212 is not high...), my self-confidence is back, I feel lighter, more sexy, I'm more confident, I have a general good state of mind and I can wear size Small clothes again. I love my life now. This change was long due.