Combined Weeks 18-20 Summaries Operation Get Fit No Excuses

Welcome back! I haven’t posted a weekly Summary in a few weeks, so I’m using this one to do a combination of Weeks 18 through 20 (which is this week and technically ends on Thursday).

I’ve been concentrating on getting to a certain goal weight by my 45th birthday. I turned 45 yesterday and I feel better now than I have in many years. Getting older doesn’t mean we have to slow down and take a side road in life. It just means we survived another year and have another chance to see more and thrive as much as we can in life. Changing my diet and adding exercise has hd a huge impact on my health and my looks both. This week is also not only my birthday, but just happened to coincide with my monthly weigh in and measurements check.

I wanted to be 75.9 kilos or less for my 45th birthday. I think it had something to do with the number 5 and it just sounded good! Hahahaha! I’m happy to report that I made it! I weighed yesterday morning and was at 75.8 kilos (167 pounds). As of now, I’m down 15.2 kilos or 33 pounds! I’m staying on a steady course of weight loss and it’s working.

Now, I have to insert a word of caution here. While making and achieving weight loss goals are good, they can also be a catalyst to becoming obsessed with reaching that number. I found myself thinking unhealthy thoughts in an effort to try to reach my goal of 75.9 kilos. I thought about eating less, taking diuretics, and trying to exercise more than my body could handle. I didn’t do any of these and I still achieved my goal with sticking to my diet and exercise regimen. If I had gone down that unhealthy path, I could have seriously hurt myself. Please be careful and mindful of negative thoughts in your own weight loss journey.

I have stuck with my semi-vegetarian diet while only cheating a couple of times over the past 3 weeks. I enjoyed a small pasta dish one week and I had fried chicken and a lemon muffin on my birthday. It was totally worth it! While I’m not saying to cheat on your diet, there will be times when you can bend the rules every once in a while without having a negative affect.

Since I’ve been eating much better for almost 6 months now, my body let me know it wasn’t happy with me after eating the fried food. I didn’t go on a walk on my birthday but did a 5.92 kms (3.68 miles) power walk this morning and I felt nauseous before going. After I got back, I was ok. But, that’s my body telling me it didn’t like my fried cheat meal. I won’t be doing that again!

Since I started my journey in January to a healthier body and lifestyle, I’ve had ups and downs. I’ve also learned through, research, trial and error what my body likes and doesn’t, food and exercise wise. Since I’ve changed my diet, I also started taking supplements to help replace vitamins and minerals that I don’t get enough of on a daily basis. Here’s a picture of what I take:

Now, here’s the results of my measurements from 25 May 2018:

Hips – 112.5 cm
Waist – 85.2 cm
Bicep – 34.5 cm
Thigh – 61.6 cm

Here’s my measurements from 26 April 2018:

Weight – 78.7 kg
Hips – 114.5
Waist – 86.5 cm
Bicep – 35.0 cm
Thigh – 62.2 cm

While I have seen improvement from April, it is small. But, any improvement is a great accomplishment! Plus, I continue to feel better each week. As I tell you all the time and continue to remind myself, it’s not all about the numbers! It’s how you feel and how you are health wise!

Thank you all for your continued encouragement, kind messages, and for following my blogs. We’ll see you next week!

Week 17 Summary Operation Get Fit No Excuses

Week 17’s Summary of Operation Get Fit No Excuses is finally here! After so many weeks of writing weekly posts, it gets hard to think of different topics that won’t just be a repeat of things I’ve already written about in previous weeks. This week has been pretty calm and uneventful as far as my exercise and eating habits are concerned. I did a 30 minutes workout every day or more. I alternated outside walking with indoor toning/cardio at-home workouts. I’ve been thinking of possibly adding some sort of strength training, but haven’t decided yet how or when. I will definitely share it with you when I do add this to my exercise regimen.

Since I started my journey, I’ve lost over 30 pounds and haven’t been this size in longer than I can honestly remember. Since I live in Italy, I had no idea what American size I now wear in pants. I got curious and wanted to try to convert my Italian size to American. I thought that all I had to do was do a little research on Google and that would be the end of my search. Boy, was I wrong!

I ended up looking at over 25 different sites with 25 different answers as to what an Italian woman’s size 48 would be in an American woman’s size! My research said the conversion was a 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, and 20! All of these numbers were said to convert from just a size 48 in Italy. Obviously, since I am American, I knew right away that over half of those numbers were wrong! I had been a size 16, 18, and 20 before in past, so I knew those were wrong right up front. To make a long, confusing story, short, I’m a 10/12 in the average American woman’s size now.

But, that’s really not the point I’m trying to make. I wasted so much time and effort researching this because my brain became obsessed with needing to know what number I was. I just could not make myself stop agonizing about it. It’s like getting caught up with what  the number on a scale says. People that weigh themselves every day. It’s a trap!

Western society has programmed young females through diet and fashion magazines, air brushed photos, and online articles about what the ideal size of a woman should be. We all know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. We also know that weight and body types, especially those that carry around extra weight, are not the only factor in a persons health. They are definitely not a factor in a person’s character. We have been taught that it’s not acceptable to be over a certain dress size or a certain number on a scale. We should always go on the latest diet or try the newest pill to lose the weight. We are taught, consciously and subconsciously, from birth, that a number is more important than how we feel. Even if we are comfortable and healthy, if we don’t conform to a certain size or a certain number, there’s something wrong with us. DO NOT LET THE NUMBERS WIN!

I have fallen into this trap more often than I can tell you. After we purchased a new scale so that we can keep up with how much weight we’re losing , I became obsessed with making sure that my number on the scale stayed the same or went lower. Now, we all know that weight fluctuate during the day, depending on what you eat, the weather outside, how much you drink, your body type, and many other factors. You can actually fluctuate up to two or 3 pounds in one day. I caught myself weighing in two or three times a day on that scale in an effort to see how my numbers were going. Where are they going up? Where they going down? Or were they the same?

I had to physically stop myself and mentally slap myself, to stop obsessing over a number. I look in the mirror every day and see my progress. I know what I am eating and how many calories approximately a day I eat. I know how much exercise, time, and effort I’m putting in to losing weight and getting healthier.

When I started my operation get fit no excuses, my goal was to live a healthier lifestyle, not to conform to a certain number size in clothing or weight. I have never really cared what the scale or my size of clothes said in the past. Why should I care now? What should matter is how I feel about myself. What should matter is how my body feels now. Those are the things that matter. My health and the improvement in my health are what matter. There is no number on this earth that can tell me if I feel good or if I don’t. Only I and my body can tell me what I’m feeling, how I’m feeling, and if I’m doing the right thing to stay healthy and happy for myself and my body.

I know I have said this in past posts, but do not let the numbers rule you! Be your own person. Don’t be a number. You are so much more than any number on the scale, any size in a pair of pants, or any fake, perfect sized person in a magazine. If you start obsessing about the numbers on your scale, your measurements, or even the size clothing you’re wearing now, stop!

If you think about it, in the past few years, there’ve been many articles about new regulations for models in the fashion industry. I’m not sure who dictates how tall or how skinny the perfect female’s body type is. Is it the editors? Is it the fashion designers? Is it the talent scouts that are looking for the actual models? I have no idea. But what I do know is that their standards over the past 20 to 30 years have become extremely ridiculous and impossible. Less than .5% of people around the world could conform to a 6 foot tall, 110 pounds, size 00 female. And honestly, how many really want to be like that? Yes, sometimes it looks good on a photograph. But most times, what you don’t think about when you’re looking at that glossy, retouched picture, is that the person in that picture is not happy. The person in that picture is starving themselves just so they can look like that. The person in that picture is not eating healthy or even close healthy.

Now that I have gotten my point across, leave the scale alone. Leave the measuring tape alone. Don’t care what size pants you’re wearing. It’s one thing to be proud of the weight you’ve lost, or the hard work you’ve put in to getting to that goal. But it’s another thing to be gum so absurd is that it takes over your life. It makes you unhappy if and when your weight fluctuates. Only use the scale once a week. I suggest taking your measurements only once a month. That way, if you continue on with a healthy eating and exercise program, you’ll see much bigger and better results in four weeks then you will every single day. Seeing that type of progress is a huge motivation and will keep you going the next four weeks.

Well, that’s all I have for this week’s summary. I hope you continue to follow me on my own journey. If you want me to follow you, or if you just want to share your own story with me, please contact me. I love to hear stories and progress from my readers. It helps motivate me but also makes me happy that sharing things from my own life, experiences that I have had, may help inspire you guys to get over whatever hump you are in that might be similar to a situation that I’ve been through. See you next week!                  

Week 16 Operation Get Fit No Excuses Summary

I can’t believe week 16 has finally come and gone! It seems like just yesterday I started my journey to get fit and get healthier. Thinking about all the things that I’ve been through and all the changes that I’ve made in the past four months, 16 weeks, I amaze myself that I have continued on this road. There have been challenges along the way. It definitely has not been an easy path to follow.

This past week I’ve had mental and emotional challenges that I didn’t expect to pop up. I should’ve expected it because everybody goes through it, but I didn’t think that it would happen to me. Padrone‘s birthday was 30 April, and it was a cheat day for both of us. I had a tiny tiramisu and some pasta. I was all happy about it. The next day, I got out and did about a 6 km fast walk to help work off what I had eaten the night before. A few days after that, I woke up with absolutely no motivation whatsoever. It was extremely weird for me. I didn’t say anything to Padrone at first and kept it to myself. I still got out every day and did some form of exercise, either a walk with Padrone,  a faster walk by myself, or some type of indoor exercise. But I wasn’t putting 100% effort into it. I was only half way pushing myself when normally I push myself to go further, go faster, and do a little bit better than I had the day or week before.

It honestly was a little bit of a struggle for me to make myself get up and exercise. Every day for the past 15 weeks, before I’ve enjoyed it and felt guilty when I did not actually get out and do something. But for some reason, my mental motivation, mojo if you will,  just left. I was feeling down and a little depressed. I felt like everything around me was just pressing in on me and that I didn’t know what to do or how to get out from feeling this way.

After a few days, I finally came to a point where it is all spilled out and I told Padrone how I was feeling mentally and emotionally. At first, I didn’t feel any better. I thought I was going a little crazy. I wondered if I was developing some form of depression because of hormones, epilepsy, or some other reason. But then, after finally talking about my feelings openly, I stayed home and I slept for about six or seven hours. I had not been sleeping very well for the past two days. I woke up and I feel like me again.

I don’t know if it was talking to Padrone about how bad I was feeling, actually sleeping really well for the first time in a few days, or just some chemical change my brain, that actually made me feel better, but whatever it is, I feel like I’m back on track now. That’s one reason why I haven’t posted a weekly summary, because I honestly didn’t feel like it and I could not.

When you are going through a down time, a funk, a small depression, or what ever other name you want to give it, you have to realize that it will change over time. Things will look better and will get better, if you just keep going. For me it’s easier to say that than do it, because I’ve been through it and I am not clinically depressed. And for me, it only lasted about four days.

If you feel bad or down longer than that, definitely seek professional help! Don’t be afraid to tell your partner, your family, your friends, someone how you are feeling, because talking about it and getting it off your chest and not carrying that entire burden or weight on your shoulders, will help you. If you’re unable to talk to someone face to face, find somebody online that you trust and say hey can I talk to you for minute? And then explain how you’re feeling. Who knows? They might have an answer that you never thought of to help bring you out of your depression.

Well now that you understand what I’ve been going through, you know you’re not alone. Many of you probably think that I only post the good things that happened to me in life, I post a lot of the bad things too. I write this blog as a way to help myself stay motivated, in an effort to help others that might be going through the same things that I have been, and hopefully, it’s an inspiration to other people to get healthier on their own and take their life back. We are all getting older and we all need to take the necessary steps to live longer, live healthier, and be the best that we can be mentally, physically and emotionally for ourselves, our family, and our friends. I know in 20 years when I’m 65, I want to be the most fabulous, physically abled, mentally abled person I can be and not be a burden on anyone.

I’ve actually found that my epilepsy symptoms improved with the change in my diet along with exercising. Obviously, it’s not a complete cure. But since the type of epilepsy I have is resistant to all current medications, I’ll take any improvement at this point. As I’ve gotten older, my seizures and the other things that happened to me because the epilepsy, have gotten worse. Of course, environment and attitude play a significant role in how your body reacts when you have epilepsy, but exercise and diet also have a role as well.

Other health improvements that I’ve seen for me in the past four months, 16 weeks, have been less reflux, less heartburn, and virtually no nausea. Before, since I had my gall bladder removed over 10 years ago, I had many symptoms of GERDS. But now that I have changed to an all plant-based diet, combined with my exercising, I’m much better. If I’m feeling this many improvements in just four months, I can’t wait to see how good I’m feeling after another four months.

Although I don’t have a specific weight goal in mind, I’m just going to continue on the path that I’m on with my exercising and eating, and see where it goes. I’m very happy so far with the results and I feel much more confident in myself and how I dress, but also on the inside. Sticking with the diet and a new way of life, because let’s be honest, it is a way of life, not a diet, and continuing on is one of the hardest things anyone can do, especially when you were so used to eating all kinds of junk food, fast food, and generally things that are not good for you.

So my goal for this week and the continuing weeks, is just to continue on improving my health, pushing myself for exercise, and maybe changing it up a little by adding some small weights for strength training. I’m not exactly sure where I’ll go from here but I’m continuing on. I know that I’m going to have other times where motivation is lacking or I just don’t feel like doing anything. But I’m going to continue because I know and experienced the results, that this is the best path for me.

Thank you so much for following me and staying with me all this time. If you have any questions, or just want to comment on something, please make a comment on the bottom. Will be back next week for week 17 summary.

If you have any exercise tips, I would love to hear from you. Thanks for reading!