New Year, New Me?

At this time of year you always see this phrase floating around, 'New year, new me!'. We all make new years resolutions or goals that we want to achieve, but how many of us actually stick with them?

I know myself that every year I make the same goal, 'lose weight' and every year I make some form of an effort but then always seem to end up back on square one. Last year was probably my best effort yet and I managed to lose almost a whole stone, but then after having some time off of work, that all piled back on... but you know what? This year, is my year.

I've decided that enough is enough, no more excuses, I need to give myself a kick up the bum otherwise I am never going to get to where I want to be! With that in mind I am making some changes to my lifestyle, that are honestly going to be quite drastic...

Dieting

Yes, the dreaded word... I've thrown the word 'Diet' around a lot in my life, and I have about the same amount of willpower as a goldfish has in long term memory, nil. This time I'm PAYING for my diet, and if this doesn't make me want to put effort in then I don't know what will. I have decided once and for all to go on the Weight Watchers plan, after a long time umming and erring about it. My mum had a fair amount of success on the weight watchers diet after my brother was born losing roughly 5/6 stone, and I'm hoping I can replicate some of that success. 

According to my height my healthy body weight should be 10-10 1/2 stone, but my goal is to get to 11 1/2 stone, as that is what I weighed before I went to uni, and honestly I was really happy with my body back then. This mean's I've got almost 4 stone to lose... Which is a HUGE amount, but I really feel ready to do this. I've set myself the goal of losing 2 stone by Tim's Birthday which is August, and I could reach that target by losing a mere 1 Ib a week, which I feel is doable! The best thing about the plan I am doing with Weight watchers is I barely have to count anything. I am doing something called the Healthy and Filling plan, whereby I have a list of foods which I can eat as much of as I like (within reason), and I only have to count foods that don't appear on the list. A lot of the foods are fruit and vegetables, eggs and potatoes, meaning I can make a healthy diet based mainly on just those!

I will be writing weekly weigh in posts as well, so that I have no where to hide...

Exercise

Another word I dread hearing... Last year was probably my best year for exercising, I had a gym membership, went to Aquarobics classes, and even did the 5k Race For Life in my home town! This year I want to build on that even more. Since the gym we were signed up to went bust, Tim and I had kind of given up on the whole idea of exercise, but all that is about to change as we have just bought an Exercise bike! Using the Christmas money we got from Tim's parents, we decided to invest it into something sensible and bought ourselves a cheap exercise bike. After testing it out and seeing that it seems to work just fine for working up a sweat, we think we've made a good choice. It also means we have no excuses to not get a short workout in...

On top of that to help kick-start my new life of fitness I am taking part in a Blogilates challenge this month. I have followed Blogilates on Youtube for a long time now, but haven't actually been trying out her workouts. I saw she was offering a Beginners Fitness Calender for January for free, and I thought it would be the perfect way to start my year... Each day has up to three workouts which you can simply search for and Youtube and then follow, and then you can tick them off as you go! I've printed my calender off and have placed it by the light switch in our bedroom, so that not only is it easy for me to see, but Tim can also monitor how I am getting on with it. If you'd like to check out the Blogilates Beginner's calender yourself then please check out her blog.

Cutting out the Rubbish

As well as going on a diet, I have made the decision to cut a few things out of my life almost altogether, in the hopes that it will not only help me lose weight, but will also help me feel healthier. So I will be giving up fizzy drinks almost entirely, only allowing myself one a month if that. Not only am I giving up fizzy drinks, but I am also giving up Alcohol! I feel I drink far too much alcohol currently, and to be honest I don't really like the kind of person that I am when I am drunk, so I am limiting myself to drinking only on special occasions, and even then only one or two drinks is acceptable.

I'm hoping that my new lifestyle will be as successful as I am dying for it to be, but I guess only time will tell as to whether I am able to stick to it...