payday treat = FitBit scales

This week has been a good week. I have now lost 38lbs towards my goal of 105lbs. That's approximately 17 bags of sugar, to put that in context see this pallette of sugar at the supermarket! The health benefits are evident already, I feel like I have so much more energy and walking is so much easier. For one thing when walking up hills it doesn't feel as if my heart is going too quickly, I can get to the top without stopping too, before I always had to stop and allow time to recover my heart rate.

I have been using my Fitbit daily to check my step count (and my sleep too). On days when I am stuck at a laptop home working the step count is very low (about 2000). I try to get up and walk on the spot even, just to get moving and it is some effort to remember to do this. On days when the step count is low I take a walk after dinner until I get to 10,000. Actually when you find some enjoyable walks that you can do regularly you start to know how many steps there are in each route, that's really helpful. 

I have got into the habit (rightly or wrongly) of weighing myself everyday. I find it prepares me more than a weekly weigh in, especially on a week when I make loads of effort but my weight stays the same so I don't get disheartened but it also it keeps me in check for the day ahead too. 

I do love a graph. Especially one that is going down in the right direction! This is how I track my progress on the MyFitness Pal app which also automatically syncs to the FitBit and MapMyFitness apps.

At the weekend I started walking with an added 7lb rucksack 🎒 I recently read that in order to make walking (as part of an exercise routine) most effective there are 3 things to consider; pace, distance and carrying a weight. I packed a rucksack and took to some very up and down hills. Although the rucksack was 7lbs I have already lost the equivalent to x5 rucksacks! It blows my mind because the 7lb load makes walking so much harder, how ever did I manage to carry all that weight? 

Since my last blog entry I've started to weigh all my food and put this into the MyFitnessPal app. I was worried that I had reached a plateau so I dropped my daily calorie goal by 200 calories. Interestingly I heard that going under 1200 calories a day is not recommended for health reasons and its important not to drop your calorie count too low, too soon for weight loss because this then makes it difficult to reduce the daily goal further as weight is lost. I currently aim to have 1398 calories a day, having dropped the 200 calories. 

I eat alot of salad at the moment and porridge oats.

Well this week I am continuing my aim to allow photographs to be taken of me and to like them, if I can. I'm going to do my best to get 10,000 steps a day and I am hoping for positive results on the scales 🤞