I am not hugely overweight but I do want to lose a few kilos. I apologize for all the overseas people who are probably use to talking in pounds, but here in Australia we measure weight in kilos.
I am around 5 foot 3 inches so just a shorty and I currently weight 61.4kg.
I started off a few months ago around 65kg so I have managed to lose almost 4kg and here is how I did it.
Diet and Exercise
First I started doing the Michelle Bridges diet. For those who aren’t in Australia and don’t know who Michelle Bridges is, she is one of the trainers on the Australian Biggest Loser. She has brought out her own diet challenge book which I purchased a few months ago. It is a fantastic book and set out in a way that I like – easy to follow, with day by day menu plans and recipes for every menu in the plan.
I also started exercising and began running. We have a City to Bay run here in September which I have done once before a few years ago and walked the distance (they have walkers and runners). I haven’t done it since as I just haven’t been fit enough so I decided that i want to do it this year and started doing some running to train for it. I’m following a program that I got from a newspaper here which is a 10 week training program that by the end of the 10 weeks you should be able to run 10km. The City to Bay is 12km.
So here’s the problem…..
Michelle Bridges Diet
Firstly with the Michelle Bridges diet. There is nothing wrong with the diet at all, I was quite enjoying it and I have to admit that I felt a lot healthier and even my hair felt like it was in such better condition. However, none of my family enjoyed it. My husband complained about the food (which was all very healthy), both about the food itself and the quantity. My kids didn’t like the food much either so I was getting a lot of wastage from them.
So I started cooking separate meals for them and myself, which didn’t take long before I got sick of doing that. I’m not the best cook in the world and I don’t really enjoy cooking all that much, so I don’t really like cooking one meal let alone having to cook two separate meals. So it didn’t take long before I fell off the diet and went back to eating like I had previously.
Exercise Running Program
I actually started enjoying running but still lacked motivation. Once I was out there doing it I enjoyed it but found it hard to get motivated to get started each time. But I stuck to it quite well for the first couple of weeks. The program I was doing consisted of four or five days worth of exercises each week (varied from week to week). I really struggled to find the time to get out running too which didn’t help.
When I reached week three my kids got sick – just a head cold but enough to keep the little one home from school for a week and the oldest one had one day home from school. The middle one was home too but that’s a whole other story. Anyway, I really struggled to find time to get out and run with my little one at home as I couldn’t just leave him home and go out. The kids do sports too so there wasn’t a lot of time after school hours to get out either. I eventually finished week three training but it took me two weeks instead of one week.
Then I hit week four and I got sick. I probably should have persisted anyway, but I just didn’t feel up to it and I guess the fact that I was slowed down in week three didn’t help with the motivation. So I haven’t done week four and in fact I haven’t been out for a run for almost two weeks now. Now I’m at the stage that I really keep putting it off because I know that two weeks off is enough to set me back and I will really struggle.
The training program gradually got harder each week and so I really think I’ll struggle with the week four training and am actually considering repeating week three.
Dukan Diet
So yesterday when the boys were playing football I was reading the ‘body and soul’ section of the newspaper and they had a story about the Dukan Diet. This is a high protein diet and in fact during the first few days (the attack phase) you eat nothing but protein. So I’m considering doing this diet, but I’m not 100% decided as yet. Although I guess since I have started this website with ‘protein’ weight loss diet in the name I should really go ahead and do a protein diet.
I really did like the Michelle Bridges diet, but just found it difficult with the rest of the family, but I really don’t think this will be any different. I will most likely still need to cook separately for myself.
So I’m going to think about it for a couple of days. Wednesday is the day I do my grocery shopping so I will think about it and if I decide to do it I will get everything I need on Wednesday and perhaps start the diet on Thursday. I need to start running again too, I was planning to go out today but haven’t got around to it as yet.
