Anniebox

Long time no post! (See I told you in the beginning I could NOT commit to doing this daily) So the last week, I've been ill as mentioned above. Not going to bother posting fitbit stats as they were pretty awful all week. I didn't do any of my bodyweight workouts, I was knackered from cycling to work every day with a cold, which I had no choice but to do as my car died on me again!!! Most days I overate on calories compared to what my fitbit said I was burning so I had lots of red bars, but I still lost 2 pounds on my Saturday weight in so not too bad. Today: Drive to work as car fixed and I needed to run an errand into town on my lunch break which isn't possible by bike. Got in 10k steps through the day and did the beginners body weigh for 3 sets, took 20 minutes this time, slightly less then last time, woo hoo. Hopefully I don't hurt as much tomorrow as I did the first time. I'm physically tired now and that's all I can be bothered to report right now so I'm going to treat myself to some Overwatch before bed.

This answer is perfection, seriously! Bodyweight workouts work for eveyone who has a body. It doesn't matter what Gender you are, if you have a body you can do bodyweight exercises and you will benefit from doing so. I'm not super fit, I'm still massively overweight and a long way from my goals, but if I can see a benefit from bodyweight workouts, anyone can! My legs no longer get sore when climbing stairs, nor do I get out of breath doing so. I can carry heavier/more bags of groceries when shopping, I can move most of the furniture in my house safely without having to get my partner to do it all for me, I can lift my bike up and put it on the wall bike mounts at work and I can actually hold my cat in my arms for a cuddle now for more than 10 seconds before he gets to heavy. As I said, I'm still overweight so you can't see the physical benefit of my bodyweight workouts yet, but I most certainly feel much better for it.

Bulk fitbit stats, boom! So the last few days have been varied, didn't end up doing the beginners body weight on the Thursday as I was just too sore from cycling, other than that though, Thursday was a good day and still all green which makes me happy. Friday: All green on fitbit stats = yay. Cycled to and from work, walked at lunch. In the evening I did do the beginners body weight circuit. I did 3 sets in total which took me just over 21 minutes. I had to do knee push ups for first 2 sets and wall push ups for final set. Everything else I did unmodified, whoop. Worked up much more of a sweat then I thought I would, hoo boy! Felt good to do it again though, I enjoyed it. Saturday: Sore, so sore and so slow, like, omg. The beginners body weight wrecked me! We went shopping and I was ok with the walking, but every slope, hill and flight of stairs was like torture!!! I've walked and cycled for a couple months now but hadn't done any body weight stuff since before my brother went into hospital in spring. My muscles had really got weak, I'd say not far off being back to square one. That is a little disheartening to realise you've gone so far back without even realising but at the same time it's encouraging because now I really want to get my shit back together and get stronger again!!!! Sunday: Rest day, lazy day, didn't do a lot of anything day. I like these days, I don't want too many of them as it's prohibitive to progress, but I do look forward to my rest days. Monday so far: Fitbit stats terrible, not even gonna bother with the effort of uploading a pic. Less than 6k steps,massively under active minutes, massively over calories, just bad. I have woken up with the most hellish cold (I suffer bad as I have a weak immune system) so I didn't cycle to work today as I felt so rough, barely walked at lunch time either, just so tired, so drained. Not gonna be too hard on myself though, I'm taking every possible cold and flu med and I hope I feel a bit less like death tomorrow.

Thanks for all the input guys, I did end up getting some new scales. As luck would have it, Lidl had some come in as a special buy this Sunday just gone, only £9.99 so not a lot of outlay if I don’t find it beneficial and they have a great returns policy so I figured I didn’t have much to lose by trying. So far the weight figures are in line with my previous standard scales and the body fat % matched up with realistically with a previous reading I had done elsewhere at the beginning of February. The water % seems realistic as well considering I consume 2.5-3 litres of water a day so I’m pleased with the purchase so far. I will bear in mind the comments about it not being strictly accurate but it will be nice to have different figures to monitor as well as just weight, I think it will help me be more realistic with my expectations and emotions going forward. I may consider calipers too, although I did have a plastic set before which snapped (on first use, sooo embarrassing)which is why I was looking at the scales instead haha, maybe I’ll see if I can find a metal set!!!

Soooo, yesterday was good, here's my fitbit stats I did cycle to work, went for walk at lunch time, ate good all day and even visited my mum and brother in the evening, which I walked to and from their house also (about 11 minutes each way). Yesterday I had zoodles for dinner which was ok'ish, a bit weird but I wanna try them again to give them a fair chance as I wasn't in the best of moods for trying something new. I think it's something I can get used to without too much trouble though. Trying this is a huge deal for me because I've severely food phobic so I'm really proud to say I tried something new! Today has gone well so far, cycled and walked, food not quite so good as yesterday (Reduced price Mars Ice Cream at lunch was too hard to pass up) but still not terrible overall, I've had worse days. My new exercise mat showed up today which I'm excited about as it will mean I can start working out at home again. I want to get back into the routine I had before my brother nearly died and my whole world was thrown upside down! I was hoping to start the beginners bodyweight stuff today but might not now because 3 days in a row I have both cycled to and from work in a fairly strong head wind, my legs are actually a fair bit sore already now so I might do some yoga, or just non leg based exercises instead. To close off this post for the day, I'm sharing this pic I took on my way home from work. It's being outside and seeing beautiful things like this which just makes me keep falling in love with cycling to and from work.

I figured that it was about time I set myself up a battle log, so here I am. I probably won’t update it daily but I do feel like I would benefit from having a place to easily log my thoughts, feelings and progress. A bit about me: · Female · 29 years old · 230 pounds Current Goals: · Lose a lot of weight (currently aiming for Onederland, then will reassess) · Increase physical fitness · Start doing bodyweight/hiit circuits at home · Progress to ‘proper’ push ups Action plan: So the main plan is to lose weight and get fit, I don’t want to over complicate things at this point because I’m bad at Maths so I am going by the age old principle of ‘East less, move more.’ For my diet, I have cut out 90% of processed foods, cut out fizzy pop completely, cut out added sugar (except the spoonful in my Weetabix, I really can’t eat it without it!) and just generally making better choices where possible (for example, low fat homemade oven chips instead of processed fried chips.) I log everything I eat on My Fitness Pal (even the mil in my cereal!) and currently my fitbit has me aiming for a 1000 calorie deficit. For increasing fitness, I have started cycling to work which is doing wonders for me both physically and mentally. This equals 6.4 miles a day which takes me between 18-20 minutes each way, I aim to do it at least 3 days a week but I actually average 4/5 days a week currently. I’m not a fair-weather cyclist either, I have waterproofs, high viz, and lights. I plan to keep cycling even if it’s cold, wet and dark (which living in the UK, it will be a lot as Autumn/Winter progresses). I also go for a nice brisk walk every lunch break and usually walk about 45-50 minutes of the hour. I have a Fitbit as mentioned above, which I am absolutely obsessed with! I currently have my goals set at 8k steps a day with 60 active minutes, I actually average over 10k steps each day. I also want to start doing some bodyweight/hiit circuits at home again, I used to do them and loved it but then real life hit me in the face with a sledge hammer and I’m only recently recovering from that. I’m waiting for my new exercise mat to arrive, then I’m super keen to make that part of my routine again. I’m currently planning to do bodyweight/hiit 2-3 times a week, allowing for rest days in-between so that my body doesn’t get so worn out that I can’t commute on my bike! Finally, the elusive ‘proper’ push up. As you can probably guess, when I say ‘proper’ push up, what I mean is doing a push up on my toes. Not on my knees and not against a wall! I want to do a push up with both my hands and feet on the floor. I have never been able to do this so although simple, this is major goal territory for me!!!! I’m not 100% sure how I can make this happen but I’m guessing body weight workouts making me stronger and losing weight making me lighter should both play their part. So there you have it. That is me, my plans and what I intend to do to make it happen. I have an underactive thyroid so it’s gonna be a slow journey but I’m determined to make it happen! I’ll probably pop in here every couple days or so, share what I’ve been up to, maybe post some Fitbit screenshots and what have you. Just want to close out by saying: Thank you for visiting my box fort, any advise, help or even just encouragement is always welcome!

Draw a line under it, move on, continue as normal. A couple weeks ago I made the mistake of sitting down to watch The Great British Bake Off with a fresh cup of tea and a 'couple' chocolate digestives. I genuinely counted the calories of 4 biscuits but I ended up dunking them in my tea, it was sooo good and I reached for the second biscuit, and the third. Before I knew it, there was only about 5 biscuits left!!!! I comically dubbed it as 'biscuit Armageddon' but I didn't let it ruin my week. Great British Bake off airs on a Wednesday, I had been good all week up until that point and I continued to be good Thursday onward. Lo and behold, I still had a 2 pound loss that week so it really wasn't actually the end of the world after all. Draw a line under it, move on, continue as normal. It's all you can do.

Hi all! Thanks in advance for looking at my post. I’m hoping you can help me decide if it’s worth buying some body composition scales? A bit of background info, I’m currently 230lbs and struggling. I’m hitting my fitbit activity targets every day, I commute to work on bike 95% of the time, I’ve cut out processed foods, fizzy drinks and unnecessary snacks. I’m eating pretty decently but the weight comes off very slow and the scales alone are not helping me out much. I have an underactive thyroid so I know my loss is slower and harder than normal, thankfully I am losing weight, however it is so gradual that it takes ages before it’s really noticeable in my clothes, measurements or in pictures. So in the meantime, I do like weighing myself for a little extra confirmation in-between that things are going the right way, but the number alone doesn’t seem to reflect much these days, for example at august 24th this year I had a 41 inch waist, as of October 1st my waist is 40 inches (yay) but my weight is a pound higher than it was in august (and 5 pounds more than I was last Saturday…) so I’m felling a bit lost. I weigh myself at the same time ever week to minimise natural fluctuations. Obviously the fact that I’ve lost an inch is good, but I’m wondering if body comp scales would help give me a fuller and more encouraging picture than the scales alone? I feel like even if the scales say the same weight, if it showed my fat mass was down and muscle mass was up, I would be totally happy with that and it would be encouraging for me rather than discouraging. I’ve never had any experience with body comp scales though, so any and all input would be very much appreciated!

You didn't screw up, you just took a bit of a detour, it happens to a lot of us, I'm a recent respawner too so I know how it goes! What matters now is that you're getting back on track and you have recognised where you slipped up before, that sets you up nicely to start again I think. You can absolutely do it, we'll be rooting for you.

OMG I feel you so much on this!!!!! I work 9 hours a day in an office every weekday and my routine is pretty close to perfect these days and I've nipped at work snacking in the bud but I struggle so freakin' much on the weekends! It doesn't help that we have to do our grocery shopping on the the weekends too so there's always the temptation to buy something. 'just 1 pack of biscuits won't hurt right?' or 'I'll just get 1 big bag of crisps and eat them in moderation' (which never actually happens) Weekends are normal life on hard mode for me at the moment haha, it's a brutal 48 hours of emotions for me haha, in a way I'm glad I'm not the only one. Lets both do our best to conquer those pesky weekends once and for all!

Thanks for the kind comments. I'm glad to be getting back into the swing of things. I started using a fitbit two weeks ago (a nice upgrade from my old jawbone) and have beat my 8000 step target every day, I actually average about 9-10k steps a day. I’ve continued cycling to work even though I now have the car back (except for 2 days where I had to drive as I needed to run an errands on my lunch break) and I’ve been for a walk every lunch break. It’s really good to be doing more activity in my days again and I’m loving the changes I can feel on my body for it. I’m not expecting a loss this week as it was my Anniversary this Tuesday just gone and we had a great day, went to the zoo, had a picnic and ice cream and then had pizza for dinner so I’ve been quite food naughty this week, but as it’s a once off occasion I’m not going to punish myself for it.

Welcome back from a fellow respawner. Work is an essential part of life no doubt but when it goes wrong it really throws the rest of your life out the window too sadly, I've been there myself. Major congrats on getting an epic new job and jumping back into fitness and wellbeing! It's not always easy admitting you lost your way but the important thing is that you're back to it now!

Just asking because I totally fell off it! I'm trying not to beat myself up about it because I've been the victim of some pretty rough circumstances and it's been stuff that I have had little to no control over so I can't be too hard on myself but I do want to get back on it none the less. Some background info for anyone who want's to read it (even if no one reads it, it feels good to just offload at least) My last posts were at the end of Feb this year. A week after that, one of my colleagues, the best person on the team, was signed off work for 9 weeks following surgery. while she was gone, our workload was crazy busy and super stressful which often left me tired, miserable and unmotivated to make the better choices in life like exercising or eating better. Also our team which was left kept a pretty good stream of snacks going to ease the pain haha. Once the colleague was back, we all thought we would be back to normal and stress free business as usual. That never happened because we then took on a new client at work with a very high volume of business so even though we had a full team again, things felt just as busy as when she was off, so the tiredness, stress and poor choices remained. Then, my brother nearly died... I can tell you first hand, nothing throws your life out of balance like a close family member being rushed into a&e by Ambulance while you are being put in the terrifying 'relatives room'. Thankfully my brother made it through that night and did not need the very risky emergency surgery that they feared they would need to do and he is still with us to this day but he was admitted to hospital for 5 long weeks while they built him back up and put him back together. Although nothing in comparison to what he was facing himself, it was still the worst 5 weeks of my life so far and any concerns for my own health, diet or well-being went completely out the window. Both during and after my brother leaving hospital, work still remained busy so that was still impacting my life too. All of these challenges meant that my previously established habits like drinking plenty of water, working out and meditating had gone completely out the window. I had not only fallen off the wagon, I had completely and utterly lost sight of it. And that has basically been my life up until Pokemon Go was released in the UK. My partner and I both played PGo a lot, luckily I had a week off work that week which was handy, I got to play it sooo much. It was so nice being outside, fresh air, time and space to think, walking and getting exercise. The weather was (uncharacteristically for the UK) sunny every day so I took a huge bottle of water everywhere I went and would drink all of it . Over the first 2 weeks playing PGo I lost 6 pounds which gave me a nudge in the right direction to getting back on track. I started regularly drinking water again, I got a bike and started using it to ride to work a few days a week but I still wasn't quite back to the proper balance that I had before. Then 3 weeks ago, my car died. I had no option but to ride my bike to work every day until my car was fixed. This ended up meaning 2 weeks of cycling to work and I loved it! This is the moment that gave me the jump start I needed to refocus myself and get my shit back in check. I had a light bulb moment, I thought to myself "If I'm cycling to work every day, I'll be exercising more so I might lose some weight again, yay." then I thought "If I start going for a walk on my lunch breaks again that's even more exercise, woo!" and that in turn led to the thoughts of "well if I'm doing all this extra exercise, I'm going to have to stop eating snacks and takeaways so often otherwise I'm just self sabotaging my potential progress." and it's just sort of snowballed from there. So at the end of February, before I fell off the wagon, I was 242pounds and as of yesterdays weigh in I am currently 231pounds. Not the biggest difference in weight given the time difference but under the crappy circumstances I've faced these past few months I'm really proud to have pulled myself back together and be sitting here today with an 11pound loss. So this is my respawn, the wagon is back in sight and I'm determined to get back on it full time. I'm not going to jump back into forum challenges and stuff just yet, I wan't to ease back into it so I don't overwhelm myself but it's good to be back none the less. So yeah, hello again I guess P.s, if you read all of this, you deserve a cookie!

Friday 26th: · Water – check · Fruit Snacks – check · Meditation – check · Exercise – NF Body Weight, knees were feeling a bit painful with the squats and lunges so I only did 2 rounds. Added in 3 sets of 10 crunches as well just for fun. Challenge recap: So my challenge goals to recap were as follows: Diet Quests · Drink more water. · Substitute carb crammed mid-morning breadstick snacks for a piece of fruit. Fitness Quest: · Complete the NF bodyweight workout at least 2x a week · Complete additional workout at least 2x a week (currently have an ankle injury so the NF Body weight Workout will be replaced with other workouts which don't involve my ankle until it's healed.) Life Quest: · 5 minutes meditation daily Overall, I'd say I stuck to that plan pretty well, water and fruit snacks are pretty much the norm for me now most days as is meditation which is a habit I'm really coming to enjoy. I had a few exercise hiccups while my ankle was injured and also while my tattoo was fresh and I was advised to take time off to let it heal, but overall I'm happy with how that went under the curcumstances. I', no mathematician, but I'd say I stuck to my goals about 90% of the time which I'm really proud of! I didn't really lose any noticeable weight this month but I've established some pretty good habits/routine so I'm really happy to use that going forward. I don't think I'll be doing another challenge yet as a colleague is off work for the next 6 weeks to recover from surgery so my life is gonna be pretty busy until then, sometimes this month I found it hard to keep coming back to post so for the time being I think I'll skip it. Will definitely do another challenge when the timing is better though! Thanks to everyone who popped in and posted, I really appreciate it, see you all around!

Thursday 25th: · Water – check · Fruit Snacks – check · Meditation – check · Exercise – NF Body Weight, knees were feeling a bit painful with the squats and lunges so I only did 2 rounds. Added in 3 sets of 10 crunches as well just for fun.