Oh Plateau

I haven’t blogged very much lately because of a bit of a combination of things:

I am leaving the country, so I am fairly busy making plans
I was worried that I had started to get a bit too hard on myself with food and exercise and it was making me unhappy
I have been going through that time of the month when you just want to eat chocolate and then cry because you look like a whale.
I have plateaud and it makes me sad when I have been working my arse off.

But, my period is over, I have started making some headway in The Move and most importantly, I got talking to my friend – who is a Muay Thai/ Kickboxing/ Kung Fu fighting machine and trainer and he gave me some motivation.

Tomorrow, the detox will start. I am going to give my system a bit of a break by eating simpler foods for a week. It’s not going to be starvation, like a typical detox – I don’t see the point in that. Instead, I will eat a lot of fruit, veg, whole grains, beans and tofu and drink lots of water and green tea. I will cut out the alcohol, bread and chocolate as well as all the other little vices I have for that week too. Even then, I will only reintroduce things slowly.

Also, the exercise routine will be refreshed. My fighting machine friend said that I needed to shake up my routine, ignore the numbers on the scales and concentrate on building muscle – once I have that, he said, the weight will drop off.

My fitness is definitely at an all-time high. I can run further than ever, but my shape isn’t changing. My body (and my brain) is bored of the running and the swimming and has embarked on a silent protest by halting my weight loss.

When I started losing weight, I was 70kg. I lost weight fairly steadily until I got to 64kg, and then it stopped again. I ramped up the fitness and got to 61-62kg where I seem to have stopped again. The lowest I have got down to is 60.5kg. I want to lose 10lbs and then I will be happy to just maintain my weight.

I am aiming for 56.5kg. I think this is healthy and achievable.

The plan is to do at least one hour per day of intense exercise that will make me ache. I want to wake up aching every day – this way I will know my body has been challenged instead of just having gone through the motions. I will do this by including the following in my routine (and maybe others if I think of some):

Stair sprints interspersed with recovery runs
Walking fast with weights (can be done on walk into work)
Swimming
Running (increasing distance or speed)
Fartlek running
Yoga
Weights at gym
Home routine (press ups, squats, reps etc)
Skipping with rope
Dancing (in room to radio)
Beach running (soft sand)

So, the aim in a nutshell is to eat more simply, work out for at least an hour a day and make sure I push myself every time.