LifeCircle 2012 - Dealing with your comfort zone

Hello, and welcome back to LifeCircle 2012. Do you remember a while back when I got you to do something out of your comfort zone? Well, I promised a follow-up task to it but I needed to give you a while to complete it again. I was going to set this before the Easter holidays started but as you know, I was running late with the last one.

So now I'm going to set you almost the same task but this time, I'm going to share with you some techniques for pushing yourself out of your comfort zone so that maybe, you can push yourself a bit further and make some really radical changes.

The first step to dealing with a problem is to admit you have one. If you are stuck in a particular area because of fear (it's usually fear that holds us back), admitting it to yourself and the reasons for those feelings has to come first. Sometimes, we do not admit those things even to ourselves; we hide fears even from ourselves. Instead, we procrastinate and find other reasons not to tackle a project now. Acknowledging to yourself that you are scared and why you have those fears will make it easier to tackle them. You don't have to admit them publicly if you don't want - although I often think it helps to share a problem - but do at least write down your fears. The act of committing them to paper or a screen crystallises them and trying to explain them, even to yourself, helps you to understand them. Recognising the fears will help you to overcome them. Keep your plans realistic though (remember SMART?).

Of course, once you have admitted that there is a problem, you need a plan to deal with it. Think of ways to overcome what is stopping you - whether that is smaller tasks to build up to a bigger one, or practice runs of a bigger task. Even just opening yourself up to something by offering to do it is a good start. Then, recognise when those fears kick in and analyse them. If the fears amount to not being good enough or clever enough or similar, then realise they are serving no other purpose than to hold you back. Some fears are there to protect you but many others aren't. Think carefully which ones are holding you back. If you come up with an action that genuinely scares you, write it down. Commit to it! Facing fears is a great way to overcome them.

And then, another good way to stretch your comfort zone is push it all the time. Try doing something scary, however small, every single day. The more you do it, the easier it becomes to do the bigger scarier tasks.

The fear that is most likely to hold us back is that of failure. This is a tough one because everyone has to accept that we will fail at something sometimes. No-one can guarantee success. Try to change your point of view - accept you will fail but that not trying is more a failure, and so is giving up. Failure is not the problem, and we need to accept it as a part of everyday life.

It's important to focus on what you CAN do rather than what you can't. If you want to run a marathon, focus on what you can do and how you can get there. If you think that you can't run a marathon, then you won't. If you accept that you can run a mile, you can work on a plan to reach your goal. Try to learn from others who have done it before; don't be afraid to take advice or input from others; people are generally helpful and supportive and0 learning from their mistakes will save you time and energy.

Finally, go easy on yourself. If pushing out of your comfort zone stresses you, give yourself some small rewards or treats to look after yourself. If you have to abandon your task because your fears overwhelm you, don't beat yourself up. Be kind to yourself, analyse it some more and have another go. Have a reward in mind for when you do achieve it and enjoy it with impunity.

Now I've told you all this, here's the task. Look back at everything you've done so far and try to identify an area of your life that is holding you back but dealing with it scares you. Work through why that is and make a plan to deal with it. Set yourself a substantial task related to this area to complete within a month, and then tackle it, bearing in mind the points I've made above. Tackle it in any way you want. If you want to start by doing something scary every day and make the tasks bigger, then do so, but remember your overall goal is to tackle something that you think has previously held you back.

When you've done all that, you need to blog about it and come back here to link up when I post the linky. That will be Thursday 27th April and the link will then stay open until 10th May. That gives you 3-4 weeks to play with.

Enjoy your Easter holiday and I'll see you at the end of April.

LifeCircle 2012: How did you do?

We all had actions, which we set ourselves two weeks ago. The deadline was, handily, two weeks. (There's method in my madness, see?) This week is all about how we got on with those actions, and how we feel about it.

I know I didn't tell you what my actions were, but I'm pleased to report that I completed the ones I set myself and I feel quite proud of that as I have had to push myself slightly to do so. Setting the actions were a big push, in the right direction of course. And do you know what? I feel really good. It has made me feel more in control of a lot of things, beyond the areas I took action. I've had a little blip these last few days - think it was the January blues finally kicking in a bit late - but I have been able to snap out of it to some extent.

A bit further along the road - still some way to go!

Six months ago, I wrote that I was halfway along the road on my weight loss journey. Being as that was six months since I started, that should mean I'm there by now, right? Right? Wrong! Is that a bad thing? No!

So what happened? I think the answer is that I have a life to lead. By no means have I not made any progress - I can tell that my clothes are looser, or fit better - I even wear a belt on my jeans now to keep them up and the belt doesn't cut in half so much as it used to. But I also know I still have a way to go to reach the goal that I've set myself, which is to be able to fit into my pre-pregnancy clothes.

Big chunks of life have got in the way. In November, I went away to a family wedding. And there was Christmas too. Actually, I don't think I did too badly then as I was ill just after and I didn't eat properly for a few days. I overate on Christmas Day but hey, that's what you do on feast days, don't you? And I had a birthday with an amazing 10 course tasting menu experience. I'm not going to begrudge any of that because I enjoyed every minute of those times. And every time, I've got back into healthy eating afterwards.

Something slightly more crucial might have hampered my progress. I stopped being quite so careful about recording my food intake. I find, for me, that it's the best way of keeping things in check. I always used to use Food Focus for this but I've recently discovered My Fitness Pal which is very good, and it has phone apps so I can enter my food intake when out and about. So, for the last few weeks, I've got back into that again and because I find the site easier to use, I'm keeping on top of it again. It really helps to make good food choices too. But before that time, I hadn't regularly kept properly on top of things and it's so easy to have an extra few calories here and there which hamper your attempts to lose weight. And it's the food intake you need to be wary of - it has a much bigger effect on your success than anything other than the most punishing of exercise regimes.

Talking of which, my new exercise regime is probably the thing that has gone really well. In October, we got a family membership to the local sports centre and I started going to classes again. In particular, Body Pump which I really love - perhaps even more than I ever did before - as I noted in my post a few weeks after I started back. I go to 2 or 3 classes of that each week, coupled with maybe the odd Combat class. I've had problems with that class recently, in that I was getting backache afterwards which, on talking to the lovely Wendy, appeared to be related to not engaging my core muscles properly when doing lots of side kicks. So, I've had to ease up and that's made me enjoy Combat much less - which upsets me in a way, because when I exercised before, I loved Combat way more than Body Pump. When I've not felt up to that, I have gone back to my old favourite - an EA Sports Active workout on the Wii. My back's a lot better now, and I'm spending a lot more time working with the core muscles.

I probably need to turn my progress into numbers but I don't weigh myself; I'll perhaps cover why in another post. I always used to measure myself to record my progress. Occasionally, I check key measurements and I know that they still mostly equate to the measurements I took when I was six months pregnant with Monkey. I can't help feeling that's quite shocking - and that maybe, my starting point was further from my goal than I first thought.

My only other way to do this is to compare my picture from August to me today, wearing the same clothes and everything. Here we go...


What do you think? I think I can see a difference and I definitely have more "shape". Editing the photos and putting them side by side may change the proportions too! I am not where I want to be yet, but I'm definitely getting there. There's no going back now. Please comment and tell me what you think - I have a fairly distorted self-image sometimes and find it really hard to make comparisons.

And just to finish off, I'm going to post a pic I snapped with my phone yesterday. I like it because I think I look happy and healthy in it, even if you can't see the difference so much since August because of what I'm wearing. And looking healthy, that is what matters, isn't it? I'm never ever going to be stick thin. Thanks to why my shape has changed, I don't think I will ever wear some tops that I wore pre-pregnancy, but the rest of me can get there. If I have to drag it there kicking and screaming, I will. Expect further updates - at the very most, in another six months.

(I've not been paid to mention any of the sites I've linked to. I've mentioned them because I like them!)

Halfway along the road

I was the fat girl at school. Actually, that's not fair as I suspect I was merely overweight, but sadly, I saw myself as fat. The first time I dealt with my weight, I was away at University. I lost weight but I took it way too far. At one stage, I was 8st7 - and I'm 5 ft 8  tall. I did it by eating very little, but also by doing running (which I hate). And when I started eating normally again, I put weight back on.

I think I struggled with my weight after that point until 2002. I had been various different sizes but at that point, I felt bigger than I had done in a long time and even my fat clothes were getting tight. Something clicked in my head, I ate carefully, neither too little nor too much, and exercised regularly. I really got into doing classes and got down to a size 12 from roughly a size 18. Don't ask me how much I lost as I don’t generally weigh myself but I reckon on 3-4 stone. I weighed myself once when I was a size 12 and was 10st 4.

After that, I maintained for 2 years - and then I got pregnant. I exercised regularly during Monkey's pregnancy - I was even at class 5 days overdue! Once he was born, I knew things would change and they did. I did go back after a few months but I got pregnant again quickly. I struggled much more this time so had to stop.

Since Missy Woo landed, I have fallen off so many wagons that I have lost count. I don't think I was actually all that big after she was born, but the weight never came off - if anything, it has piled. I tried several times to get going again and I've either been thwarted by childcare or injury. I kept getting muscle injuries in my back, neck or shoulder - seemingly caused by having two pregnancies close together. Every time something happened, I would be advised to rest for a couple of weeks and that would turn into 4 or 8 or even 12 before I started again.

I hated it, and hated myself. Last year was the worst. We went away early in the year and I avoided having my photo taken where possible. I also have pictures of me at a family wedding last July and I think I look hideous. There is no picture of me without a small child in front of me for protection. I wore a last minute desperation purchase dress that I could get it on but the fit was appalling.

I started my weight loss journey this time in February 2010. Again, something in my head just clicked and I know I can do it. It is still hard - trying to fit it all around children , feeding them etc. It's taking longer - I know I was not quite as big was I was in 2002, I'm 6 months in and I'm still not where I'd like to be - but then my life is very different to how it was back then. I view slip ups very differently now  - I just get straight back on track whereas before one slip up could turn into ten very easily.

The other day, I was getting a bit fed up because I am not yet a size 12, so I took a photo of myself. I've compared it to the "before" pictures – from the holiday and the wedding - and I think there is a difference. I am a size 14 now but an unfortunate side effect of two pregnancies for me seems to be that someone thinks I should have Dolly Parton sized proportions in the chest department. They don't seem to be shrinking as fast as the rest of me so I may never get to wear my lovely size 12 tops again. *sob*

Being the self-critical sort that I am, I have cringingly shown these pictures to a few people for unbiased opinions and the reaction has mostly been "Wow!" which I'm taking to be a good sign. I'm putting them here as a record of my progress, and to remind me to keep going at weaker moments. Looking at the pictures, I think "not bad" but also that I have a way to go. There might have been a bit of stomach sucking going on and dark tops do hide a multitude of sins. I have seen other pictures of me from only a few months back and I think I look huge, but then I am never going to be a stick thin lollipop.

January 2009

July 2009

August 2010

So here I am. Halfway along the road, maybe a little bit more, who knows? I don't want to go back to how I was last year so I am proud of how far I've come. I am not about to start to think that I've done the job, and I have got to keep going. I am determined to be healthy and happy, both on the outside and from within. And yes, I do still eat cake, just not every day. Life is too short not to have the occasional treat. It keeps you sane, and I find that complete denial just does not work for me.

Onwards and upwards, huh?