Keeping It Off

Last year I lost 23kgs.

It wasn't easy by any stretch of the imagination and even now 11 months later I still catch my breath when I see "Fat Jo" pictures and compare to where I am now!

The Numbers

I weighed 115 kgs when I started on May 26th 2016, I am 160 cm short so this is where BMI says you are "Morbidly obese"...Sigh...That first weigh-in was soul destroying because I knew it was bad but I didn't realise at the time that it was 'That bad'... The shock of this couple with my health issues made me realise that I needed to do something and I needed to do it now! My mind was made up that I did not want to live like that anymore and this is the mindset I relied on to get me through the six months that followed.

In my first month of diet and exercise I lost 4 kgs and I was pumped! It was going into winter so the mornings were super cold but I was determined to see it through so I kept going... By the end of July I had lost a total of 10 kgs and I felt good! Between August and November I lost another 13 kgs and I was so pleased with myself!!! In total I dropped 4 dress sizes and halved my waist during what I now call, "The First Campaign".

Maintenance

I went into the Christmas Season a very happy woman with a new wardrobe and a spring in my step! I had become a street power-walker / runner in the warmer months and I kept this up while away for the Christmas break. I also decided to cut myself some slack on the diet front and enjoy food as I had had a restricted 6 months diet wise. 

I ate. I drank. I was merry.

On January 6, I went on the scale and it read 93.3 kgs - This was a pleasant surprise to me as I was really not methodical in my approach during the festive season so I was quite please that the damage was limited to 1.3 kgs! (Happy dance). The challenged I faced in the first quarter of the year is that I moved house some way away from my gym and I travelled quite a bit for work so exercise never really happened (not proud of that honest). 

Diet wise, I remained slack from the Christmas period and this was worse when away from home as I was having to eat out quite a lot... I was sure this would be the beginning of the "decline" back to that 115 kgs and I have to say I was really stressed out and yet at the same time inactive...The mindset of steel that got me through the first campaign seems to elude me now.

There are certain lifestyle choices I made during the first campaign that carried me through and have resulted in me keeping the weight off - Removal of sugar from my diet is one, whole grams over processed grains is another, drinking water and herbal teas, no starch at night, portion control, low salt and more all contributed to my overall diet being reasonably healthy though there were several "contraband" items like wine and spirit coolers that got in there more often than not.

Today I weighed myself and I am 92 kgs, testimony that I have after 4 months I have been able to maintain healthy eating habits that have enabled me to keep the whole 23 kgs off!

The Second Campaign

I am still considered "obese" based on my BMI rating which means I still have some work to do before my weight loss is down to a healthy level. I am gearing up (mentally) for another May kick off to "the second campaign"  with the same goal, to lose another 22 kgs to reach my goal weight of 70 kgs by Christmas. This will require a combination of clean eating and exercise as it took last time, the difference is that I have already achieved this and recently so I have confidence I can do it and motivation to do it.

I will feed back monthly so you can track my progress with me...

Kis·met

This Valentine’s Day is the first one my husband and I have spent apart since we met.

I love to tell people that I met him in a bar (because clearly “good” African girls don’t do that! Ha!!). It was more like a restaurant come cocktail lounge during a birthday party we were both invited to by different people. He caught my eye almost instantly but a girl has to play it cool right, so I sat near him but avoided eye contact and spoke to other people first. As the evening went on we got to talking, well flirting really and somewhere in there we exchanged numbers and the rest as they say is history…

Don’t Awaken Love Before It Pleases

I was single for much longer than a “good” African girl “should” be… I met and married my husband in my 30’s.

To give context, most African girls marry in their very early 20’s, it is believed that securing a husband and a home is part of the ‘critical path’ towards womanhood and it must be prioritised.

When I was 25, (the age at which I had planned to be married) I had completed my degree and had a good job and a nice flat and all that was missing, I thought, was a husband to kickstart the next chapter of my life. I dated, but never met anyone who was serious about me or whom I was serious about at the same time. It was a confusing period in my life and I remember praying for a husband and children almost round the clock. The danger in being fixated on anything especially something so life altering is that you have a greater propensity to make big mistakes, Huge even!

I lived abroad throughout my 20’s and remember always saying I didn’t want to raise children there yet I worked overtime to try and create a life there, silly really.  I remember making the decision to move back home, it felt so right. I was 29 and ready for a life change.

I was ready to be part of the solution in my own country rather than investing another decade building someone else’s country… Being a foreigner is harder that it first seems and far less fulfilling than portrayed in the movies! You always feel like you don’t really belong. In the space of a month I made the decision, handed in my notice at work, told my pastor and packed up my flat into a shipping container and bought a plane ticket. Three months later I had set up home in a charming cottage and had resumed my residency on the African continent.

Six Degrees of Separation

Growing up my best friend was a boy! He was cousins with this girl in another school who I just couldn’t stand – We had so many friends in common it was insane yet we just didn’t get along. Fast-forward to my twenties, we met abroad and through a set of difficult circumstances we became more than friends, we became sisters. She married a guy, one of our fellow countrymen, a couple of years before I moved back home and he became family to me instantly. Within 6 months of my return to the continent they came over on holiday and introduced me to a man… This man then went on what ended up being a 2-year on again, off again, campaign to win my heart…The night I met my husband, I was meant to be out on a date with this man. In the 2 years I had known him he had failed to entice me into a relationship with him. I was only out with him that night becauset a friend had dared me not to say no to any dates for 30 days and I had accepted. As Sod's Law would have it, this man resurfaced and invited me to a party the following week! He had another friend who he had invited to the same party and that person decided they didnt want to come alone so by chance asked my now husband if he would be his wing man and tag along. This scenario got me thinking about the theory of 6 degrees of separation....  

When I track how we me, there are in fact six people that connected us (plus two hemisphere moves…) as follows:

(1) My best friend linked me to;
(2) My Girlfriend-Sister (ex-mean girl from school), who linked me to;
(3) My brother-in-Love (her husband) who linked me to;
(4) The Man... (Friend to my sister's husband) whom through his invitation to;
(5) The Man's friend (who needed a wing-man), I met
(6) My Husband (The Most Beautiful Man of them all!).

“Six degrees of separation is the theory that any person on the planet can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries.”

He Loves Me

A couple of days after we met, he called me and asked me what I do after work and I said, ‘I go home unless a beautiful man invites me out for a drink…’ and he said to me, ‘Can I be that beautiful man tomorrow night?’ and that’s how we ended up having our first official date – A whirlwind romance ensued and nine months later we were married.

 After a decade of failed relationships in my 20’s I did not escape unscathed and was more than a little sceptical and very distrusting of men. Once you have kissed a couple of frogs and they have remained frogs, you lose your belief in prince charming and happily ever after… you even begin to doubt love…

My husband was a shock to the system. He made it clear from the get-go that he was into me – He courted me in the traditional sense of the word and proved his love in a million ways. I have never known tenderness and kindness in the way he gives it… He made me believe in ‘happily ever after’ and awakened a love in me so deep I knew I belonged with him...I see now with gratitude, the importance of not ‘awakening love before it pleases” because love truly is beautiful in its time…Our love story and the babies that have come along to complete our family  validated the wait and have completed me…Hindsight brings great insight on the journey we have travelled and if we learn the lessons it can help direct our future path...

So, this Valentine’s Day as I look back on our life together I am filled with thankfulness and excited about spending the rest of my life with this beautiful man…

Happy Valentine’s Day My Love xoxo

He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not...He LOVES ME! 

Make Things Happen!

I am guilty of being part of the serial new years resolution makers-then-breakers club. Losing weight and getting fit being at the top of that list! I have never successfully driven resolutions beyond the first quarter of the new year for some reason.... I always seemed to get busy with life and work and just forgot, then I would look up 6 months later and realise I had totally blown it and then figured there was no point restarting anything, best wait to next ‘new years’ to start afresh, I would say to myself...Silly right! Also, a clear lack of discipline in certain areas of my life. In the end, I just stopped making ‘new years’ resolutions as a general rule (instead of working on my discipline issue can you imagine!). That was about three years ago now...

On new year’s day I saw the image above on my friends Facebook wall and a light went on in my head! Instead of a long list of empty resolutions that will get lost along the way (mostly due to poor commitment to them) I thought to myself, that if I could have just one, one that I could not "fail", one that was linked to my ethos and vision and drive so much so that I have no choice but to focus on it all year... If I could set in stone just one RESOLVE, to; 

Make Things Happen!

...perhaps I could register more success that I had done in the past after all, last year I had lost 23kgs by starting my weight loss journey in May! Not on January 1 as a resolution dictates, and I stuck with it. Thing that helped with this particular goal were, having the right mindset, having a clear end in mind plus celebrating smaller milestones along the way. I also was not bound to perform a specific task in a specific time frame so there was no pressure and no real definer of what failure looked like because as long as I kept going I was winning! My life changed too, I reflected and revised so many areas of my life to accommodate a healther me and that helped me stay the course I feel, my hashtag in 2016 was #JusKeepMoving!

#MakeThingsHappen could be my 2017 hashtag and whenever I achieve something I will have it as a reference point for celebration! I fell that this is one resolution which would not be setting me up to fail, on the contrary it gives me a real shot at success this year because to achieve it, I just had to produce results in all areas of my life and in reality we all do this anyway, perhaps not in as focused a ways as having a resolve may inspire, so I have decided to adopt it and run with it!!