sixty ninnnnnnneeeeeeeee!
Last november I started a diet. I have a traditional medicine doctor who monitors me, gives me some herbal tablets to take and has helped me keep on track. I check in with him twice a week, I get on the fancy super scales which give not just my weight & height but also my body fat percentage, hip to waist ratio, muscle percentage in limbs and torso, endermal fat number, some other fat number (which refers to fat on my organs - seems the darn stuff is everywhere!), a bunch of other readings, a comparison to the last 9 weigh ins, my fitness rating (?) and how much weight it says I still need to lose. So I'm getting a lot of information, which helps makes sense of what's going on with my body. We have a chat and he checks what I'm eating (that would be the diet part) and how much exercise I'm getting.
To begin with, I struggled. But stick to the diet I did - well 90% of the time. It really did help me to start losing weight, as opposed to putting it on! However, I did start to worry, what happens when I come off the diet. Will I turn into the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters? That would be horrible. So seeing as the diet does help, I taken a less strict approach with the herbal stuff and really used it to help me change some bad habits.
One of those bad habits has been intermittant to non-existant regular exercise. There's a podcast I've been using called yogamazing, it's free and the instructor is really good. I started by doing one yoga session, 25 to 30 minutes long, in the morning. I got up to 2 yoga sessions before realising I'd best get back to going to the gym. I was stuck above 70 kgs and really didn't want to be. So I plan out a weekdays the gym, weekend yoga or walking or tennis. I'm trying to do yoga at night to balance the gym in the morning, it's something I really need to proritise.
This week has been a yoga week, I've had trouble sleeping and felt that yoga was a better choice than the gym. I get up at 6:30 am for yoga, 5:30 am for the gym. Next week I'm going back to the gym, it could well mess with my weight and that's ok. So long as those body fat percentages keep going down.
So why blog about it? Because today for the first time since I started university, my weight was less than 70kgs!! To put this in perspective my final target weight is between 63 and 65 kgs (to be decided on as I get closer to it).
The first moment of excitment I had was, at the hospital having some health tests done (for my visa renewal), my blood pressure was 120/70 which was a good sign and then the scales had me at 69kgs. I pulled Mike over and said "look at that!!". Then proceeded to do a little jump for joy as there were lots of koreans watching us and I didn't want to be too weird (not that purple hair is...). After the initial elation cleared a little, I realised I couldn't really take the 69kgs as fact, I had my phone in my pocket, a bunch of coins and some other bits and pieces. Also this isn't the super scale that I've been hopping on and off with regularity. I had to have my normal weigh in.
So as soon as the hospital stuff was done, we nipped over to the traditional medicine doctor's office and had my weigh in there. That's when I was happy then sad. You see I can understand some of the super scale's read outs but I always need to wait until we can compare the print out with the previous one. That's when it gives me something useful and understandable. So when I saw 69.8kgs I was thrilled but saddened when I saw something that usually indicates my muscle mass has dwindled and my body fat has increased. There was no little jump of joy here. I trudged into the doc's office and asked him "what's the story?" He looked at it and then double checked. He told me I'd not only broken the 70kg barrier but it was 80% fat reduction and 20% muscle. He gave me the papers to check and all my results, except for the fittness test were substantially better than the last weigh in. I jumped around and gave Mike a slap on the shoulder. It somehow seemed fitting!
I am totally thrilled to have gotten to this point and now I have a party to look forward to. The doctor and his family and friends had said one night that we'd have a party when I broke the 70kg barrier. It'll probably be next week but I don't care. I'm going to wear my pink dress - even if it is far too raunchy in Korea. It's going to be great - so long as there's a side salad to be had :)
If you read this far, I think you deserve a before and after photo.
I chose these photos because Mike (not his hair) is a constant.
