Most diets seems to put ridiculous constraints on people - usually they lose weight to start with but then put it all back on as its just so hard to maintain. I've also heard of some pretty crazy diets, one of my friends told me that his mum was on a "bread diet" in the 1980's where one day a week all she would eat was bread - literally just bread, no butter or sandwich filling just bread. Madness.
Anyway, last year I decided I needed to do something about my diet and exercise we had come back home from living in Korea and Taiwan and I was just feeling kind of bleh. I think its due to the fact that when living in Asia I was eating a better diet (especially in Korea) and also moving a lot more during the day. When I returned home I went back to a desk job and food here is much heavier/richer than food in Asia. Plus I had just come home for being away from home and it turned out I wanted to eat all the food!
Although my sensible and logical brain knew this was a pretty crappy idea - the part of my brain that said food is delicious and exercise is boring took over and I put on too much weight for my liking and started feeling generally crappy and bummed.
But fortunately, I'm not the "woe is me" type so I decided to join a gym and get back on a healthy eating plan.
These two photos were taken about the time I decided it was time for a change, the one in the red dress was taken pretty much on the week I started a programme at my gym called "break" - which I have now done twice.
So for the first time ever I got a personal trainer - which was a little scary, as I like to think I can do EVERYTHING by myself. But the truth is you can't do everything by yourself - my first trainer Aimee was just incredible. She was really good at reading people and their abilities and if you tried your best, she was just pleased as punch BUT if you were slacking she would tell you that you need to sort yourself out. One time in a class a lady in one of my classes who doesn't always give it 100% was complaining to Aimee she wasn't losing weight and she just told her straight out "It's most likely your diet and you need to work harder" woah.
My current trainer is Cara, who is a recent arrival to our part of the world and originally from Ireland (she came to Wellington in September last year) and she is really great too.
The first time I did the break programme I lost around 10 kilos, the second time I did it I didn't lost so much weight but I gained a lot of muscle and a generally better body shape - by that I don't mean skinny! I am still an hour glass, but an hour glass with a lot more definition.
Here's a couple of more recent photos so you can see the difference the healthy eating and exercise has made - I'm not on some crash and burn exercise/diet regime where the goal is to lose as much weight as quickly as possible, but rather I'm working slowly and surely to get to my goals.
I hope you all have a great Friday xoxox
