Blogger Challenge Week 7: Motivation

Time for the 12WBT blogger challenge for this week. I will be answering a few questions this week:

1. Why did I join the 12WBT?

   My reasons for joining up on the 12WBT haven’t changed since I put up my first blogging challenge post. I still want to lose weight to get to a fitter and happier healthier version of myself, and also so that one day when I do have children of my own I will be a good role model to them. I want to learn about good nutrition, so that I know when I feed these children one day, I will be feeding them good, healthy, nutritious food and that I will be giving them a proper portion of food – not my over the top portioning that I tend to do now. More than anything, I don’t want my children to ever have to deal with a weight problem and have to join up on their own 12WBT challenge. And yes, being able to wear a slinky dress, or nice lingere is also a bit of a factor for me, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t!

2. What has been your biggest achievement to date?

   I think there are two achievements. Last week at weigh-in I was only 500g off my end weight of 12WBT in 2010. So close I could taste it. I was pretty chuffed that I’d managed to lose nearly 10kg this year. This was really brought home to me on the weekend when we went out for cricket presentation night. I was standing with Mick while he was talking with one of the young guys, when all of a sudden he turned to me (the young guy – not Mick…) and said to me “You’ve lost weight haven’t you Tina. Like, really lost weight. I’m sorry I don’t mean to sound rude, but you really have, haven’t you?” I was so chuffed that finally someone had really noticed it. I told him I loved him and I could have kissed him ha-ha. It made all the work that I’ve done worth it, and gave me that little kick I needed in the arse to get myself back on track and get going again.

   My other big achievement was that I ran. I’m not much of an exerciser, as I’m sure you will have noticed from my constant complaints on the blog about having to exercise, but I was pretty chuffed with myself when I got out there to do my walk/shuffle/jog/run thing and when I actually did run. It wasn’t even a jog, but a run. It wasn’t for long, but I did it and it gave me the enthusiasm to get out there and keep doing it. Until I fell over that is, and the mornings got darker. Now I struggle to get out there and do it, but it’s a plan for the future. For now I’m concentrating on my swimming, which is also an achievement for me – taking lessons and learning how to swim properly. Now I’m practicing, practicing and practicing some more to get really good at it.

3. What have you struggled with? How can you overcome these issues?

   I struggle with exercise. More than anything else that is my Kryptonite. I try to like it, I really do, but I just don’t. I’ve waited for that feeling to hit me that everyone talks about – how you start to love and crave it. But it hasn’t hit me and to be honest, I don’t think it ever will. The only thing that I really love to do is swim. I don’t really feel like that is exercise, because I can just totally tune out the world and focus on just moving my arms and legs and I can think about whatever. When I go for my shuffle or am doing a dvd or something else, I can’t get into that Zen zone. I have to concentrate – either on the roads/paths (so I don’t go arse up and fall over again), on my feet, or just on what the instructor is doing in the dvd. But swimming isn’t like that.

   I don’t really know how to overcome this issue I have with exercising. Apart from just getting out there and doing it, there really isn’t anything I can do to make myself love exercising. So for now, that’s what I do. I just force myself (sometimes) to exercise. And loathe every second of it. Maybe, just maybe, one day that love of exercise will come to me. I’m not really expecting it to though. *sigh*