Steve’s Choose To Lose Blog: Week 5

June 6, 2019

Steve’s Choose To Lose Blog: Week 5

Steve, our Marketing & Communications Officer, has joined our latest fitness and weightloss course Choose To Lose, to learn more about one of our most popular classes and hopefully feel the benefits for himself…

The halfway stage and an opportunity to back up feelings with facts.

Week Five of Choose To Lose is Testing Week – a repeat of Week One’s fitness tests to gauge how (un)fit I am and how far I’ve come in just one month.

And the results were very pleasing.

My five-minute exercise bike sprint saw me rise from 2.73km in week one to 3.15km. I managed 29 squats in one minute – an increase of two – and lasted 93 seconds in the plank position, beating my previous total by 31 seconds.

The only number which fell was my press-ups, from 37 to 35, but having dropped lower to the ground with each one – and therefore managed a ‘better’ press-up – I’ll take that as another positive step.

I am now getting to know my limits and capabilities far better. Subconsciously I had maybe held back a little, fearful of pushing too hard too soon and not lasting the full session, but my increased capacities have showed me that I can give everything in each circuit and still be ready for the next one. It still hurts, of course, but reduced recovery times have definitely helped to boost my confidence.

There is now also the added incentive of keeping a food diary, to document every calorie and unnecessary snack. Whilst my fitness has undoubtedly improved, and my waistline less flabby, my weight has only dropped by a couple of pounds.

Greater weightloss will no doubt follow in time, but having to record the mid-morning mini-flapjack which I’ve just eaten whilst writing this will make me think twice before indulging too often.

The nutrition workshop which we attended earlier in the course was an eye-opener, even for somebody like me who thought they knew the basics – lots of water, 5 portions of fruit and veg, not too many carbs – pretty well.

Next week I’ll look at the nutritional advice – given to us by Louise Jones – in more detail.

There’s no need to remove every sweet treat from my diet, but after a couple of ciders and an over-indulgent dessert last weekend I must start watching what I eat more closely if I’m to see the full benefits of my workouts.