I'm currently nearing the end of my last year of school and things are getting gradually more stressful! Between revising for exams and trying to continue my healthy eating I have hardly any time to think about anything else - but procrastination has brought me here, and I now find myself making a blog.
This has been something I have always been meaning to do, but I have been somewhat apprehensive and...embarrassed about for some reason!
But I have to face the facts. I have put on some unattractive pounds and lost a fair amount of muscle since this time two years ago. Looking back on old holiday photos has been depressing to say the least; I was at the peak of my fitness and doing about 4 hours of exercise per day.
Now I'm almost sedentary except for the odd run every month or so :/ except for walking to school and back.
After exam stress has calmed down I am aiming to really get back on track with my fitness and hopefully improve my health and body. I plan to do this by setting clear goals, making a clear schedule, measuring inches lost and, of course, using this blog for accountability.
I want to stress that I am not overweight - I am a normal weight but I want to change my body composition to lose fat and gain muscle. (I have weird fat rolls in places I never had, and I'm not too keen on them).
I will outline my goals and schedule in a later post.
But for now, these are my worries:
- I am only 4ft 11 so my basal metabolic rate (the calories I burn per day just existing) is very low at 1150 max. This means I cannot lose weight just by cutting down the number of calories I eat on a daily basis. I have been trying to do just this for many months now and I have seen next to no progress. This was the reason for my weight gain in the first place - i would eat the same amount as my friends who are all slim and tall, without realising that I do not need as many calories a day as them. So while they maintained, I gained:( Another bad thing about being so annoyingly short.
- Having such a small calorie burn means that I need to be very strict with monitoring my calories and it leaves little margin for error or laziness. With an hour of exercise a day I will burn about 1550 calories a day which is what most girls my age would burn by just existing (their BMR). At the moment I am unsure of how many calories to eat on my exercise days but i am thinking I may have to go as low as 1200-1250 in order to lose half a pound a week! And this is with exercising for an hour a day 5 x a week.
- I am scared that my motivation will decrease and I will end up giving up.
- I am worried that even if I do keep this up, I will not see any results (negative, I know!)
- I am worried that I won't lose fat quickly enough (this shouldn't really a main focus but I feel that without seeing a results I will be more likely to give up).
... enough of the negativity though - I need to focus on getting my grades first!
My next post may not be for a while until my exams are out of the way but I will be back:)
Peace and love xo
