Last week, I announced that I am undertaking a 12 Week Transformation. By the time I turn 40 on October 6^th, I expect to weigh a bit less, feel a lot stronger and have cemented lifestyle habits to carry on into my next 40 years.

I am not starting from scratch. I have been here before and have a solid foundation of knowledge to draw on. But this is not a complex series of life changes. Anything I do in the next 12 weeks needs to be sustainable for life. No fads, no quick fixes, just adopting healthy habits I know my body responds well to.

The Plan

For the next 12 weeks (and forever more), I commit to:

• Weight train 3 times a week
• Incorporate incidental exercise into every day
• Eat real, unprocessed food
• Reduce and ultimately remove Coca-Cola from my diet

Of course, anyone who has ever embarked on a health kick will know that even the simplest plans can be difficult to put into practice. Having done this all before, I have already identified where my pitfalls exist and so have set this plan up to avoid those wherever possible. I’ll elaborate on this in a future post to explain what works for me and why. You may find your path to success looks quite different to mine and that’s completely okay. Fine-tuning lifestyles changes to be personally sustainable for you is the key. But obviously the principles of regular movement and a balanced diet of predominantly whole foods applies to all of us.

Week 2 Check In

After two weeks, here’s what I’m super duper proud of: I have not missed a training session. Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, I get up, I put on my activewear and I train. I have committed to be somewhere on those mornings and I turn up. The gap between Wednesday and Saturday actually feels too long and I plan to incorporate some kind of cardio session for Thursday or Friday. It might just be a 20 minute Youtube video from Fitness Blender or it could be going for a walk with a friend or taking Harlow out scooting but my body wants to move so I am paying attention to it. In the past, I have been very attentive when my body tells me it needs chocolate but strangely less captivated when its talking to me about eating carrot sticks and going for a run. Funny about that.

So I’ve taken to the exercise with a committed enthusiasm and that feels great. But if training is the first horse out of the gate, then you’d have to say my diet is the poor straggler up the back. This tends to be my way. I come out strong exercising but it takes me longer to commit to putting the Coke and hot chips down. It seems strange to put all that training effort in only to blow it with junk but there you have the complexity of the human brain and how it will cling to addictions feverishly.

Again, I have been here before and I know that as I begin to feel the benefits of the exercise, I become less and less inclined to fuel myself with poor food choices. But the biggest problem is a lack of organisation, food-wise. Pre-planning and pre-preparing food is critical for me. Experience has shown that leaving meals until the last minute when I’m headachey with hunger see me making bad choices. Drive-thru, anyone?

So in Week 3, meal prepping is my major focus. Week 2 may have been sabotaged by a killer dose of PMS and a kid’s birthday party but you know what? I can only look forwards. I kept exercising. I didn’t eat chocolate for every meal. It’s okay. I am still on track.