Kwest student Leah Wiens has recently embarked on a mission to improve her lifestyle and lose weight over the course of one year. Follow along to see her progress and cheer Leah on.
Well, I’m super proud that I’m starting to see some results. Here is how I’ve done since August:
Right Calf: 0.125” gained
Left Calf: 0.5” lost
My calves actually weren’t the same size when I started; there was a half inch difference, so one calf slimmed down by half an inch and they’re about the same size now. I’ve noticed that my calves feel much firmer and I think I’ve gained considerable muscle here.
Right thigh: 1.25” gained
Left thigh: 1.125” gained
I’m not upset that my thighs have actually gained… I’m 100% positive that this is due to some serious muscle building. My thighs actually look much better and I’ve even been getting compliments. They feel really firm, too! I don’t know that I’m going to necessarily lose much, if anything, off my thighs and I wasn’t expecting to, but am really glad that they’ve firmed up. And though it wasn’t measured, I’ve actually noticed a bit of a reduction in the amount of fat around my inner thigh… glad to see that start to shrink too!
Hips: 0.125” lost
Waist: 0.375” lost
This is good – the hips lost a little bit, and I’ve lost close to half an inch off my waist. I’ve noticed that even just this difference has improved the fit of my pants, and it has been much easier to shop for pants. It’s nice that I don’t have to fight with pants when I put them on anymore! The one thing I’ve noticed though is that most of my pants now have a lot of extra room in the legs, so I’ve been sticking to stretchy material to hide this and hopefully I’ll see a bit more of a reduction in the waist/hip area so I can go down a pant size.
Chest: 1.375” lost
YES! This is what I’ve been waiting for. When I spoke with Kara about joining boot camp she said that the chest is almost always the first to go, and so I thought that getting into shape would be a great alternative to surgery to reduce chest size. Almost a full inch and a half off the circumference of my chest is fantastic, and I hope that as I continue with boot camp and kickboxing I’ll see even more significant losses here.
Right Bicep: 0.5” lost
Left Bicep: 0.375” lost
Really happy about the biceps too… I’ve always been embarrassed by the part of my arm that I call “the chicken wing”, and have been hiding my arms under sweaters for years. Not only have I lost here, this area jiggles less and is firming up quite nicely. My upper arms are looking much more toned, and I think by next summer I’ll probably wear sleeveless shirts without embarrassment. I’m happy to see some good progress in this area.
Weight: 10lbs lost
YES! TEN POUNDS! The scale finally budged for me! Ten pounds in addition to how much fat must have been converted to muscle (which is of course heavier) is really exciting. HOWEVER – it is also important to acknowledge that all of this weight was lost in a relatively short period of time. From August to September I didn’t lose a single pound (though I did lose some inches). In September when I really started to eat well around the time I did my first post, all of that weight came off within a week or two. Then, as the month waned and work got really busy and I was too tired to cook and I started attending class a bit less (you know – the usual excuses), I was able to keep the weight off but did not continue to lose. I know I can do better, and my goal for the new boot camp session that started Oct 15 is to really ramp up and get that scale moving again.
After a bit of a slump at the end of September, I really re-committed to my lifestyle challenge and I’m feeling really enthusiastic about everything again. So now that I am once again ready to give this my 110%, I sat back and evaluated what went wrong towards the end of September that caused my momentum to slow:
1) Work was very busy. I wasn’t always able to leave early enough to beat traffic, and after work I was simply very exhausted. I felt it starting to snowball, hitting that point where I always used to burn out and quit before, hence my serious recommitment to fitness. I can’t let that happen – I have to be in control and choose to continue no matter what. I know that there’s no easy solution to a busy career, so I think it’s just going to take sheer willpower to power through the busy season.
2) Sometimes I stayed up too late and was too tired to exercise. Maybe some people can have it all – work and exercise plus a budding social life – but that’s just not going to happen for me. I have had to acknowledge that my body REALLY needs its full night of sleep and fitness needs to be my priority on weeknights; friends need to be fit into the weekend. It does make me sad that I don’t go out much anymore and that some friends don’t call like they used to because I’ve been AWOL… but, again, I’ve already acknowledged that I have a lot of work to do and it’s not going to be an easy thing. I am dealing with this by looking on the bright side – I am saving money. Because I’m not out eating at restaurants with friends or incurring various other entertainment expenses, I am not idly spending hundreds of dollars a month on nothing.
3) I got a bit frustrated with eating well because it can take a significant amount of time. There is basically no pre-packaged or processed food that I’ve found to be decently healthy without being a total sodium overdose. Quick things like canned soup are a no-go because while they’re low in calories, the sodium content is obscene (Kara told me I needed to be down between 1500mg and 2000mg of sodium per day, which has been surprisingly difficult). The solution, unfortunately, is that I MUST make time to pack healthy snacks and make my own food, BUT – what I have been doing to help is become a more “boring” cook when I’m busy… there are some great, healthy meals that I’d been making from scratch but it just wasn’t sustainable because they take too much time and have too many ingredients to chop up and too many steps. As I’ve been going along, I’ve found that maybe just frying some fish in olive oil and popping some brown rice in the rice cooker is going to be good enough because it’s fast… and surprisingly, I haven’t really cared. I think part of this is that the less sodium I consume, the tastier my “plain” food becomes.
So this weekend I got lots of rest, bought some groceries and stayed home Sunday afternoon to make some healthy snacks and foods to bring for lunches, did a bit of meal planning, and then went to bed really early for boot camp. In order to get myself really motivated to do this (keep in mind I hadn’t seen my newest measurements yet), I thought about the progress I’ve made in terms of physical fitness. We frequently do sprinting drills at boot camp … I am a slower person and have had trouble with this in the past. All of a sudden I am not only noticeably faster, but able to sprint across the gym and back throughout the drills without feeling sick or being too out of breath. I’m also able to continue sprinting until the end of the drill, rather than really slowing down around the halfway point. That’s a great feeling, to conquer something that is most certainly not one of your strengths. We also did an 800m run as a benchmarking exercise in September and it took me six minutes – this last Friday it only took me five minutes to complete. Last night at kickboxing we had to do fifteen minutes of skipping, and I didn’t find it to be too bad even though I’d already been to boot camp in the morning… when I first started with Kwest at the end of April, even like two minutes of skipping was too much for me.
I’ve also been getting lots of support in all of my classes. All of the instructors have been going out of their way to push me and challenge me and keep me going when I would have otherwise stopped. I also have a boot camp “buddy” and we’ve been partnering together, running together and motivating each other. When one of your peers is shouting really positive encouragement at you while you’re working and you feel really good because you’re cheering them on too, it’s easier to give that extra push – Kelly keeps reminding us that if we can power through “the burn”, we’ll see the results. I truly appreciate all of the help and support I’ve been receiving.
It feels like I’ve reached the critical point where I’ve seen some good measureable progress, I’m noticeably more fit, and if I can just keep going I will start to see big results. This is also the point where I have always quit in the past – after experiencing the exhaustion and slump I felt at the end of September I would normally just drop off. But this time and I have instead re-committed to exercising, eating well and continuing with my one-year challenge – I am definitely going to succeed.
Kwest Kickboxing Muay Thai and Fitness Centre, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada