It’s day 5 of Blogtober 2022 and the prompt is Mental Health Awareness. I’ve started exercising and I believe it’s already making me feel healthier mentally as well as physically 🙂

I’m going to start by giving you a bit of background about my weight problem and my total lack of exercise until just under 4 weeks ago.
It might be a bit long so I give my apologies in advance!

Morbidly Obese

I’ve been morbidly obese for as long as I can remember. I’ve seen photos of myself at a ‘normal’ weight when I was 7 or 8, I think but I don’t remember ever being anything but fat. I feel like it has defined me for the whole of my life.

P.E. Lessons

I hated P.E. at school and would try to get out of it as much as I possibly could. I remember feeling so relieved when I went back to school after being off ill and my friend told me I’d missed the cross country P.E. lesson. The teacher never told us when cross-country was scheduled so I didn’t stay off because of it, I was just very lucky!
I was lucky again the next time they did it because again, I was off ill!

Any kind of exercise would result in aching limbs and being out of breath, obviously, but the fact that I was much more out of breath than my friends and it took me longer to get my breath back made me feel embarrassed and I began to see being out of breath as a bad thing.

If anything made my legs ache or got me out of breath I’d stop doing it and I’ve been like that since my school days. I’m 46 now!

Weight Loss

I’ve tried every diet going and the only one I’ve had success with is Slimming World. I joined in August 2012 weighing in at 31st 1lb and I lost 7 and a half stones in my first year.

I kept that off for a few years then started putting it back on when I started suffering from migraines. It took over a year to get my medication right and then not long after, Covid hit.
I put about 4 stones back on during the lockdowns.

Struggle

I’ve struggled to get my head back in it and I’ve wasted so much time taking 1 step forward and then 3 steps back that I decided I had to take action this year and get serious about my weight loss again.

I’m still going to Slimming World, (it was my 10-year anniversary in August!) and I decided to follow the Fast Forward program for a week to help me get in control again. It’s a low-calorie, very strict diet and it always helps me kick start my weight loss when I get in a slump.

Fitbit

I knew I needed to do more than just sticking to plan so in July this year, I bought myself a Fitbit watch. I planned to do more walking because everyone says walking is one of the best ways to lose weight. However, I really struggle with walking because my knees get so painful. They often twist and leave me in agony and that’s just when I walk around Asda.

I thought the watch would help motivate me but I kept putting the walks off and trying not to think about the 70 quid I’d wasted on the watch!

Seated Elliptical Trainer

I was trying to think of ways I could get exercise at home when I remembered seeing an advert for a seated elliptical trainer. I went and ordered one from Amazon and it came the next day.

I have to say, I was a bit disappointed when it arrived because it moved around quite a lot and the pedals were a bit too high for me so I struggled to get my feet on them.
Now the total money wasted was up to 100 quid and again, I tried not to think about it!

At my next Slimming World group, I was telling my friend about it and she said her husband had one but it was too heavy for him to move and asked if I’d like to swap.

Much Better

The one I got in return was much better for me. I could get my feet on easily and after trying it a few times I found that I had no knee pain at all.

I checked out some of the exercise videos on the Fitbit app and found that I could follow along with a Spinning video and actually completed the whole 20 minutes!
This may not sound like a lot but it was a massive deal for me. My legs ached for the first few minutes but instead of stopping and giving up, I pushed harder and was so pleased to find that after a few minutes, the aching stopped.

While looking at different machines I found one that had Bluetooth and could connect to my Fitbit watch so the super wonderful husband bought one for me as an early Christmas present 🙂
We gave the one from my friend at Slimming World to another Slimming World friend!

Daily Exercise Routine

Whenever I’d heard people talking about enjoying exercise and how it made you feel good afterwards, I totally dismissed them. I couldn’t believe I’d ever feel that way about exercise.

I surprised myself so much by actually enjoying it! Far from hating being out of breath, I now have to ask my family to stop talking to me when I’m exercising so my heart rate doesn’t go down!

After every session, I’ve found myself looking forward to the next one. I can now see how exercise can be a huge benefit to people with mental health issues. I’m nearly a month in and I feel so good after each session.
I’ve been going to bed earlier so I have more energy to exercise the next morning.

First Session

This was my first attempt and I was really pleased with myself! I was still getting used to my Fitbit so I didn’t change the exercise type.

Today’s Session

This is my result for today. I now set my Fitbit to Spinning when I’m doing 20 seconds slow then 40 seconds as fast as I can. I did this for around an hour until I hit my step goal for the day then carried on at a steady speed until my playlist finished which is 72 minutes long!

I hope to be able to get my heart rate up enough to go into the cardio range and eventually peak range when I get more mobile. I’ve only managed a top rate of 135 so far.

Today at Slimming World my weight was 27st 9.5lb which means I only need to lose 1.5lbs to get my 3 and a half stone award back 🙂 It might take me a while because although I’m totally on track with my eating, starting a new exercise routine can slow down the result on the scale. I found a good article that explains why it happens so I’m not worrying about the scale results at the moment.

I got my Bronze Body Magic award at Slimming World today and everyone gave me a huge cheer!