I have tried very hard this month with DietBet as I have every other month so far. I knew starting out that it would be though this time around being my third month in a row doing 4% in 4 week games. I also knew it would be more difficult than before because I was nearing the territory where my weight loss journey ended almost five years ago. I maintained within a five pound range for the most part with an occasional ten pound range at that weight for three years. I was in a healthy weight range, so I lost my steam for pushing myself harder and farther back then. I started gaining the weight back after two surgeries in 2013. Initially it was due to being mostly sedentary for a time after each one, and then my paying attention to what I was eating completely left my attention. I just kind of spiraled out of control for awhile after that.
Yet, I was determined to at least keep trying in February. At the beginning of February I joined 3 new 4% weight loss in 4 week DietBets and a third 10% weight loss in 6 months game also. I had joined one in December and one in January. The first week of February, I printed off some Challenge Trackers too and started doing these monthly Challenges along with DietBet games. I started a 100 Mile Month Challenge by eatdrinkandbeskinny.com. I started a 30 Day Butt Lift Challenge by blogilates.com. I started a Lose the Love Handles Challenge by shrinkingjeans.net. I also joined a 28 Day Beginner Squat Challenge that was posted in the Facebook Group for Fitbit Friends. I started planning and tracking my mileage goals for each day, so that I could hopefully complete 100 miles in February with the help of my Fitbit tracker. I started doing challenge exercises each day as specified on the sheets I printed. The first week I continued with my Yoga Videos from Gaiam TV – My Yoga Online. I completed 5 Yoga Videos that first week I think and exercises off each challenge sheet 7 Days that week plus one Blogilates Pop Pilates Full Body Video.
The second week of the month, I picked up the Blogilates Flat Abs Challenge Calendar too. I started off trying to do 2 days at a time trying to catch up in hopes of finishing it by the end of the month. I continued my challenges daily through Thursday night. However, I had been starting to feel a little tired already. I also had to spend Wednesday night up all night packing to leave early Thursday morning to go out of town for my Grandmother’s knee surgery. I was able to do my challenge exercises Thursday night after going well over 24 hours without sleep, but I crashed hard that night. I had to wake up early again the next few days though. Also, after spending a lot of hours in the hospital, not getting much sleep and being exposed to bitter cold temperatures outside, I still had no energy for any exercise other than some walking/pacing around the hospital when we were letting my grandmother sleep or when her nurses were in with her or something.
I made it back home that Sunday night pretty late and was completely exhausted. I have Rheumatoid Arthritis and it brings on bouts of chronic fatigue. I think being exposed to who knows what in the hospital didn’t help, and with my RA and medication, when I get sick or run down, it lasts two to three times as long in my system as a normal healthy person. My mother has RA too and she experiences the same issues.
I eventually picked exercising back up the challenge exercises again the Thursday after coming home. I managed 4 days of exercises that week plus another Blogilates Pop Pilates Video. On some days I was trying to do multiple days of exercises at once to try to catch up so that I could finish my challenge calendars by the end of the month. By Sunday I had caught up to date on the Beginner Squat Challenge and the Blogilates Butt Lift Challenge. I then noticed that the Butt Lift Challenge was for 30 days, but I wanted to finish it on the 28th. I was still having bouts of dizziness and waves of nausea and had to take more rests than I had been previously. My sleep was also still suffering. I was not getting much more than four and a half to five and a half hours of sleep even through the third week of the month. I think this is because I had been thrown off my sleep schedule going out of town and having to get up early while I was gone to get to the hospital. I would wake up at home after just a few hours of sleep and couldn’t go back to sleep.
Then the last week of the month came, and I slowly started getting a little bit more sleep averaging about six to six and a half hours a lot of days. I was still feeling ill and took Monday off from exercise videos and challenge exercises. I started again Tuesday. Some days I did multiple days off different challenge calendars and some days I just managed one day off some of them. By this time, I realized I was not going to finish them all, but I was determined to just do the best I could. I kept plugging through during waves of nausea, dizziness, blackening vision and even cold sweats.
I am proud to say that through what has been my worst month in a long time, I have still somehow managed to finish my 100 mile month challenge with 100.80 miles logged this month according to my Fitbit. When I wasn’t exercising from videos or other challenges, I was still logging steps meeting my step goals and most of my mile goals in order to finish this challenge. I also finished the 28 Day Beginner Squat Challenge. I finished the 30 Day Butt Lift Challenge too. I actually finished the last 4 Days (27, 28, 29, and 30) on Saturday the 28th, just so I could finish another one of my challenge calendars. I didn’t finish the Blogilates Flat Abs Challenge. However, I am OK with that. I started it late did two days at a time a lot of the days I did this one. I did finish through Day 16 of it at least. With the 28 Day Lose the Love Handles Challenge, I had missed the instructions with this one at the beginning that we were supposed to do two sets of the exercises the first 21 days and 3 sets the last 7 days. I then modified my calendar to one set the first week, two sets the second week, three sets the third week and four sets the fourth week. I managed to finish through day 21 this way. I only had one week left which had a rest day in it. So, technically, I only missed six days of it. I am OK with this too. I honestly feel like I did the best I could this month with my routine being changed on me for awhile and with exhaustion and illness plaguing me for the past two week. There is always room for improvement with things, so I am planning to start some of these challenges over next month leaving out a couple and adding a couple new ones in their places. I will post another blog about those next.
The last thing to address in this blog is how all of this has affected my weight this month. The first half of this month my weight continued to fluctuate between 160 and 162. My initial weigh-ins for my DietBets that started Feb. 2 and Feb 4 were 161.8 and 160.6. I was very frustrated to see my weight keep fluctuating right here for a little over two weeks. However, for awhile there wasn’t much I could do about it because I wasn’t feeling well and my body needed to rest before I could start exercising more again. I then changed my way of thinking and decided that it was a good thing I had at least maintained my weight while being out of town eating different foods than I was used to at home. Once I finished resting for the 6 days I took off between the 13th and the 18th, and I started exercising again my weight slowly started coming back off again. I weighed in Saturday upon waking up at 155.8 without my clothes. My goal for my weigh-out Monday or Tuesday is 155.3. My goal for my weigh-out Wednesday or Thursday is 154.2. My other goal for this month for the 4% game is 153.8 on March 18th or 19th (because my weigh-in for that game wasn’t much lower than the other games because I was stuck for so long this month). I am really hoping that I am getting close enough that I can manage to drop the rest of the weight I need to lose by Monday or Tuesday and Wednesday or Thursday and that I can lose enough that it is low enough to meet my goals with my weigh-in clothes on. I am really optimistic as well as my getting back into my exercises after a six day rest has seemed to re-ignite my metabolism. If I don’t I keep telling myself that I can’t beat myself up over what I did or didn’t do this month. It has been a long hard month on me, and I did the best I could and that’s all I can ask of myself. My only goal should be to keep trying for my game that ends later in the month and for any other games I join in the future. Most importantly, I just need to focus on my new challenges and getting back into my Yoga. I need to stick to my healthy eating (which I have done really well both at home and out of town) and getting as much exercise as I can when I am not too ill or exhausted.
One more note, I would like to say that I regrettably have not spent nearly as much time on DietBet games reading the activity board this month as I have in previous months. I haven’t been on my computer until now since I left for my Grandmother’s surgery. I have checked in occasionally on my phone app, but it’s just not the same. I really miss the encouragement and motivation I have received in the past from DietBet. I really hope I can jump back in and spend more time on here again in the future. I have been ill and working my butt off when I can to try to make up challenges and losing my weight in a shorter time period. I hope everyone has had a great month and I hope everyone is going to meet your goals this time around and I hope that everyone has an ever better month planned for March!
Oh, I just realized I forgot something else too that I learned in February. I also learned that keeping a log of my exercises seems to help me stay on track. For a few days, I was posting a daily log for my exercises at the end of the day before I went to bed. However, I found this to be very tedious and when I wasn’t getting on the computer when I was ill and really pushing to finish exercises. I was just ready to relax and get to bed when I was finished. I think for March, I may try to do a weekly log of all the exercises I finished at the end of each week. I think I will try to sit down and do these somewhere between Friday and Sunday. I like the accountability of the logs and I like having it to look back at in the future. I know I log stuff in my Fitbit, but I log my exercises more generically in my Fitbit App. I think once a week will be a good marker for me to go by in the future to see where I have come and where I can continue to grow.