This is my first update on a post I wrote about my experiment in using hypnosis for weight loss. (Read it here).
I have followed the advice and left it for four weeks until I weighed myself again. And the result?
I have lost 2 pounds. Woohoo!
I have to admit I was a little bit disappointed with that but on reflection, it’s not too bad. I have never been obsessed by the number on the scale anyway. I don’t think it matters as much as how you feel and how you look.
And how you feel about how you look.
Or is that just my excuse for not losing much weight? No, seriously, I do think there are more important issues than how much you weigh.
What else has happened over these four weeks?
Drinking water
I have learned to drink water. I have always known that I really should be drinking a lot more water but I could never get myself to do it. Now I seem to have dropped into the habit pretty easily.
It’s easier when I’m working. I keep a glass of water on my desk. My day is divided into blocks of time and I focus on one task in each block. While I am doing that I drink my water.
When I finish, I take a short break during which I fetch new glass of water. This is fine during work time but I have found it harder to keep up with over the weekend. But it is still a vast improvement on where I was before.
Diet
I wouldn’t say that my diet had changed a whole lot. There have been occasions when eating out that I have chosen a healthier option. I wouldn’t say that I think about it all the time though.
I don’t obsessively monitor what I eat but I don’t think that my diet was too bad anyway. I have never been attracted by cakes and sugary things. If I did really analyse it I’m sure that I would find room for improvement.
One thing that I am guilty of is eating too fast. I have consciously tried to slow down and savour my food but I sometimes slip into the old habit.
I think that we all know which types of food are good for us and which aren’t. If you eat consciously, you must have a better chance of making healthy choices.
Exercise
The big thing for me is the lack of activity. We’ve all heard that weight loss is simply a matter of burning more calories than you eat.
I don’t think that I consume that many calories. Not too many bad calories anyway. It’s that burning them off part.
I spend a lot of hours sitting in front of a computer and if I’m honest I could do a lot more when I am not work.
I have been making some small changes but nowhere near enough. Writing for example. I am the worlds slowest typist so I invested in voice recognition software.
As I write this I am not sitting at my desk but standing up and pacing around the room. To the extent of the cord on my headset anyway.
That may not sound like much but it’s a couple of hours a day of standing up when I could be sitting down. That has to be worth something.
I have been doing other little bits of resistance training but it probably adds up to a few minutes a week rather than a few minutes a day.
I rearranged my work schedule so that I can finish earlier and have time to do some household chores before dinner. I have to say that that hasn’t quite worked out the way I planned so far.
Summary
There has been little change in diet or exercise. I am certainly not doing anything that gets my pulse racing on a regular basis.
Given that, I am happy to have lost 2 pounds.
I didn’t expect a miracle cure. There have been changes in the way I think about health. Did I expect more? Probably.
Do I regard this as a failure? No.
I haven’t seen the kind of changes that I would have liked but I have seen changes in the mirror.
I am slightly more toned. I can see that some things don’t sag as much as they used to. Things have been pulled into place.
The body I used to have is still in there somewhere. I have even started to get excited about the possibility of bringing it out again.
This has not been a raging success so far but I do think it’s a step in the right direction. Or at least one normal step made up of a lot of tiny steps.
I choose to focus on all those tiny things piling onto the positive side of the balance. As I see the results from them, I feel the desire to do more. The momentum is growing.
I don’t feel inclined to give up on this weight loss experiment just yet. I am sure that in my next update, I will have a lot more to report.
