Chez FitMercy

Good day good readers. Is it not awesome that I am still in this weigh in and healthy lifestyle blogging? I am so proud of myself this morning and my Wednesday weigh in and blogging about it had not faltered for a moment.  Consistency is a key to success, keep moving even when sometimes you take some wrong turns [of course its because you are conscious is the reason you even know you have taken a wrong turn], keep moving by turning back into the right direction. Do not stand there kicking or blaming yourself for the wrong turn and not doing anything about it. Today we want to understand more about success and how you need to get yourself ready for it. Last post dwelt on what our plans, goals and resolutions are in 2017 [I believe you have written them down], now we are to be optimistic and enter into the level of imagination on what our successes will be like this year. What successes are you looking forward to? 1. From 1lbs - 500lbs loss 2. A toned/ripped

Weight loss journey can be as interesting and as boring, it can be as inspiring as it can be frustrating. It is the desire to keep moving no matter what, that brings the most success. I had been on this for the past 6 years and it is funny how many times I had to lose and regain those tiny pounds but somehow I am nearer to my goal weight now than ever before. Sometimes I lose weight rapidly, other times they come in tiny bits and some days it's like I woke up to gain 5lbs that will refuse to go away irrespective of what is done. In this long journey to great health, I have learnt to keep on keeping on even when the surrounding conditions doesn't permit it.

Today, take a look at YOU... Just look at ALL you have accomplished! Be PROUD of YOU! YOUR hard work and persistence are paying off! Keep UP the GOOD work! Yes, YOU can do anything you put your mind to do! Google says, pride is a feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one's own achievements, the achievements of one's close associates, or from qualities or possessions that are widely admired. It is the consciousness of one's own dignity. Wikipedia however talks about pride as an inwardly directed emotion that carries two antithetical meanings. With a negative connotation pride refers to a foolishly and irrationally corrupt sense of one's personal value, status or accomplishments, used synonymously with hubris . 

I have cracked my brain over what to write about today and when I tried putting some post together about " living healthy on a low budget " (watch out for that next), the topic " family " just popped in my mind and I decided to just pour my heart out a bit this week and also reminiscence into what my family eating style was about too. I grew up within a family of 7 including mom and dad. We are a combo of 3 boys and 2 girls, friendly siblings in our years of growing, we did everything together and really loved ourselves. I think as we were growing we started recognizing our individual differences and it could only make us form parties, I don't mean we disliked ourselves but we started preferring one person over the other and obviously became closer with one more than others, lol. (If this has not happened in your family, raise your hands up).

My weight is up this week because of a new exercise plan.  I weighed this morning first thing after leaving the bathroom and it was a gain from last week, I decided to do my workout for the day which was a high intensity interval training. After the exercise, I bathe and weighed again and it was an increase on the scale. I wish to address this in my post today. I had been discouraged over and over about this issue in my journey towards losing weight. I mean, starting a new exercise plan with great expectations of a cooperation from the scale only for you to sight a bad gain at the first weigh in, urgh...

Overeating is the process of eating excess food in relation to the energy expended by a person. There are a thousand and one scientific explanations that is given to what happens before, during and after overeating. I want to explain overeating as it relates to me. I mostly have this experience when I think I am too hungry or when I enjoy the meal or when the food is my favorite. I think as much as it is easy to explain overeating, it starts from the mind then the mouth and the most effect is felt in the stomach then the waist in that order.

I have kept at this streak for 20 good weeks straight up. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy Find Below my chart for the past 5 months of consistent weigh ins.

I have been weighing myself and blogging about it for almost 20 weeks consecutively. I feel proud of myself because I know that consistency is very important in a weight loss journey and I am doing just that. For the past 3 weeks I had been posting on eating, hunger and other things in-between. I posted about CRAVINGS , DESIRE TO EAT and HUNGER , today and I am going to make my inference from the past posts and how it could affect me as a person (one of the purpose of this blog is for readers to learn from me and succeed). My conclusions goes thus : 1. I now know what true hunger means, which according to Dr. Fuhrman is felt at the throat and at the back of the mouth (refer to the last week's post)

It's a new week and I am a little excited today for some reasons: 1. I had my first workout Wednesday morning after more than 3 whole weeks of inactivity. 2. I just got clue to a new challenge and I am really excited that I may not bored out of this. 3. Intermittent Fasting is working and I am not worn out. It's more spiritual than physical and that keeps me going. 4. This is my 200th post on this blog, a wonderful milestone for me. I am proud of myself The post on true hunger is not really mine but a fact as researched by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.  Happy Reading. Hunger is good to experience on a daily basis. Hunger is important to aid in our enjoyment of food and get the precise signals from our body to know the amount of calories we need to maintain our lean body mass. When we eat when we are hungry food tastes much better and we are physiologically primed for proper digestion. Hunger, in the true sense of the word, indicates to us that it is time to e

I love cooking.  I love learning new cooking tips. I love trying new recipes. I think it could be responsible for my tendency to overeat. I love the food I cook or let me just say I love eating food, good foods, delicious food. Can I say I lack self control? Or all these episodes of overeating even after intermittent fasting is emotional in nature? I have tried 5-6 meals a day and I ended up overweight and now I am doing intermittent fasting still I tend to overeat at my non-fasting window or days. The question I am asking myself today is this: AM I AN EMOTIONAL EATER? Whenever you eat outside hunger it can be defined as emotional eating. Anytime you eat to soothe yourself or suppress a negative emotion e.g. anger, sadness, or even boredom you are emotionally eating.  I am aware of this but I seem not to be able to help myself when the eating starts but I try that it doesn't spin out of control, at least I am sure to get it curbed within 24 hours,

It is two weeks and two days today that I had been planning and journaling. In these few weeks I can call myself a planner , woohoo! Planning also called forethought  " is the process of thinking about and organizing the activities required to achieve a desired goal" . I love this definition because of the these words ' thinking ' ' organizing ' and 'goal',  since that's what I have been doing, although not the deep kind of thinking but the just-do-it type. I mean all I do each night is just know what my workout plan for tomorrow is and I get everything ready including Plans A, B and everything to Z. I wake up each day not planning to finish the whole exercise in my journal but as much as I am satisfied with while there is still time. I write the meal plan for the next day including my snacks in my journal and for the past 16 days, it's been worth it. Every night I end the day completing my workout or writing how the day had been food-

I tried my best this past week but I think TOM really proved me wrong and I am not feeling bad about it at all. I am growing into it and I believe with time things will work well. As I planned last week Wednesday, I did 5 days intermittent fasting 14:10, one day 18:6 and a 24 hour fast which ended this morning. I stepped on the scale this morning and I weighed 170.4lbs, I know it has something to do with TOM and some other factors I took note of like overeating during my eating window. When breaking the fast by 11am in the morning, my meals are planned and on point but by the time I get home at dinner, there is a feeling to stock my tommy. I am putting that into consideration this week, meaning just because there is a fast does not give room to eat just about anything.  On the exercising front also, I did not lift a finger this week because I was just not feeling it (it's a bane). I am going to make sure to try my best this week to workout for the 7 days starting today, I stil

My weigh in today looks well and with such small loss (0.2), it is a movement towards the right direction. The retreat had not allow my routine to be back to normal but I am focusing on my diet more. I intermittent fast everyday, a 14:10 pattern i.e. 14 hours fast and a 10 hours eating window. Let's speak more about food fast, for 40 days we had been involved in a 19:5 fasting pattern (spiritual exercise), and I may say I am reaping some benefits both physical and spiritual. I wasn't 100% faithful like DH was but I did up to 65% of the fast. I really learnt a whole lot of stuff about myself and hunger during these fasted periods, I will highlight a few: Intermittent fast or what I call "short term" hunger cannot kill me or anyone. I am well able to exercise in the morning fasted hours than when I break the fast at night, when I tend to be weaker. Hunger pangs bite hardest into me between the hours of 10am and 1pm. After these 3 hours I don't fe

Good day good people, I almost forgot to write about my weigh in this week.  I felt a little better this week because there is a reward for my consistency. I had a pound loss over the scale and it makes me feel nice and ready to continue with my present workout/food schedule. The weather (my last week's excuse) is getting better with some showers in between but much more, I think I felt more determined to do THIS. I had been running indoors ( how possible could that be ) and it had worked, as evident on the scale and also my heart rate monitor.  pop sugar After some more researches, I will talk about exercising indoors and all the benefits attached to it in another post soon. I love a mantra that reads "if plan A is not working, there are 25 more alphabets between A and Z" meaning that I just had to stop making unnecessary excuses and move on. After some pep talk, I told myself I am on a weight loss journey and it is no good news that I keep merry-

I had an 0.4lbs weight gain between last week and today. I am not surprised because " it's not possible to keep doing the same things and expecting different results ". All my plans to take my workout up a notch last week was forfeited by some factors beyond my control, "weather" (over 37 degrees celcius and over 27 at night). I hate making excuses but I seemed to be very helpless at this point, the scotching sun during the day and the humidity at night is quite overbearing. According to a previous plan , I intended utilizing the mornings but they are as equally humid as the nights too. The effects of all these is low morale and total body debility and I don't feel encouraged to do anything. It looks to me that my mind is not working neither is my body. I am presently on intermittent fasting and I am consistent with it, but I also think I eat too much while breaking the fast and it is really jeopardizing my efforts of the fasted periods. I h

Intermittent Fasting (called IF) is a pattern of eating where you time your eating. There is a deep study by various people on this (Read on  here ...) and I have tried some of these including:- 16:8 Fasting You fast for 16 hours and limit your eating within an eight hour window. I was doing this day in day out early 2015. My breakfast was coming in by 3pm every day and I lost weight and my blood work became almost perfect. I think I got discouraged along the line when some "concerned folks" started complaining that I am doing "too much". I regret ever listening to them now, not sure they were God sent. 24 hours Fasting . This is when you don't consume any calorie for 24 hours straight, I normally fast breakfast to breakfast i.e. 7am today till 7am tomorrow. I did this as a "collabo" (together) with the 16:8 and I think this was what made my weight loss so drastic and noticeable. I did this early last year and I had a surprise

How has been the day friends?  Today is Day One of Project Scale Down . I measured my girth at 36.1 inches Weighed in at 169.6lbs (77kg) A starting picture too. The next blog will be 16th of January for Day 15 progress. Follow me on twitter for daily updates. Observations : 1. My core had become very weak from lack of exercise 2. I did 60 secs plank hold twice, I started shaking at 2 secs the first time, 12 secs the second time 3. Fitness Blender core exercise for 20 minutes and I stopped the video thrice 4. I am really out of shape. Extras : I am beginning 5:2 Diet Fast by Monday 4th, 2016. It is a healthy way to keep your body in good shape. I have tried it before and I am ready to do it again. I will blog about this and what I did after the first day is successful.