12WBT Week 4 Review

12WBT- Week 4 Review 

Weigh in:

Week 4 was mini-milestone week, which meant that on top of weighing in, we had to redo our measurements and fitness test as well. I was looking forward to this because I have been a bit disappointed with my losses so far and wanted to see what the tape measure had to say! I actually bothered to calculated my calorie deficit at the end of week 3, and worked out that based on maintenance calories of 2000 per day, I should at least lose 1kg in week 4. But weight loss is not as predictable as that, so I wasn't holding my breath. 

Come weigh-in day and I lost 1.1kg! I was so happy with that! It puts me only 1.2kg away from my original goal of being below 60kg by my birthday, and my birthday is in 2 weeks. Will I make it?

I've also lost 11cm in the past 4 weeks:

• 2cm from my chest
• 4cm from my waist (I finally have a waist circumference in the 'healthy' range!)
• 1cm from my hips
• 2cm from each arm (at first I thought my arms hadn't changed, so I was sad, as this is one of the hardest places for me to lose weight, but then I got my boyfriend to redo the measurements and they were smaller!)
• 2cm from each thigh 

I also improved on my fitness test:

• 1km time trial: 4 seconds faster  (4.46 to 4.42)
• Sit and reach: 1cm further (3cm to 4cm... I really need to work on my flexibility!)
• Wall sit: 29 seconds longer (1.32 to 2.01)
• Pushups in 1minute: Same amount as last time (35), but I doubled the amount I did on my toes (7 to 15) 
• Ab Strength (plank): 41 seconds longer (2.00 to 2.41) 

Overall, I'm really pleased with the progress I've made over the past 4 weeks. 

Exercise:

Monday: Body pump and CX-works. Increased my weights :). It's funny, I used to hate body pump, now I'm loving it!

Tuesday: RPM. It's funny. I'm working just as hard, if not harder in this class, but finding that I'm not burning as many calories. I used to burn at least 400, but now it's down to about 350. I guess that's what happens with improved fitness and weight loss!

Wednesday: Body balance and 12WBT fitness test. I really love Body balance! I was so uncoordinated to begin with, but now I'm getting the hang of it. It's challenging but relaxing at the same time.

Thursday: Nothing. There's no good classes on at the gym on Thursday, and I'm sick of doing the workout videos, so I find Thursday the hardest day to get motivated to work out. Plus I have so much study to do at the moment, and that study has taught me that for exercise to have a significant effect on weight loss, you have to do a lot of it (at least an hour a day). For this reason, I am feeling a bit less obsessive about sticking to my 6 days of exercise, especially since I had my biggest loss after taking the whole weekend off! I will aim for at least 5 days, if I do 6, all the better. I might try a cardio based gym machines workout next Thursday.  

Friday: Strength workout at the gym plus 20 mins of cardio. Really enjoyed this workout. I'm liking strength training more and more. Especially now I can see how toned I am getting!

Saturday: I did the 12WBT week 5 SSS at the gym. I struggle working out what to do for my SSS each week. Since my gym is so big (with cardio and weights in different areas), the previous gym SSS programs have been a bit inconvenient to do, so I have just been doing home workouts based on the workout videos, running and a bit of toning. I was getting very sick of that, so when I saw that the week 5 SSS would be very easy to do in the women's only section of my gym, I was excited. This was my best SSS ever! 750 calories! I had to go for a bit longer to get to that number, and I was sweating like anything and struggling towards the end, but I really enjoyed myself!

Food:

My food was pretty spot-on again. Even on Saturday, after my huge SSS! I planned my meals again for Saturday, and this time I didn't go over my 1200 calories at all! And I even had cheesecake! 

I don't know if it's been the meals I've made this week, or if my stomach is shrinking, but I've found myself getting full a bit. This is the first week that I have experienced feeling full while following the 12WBT. I'm not sure if it's a good thing or not! 

The challenge for this week was to try different foods. I didn't really attempt this challenge. I grew up with a hugely varied diet (kids at school often thought the contents of my lunch box was weird). I've tried a lot of things, and I like a lot of things. The few things I don't like, it's because I've actually tasted them. Plus I've been cooking for my boyfriend this week, so I had to make sure I was catering to his tastes as well. 

Week 4 completed and I'm still going strong and really enjoying myself :).