Find out more about this project and my weight loss goals here

It’s official – I’ve been on this weight loss journey for a whole month. Changes are turning into habits, the weight is consistently dropping off, and I’ve learned to say no to temptations. Long may this continue!

Anyway, let’s get into week four’s ups, downs, learnings and statistics…

This week’s stats

Weight loss goal: 0.5kg
Weight lost this week: 0.6kg
Current weight: 96.4kg
Weight lost total: 2.6kg

Daily calorie goal: 1,750
Average daily calories consumed: 1,573
Water goal: 14 litres
Water consumed: 12.5 litres

Step goal: 35,000
Steps achieved: 55,694
Distance walked: 34.64km
Heart points achieved: 349
Longest walk: 5.62km

On the menu

Something I haven’t mentioned before is that our meal plan flexes and changes dependent on what happens throughout the week. We’ve always meal planned but been flexible with what meals go where – this lets us pick and choose what’s for dinner based on what we fancy, but ensures we’re not overwhelmed with choice, and have all the ingredients available. The way I do this with the new diet meal plan is using colour-coded sticky notes to plan out the week – which lets me move things around if needed – and then write what we actually eat in later. There’s a whole host of reasons things might change – lack of ingredients, last-minute plans, or simply being too tired in the evening to prep something. This way I can keep a record of each week, and look back if I need inspiration for the next week’s meals.

To show you how the week can change, here’s the initial meal plan I made before going shopping the previous Friday:

And here’s how the week actually worked out:

New recipes

Keeping me motivated

I don’t watch much TV but I LOVE YouTube. Over the last few weeks I’ve been watching a lot of videos on meal prep and nutrition advice to help me create my meal plans and choose the right foods – and I’ve been watching a few videos from YouTubers who lost a lot of weight sustainably too, which I think is helping me to stay motivated.

• Abbey Sharp – Youtuber, registered dietician and full of wholesome advice on eating well
• 27 Fox Place – THE most satisfying meal and ingredient prep videos focusing on whole foods
• LouisesJourneyxo – British influencer who lost a ton of weight just by walking and shares her advice
• Liezl Jayne Strydom – Makes easy to follow and inspiring meal prep plans that don’t take hours

I’ve also been spending a lot of time on Pinterest, saving recipe ideas to my Healthy Recipes board.

Out and about

Spring has sprung in my village, and everywhere I go there is a new explosion of flowers. The baby lambs are frolicking in the fields, the birds are singing, the sun is shining – daily walks have never felt so good. My cat even decided to get in on the exploring action, and followed me closely on a walk for a mile and a half before we started encountering dogs… and I thought we better get home before he got lost!

How I’m feeling

Something I’ve been thinking about this week is how for many people talking about their weight loss, they had ‘easy wins’ that really made a huge difference. Things like giving up daily fast food or cutting out sugary drinks are examples of things that really made a huge change in their lifestyles, which is obviously great for them and really helped them on their journey. But not everyone has big easy wins like this! I don’t eat fast food or takeaways regularly, don’t drink a lot of alcohol, and don’t drink much other than water or tea (and even that is decaf, without sugar). Because I generally eat healthily and have done for years, while slowly but steadily getting heavier, I think being overweight, for me, has just been caused by a combination of slightly too much food and too little exercise.

On the flip side, I have found small easy wins that make a big difference. Walking at least 5,000 steps a day is not a huge undertaking, but done consistently over a long period is really good for my body, and something I can stick to long-term. Reducing the amount of oil we use in cooking is very easy, as is reducing the portion sizes of pasta and rice. We already ate a lot of vegetables, so increasing the portion of a meal made up of vegetables wasn’t too difficult. Meal planning, cooking, shopping economically and not wasting food were skills I had already developed over the last decade, so applying these to a new challenge was pretty easy too.

4 weeks in, I’m feeling positive and confident that I can sustain this lifestyle change. Because that’s what this is, right? It’s not a diet, it’s a weight loss journey, sure – but to maintain my goal weight, when I get there, I’ll need to keep doing a lot of the changes I’ve made. The exercise, the balanced meals, the minimal sugar, the mostly eating fruit and veg.

‘Til next time,

Alli xx