W8D7: Results are in!

R1W8D7 (Round 1, Week 8, Day 7): Here are my 8 week results. (I can’t believe I’m posting these pictures!) 🙈

Week 1 vs Week 8 pictures

Back story:

I never really hated my post-baby body, because I was told that I would probably never be able to have children naturally. 4 operations, 10 daily meds, 600+ injections, 2 rounds of IVF and immune therapy, and 16 years of infertility/loss later I finally gave birth to our much longed for child and I couldn’t be happier. (Those of you who’ve been following my blog know all about this… For anyone who’s interested click on “IVF experience“.)

A little too happy… I had already put on weight due to meds, and put on more in pregnancy, and I just stopped worrying about weight – which was exactly right for me at the time.

Fast forward 2.5 years and I was beginning to feel uncomfortable… Clothes were getting tight and I was having to buy larger sizes, and my baby’s now a toddler and I want to model healthy eating and exercise habits. I just wanted to feel like me again! I kept seeing ads for Fitmum so one late night browsing, I finally took the plunge.

I am vegetarian so I did the Vegan programme (initial 8 week detox) with 3 eggs a day. I’d say I was about 85-90% compliant. I occasionally went over the seed limit, and I had salad dressing, tomatoes, avocado and watermelon, all banned/limited on this detox. I sometimes ate later than suggested but I tended to try and keep roughly to the recommended 14hr fast.

The first two weeks were hard! But now in Week 8 I can honestly say it doesn’t feel hard at all and I’m loving it.

My results:

I didn’t measure myself but when I started out, I was squeezing into a UK size 12 dress and could barely do it up. In week 7, I bought 2 size 8 dresses! (I think they were pretty forgiving and I’m probably a comfortable size 10 now.)

When I started, I could barely do any burpees and I really struggled to do 50. (I did them instead of the weekly 5k run.) Yesterday I did 100 burpees! And my 50 burpees time came down from 9 minutes in Week 1 to 4 and a half in Week 8.

Most importantly I started feeling super positive! I felt really empowered because I could see and feel the results. I really enjoyed doing the daily exercises, and it was so easy to do in my own home without any special equipment. I love that my kid could help with the exercises and could see mama living a healthy lifestyle!

In total I’ve lost 12.4kg / 27.34lbs. My goal is to lose another 8-9kg and be happy in a swimsuit at the beach wedding I’m due at in a few months so I’m going straight into round 2. (The same thing just repeated again.)

I’m so grateful to the programme and the creators, Sharny and Julius, for making it so accessible. In Week 1, I couldn’t even imagine committing to this for 8 weeks. Now at the end of Week 8 about to flip into Round 2, I’m so glad I took that late night decision!

Top tips:

1. Take the before photos – even if they make you cringe. And take progress photos every week. If I was ever a bit worried about the scale not moving, I’d take some photos to see how far I’d come. Because you can see the difference every week.
2. Find out what (diet compliant) stuff you like to eat and stick to it. I spent a few weeks experimenting with cauliflower and it was a waste of time! In one of Sharny’s live videos (she does them every day) she talked about food being fuel and not reward and this really makes sense. Once I had realised what I liked, I just ate pretty much the same thing every day.
3. Tell everyone you are doing it! It felt a bit embarrassing in the beginning but meant I stayed on the straight and narrow as I didn’t want to lose face in front of my friends and family!
4. Drink a tonne of water. I already did, but drink even more. Half the time you’re not hungry – you’re thirsty.
5. Plan ahead with eating out: Most places you can find a plain salad, but it’s so much nicer when you plan ahead. I got a cool lunchbox (Black+Blum) and I generally bring my own salad for lunch at work or round people’s houses. I carry protein powder and seeds in my bag so I won’t be caught short. You can buy hardboiled eggs to take away so if I am out I do that and add it to a restaurant salad. And I have figured out the local restaurants that do good healthy food and we go there!
6. Take probiotics! I didn’t realise they were even doing anything until we went away for a few days and I was a bit constipated! I now take them daily.
7. Non food rewards! I saved loads of money on not buying expensive ready-made food. Now I mainly buy fresh veg! And I take my own packed lunch salad as it’s so much nicer (and cheaper) than the stuff you can buy. With all the money I saved I treated myself to non food stuff like new shoes, a manicure, and toiletries… and of course new clothes when my clothes started getting too big!
8. Healthy treats: If I really needed to, I ate healthy treats – my favourites are homemade courgette/zucchini crisps, watermelon or homemade vegan chocolate. All diet approved!

That’s it really!

Quite strange to think I made it to 8 weeks. To celebrate I drank an entire bottle of prosecco (v low carb, haha, and it was over a whole afternoon as we had friends round watching the sport). And I ate quite a lot of a bag of Popchips. I can’t believe that’s what constitutes cheating now, but there you have it. I fully expect an impact on the scale tomorrow but I’m going directly back on the detox so I hope I can get back into it.

(The rest of my stats were: Rest day, a tonne of salad. And I had some cheese sausages/burger too! And watermelon! Crazy!)

Back on the wagon tomorrow…