Last year, just after I turned 39 I was pretty miserable in my body, and with myself. I wrote a sort of poem and then decided to do something about it. Over the last 12 months I have written lots of updates about my ‘Fit by 40’ progress but now I actually am 40 (well 40 and a month now) how did I actually do in my mission?

Well, for the first 4 months or so I was following the Shake That Weight very low calorie diet plan, and I lost just over 2 stones in weight. I then switched over to Intermittent Fasting and I’ve been doing that properly since January of this year. I’ve not actually lost any more weight since starting IF (apart from some that I had gained over Christmas) but I am sticking with it.

I still want to lose some more weight but I’m not in any big rush. The thing about IF is that it helps your body heal, and after over 20 years of yo-yo dieting my body has a lot of healing to do before it can start concentrating on losing weight. I’m in a couple of IF Facebook groups linked to the book Delay, Don’t Deny which really started me on this intermittent fasting path. In that group they talk about NSVs or non-scale victories. And although I’ve not had loads of NSVs I have had some – my eczema is completely gone, my hay fever started a lot later this year than usual, the hard skin on my feet is much reduced, my constipation has improved, my nails are stronger and grow faster than I’ve ever known… On the face of it these all seem quite odd things to attribute to fasting but it’s amazing what the body can do when you give it a rest from digesting food all the time!

On the fitness front things are much the same. I was doing great with yoga, and somehow just got out of the habit of doing it. I’ve started again in the last couple of weeks though so we’ll see how long this stretch lasts! Gabe is going to be going to nursery for three full days a week from September so I’m hoping that will give me time to fit in a proper yoga class somewhere and maybe so something like Zumba again, which I haven’t done since before we moved. According to my FitBit I have a fairly low resting heart rate which indicates good cardiovascular fitness though, so that’s good at least.

Overall, I’m pleased with the progress I have made in the last 12 months and I’m definitely in a better place than I was a year ago. And finally here are my much promised progress pictures!

I’m definitely not ‘done’ yet, if you can ever really be done. I’m going to carry on my intermittent fasting lifestyle and I’m confident that eventually I will lose the rest of the weight that I want to lose, and get to a weight that I can maintain, hopefully for the rest of my life!

So onward I go….I’ll still be writing these posts but I guess I’ll have to think of a new title – Fit at 40 maybe?

If you’d like to read the rest of my Fit by 40 posts you can find them here.