Tomorrow is officially the 1 year mark from when my husband and I started doing the 5:2 diet ! I am so happy with the progress we've made over the last year!
After one year I am down 36 pounds! I was even down to 39 before Christmas & New Years hit, with weeks of yummy foods & lots of traveling. Minor setback! I've also lost 6 inches off my waist, 5 inches off my hips, and dropped 4 pant sizes. (My husband reached his 20 lb. goal months ago, without doing any exercise. He still eats the 5:2 dinners with me, and does full diet days when the scale starts climbing again.)
Here is a 1 year comparison picture for you... which sadly looks almost identical to my 4 month picture, even though I've lost another 15 lbs. or so since then, haha.
To quickly sum things up...
Diet ~
Throughout the year I have been doing the 5:2 diet, which involves dieting 2 days a week and only eating 600 calories those days. I have created a lot of 100 and 200 calorie meals, which I've been sharing here (with links on my recipe page). After 8 months I bumped my calorie amount up to 700 just to give myself a little more freedom on those days & keep from getting burnt out.
Exercise ~
I've also been exercising every week day, doing a combination of cardio and strength. I find my workouts on YouTube, and early on I discovered Zumba, which is a fun dance based workout (though I like it more than most dance workouts!). I got totally hooked and was happily doing 20-30 minutes a day along with a 10 minute strength workout (Pilates with Cassie Ho). Around 6 months I was laid up with Strep and had a hard time getting back into the workout routine. I eased back in doing 10 minutes of Zumba & 10 of strength, and have been doing that ever since (and wondering how I had the time & motivation to do so much before!)
It's not surprising to hear that I lost most of my weight (29 lb.) during the first 6 months, and it's been a very slow decline since then. Part of that is from cutting the exercise in half, but I also know it is just going to be harder to lose weight the closer you are to your goal. I don't get to see quite as large rewards now, but I am pretty happy with my figure currently and motivated to keep working as long as the numbers are still going down.
A couple of recent changes...
On my 2 diet days, instead of the Zumba + Pilates combination, I've started doing a circuit workout to keep things interesting. I started with a circuit I found on Pinterest, but added in some other exercises since it was mostly focused on abs. I also threw in 500 jumping jacks, ha ha! I have this exercise written out as a checklist and just work on it throughout the day, doing a few here & there. Sometimes I knock it out in the morning, other times I'm finishing it up before bed.
One day I should put together a nice graphic for this, but for now, my circuit workout is ~
1) 5 burpess 2) 30 second side plank (both sides) 3) 50 jumping jacks 4) 15 squats 5) 50 jumping jacks 6) 45 sec. plank 7) 50 jumping jacks 8) 15 side leg lifts 9) 50 jumping jacks 10) 20 Mnt. climbers 11) 50 jumping jacks 12) 15 push ups 13) 50 jumping jacks 14) 10 tricep chair dips 15) 50 jumping jacks 16) 30 Russian twists 17) 50 jumping jacks 18) 15 plie squats 19) 50 jumping jacks 20) 25 oblique cruches (each side) 21) 50 jumping jacks 22) 20 bicycles
Do it one time through. If you're not sure what any of those are, search for the name on YouTube and you'll find some examples. And if any of the reps are too high, just start with half and come back to finish the other half later. At the end I am definitely doing sets of 25 jumping jacks!
And on the diet side, about 2 or 3 times when things were too stagnant & I needed a boost, I did a 'light' week. I basically tried to eat more similar to my diet days before dinner for one week (Just the 5 weekdays. I'm not dieting on weekends!). I would either skip breakfast or have something 100 calories, then I would have my 100 calorie soup or salad for lunch and a few light snacks leading up into dinner. Since it wasn't official a diet day, I was a little more free with my snacking, but tried to keep it under 500 before dinner. That way, even with a big dinner and possibly a snack afterward, it was still a pretty low calorie day. Those weeks I was usually able to loose 2 lbs.
Currently I'm having a hard time coming down from the holiday eating and am still stuffing my face way more than I should! (I work at home, like 1 foot away from the pantry. It is not pretty!) I'd planned on doing a light week to make up for the holiday & could not motivate myself to the last two weeks at all. Maybe next week!
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