Old Ways
I have just completed my 12 Weeks journey and wanted to share my experience so others can truly understand the power of this program.
Like many of you during COVID I was binge eating foods that I knew weren’t good for me, my exercise was basically moving from the couch to the fridge and back again… My alcohol consumption was at an all time high because I felt like what else was there to do. I lived by the motto “treat myself”, but I wasn’t feeling too happy with myself.
I have been yo-yoing with my body weight since I can remember. If I had a goal to lose weight for some event I could achieve it but never maintain it. Just jumping from one fad to the next. I am naturally curvy and I don’t hate that but I found that eating poorly was really affecting my mental health.
One day at an all time low I decided I was ready to make a change. I came across 12 Weeks to Wellness as a possible option, so I decided to give it a go.
The Beginning
My first coaching call.
If I am being honest my level of motivation to even take the call was at about a 2/10. But seeing as I had made the commitment, I decided I should take the call, and I am glad that I did. My coach Bettina talked to me about the goals that I thought I could manage and some small steps that I could do to start off. My goal was to do 10k steps a day and to start to introduce more green foods into my diet. I was given some great recipes to try also. I left the call feeling very inspired and ready to achieve what I had set forward. And I did for the first week and then I started to slip, it rained a few days so I didn’t do my steps and my other habits started to sneak back in. On my next call I explained what had been happening, how bad I was and I was really talking negatively about myself. My coach told me that I need to stop talking down to myself and start being kind to myself, which really hit home. I think a lot of the time we start off eating well and then we fall off the wagon so to speak and give up, rather than saying, you know what, this is a journey and I need to be kinder to myself and keep going.
The Halfway Mark
I am half way through my journey and I am starting to feel a few things. First up my energy is picking up, which is HUGE. I see myself staying awake longer, getting more work done and feeling less stressed. The more I started to see myself changing the more I wanted to continue to achieve even more.
A Big Rock in the Road
I was feeling great and like everything was going well, then I came up against something I wasn’t prepared for….
On my next call with my coach I was asked to try and transform some of the old negative images I have of myself and transform them into something positive. In my head I am thinking “sure this is easy” and then it came down to doing the work. Like many of you I have been told that my weight would hold me back, would make me less successful, I have had some of the most nasty things said to myself and it imprinted on who I was as a person.
This took some time to process, to really sit down and write out all the horrible and degrading things I thought about myself and really think about is this real? Would I say these kinds of things to my best friends, or even my worst enemy and the answer every time was NO, so why would I say that about myself.
My success, my personality, who I am isn’t defined by my weight or nasty comments made by a handful of people.
I turned all those negative comments into positive ones and started to say them to myself daily. I won’t lie, it was hard to face that part of myself. Some days I didn’t believe it and some days I fell back into feeling low, but I see this as a journey not a destination.
However, each day I became more awake as I put it. I was walking more, eating better foods, feeling life come back into my body. It felt AMAZING!!!
The End
Coming into this program I thought to myself that this would be some light hearted, easy to do program that I would crush. What happened changed me in a deeper way than I expected. We are so hard on ourselves and I think we see that as “normal”, we put ourselves down rather than look at all the things that make us who we are. I have come out of this program feeling, hopeful! I have lost weight, I feel more confident and most of all I feel like I have gone through a transformation and come up a new person.
If you’re feeling stuck in negative patterns there is no harm asking for help. Sometimes we need someone to guide us or support us while we transition.
All in all I was so happy and surprised by my experience, and I am thankful that I took the leap!
12 Weeks client (2020)
