Next year, an improvement on 2012, and other resolutions

When I look back at 2012 it will probably be the year that held the greatest, most positive change in my life.

I know, all of you know I am a mother by now. I have been talking about my baby (I am so in love with her) on here and everywhere. I also became a wife to a man who inspired me to become a better version of myself and who continues to inspire me everyday to discover more about who I am and who I can be. Showing me that life has limitless possibilities, the limits being only those that we impose upon ourselves. 

How can I then surpass all this next year? Now that it is a time of reflection on what happened in the past year and set new goals for the next? 

I believe that setting a goal not to backtrack on progress already made is a good goal in itself. A mistake a lot of us make is to relax once we achieve our target weight, look, fitness...after all, we don't have to work so hard anymore. Finding balance to maintain it is difficult. I intend to work everyday at finding balance.

Speaking balance, I will continue working on finding balance between family, my business, and my personal life. Being mothers and wives we tend to lose our personal identity. We become, Mrs So & So, Mama so & so. We shrink into that quiet accompaniment to our husbands and children. I am fighting to keep my identity, personal growth will make me a better wife and mother. I am proud to be Mama Njoki, and be known as the wife of so & so, but before I became all these, I was known as me. The juggling act gets tiring, but I enjoy most of it.

I promise myself not to let life affect me I have noticed that I have become more distrusting, giving my personality up to influence by the lying, thieving, hypocritical, ruthless and unforgiving society we have become. I have become more cynical,  I have become afraid of everything and nothing in particular. I have hardened my heart and found reason not to care about what injustice I see right outside my doorstep. I promise to keep my heart open and not become what society is shaping us to be everyday.

That's it for now! I hope you have an active 2013!

The fear of bulking up, why women keep away from weights...

The inspiration for this post lies in a comment I received recently when I stated I was looking for heavier weights to use at home.

There is a common but misguided belief that women will bulk up and begin looking like men if they decide to do some serious weight training. This is why a lot of women will only turn up at the gym for the zumba, or aerobics class and for the more adventurous ones, yoga. Rarely will you see women lifting weights.

The reality is, women cannot (naturally) bulk up like men. It is physiologically impossible. We do not have enough testosterone to do so. Men have more than twice the amount of this hormone, it is responsible for their masculine features (facial hair, physical strength/muscles...). What about female body builders? They use steroids and exogenous testosterone for them to bulk up like they do. As a woman, you would have to use these in order to look like that.

So why do resistance/weight training? To gain muscle...not like a man, but to become toned and shapely...who doesn't want that? And not those sissy weights the media has made us believe are made for women...they are even manufactured in pink for goodness sake (I'm guilty for starting on those as well! ) Lift the heavy stuff! Another plus is that at rest, you burn more calories than another woman who weighs the same but with more fat than muscle. You also burn more while performing an activity.

While cardio does burn fat, losing weight through cardio alone means that you will have to work harder to keep it off (that is, always performing cardio) than a person who chose to build muscle as well as do cardio.

I have also tried to encourage my mother to start doing resistance as well. It is good at any age but especially for older women as it helps maintain or build bone mass which we lose naturally with age.

One of my new years resolutions is to protect the muscle I've built, knowing how beneficial it is to my overall health. This means, yes, I will have to get those heavier weights I'm looking for.

Have happy, active holidays!

Staying motivated, what keeps me going?

It may sound like bad news to you, but you already knew it didn't you? The total lifestyle change is here to stay. There is no crash diet, it has to become a habit. It is more than just fitting into that bikini in summer, it is about being able to change your own clothes when you are a great grandma, it's about playing hide and go seek with your grandchildren, it's about keeping up...ok that might be difficult but I'll write it anyway, keeping up with your teenagers.

So what keeps me going?

1. I never had any "in between clothes". I had my maternity wear, and then I had my other clothes. About four sizes in between...I did not get comfortable, I couldn't, I looked really bad in my maternity clothes for a while, everyone complained, but I chose not to get comfortable. It was either get back to my old wardrobe or look pregnant.
And now it is to maintain this wardrobe. I want to fit into my skinny jeans, have a choice of swim suits, and slinky little black dresses. I want that, and I know it takes work. It sounds vain, but it isn't. You live in a house in which you pay for the view, you pay for the security, for the gardens surrounding it, for the suburbia lifestyle, you have to work for it. It's the same thing.

2. Force of habit
If you do something long enough, it becomes a habit. Your body gets used to it. You get a high off exercise that you miss when you don't exercise. I actually get a pinch of catholic guilt when I eat a high calorie meal or snack, then I repent this sin by working my tooshie off. I get sluggish if I don't exercise for more than two days. Do it long enough...you won't have a second thought, it'll just be you.

3. I want to inspire others
You oxymoron you!
Yes, I can hear you think it....I'm an oxymoron. You know what? I don't mind it at all. There have been people in my life that have inspired positive change starting with my little one. Without them, I would be a very different person. Without inspiration, artists would never create the master pieces that they do. I want to show you that it is possible. We have a litany of excuses here....it's my genes, I have children, I can't exercise, africans have curves....I know them, I have used them, and I decided not to use them anymore. If I slack, I expect you to tell me so, because I have made this journey public.

4. I love a healthier me

Knowing that I can possibly prevent a lot of sickness just by living healthier, and having such knowledge, why not practice it? No one likes to be sick, or suffer the physical, mental, not to mention economic effects of being sick. Being healthy should actually be number one on this list but it is not in order of importance.

Ok, that's it for now. What are your reasons?

Oh no. . .the holidays are here!

And I have already indulged my cake craving.....and more wine than I should have, it's going to be a difficult holiday season.

Parties, lots of nyama choma (barbecue meat), sweets and decadent desserts, it is a time when the gains of the past year can quickly be eroded. How do I intend to keep myself focused?

1. Keeping to my portions rule even when out and about.

    I attended a function recently where the plate served was mostly fish and lean pork....I breathed a sigh of relief I did not have to be that worried.
   Keeping off carbohydrates and most sauces as well. Not knowing what goes into your food is to blame for a lot of weight gain. A lot of accompanying sauces have butter as a base, dressing your salad in mayonnaise rich thousand island sauce takes away the whole point of the salad. I intend to be very conscious about what I put into my mouth.

2. Nursing that one glass of wine....

   Gone are the days where nights out were accompanied with drinking that would be the calorie equivalent of a small loaf of bread. I intend to nurse one glass of wine, finishing off my glass of water several times during the meal. Beer is out of the question, I have worked too hard on my belly to watch it grow again without a valid (little baby) reason.

3. Making time to work out....

   I was at my mother's over the weekend, and yes, I carried my workout mat, ankle/wrist weights and some exercise MP4 that I could play on almost any device. I worked out early in the morning on the day of travel, I woke up extra early to do so because I knew that finding time to do the same in the next few days would be difficult. I did tae bo in her parking space, and made it difficult by using the wrist weights. I did miss one day but considering I was travelling and busy, I think I did pretty well. I intend to continue doing this, remain motivated and find the time to work on my body.

4. Not being a couch potato

   This means waking up early, keeping busy. We have come to define rest as not doing much, just lazing around. It doesn't have to be that. I am redefining my holiday period as an active rest period. Taking walks with my little one, and playing with her. She is 10 kilos now, and quite a handful, she is also learning to walk, holding on to her for long periods of time is a work out in itself. My television remains off, and I don't miss it. Active rest, that's the key.

5. Water water water!

  It's time for a lot of sugared carbonated drinks, the African way of celebrating christmas...I will keep away from these, even the diet kind. It will be water or tea. No extra calories sneaking up from behind!

6. Brown brown brown!

   Brown rice, brown ugali (stiff porridge), brown bread (home made rye mostly),....I will try to keep to food that has not been processed too much. All in moderation of course. These are all carbs, when I chose to eat them, I will eat those that have additional nutrition.

7. Cheat days!

  Without cheat days or cheat meals, any lifestyle change for health can become a daunting task almost doomed to fail. I know I will have cheat meals, but I will make up for it. I will not starve myself, but I will push my body to realise its full potential. I will utilise those fat calories in that piece of black forest that melted in my mouth in a 45 minute run, or a High Intensity Interval Work out, I will lift more, push further, and I will smile while doing it.

Have an active holiday won't you?

Breast feeding Kenyan style, and the expanding hips that came with it

I did a lot of research when I was pregnant. My husband used to joke that I was taking a degree in pregnancy. One of the things that was constantly repeated was how breast feeding helps mothers lose weight. I was planning to breastfeed so I was happy that I had nature's given tool to help me get back into shape.
I welcomed my little angel into the world, and yes, begun breast feeding after not so few hiccups (not the forum to discuss cracked nipples, latching problems, supply issues, sleepless nights....) but the weight did not fall off. In fact, after the initial first two weeks weight loss, it seemed that my hips and everything else seemed to be getting bigger, how is this possible? My little one is deriving nutrition from my body, taking away from what stores I had accumulated when I was carrying her for this very purpose.
The problem was, I was breast feeding Kenyan style.
Soon after giving birth, Kenyan mothers are drowned in food. Porridge is the food of choice, I drank it so much in the first two weeks, that it was pouring out of my ears. It is supposed to increase food supply. They are told that they have to gain weight in order to 'take care of the little one'.
It is all well intended but such practices do more harm than good. The extra calories required to make milk are much fewer than the mountain loads of food lactating mothers consume. Fluids are what makes a major difference in supply. This is from experience. That and a lack of stress, and being rested.
If I have another child, I fully intend to breastfeed. However, I will not bow to pressure to drown myself in food for this purpose. I know better.

I don't know what I weigh and honestly, sometimes I don't care

I am often asked how much weight such and such an exercise 'cuts' and how much weight I have lost, or how much I weigh. . .there is an obsession with weight for very understandable reasons. My answer usually is....I don't know how much I weigh. And it's true. I don't.
I am concerned with my overall weight, it is one of the reasons I embarked on this journey. But it is not the only reason. I know how constant weigh ins can serve to discourage me so I generally avoid them and focus on other indicators of progress. Today, my indicator was the 'mirror test'. . .I looked at myself in the mirror and saw a definite change in muscle definition.
I also define progress in terms of cardiovascular fitness. How I control my workouts, am I constantly out of breath, how far can I go and for how long. Progress can also be seen in my resistance training by how many push ups i can do, how much weight I bench, etcetera.
The good thing about it is, there are so many small things that I can celebrate without being obsessed about my weight. I haven't weighed myself since my daughter was born. I wouldn't be surprised if I weigh more than my pre pregnancy weight, I have been working on building muscle, for the same volume, muscle weighs more than fat. I will however have my body fat percentage checked soon, that, I am very curious about.
I fit into my tiniest dress yesterday. It fit different, my body has definitely changed having had a baby, but it fit. . .

Have an active day!