They say black is slimming...

My husband and I have started a new weight loss regime. We signed up at our local gym, we're tracking our calories daily, and we're weighing ourselves to see how well we're doing in our progress.

I've started doing this because I'm overweight. In fact, I'm morbidly obese. When I first went for my "MOT" at the gym, I was hit with the hard-to-face fact that I lead a sedentary lifestyle... Well, at least, I did up until a month ago.

During the month of September, I've been to the gym, I've reduced my portion sizes (and hence my calorie intake) and I've managed to lose 4.4 kilograms as of this morning. As I've got a total of 55 kg to lose to get into my "ideal weight" range, I need to keep working at this and finding new ways to motivate myself in order to achieve my goal.

Here's what's been working for me:

1. I have told everyone that I know that I've joined the gym. I'm not hiding the fact, and I feel like if I hadn't told anyone that I would be able to happily say, "Yes, I'm a member of XYZ gym" but just not bother leaving my house.
2. I am VERY lucky to have a boss who pays for a single weekly 1 hour session with a personal trainer. He helps to keep me on track. I've been going to his weekly sessions for months, but only recently have I started to see changes because I decided to change other areas in my life.
3. I am a bit of a gadget freak, and I'm married to a man in IT. I have the new iPhone 5 and I'm using about 4 or 5 different apps that help me to stay focused on my goals. I use Fitocracy (because I'm also a bit of a gaming geek), My Fitness Pal, Weight Bot, and Couch to 5K. I use a few others but not nearly as often as these.
4. I have tried a lot of different types of exercise and I have found one that I really REALLY enjoy... Swimming! This is low impact (I find my knees get very sore when I'm doing any kind of running/jumping activities) and it works the entire body. It helps to control your breathing, and you can put the rest of the world out of your mind while you swim back and forth in your own world.

Swimming is my exercise of choice. When I first got into the pool I was wearing one of those granny bathing suits that has no cross straps on the back. This didn't really matter because my first outing of swimming lengths at the gym took me between 20 and 25 minutes to swim a total of 400 metres. At the end of this I was DYING! But I'd had fun doing it. Swimming was always a fun activity for me when I was growing up, but I never swam distances so this was a new challenge for me.

Since then I've managed to increase my speed by going more frequently to the gym, by working out a way to keep my face under water and not drown whilst doing the front crawl, and by buying myself some new swimming gear (new swimsuit, swim cap, goggles, nose plug, lap tracking watch and under water MP3 player -- I told you I'm a bit of a gadget geek!).

Now I want to share my continuing story with anyone who wants to read about it. So I've decided to start writing a blog. I'm aiming to update about once a week, but if anything more significant happens, or if I find I haven't got the time, that target might change. We all know how "real life" can affect things. And of course, my blog has a black background, because years of being overweight has meant that I've heard this over and over...

Black is slimming.