Behind The Scenes 11 March 2022 – 9kgs Weight Loss

It has been a very exciting week for me behind the scenes 11 March 2022. I’ve been nailing my weight loss goals and my first delivery of Nova Choc-Oh-Late as a brand ambassador arrived. It has been a really good week and I’m looking forward to the school holidays starting next week even if it feels like the school year only just started.

Nova Choc-Oh-Late Delivery

Last week I announced that I am a brand ambassador for Nova Choco-Oh-Late for the next 6 months and this week my delivery of Nova Choc-Oh-Late arrived and what a score it was! I received 3 packs of baking buttons (milk chocolate, white chocolate and dark chocolate), 5 slabs of 100g chocolate  and 5 slabs of 40g chocolate in a variety of flavours. I was super chuffed to find that my all time favourite Mr Mint was included in the delivery.

Nova Choc-Oh-Late is high quality, hand crafted chocolate that is sugar free and gluten free. While I really love my sugar these chocolates are super tasty and you would not know from tasting it that it has no sugar! Read my Nova Choc-Oh-Late review here.

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Lynne Huysamen • Blogger (@lynnehuysamen)

Lost 9kgs Since Last Year

I’ve struggled with my weight since I quit smoking 6+ years ago. I’ve gotten into a good health routine over and over, but always lost momentum. There always seems to be something that comes up that makes it tricky to keep going and then when I get out of my routine I pick up the weight again. Since 2015 I gained about 20kgs and I have not managed to lose it.

Last year in October I made a decision to not try and set myself too many goals at once. Rather to slowly introduce something new and keep at it until it becomes a habit and part of my daily routine that I can easily keep up with. Once I have achieved that I can introduce something new.

It is important to me that I enjoy what I am doing and I don’t feel like I am missing out on the good things in life. I don’t want to feel like I’m torturing myself.

In October last year I weighed 82kgs and today I weigh 73kgs. I don’t have a goal weight, I just want to feel better in my own skin. One thing that I am aware of is that when I get down to 70kgs I will have moved from the overweight category to the healthy BMI category. I am so close to that and I am sure I will succeed.

So here are the things that I have done:

1. Introduced Salad With Every Meal

I love salad and it is not something hard to do to include salad with every meal I eat (lunch and supper). This was a great way to start with my weight loss goals because it is not something that takes up a lot of time and it is not taking away something I love, rather adding something good to my lifestyle.

So many weight loss programs say not to add salad dressing, or only to have olive oil. However I love salad dressing and I decided if this makes me more likely to eat salad surely salad with dressing is better for me than not eating salad?

At first I made a salad to add to our meals every time we ate, now I make a big bowl of salad every 3 days and keep it in the fridge because it makes it so much easier to add to meals this way without adding extra work.

The only meals I don’t include salad are breakfast and Friday night when we have burgers.

2. Cut Out Snacking And Coke

I’m big on eating and snacking is something I did a lot of. I can easily take down a big packet of chips (or two) and at first it was tricky to cut out snacking but it became much easier over time. Once I had cut out the regular nibbling of chips, biscuits and chocolate I soon stopped craving snacks all the time.

Coke is also a weakness. I love drinking Coke and I was drinking a lot of it. What I’ve come to realise is the more Coke I drank the more I wanted. After not drinking it for a while the craving for Coke stopped.

Our treat night is Friday night so I buy these things on a Friday only. I don’t keep them in the house at any other time.

3. Smaller Food Portions And More Salad

My next step was to start dishing up smaller food portions and adding more salad. I did this over a period of time and now I only want to eat a small plate of food at meal times as this is what I have become used to.

4. Eat When Hungry – Intermittent Fasting

I changed my eating patterns. Instead of eating breakfast, lunch and supper because these are the times I am “supposed to” eat I started eating only when I was hungry. I’m not normally hungry in the morning so I started eating around 11am to 12pm and then eating supper. In one of my live videos a while back one of the moms said I am doing intermittent fasting. I said no I’m eating when I am hungry.

After my live video I looked up intermittent fasting for the first time and yes she was right. I was eating only between 11am and 7pm which is the 16:8 method of intermittent fasting where you only eat for an 8 hour window during the day. I became more conscious of this and decided that I am going to stick with only eating between 11am and 7pm. It works for me.

5. Daily Movement

Every day I make sure I am active. It doesn’t have to be a wild cardio session, I just have to get myself moving a bit every day. Gym doesn’t suit me and neither does working up a massive sweat. I started with my morning beach walks every day and after a period of time I started walking every evening with my kids too.

I don’t push myself to walk a certain distance or speed, I just make sure that I get out there and do some movement. I’ve started really enjoying this and I look forward to my beach walks every day.

6. Cutting Down On Coffee

I was drinking 4 to 5 cups of coffee a day, with 2 sugars in my coffee. I first cut down to 2 cups of coffee, one when I wake up and one when I start working. Then I cut down to one cup of coffee when I wake up. I feel this has made quite a big difference. This is as far as I will take it though, I’m not giving up my one cup of coffee and I am not going to cut down on my two sugars.

7. Detox Drink And Green Tea

About four years ago I lost 7kgs in two months drinking a homemade apple cider vinegar detox drink. I’ve started making it again recently, however I’ve not made it nearly as strong and I only have one glass of it most days. It is quite a brutal drink and since I don’t want to torture myself I have made it weaker. I won’t be drinking this every day forever but I do feel that it has played a part in my weight loss.

The other thing I have started doing is drinking at least one glass of cold green tea every day. I make up a bottle of it and keep it in the fridge.

I now feel like I have implemented all the things I need to do to slay my weight loss goals – all I need to do is maintain these good habits. I will update on my progress in the coming weeks and months.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Lynne Huysamen • Blogger (@lynnehuysamen)

SnapnSave Glad Competition

I’m still absolutely loving SnapnSave – you can read my review here. They currently have an awesome competition going. Snap the Glad bake and cooking paper offer, bake your creation using the Glad bake and cooking paper, and then share it socially using the hashtag #GladToBake. You could win a R100 cash prize to your SnapnSave wallet.

Since joining SnapnSave in January I’ve earned back R225.90 on products that I would have bought anyway. Yes it is slow going but I’ve earned that back in just 6 weeks so my plan is to continue with SnapnSave and let my savings build up so I can cash out at the end of the year to make the festive season a little less painful.

Ysense Earnings Update

It’s been a slower earning month for me with Ysense since I have not had much spare time to check in and do surveys. However my total lifetime earnings are so close to $2000 (R30250.84) which is going to be an amazing milestone to reach!

If you are keen to earn money through online surveys, completing offers, playing games and/ or referring others read my Ysense review to learn more about it.