Chez FitMercy

Thank God for another week. It had been hectic this past few days such that I had been extricated from my daily routine, I had attended to everything as they came. I mean this past week had been without a proper planning just because it was not working and many things are being undone at the close of the day (when I retire to bed nightly). I decided to start my series on CRAVINGS;  this is a strong desire for something such that unless it is satisfied it could jeopardize other things. Food cravings on the same page is the strong desire to eat a particular food or a food group, if not satisfied the person could either go hungry on other essential foods or could overeat other foods. It is quite unfortunate to know that cravings tend to the wrong foods especially sugars, it is really rare to see someone crave veggies or fruits, we tend to crave ice-cream, chocolate and simple carbs. We also crave foods we normally will not eat. Craving is not hunger, in fact we normal

I am making this a quick post so that I am not breaking my weigh in streak. I weighed in yesterday at 170.2lbs and that is a result of one week of inactivity but keeping food choices on point. I did well intermittently fasting and made good food choices, I also tracked my meals in my journals without default. You might wonder why I feel a gain of 0.4lbs is a good thing, I think so because I am just coming out of TOM and I normally expect a 3lbs gain most times but I think something is working for me, I only hope it has nothing to do with lack of exercise which characterized this week. I coming up with a series of posts on hunger, cravings and a desire to eat , I am almost done with it and I promise you it will be a good time to keep "overeating" under forever. ________________________________________________________________________________ I danced last week for a total of 90 minutes and I was surprised to have over 10,000 steps on my tracker, that is

It started yesterday and I have decided to make it a post. I started craving these foods yesterday, and I feel like sharing in a post today. and of course this:   How do you handle your cravings? Why do we crave only the not-so-healthy foods? Can you eat the above without overeating them? I need help.

This week had not been really interesting save the surprise birthday party I was at on Monday 20th. On the healthy lifestyle road, I can say this week was a bore. I tried working out but the morale was just not there (always remember that this happens a lot along your journey to success). Well, I needed to something interesting for this week's post and voila  - "clutters and de-cluttering" . We have all had to battle with this at one time or another. If you are a working class and you are like me with an 8 hour job with other extra-curricula activities on a daily basis, then you will relate with this a lot. Sometimes it becomes worse and you just must find that time to get your house in order. At a point, a cluttered house was my bane till I found a secret of handling one room per time and in a month my home became a safe haven again. Funny part is that when the house is cluttered there is a superstition that one will be having constant nightmares (I don'

When we talk of personality, we are referring to who you really are , what stuff you are made of, what you do as habit or attitude effortlessly or sometimes without thinking. For example you can never advise an extrovert to start talking because it is done without thinking neither will you force an introvert to socialize since he won't bulge. In the psychological world, they have a lot of classifications that I am not delving into in this post. I will be referring you to some quiz (at the end of the post) where you can find out where you belong and what you can do to help achieve your healthy goals. Did you wake up 4:30am everyday to get some runs in and after a week you were either exhausted, bored and uninterested in it any longer? Were you in a monthly challenge and your schedule did not see the light of the 5th day? Have you tried Yoga and you wondered what the slow motion is all about? Did you register in a gym at the beginning of a year and you wondered why t

I used to hate spinach (saw it more as a detox) as a veggie option for a long time until recently when I made it work for me and it had been yielding without tummy bugs. I grew up to not only steam spinach but blanch it if you ask and I get all manners of tummy troubles a day after, so I grew to dislike spinach. As a student I met some ibo girls that made me love ugwu (pumpkin leaves) and so I discarded spinach but during the dry seasons, ugwu is so untouchable. All these pushed me into finding a way out, so I can eat my spinach with all its nutrients intact and not having to frequent the bathroom 12 hours after. I got some spinach from the garden on Saturday and I wanted to just share what I did with it. Fresh spinach from garden Ingredients 1. 2 handful of Spinach (preferably baby spinach) 2. Red Oil (be careful because 1tbsp of Palm oil is 120 calories, add as desired) 3. 2 Ripe tomatoes 4. 3 Hot Scotch Bonnet pepper (Rodo) 5. 1 big ball of red onion 6. 1 smok

I love cooking.  I love learning new cooking tips. I love trying new recipes. I think it could be responsible for my tendency to overeat. I love the food I cook or let me just say I love eating food, good foods, delicious food. Can I say I lack self control? Or all these episodes of overeating even after intermittent fasting is emotional in nature? I have tried 5-6 meals a day and I ended up overweight and now I am doing intermittent fasting still I tend to overeat at my non-fasting window or days. The question I am asking myself today is this: AM I AN EMOTIONAL EATER? Whenever you eat outside hunger it can be defined as emotional eating. Anytime you eat to soothe yourself or suppress a negative emotion e.g. anger, sadness, or even boredom you are emotionally eating.  I am aware of this but I seem not to be able to help myself when the eating starts but I try that it doesn't spin out of control, at least I am sure to get it curbed within 24 hours,

Last week, I was very religious with tracking both food and workout on a daily basis and all was going well till Saturday when I was supposed to have tabata, I just realized my heart rate was high, my body was not ready and till this morning I had not lifted a finger in my home gym.  It would be a lie if anyone told you it's all rosy and active through a weight loss journey there are lots of ups and down. In fact I think my own journey had been unique. I cannot work on a regimen for 4 weeks straight, No I can't! BUT I WILL, as you know that I get bored easily, so to be frank the road is not easy at all and I am not exempted.

It is two weeks and two days today that I had been planning and journaling. In these few weeks I can call myself a planner , woohoo! Planning also called forethought  " is the process of thinking about and organizing the activities required to achieve a desired goal" . I love this definition because of the these words ' thinking ' ' organizing ' and 'goal',  since that's what I have been doing, although not the deep kind of thinking but the just-do-it type. I mean all I do each night is just know what my workout plan for tomorrow is and I get everything ready including Plans A, B and everything to Z. I wake up each day not planning to finish the whole exercise in my journal but as much as I am satisfied with while there is still time. I write the meal plan for the next day including my snacks in my journal and for the past 16 days, it's been worth it. Every night I end the day completing my workout or writing how the day had been food-

Plyometrics also called "Jump Training" is a type of exercise that involves a quick and explosive movement. I personally love strength training than cardio workouts, I just dislike that chest thumping that happens after the cardio exercises. But I am at ease with plyometrics and I love the fact that more energy is burned because it high impact exercise at a short time frame. This week has seen me with a lot of this jumping around and I feel the endorphin rush after each session. I am posting this so that you can give this a try sometimes, below are my favorites:

I weighed in this morning at 170.2lbs and that is a gain of 0.6lbs this week. I did well because I had NSVs . I feel so proud of this achievements and I know that the scale will soon move towards the right direction.  NSV means Non-Scale Victory , it is very important for everyone on a weight loss journey to imbibe this as a culture if they want to ever make a headway. It is often said that the scale nor the numbers on it does not determine what success you have. I agree with this and I think it is fact even though it is easier to feel bad and misbehave after any weigh in that shows an unfavourable number. 

It had been great completing this week with daily exercising and cautious eating. My feelings was mixed on what the result would be because I am just days past TOM,  the weight is always maintained at this time but I did try my best to take healthy steps towards a weight loss this week. Low numbers on the scale doesn't come by accident, it comes through a conscious and consistent effort. I weighed in at 169.6lbs this morning (0.8lbs loss) I was determined to do something positive this week and I am grateful that lines were falling to me in pleasant places. One of the most important things that happened was my journal, it became a bestie this week and I wrote in it everyday. I planned and tracked my workout, planned and tracked my food, I wrote down my feelings including reasons for my failures and ways out.

I tried my best this past week but I think TOM really proved me wrong and I am not feeling bad about it at all. I am growing into it and I believe with time things will work well. As I planned last week Wednesday, I did 5 days intermittent fasting 14:10, one day 18:6 and a 24 hour fast which ended this morning. I stepped on the scale this morning and I weighed 170.4lbs, I know it has something to do with TOM and some other factors I took note of like overeating during my eating window. When breaking the fast by 11am in the morning, my meals are planned and on point but by the time I get home at dinner, there is a feeling to stock my tommy. I am putting that into consideration this week, meaning just because there is a fast does not give room to eat just about anything.  On the exercising front also, I did not lift a finger this week because I was just not feeling it (it's a bane). I am going to make sure to try my best this week to workout for the 7 days starting today, I stil

Indoor fitness could pop up for many reasons, the weather being the ultimate of them all. It could range from a scorching sun, heavy/light rain, darkness, dawn etc. A lack of time during the day or even cash crunched to pay for a gym can make an ardent exerciser resolve to stay indoors to do the needful. My own reasons being : I cannot run outside because DH feels it's not safe for me  I am not always buoyant enough to pay for a gym subscription  I am not rich enough to get the complex machines like a treadmill, stationary bike etc  According to Liz Noelcke a staff writer with Sparkpeople, "there is no reason that you can’t make a home gym part of your reality. A home gym adds convenience and privacy to your workouts. When you exercise at home, you save time, money, and the rush hour headaches (on the road and in line for the elliptical). Although you might be cautious due to budget and space limitations in your house, building a home gym isn’t as impractical as

As I sat down on my chair today and in a brief moment I was thinking of when my weight loss journey started some 6 years ago. I was a field worker for my organization and trust me I was not enjoying my job then, I felt cheated everyday when I got to work because of some "discrepancies" in posting of staff members and my assumed lopsidedness in the treatment field workers were getting. Also, I was not really a happy person because of some challenges I faced as a newly-wed and trying to even understand the relationship that I was really working hard to be the best at. One day I was on the field and I came face to face with my most dreadful equipment then "a scale". Before then I never wanted to know what my weight was because I was really scared I might have to face some realities of a pending health issue or something close. Well, that day my colleague on the field persuaded me (he has a really small structure) to check since it wouldn't hurt to know. 

My weigh in today looks well and with such small loss (0.2), it is a movement towards the right direction. The retreat had not allow my routine to be back to normal but I am focusing on my diet more. I intermittent fast everyday, a 14:10 pattern i.e. 14 hours fast and a 10 hours eating window. Let's speak more about food fast, for 40 days we had been involved in a 19:5 fasting pattern (spiritual exercise), and I may say I am reaping some benefits both physical and spiritual. I wasn't 100% faithful like DH was but I did up to 65% of the fast. I really learnt a whole lot of stuff about myself and hunger during these fasted periods, I will highlight a few: Intermittent fast or what I call "short term" hunger cannot kill me or anyone. I am well able to exercise in the morning fasted hours than when I break the fast at night, when I tend to be weaker. Hunger pangs bite hardest into me between the hours of 10am and 1pm. After these 3 hours I don't fe

I have been AWOL for a week, I went on a retreat. The Nigerian Baptist Convention (which I proudly belong) had it's Convention in session between Saturday 16th April, 2016 to 21st April, 2016. It was mandatory to be in attendance because of some important roles myself and DH were playing. That aside it was a very rear opportunity to be alone with God and learn at His feet. It was a good time to retreat and pray to God almighty who can do every impossible. The theme for this year's Annual Convention is Moving Forward: Working Out our Salvation with Fear and Trembling , it was a program filled with teachings, sermons, prayers of intercession, petitions etc. I was richly blessed and I would not have forgiven myself if I did not put my all into this. The essence of today's post is the benefits that accrues from having a personal retreat. Retreat in a simple term is "withdrawal or a draw back" it is mostly used in the army. A retreat is often carried

google Motivation Mondays on my blog will be about featuring personalities who had done extra to achieve their goals in life. It is all about the extra steps towards being better at issues they are passionate about and ready to do all what it takes to be best at it. google I intended bringing on people who have experienced success in their weight loss journey and other journeys in life to this blog but I somehow realized people are a bit skeptical about appearing online and for God's sake I understand that quite well because I personally will have reservations on being featured anywhere in a public blog. Anyways I contacted a friend and she obliged but not without some restrictions. You can only get to  know about her and her journey if you will follow her on IG and support her blog on Sparkpeople . This lady had been so much of an inspiration to my journey through life and especially the determination to lose weight and be healthy. I know she has a s

168.2lbs flashed me yesterday on the scale. It's a relief since I have not had a number this low in the past 12 weeks of my Wednesday Weigh in. I tried to do all that is in my power to exercise throughout this week (as promised in the last post), though not the expected minutes. I have strongly decided not to make excuses nor complain anymore (as Nia advised in her blog), I am going to shut up and do something . I love to plan whenever I can and this in turn helps batch cooking which also eases me off every wrong choice in meals, unhealthy snacking, binge eating, exercise rut and overeating as the case maybe.  Now I really wonder why we don't plan to plan??? The place of proper planning cannot be over-emphasized in any weight loss journey.  When you plan : You will likely have extra time on your hands to rest or have some ME time You make your exercise sessions an appointment that must not be disappointed You will save a lot of money because the plan

Good day good people, I almost forgot to write about my weigh in this week.  I felt a little better this week because there is a reward for my consistency. I had a pound loss over the scale and it makes me feel nice and ready to continue with my present workout/food schedule. The weather (my last week's excuse) is getting better with some showers in between but much more, I think I felt more determined to do THIS. I had been running indoors ( how possible could that be ) and it had worked, as evident on the scale and also my heart rate monitor.  pop sugar After some more researches, I will talk about exercising indoors and all the benefits attached to it in another post soon. I love a mantra that reads "if plan A is not working, there are 25 more alphabets between A and Z" meaning that I just had to stop making unnecessary excuses and move on. After some pep talk, I told myself I am on a weight loss journey and it is no good news that I keep merry-

On the 3rd of November 2015, I woke up as usual doing my daily routine of house chores. I did not eat because I intended engaging in a fast that day. I got to work early and around 9am I was summoned by my boss, as I entered the office, a dizzy feeling came upon me and I had to lean on the nearest object so I don't fall. I went back to my office and I attributed that to an empty stomach. I took two glasses of water then ate breakfast and I was fine. I went about my daily business and the second day Wednesday 4th, I experienced the same thing. I took permission from DH and I closed from work to rest at home but this time the whirling did not stop. On the morning of Thursday 5th, I could not turn my head without whirling (of course it was later I realized it was in my head), I took an excuse from work and I had to visit a laboratory to do some necessary tests to be sure I was fine and every result came out with good numbers i.e. blood count, blood pressure, sugar fasting and eve