Bet you weren’t expecting that picture to be at the top of this post. Bet you thought there would be a cute picture of one of my little cherubs!  Well, they’ve definitely changed my life in more ways than I could’ve imagined, but this little thing has changed my life too.

It’s a Fitbug Orb.  Back in April I was feeling fat and frumpy and needed to do something about my ever expanding waistline.  I couldn’t even blame the fact that I’d had two children as I’d put on all the weight before I even got pregnant.  I’d lost all of my baby weight within four days of my second baby being born just before Christmas (I generally lose weight whilst pregnant and have very small babies – this is not to be encouraged!), but I decided that, while I had time off work on maternity leave, I was going to get fit and try to lose some more weight.  I was going to adopt the ‘eat less, move more’ method of weight loss.

I bought a cheap pedometer and started to record how many steps I was doing each day, trying to aim for the NHS recommended level of 10,000.  I recorded it in my diary each day (as you can just see in this post) but I didn’t really do anything about it when I didn’t reach my target level. I also wasn’t convinced by the accuracy of the pedometer as I drove in the car for 3 hours one day and it told me I’d walked around 5000 steps in this time!

I was walking through our local supermarket a couple of days later and I found the Fitbug Orb offered at half the normal retail price.  I weighed it up in my mind, thinking that £25 was a lot of money to pay for a glorified pedometer, but then thought that it was a lot cheaper than joining a gym (and never going!).

So since the 24th April, this little baby has rarely left my side.  I wear it clipped into my trouser pocket or on the waistband of my skirt.  It measures how many steps I walk every day and records it on an app that it links to on my phone.  At the end of the week it looks at how you’ve done and sets you new targets for the week ahead.  Since I’m just ever so slightly competitive this really works for me and I now find myself walking absolutely everywhere.  And it’s working.  Since I got the Fitbug in April, I’ve lost 23lb.  I know this because the handy little app tracks that too, as well as letting me set all kinds of goals that I want to work towards. The targets are achievable whilst I’m off work but I know, from the odd days where I’ve been in to work this term, that I’m really going to struggle to meet them once I’m back working 5 days a week.

It’s also been really useful as it monitors my sleep and I can see how often I’m having to get up with Baby T in the night and I can show this to my husband to prove how awful it can really be!

As the weight started to drop off through exercise I noticed an improvement in my eating habits too.  There’s a lot more fruit and vegetables and a lot less chocolate being consumed.  The app tells you how many calories you’ve burned through activity and when you realise how far you need to walk to burn off the 245 kcal in a Snickers ( about 2 and a half miles in my case) you don’t really want it any more.  I’m not getting obsessed with calorie counting, just being far more aware of what my body actually needs to get through the day.

Last week I spent a happy afternoon going through my wardrobe and sorting out all the clothes that are now way too big for me to recycle to another home.  This is the result of my sorting:

I’m mourning for that skirt on the top, ridiculous I know, but it was a particular favourite.  However, I decided that it had to go, I want to remove all temptation to ever have an excuse to put the weight back on.

I don’t want to do all this hard work and then put it all back on.  So I’ve started running.  Now anyone who knows me will know that that statement is one they never thought they’d hear me utter!  But it’s true, I’ve started running and, so far, I’m loving it.  I’ll tell you all about the start of my running story next week.

This post is not affiliated in any way with any of the products mentioned above.  All opinions are my own.