Hi people!
I have a bit of news to share just before I get into today’s post…
So I will be on radio today… on a radio interview with @Sadiqspeaks on @Wigradio.
We’ll be talking on how to make a difference with NYSC, my book journey, how I walked the path (and still walking the path) of making God’s plans for my life come through, amongst other sweet stuff.
So if you are someone who’s interested in doing awesome things in today’s society, tune in at www.wigradio.com by 10:30am to listen.
Uhm… I believe it will be an amazing time, that’s all!
🙂
*****************************************
I didn’t think that I was going to write anything on my weight-loss journey on the blog this year because I’ve generally changed Monday’s Inspirational Drive to Purposeful Monday’s on the blog… but as I huffed and puffed last night to Shawn T’s insane abs workout, I knew I had to let out my “insane love/hate for the man” and what better place to do that than on my blog?
We can still call this a purposeful Monday post ba?
After all loosing weight is purposeful too. Haha!
So basically I started this weight-loss thing since 2013… yes e don tay we dey walk this waka.
*sigh*
Little bit of history here:
I started at 98kg in 2013, I have gone down to 72kg and now I am at 76kg.
I seem to be going around a cycle on this journey…
One thing I am glad at is that exercise has become like second nature to me (Shawn T’s workout is just wicked though!) and no matter how long I stay off it, I always blend back in again.
Last year Eziaha started her FitFabFam which I was part of but then she closed it down because of her being the only consistent person on the group. Lol.
I’m not going into my thoughts about that but will go into how that came way out of the blue and had us (the remaining persons on the group) dazed for a while.
Well, I sincerely didn’t want to abandon it all so three of us decided to continue and it was going well… till December came.
And banga soup and owho soup came.
Loooool.
I went home ohhh and my mom took the liberty to feed me well.
Hehe.
Let’s just say that I was home just twice in 2015 and the second time in December was a blast!
I wouldn’t have added weight if I had continued my exercises but I didn’t.
And thus grew fresh not fat. Hehe.
The funny thing was that I actually loved it because my bom bom filled out (it always goes flat when I slim down) and my front side also filled out, so basically I was feeling “sexy”.
Haha!
Not to mention that everyone else also seems to love me with a little meat on my bones.
And I sincerely have no qualms about adding a little weight here and there anymore… and this brings me to the biggest lesson I wanted to share from my weight loss journey…
I am now Godfident in who I am and how I look.
I don’t even know how this happened through the years but I sincerely am more concerned now about letting the light in me draw people in than the body I have.
I don’t know if that makes sense.
I have written about my journey to knowing that I am beautiful here before but where I was at that place is nothing compared to where I am now.
Right now, I literally am all about the light that draws people in that reflects out of me.
I shared at our last “Women at the Well” hangout on how 1Corinthians 7 I shared from actually leads to just one aim that God has for us in singlehood… which is that “He wants us to spend as much time as we can with Him without distractions”.
And then what does spending time with Jesus do to you?
It lights up a light inside of you… a light that people look at you and though you are dressed well and all, that’s not what draws them in… there’s literally an inner beauty spilling out of you that they can’t figure out and finally have to tell you “there’s something about you!”
And that’s a ministry open door right there, an opportunity forr you to share about the Jesus who makes you this light that everyone sees spilling out of you!
God sees my heart and He knows that with all my heart, that kind of light is what I wanna reflect to people.
So right now I am all about that kind of life.
It’s taken me a while to get here because at first when I started loosing the weight I basically just wanted to look good and have a sexy body/tommy, etc… but now squash all that… God has totally molded my mentality unto another level.
And also raised my Godfidence level up several notches through this journey.
Trust God to take motives and make them His own thoughts…
Now does this mean that I won’t take care of my body?
No, no, no!
Why was I huffing and puffing to Shawn T’s workout yesterday?
Of course I have to get back to being fit and losing all these banga soup weight I piled on (full bom bom and full front side bye bye *tears*)…
And that’s where #balance comes in.
I can’t say that because it’s inner beauty that matters to God, I should treat the outer beauty anyhow…
So I am still not gliding on top scale as regards discipline on foods I eat or exercise yet… I am currently on a yoyo kind of way on this. Up for about a month and down one way another time… so I wanna get this on track and also inculcate exercise as a habit I won’t abandon for long periods of time…
But basically on this journey to becoming the God kind of woman I wanna become, it’s the light within that is drawing me and pulling on my heart.
And oh, I shared what I got from our single’s group study on Deborah and on my own journey to BECOmING in a guest post and you should totally check it out HERE.
All the above said, I also wanted to write this post because I desire accountability on this journey.
It’s been an almost too long a road to 65kg… I should have gotten there since but I get to 74/72kg and everyone says I am good and sincerely I love me at this weight too.
But BMI still says my ideal healthy weight is 65kg and like I said I am a go-getter, I set that goal in 2013 and not getting there would always make me think I didn’t complete my race.
I love the way I fill up with added weight and won’t mind being at this weight when I am married with kids *wink wink*
But for now, as regards taking care of my temple, I will try my best to get to my healthy weight.
So in line with that goal, I will be posting an accountability post here every Last Monday of the month.
I intend to be SERIOUS on this journey and get to goal weight by June.
June makes it 3years on this journey and it will be a great time to wrap it up and start maintaining.
I am currently in a weightloss group with my bebe Mobolaji and it’s been of great help to me.
So here’s hoping that no matter how many times we fall we’d stick to this till we are at a place where we are on a smooth glide to taking care of our bodies in a way that’s pleasing to God…
So pretty please, someone hound me if you don’t see a post on the last Monday of March on my weight-loss journey and progress.
I’m 76:7kg right now and I won’t just be giving progress on the scale, I will also give progress on my eating habits and exercise habits.
Those are two things I want to get on track and the scale will follow.
So have an amazing week ahead and don’t forget to tune in at www.wigradio.com by 10:30am to listen to my interview.
Love and love,
Frances.
Join our Blog Family
[mc4wp_form]
14 Comments
E
February 22, 2016 at 2:11 pmHahahahahahahhahaa at daze!!!
I live and aim to daze…
I mean! What would life be without it.
Lol
This weight loss business is serious stuff and I’m thankful I am on it. The discipline impacts other areas of your life; tz awesome.
Well done girl!!!
Sometimes I am convinced the ONLY or major reason God led me to start that group was to learn all I learnt from you (as per all those websites on food education especially), and then hit the streets. Literally!!!
For that, I am thankful.
God help us all on this journey and LIFE
Amen!!!
E’
PS
It was a bit hard finding the comment button. Could you look into making the blog a lil less busy? I almost gave up lol
Frances Okoro
February 22, 2016 at 4:47 pmLoooooool E @daze…daze us in a better way that makes us hug each other biko. hehe… but I am sure glad that you found the reason why the group was brought together in the first place…
Glad to have been used in any small measure!
And amen to this journey getting on track ohh.. its really a “journey” not a destination…
And oh the blog, wanted to edit and work on some stuff before sef, just waiting to be able to subscribe…
Thank you for not giving up 🙂
ihuoma
February 27, 2016 at 9:00 amI totally agree. The blog always looks busy. I have been reading this blog for some years now. It’s not easy to navigate at all. (user friendly) . Abeg do something about it. Thank you very much. I love what you are doing here. Great job. God bless you.
Frances Okoro
February 27, 2016 at 9:42 amHi Ihuoma!
Thanks for coming out of the ghost reader fence to give your suggestion..lol.
Thanks!
will work on it.
And thanks for your kind and encouraging words 🙂
Stay around on the “commenting side of the fence oh”
o_see
February 22, 2016 at 7:30 pmHey. Can I say I hail you for being one of the few women I know that’s taking their weight control and eating habit seriously? Well, i guess I’ve already said it. I was on a weight GAIN journey though. Right now it’s less weight gain and more weight stability.
Another thing that I will tell you I’ve learned since my own journey started…5-6 years ago, is that BMI, while a good indicator for the average human, doesn’t really hold water for athletes/physically active people. By that I mean, BMI is an okay indicator for checking if you’re overweight when you’re not very physically active. Your current weight might be because of muscle mass you’ve built over time. and i hear you can never have too much muscle…well you can but you’d have to be binge eating proteins and taking steroids to pull that off. Although, from a biological standpoint, women don’t build that much muscle fast…at least according to what i’ve read. It’s testosterone that’s responsibe for muscle growth and womens testosterone production is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY less than mens.
I’d suggest using body fat percentage as a better indicator for how well you’re doing. If you google body fat percentage and check Images, you can use that and compare with what you have.
This is just me helping a fellow fitness buff out. Less helping and more giving advice on what i’ve read and stuff. Anyway, later. God bless.
Frances Okoro
February 23, 2016 at 7:02 pmHi O_see!
Thank you soooo much for this info…
I admit that I have read up on stuff that talk on BMI not being a very accurate guide and I really do have muscles kind of, being that it’s not really flesh flesh that’s my body type(hope it makes sense)
So I will check up and read up on body fat percentage.
Thanks!
And weight gain kwa? Hmmmm.
Kai!
See this life!
Lol.
And women are more and more being mindful of the way we take care of our temple ohh, we are now plenty, not few 🙂
o_see
February 25, 2016 at 4:00 pmThere are many? Me i no dey see them oh. And that thing is important to me when it comes to choosing someone to stick with long term.
Oh and YES! WEIGHT GAIN! Well for people like me with very slim uper body and poor upper body strength, gaining weight was the way to go. So started lifting weights and eating more protein and carbs (4-6 meals a day….small meals but frequent meals is the key, for those interested)
Why…? Well, i grew up in a broken home and my dad basically made sure books about marriage were always available…since i was 12! So I’ve been reading about marriage for over 10 years. Wait..where was I going? Oh yes, I’ve seen so many stories and issues in marriages that all boiled down to ‘sex” related problem, People not finding spouses attractive anymore etc.
From my studies , sex is one of the glues that holds a marriage together, And If my wife and I are “sexy” when we’re in our 40’s, WHAT DO WE HAVE TO LOOSE? That’s just me sha.
But the main reason i started exercising was fear of being fat. I just didn’t like the idea. Now some might say that it’s whats on the inside that counts and beauty fades but I have an uncle in his late 60’s who can do more push ups than a lot of young people i know. But there’s health risks attached to being fat. visceral fat is one of the causative factors of diabetes, high BP, heart attacks etc (my dad had the first 2.) so, I’m of the opinion that body fat needs to be kept in check. the sooner exercising and eating right become a habit the easier it’ll be.
Plus the bible says bodily exercise profits little when compared to spiritual stuvz that carry over to the afterlife. But it’s LITTLE in comparative ….without comparing, there’s a lot of benefits.
Forgive me for ranting. I’ve just been into the whole fitness thing for soooooooo long.
Frances Okoro
February 25, 2016 at 8:59 pmHahaha! I can tell you’ve been into the fitness deal for sooooo long! Nice to meet you!! Hehe.
It sure would be great to have a husband who goes on fitness deals with me…
In 2014, I used to jog from law school to lekki toll gate and also used to joke that when my man comes, he will jog down with me just to know that “e nor easy”
Loool.
And thanks for the info, we sure need to inculcate the habit… fall and get back right up till it becomes something for life.
Amen to that for me ohh!
And wow! On your dad getting you guys started on getting knowledge on marriage early on… wow!
AJ BLACK
February 23, 2016 at 11:46 amHey,
I like this conversation and I tend to get passionate about it.
I love physical fitness and physically fit women,but that BMI has really been disturbing me for a while. I have tried to do some research on it and my take is that those figures are not nearly as tight as the abs we sweat for. In the main, those BM indices are very loose approximations. My very strongly held opinion is that a healthy weight does not have to be within 5 kilos of your index number.
I am bothered about our women going after an ideal which is based not so much on health as on fashion. There is a picture of the perfect female body which a lot of sisters have in their subconscious- the BMI only corroborates. Working after the healthy body the way many ladies I know go about it is, to me, unhealthier than their extra weight.
I love the fact that you talk about real beauty coming from within as well as the essence of a healthy self esteem. I keep remembering that it was our tradition-still is- in parts east of the Niger to’ fatten’ our maidens just before marriage as the ultimate beauty treatment. Those body parts that have begun to ‘bloom’ courtesy of Mama’s attention, in my opinion, were meant to bloom. Please note that I said, ‘bloom’, not ‘burst’.
And finally, I always argue that the adjective ‘sexy’ cannot be Christian in most of its usage. I ask, ‘When you use the word, what meaning do you have in mind?’
Thanks a lot for this and keep seeking.
Peace and love.
Frances Okoro
February 23, 2016 at 7:23 pmHi Aj Black!
Your comment holds a lot that if I were with you physically, we would have had some very interesting conversation about..but I’m left with the comment box so i’ll use it for now…
So I admit that I started my weightloss journey with the wrong mindset…probably went about it the right way with exercises but the wrong way in what thoughts were in my mind.
These words from you sum it up: “Working after the healthy body the way many ladies I know go about it is, to me, unhealthier than their extra weight.”
I basically wanted to “show them” and just get the weight off, not just cuz I wanted to be healthy but because I wanted that body image I always wanted.
Granted I also wanted to be healthy as my BMI was massively overweight but my main reasons weren’t healthy.
First then I had no good identity of myself in Christ…I wanted to gain self-esteem from having a good body and that would have been building who I was on quicksand… the only solid foundation was to know who I was regardless of what I looked like physically..to know who I was in the Beloved – Jesus.
I actually cringe these days when I see “I am fat and feel so bad, pls help (those kind of words)… those women might indeed be helped to lose the weight but the kind of knowledge on where their beauty stems from would elude them even if they get the body they want.
So I sincerely appreciate God dealing with me on this issue and hope other women get it too.
On the issue of being sexy…I used that on a lighter note…
I remember sharing a facebook status some years back saying “I don’t want to be sexy, I want to be beautiful”.
Being beautiful stems from within and that’s my aim…
That said I really wasn’t analysing sexy in the context up there, it was on a lighter note.
I’ve tried to think of the images that come to mind when I use the word “sexy” and if a christian woman can be called that…i’d say that if she was married then all that sexiness can be used to describe her by her husband between the both of them/she even just wanting to go all out “sexy” for him… but publicly, atleast what I want to be known for by the people God wants me to influence isn’t “sexy”
It’s beautiful…consisting of the beauty God delights in, a meek and quiet spirit among other virtues.
Well like I said, till we can meet physically, this comment should do for now.. 🙂
Frances Okoro
February 23, 2016 at 7:27 pmAnd Loooool at “bloom not burst”.
Hahahah
AJ BLACK
February 24, 2016 at 6:30 amThanks Frances,
I’m delighted I wasn’t understood- especially about the sexy bit. Of course a Christian woman can use the word SEXY with her husband. She can dress sexy and act sexy for him in their home- in fact she is under an obligation to.
I feel I ought to apologise for taking your usage out of context, but since you are so big and loving about it, I won’t. A bigger reason is actually that it ought to stay said because I know a lot of Christian ladies who go out of their way to dress and look sexy with all the unchristian motivations and I still feel that spirit is from the pit.
I recently told a brother that’d been searching for some time that the reason he hadn’t found is that he had been searching with the wrong criteria. I told him that since he made God part of the search, He was in a kind of breach by giving God conditions that contradicted with His will- and there were too many sexy Christian ladies distorting the view. I told him that once he found the beautiful Christian woman, he would grow to love her beyond any and everything in skirts- regardless of her looks-only he had to be looking for the right beautiful.
Thanks again for writing so many beautiful things about Christ. I’m sure so many Christian ladies need to ‘hear’ them.
Peace and love.
AJ BLACK
February 24, 2016 at 6:32 amSorry, that first line should read….MISUNDERSTOOD..
Frances Okoro
February 24, 2016 at 7:36 pmThanks for not apologizing even… I llloooove the fact that you called attention to the truth on “beauty” sexy and going about weightloss the healthy way…
And re your friend…it takes God to renew our mind on the deal on trusting on Him for our spouses.
we have so many set mind-sets, most of them don’t align with God’s thoughts…and if we must get His will for us, we must pull down our thoughts and enthrone His own.
God help us all.
Thanks Aj!