It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life....

And I'm feeling good! Thank you Michael Buble for lending me your lyrics.

I realise I've been absent for a week weeks, but it's not because I've had nothing good to report. Quite the opposite actually. Boot camp has been going extremely well, I'm so much fitter than I was just 4 weeks ago, and I have lost 4.2kg since I started. Holy crap, I didn't realise it was that much until I just looked at my weigh in book! 1.7kg of that came this week alone, which I was very pleasantly surprised with.

Better still - on Monday I tried on a dress that I bought months ago. It didn't fit me at the time, but it was gorgeous and on sale, so I had to have it! It has never fit me. As recently as 5 weeks ago, the zipper was still a good 3 or 4 inches from doing up. I decided to see how close I was on Monday, because I'm desperate to take it with me on the cruise we are going on in a few weeks. I thought it was a lost cause. To my absolute surprise, it did up! It is still a bit tight, but nothing I can't get away with, but I know it will be looser in a few weeks anyway. And if I do say so myself, I looked damn good!

So clearly, boot camp is doing it's job! I absolutely love it. It is damn hard work, I am sore every night after I finish, but it is worth it. I have discovered how to really push myself past the mental barrier that I seemingly set up for myself every time I do something difficult. I hurt, I'm tired, but I manage to keep going. I am bruised nearly every session (in fact I have a lovely bruise and massive lump on the front of my ankle at the moment from carting a keg around at Monday nights session!), I come home covered in grass, and some nights I come home sopping wet if it's been raining, but I love it! It really is the change I need and I can't thank the trainers from Urban Bootcamp enough.

I know when I go on this cruise I will be confronted with all sorts of temptations, but I'm determined not to succomb to them all the time like I did on the river cruise in Europe. I don't need a hot breakfast every morning. I don't need a big lunch (including dessert!) every day. I simply don't need nor do I want those things. I want to come back from that holiday without having set myself back several weeks. I want to know that all the hard work I'm doing now hasn't been for nothing. I want to be at goal by the end of the year and finished maintenance by the time I turn 30 in January next year, and doing all those things won't help me achieve that. My state of mind when I went to Europe was not good - I simply didn't care if I gained weight. Now I care, and I'll be damned if I set myself back that far again.