Renee was back at Beachbodies, so I wasn’t training alone, I had a new pair of properly fitted, running shoes and I had a new heart-rate monitor that counted the calories I burned.

For years I’ve blamed my dodgy knees for preventing me from doing karate, so I even threw that excuse out and did my first karate class in 15 years, which incidentally prompted a new goal – to fit into my karate uniform.

Without the excuses I had a renewed motivation to do well and I trained harder than I ever have. I really pushed myself.

Much of that was driven by comments on The Biggest Loser Club website and comments that Shannan Ponton had made about motivation.

I didn’t want to be a person who needed someone else to tell me why I needed or wanted to do this.

I wanted to set my own goals and take responsibility for my own actions – and I did.

Plenty of people don’t and that is the difference... You need to have that cathartic moment that drives you to make changes.

I had another challenge too last week – I had a birthday.

No, it wasn’t a challenge because I’m old now, it was about the realisation that a positive support group is vital.

So many people thinking they’re being “nice” bent over backwards to tempt me to break my diet and have some cake, or have a beer for the special occasion.

People will try to sabotage your efforts, even going so far as telling you that you’ve earned it. You’ve worked so hard, you deserve to derail your journey!

It’s behaviour from which you need to isolate yourself.

Luckily, it wasn’t a temptation for me at all. I’m not cutting this journey short for anyone!

It reminded me of something Shannan said, “You don’t reward yourself each day for going to work, so why reward yourself for exercising?”

So the result for week three of the Shannan Ponton 8 Week Challenge is that I lost 2.5kg.

Initially I was disappointed but then realised that I’ve set myself ambitious goals and that’s what drives me.

I’ve lost a total of 10.9kg so far on the challenge and over 60kg in total.

I’m proud of that.