So weight loss. The crux of most peoples lives. No matter what, you are never skinny enough or good enough unless you look like someone on the cover of a magazine. This has haunted me my whole life, ever celebrity you see with zero perfect body fat that has been photo shopped to look skinnier than you could ever be and feeling the shame. OH THE SHAME. It burns through my soul. Makes me want to avoid looking in the mirror and knowing that because I don’t look like that, I have no value.
I get that we have been judged on our body types and appearance but we are fast approaching an age of LOVE YOUR DAMN SELF so I wanted to jump on this band wagon. If Meghan Trainor can love herself as she is, then I can. I will follow her example and man, does she set a fantastic example. Hats off to her, she changed my life.
Let me give you a bit of back story. Lets start by covering my vague time line:
Teenager 14-17. Overweight, unhappy and extremely miserable.
17-20 Anorexic and exorexic (there are two different types)
20-21 Okay I guess, up and down, weight remained stable.
22 Massive weight gain due to severe mental health issues that I refused to get help for
23- After a year of bascially mentally recovering, I began my crossfit journey, tried every diet under the sun and was introduced to Meghan Trainor and the whole movement
24-28 The real journey began, ever decreasing size, mental health issues and eating disorders.
The photos start from about 23, turns out before cell phones really took off, I didn’t take many photos of my body. Its so easy to forget how far you’ve come.
After I finished uni, the heaviest I have been since I was 16, I just didn’t know what to do. I was really heavy, unfit and really unhappy with a massive caffeine and sugar addiction. It was bad. This is why however, my daily diet was:
2x Large Triple Caramel Frappes from starbucks (they come in at 600 calories each)
3 bags of sweets
2 more instant coffees with sugar
2 Diet colas.
And that was just my base. I ate bread and whatever I could grab on top of that
That was my life and I was sat there wondering why I had put on so much weight and felt like shit all the time and had a plethora of mental health issues. Maybe because all the sugar and caffeine had corrupted my brain. But, uni was an unpleasant experience and I was doing the best I could with what I had. I was pure and simple, in survival mode.
Since then, I started to change my life. Eat Clean. Train Mean. Well.. move again and not eat candy and be addicted to coffee.
The strangest thing I have ever done is try to balance, love yourself with who you are and but also loose weight to be healthy and do a pull up. I thought it would be a simple thing but I could never work out how the balance worked. Which is really frustrating because you spend years being like, I love myself as I am. Love ma curves, doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks but then also, You need to lose some weight to be healthier.
I suppose we can cut to the main question.
How did you start loosing weight?
By making better choices, everyday. Even with no idea how weight loss worked, I tried. Everyday. I tried to eat healthy and eat less. I stopped eating processed food. Tried Paleo. Tried Veganism. Tried the Tim Ferriss 4 hour week body diet. Things I learned are:
Paleo is hard. Really Hard.
Tim Ferriss plan of eating clean 6 days a week and binging on 1 day was interesting but it didn’t work for me in the end because it became binge weekend and I was back addicted to sugar.
If you do Veganism right, its amazing. I love veganism. Not so much the culture but I love the food, the passion, the trying of new things. If I wasn’t so allergic to Soya I would be vegan again.
I found out what I loved and what I didn’t love. I felt so much better eating healthier, I loved eating veggies and clean and all natural.
But it wasn’t working. Like I was eating clean, why wasn’t that enough?
Well after I hired a PT because all coaches need coaches. If you want to hit your goal, hire someone to help you understand what you cannot. She taught be the basics of weight loss and its so simple its made me face palm. I never realized how ignorant I was and its been a long journey of trying diets and learning new things and all it took was someone to say.. it doesn’t matter how healthy you eat. Calories in, calories out. You’re eating way too many grapes and its making you nap in the afternoons because of the sugar crash.
We started slow, I started tracking and we made me be consistent.
Now, this is simple but I assure you, its not easy. Not when life is unfair and everyone is eating chocolate and you can’t but they are skinny and just ate 2 large pizzas. Not when you have been eating salad and you’re still really hungry but you need to stay on track because you have goals. Not when everyone around isn’t supportive because weirdly, people hate people doing things to make themselves better, because it reminds them that they aren’t. Weight loss suddenly became a mental battle for me, its always been a battle but now it was a challenge. But also, it was freeing. I could eat and not stress over everything I ate because for the first time. I was in control. I understood why I wasn’t loosing weight or why I was.
And no, I still don’t look shredded but I have come a damn long way in knowledge, self love and weight loss and I am proud. Its so easy to get caught up in feeling like nothing is good enough or being frustrated that you’re not where you want to be already. I know. We all go there.
Life is a journey. Sometimes you will get stressed and put on or lose weight. Your body wont stay the same because nothing stays the same. If you put on some weight, embrace your body as it is. If you’re unhappy with it and you feel crappy, be more careful and make better choices. Follow the path that makes you happy.
If you want more information on weight loss or want a specific weight loss coach, we can integrate that into your program with me.