Let There be Cake!

Making a dinosaur cake tonight for my daughter's birthday tomorrow.  You may well assume I am talking about my youngest but no, I am talking about my tween daughter who, this year, has become obsessed with dinosaurs! No pretty cake ordered this year, none but a dinosaur!  Oh well, hopefully this will go to plan (have bookmarked a 'how-to' clip off the web), otherwise they will just being eating random shaped, chopped up, pieces of cake!

But none for me!  I have no interest in trying it.  I'm just going to pleased to see the look on my big girl's face when she see's it for the first time!

My friend had a neat comment today, she stated that she had weighed herself and that it would be the last time she ever saw that number.  I like it!!!  I'm am going to use that Myself, as a positive re-affirmation, whenever I have a weigh in.

Better get on with things.  I have had a busy day, organising and planning things for various activities for the groups I'm involved in and also phoning around for other matters and have to clean and cook dinner!

I found this quote to share.  It pretty much sums up how I was led to this town to start my new life.

I know Christianity is not everyone's choice and as I explained in an earlier blog, I'm not here to 'bible bash', everyone has free will to choose what they want to believe in.  However, for me this has been a real part of my journey which has bought about a real sense of peace, has helped me learn to trust again, too forgive, to regain strength and to have hope.

I hope you like the quote.

and what helped me to overcome depression (and I'm not saying that Christian's can't have counselling or medication to assist, because everyone overcomes at different lengths of time), but for me it was knowing that He loves me so much.

But back to the weightloss story now.   Did not heed my own advice last night.  Stayed up way to late and ended up eating when I didn't need to eat. Gotta work that off now!  Duh!!!

Now, I'm not desperate & lonely by any means; and I have good friends & my children, but sometimes I get in this weird mood whereby I don't feel like going to bed (usually if I'm overtired to begin with...) because this is the time when it reminds me that I am alone (I don't miss my ex at all, but I do miss having someone special).  As a result, I end up staying up ridiculously late sometimes - and this is when you have to overcome the temptation of late night snacking.  Why, oh why, did I forget to pray for strength to resist and to go to bed early.  (original plan was to have an early night).  Kicking myself.  Have decided that I need to set a goal for this week, so new goal is to go to bed at 9.30 pm every school night this week.  Oh and drink plenty of water.  Something I find hard to do.  Can't afford to buy water (when there is free water out of the tap), but our town water tastes awful, in my opinion, particularly my part of town, so I'm going to attempt to use boiled water with lemon!  Will see how that goes!

Ok, as promised, here are my photos for my photo journal.

Firstly, where I got to at my heaviest before embarking on my spiritual & weightloss journey.

Wow I don't even recognise Myself.  Can't believe I allowed myself to get to that place.  (No laughing at my hair... it was very windy that day at the sports field lol). Haha!

10 kgs lighter  (Unfortunately, don't seem to have any full length ones, except with other people in and I need to be in the photo in a way that I can crop them out, for privacy reasons..).  One of my goals, is to get up to speed with Photo Shop so I can learn how to blur out other people for these purposes.

I have a few other recent photos at another 3-5 kgs lighter, however, I will post a photo at every 10 kgs less, to show my progress, but also to keep motivating Myself as people will be waiting, watching.

Below is a photo of me 10 years ago, which is where I have set as my goal.

 Best thing to do is get as many people on board with you as you can that have your best interests at heart.  Having some supporters cheering you on to keep going, makes a huge difference.  So thankful for mine!

Nice Quote

Just a quick post.  Saw this quote - thought it was nice so I'll share it with you.

Going to put some photos up of me this afternoon (scary!).  One of where I used to be and should be, as my normal self, one of me after my relationship breakup & depression... (OMG - embarrassing, makes me want to curl up and hide under a duvet when I saw the photo!!) and one of where i've got to now.   Gosh, looking back I can't believe I allowed someone to treat me like that and also allowed myself to get to that size, letting life get the better of me! 

Hopefully will encourage anyone thinking of starting a plan, but even if it only encourages one person to get started towards their goal, then I'll be happy!

Update - 20th July

So in my blogs, I have mentioned, that along my spiritual Journey walking with God, I have been restored.  So Good!   Really nice to be back to my old self – just a lot wiser and more discerning.  Praise God.  So now I’ve been left with just the physical to deal with.  I do think you need to have the mental side on track first because to succeed at anything, you need to be confident and believe in your self.  Believe that you are worthy of good things happening to you!   I’m happy and content with my life, this doesn’t mean that I don’t have other goals nor does it mean that I don’t want more out of life, but I do believe it’s important to be thankful and content with what you do have – first.  Otherwise you will never be content no matter what.

Now I’m thinking about how cool it’s going to be, to be back to my old self physically.  It’s nice being able to say “I am doing it” instead of “I’d like to do it”  and it’s a wonderful feeling every time you get into a smaller piece of clothing. 

I still have my challenges though.  I know now that even if Weight Watchers was to close down tomorrow, that I could carry on regardless, because I know I’m strong enough.  I’ll be honest it’s still a challenge though, don’t ever take it for granted.  Chinese neighbors noticed the girls had been picked up by their Dad, so they have just come over to drop off a big bowl of combination meats fried rice for my dinner!  Let me tell you, I was standing there thanking her looking at the food (she is a great cook - tastes even better than the takeaways) and I’m thinking I could easily eat the whole lot.  I’m a foodie!  I’m passionate about food, I like the social side of eating & the sensation of actually eating as apposed to just downing a protein shake.  It’s more satisfying in my opinion.  Food is meant to be enjoyed – but not abused.  So then I had to make the choice – am I feeling strong enough tonight to eat a little bit and save the rest or am I going to have to put it away to share at a family lunch tomorrow.  Sometimes it tastes so good that you just want more (even if you don’t need it).   Another tip I learnt at Weight Watchers was that ‘the first bite tastes as good as the last’.  Meaning you don’t need to have another piece or helping because it’s just going to taste the same next time.  You can wait until next time.

I had some and put it away.  Must admit it has been a long time since I’ve had some rice.  It was nice but I know I will be happy not eat rice for a long time now.  Thank you neighbor for thinking of me, it was delicious!

Helpful Tips

Some of the changes I have made are based on things that I have tried, that if you are trying to loose weight, may help you also.

These are all common sense things really, but sometimes, we just need reminding...

·          Cutting down on carbs

·         More exercise – if you hit a ‘wall’ with your weight loss, change this routine or mix up different types of exercise over different days

·         Use a swiss ball.  Seems to help.  I like to sit on mine when I work at the computer or watch T.V as it works your ‘core’ muscles around  your middle whilst you are balancing on it.  Every little bit helps.  This also helps my posture.

·         Drink lots of water (something I often forget to do, but does really make a difference).

·      Eat some protein at breakfast time.  I like to include a soft boiled egg or maybe some sardines on grain toast – something like that.

·         Weigh food

·         Be strict & honest about your portion sizes

·         You don’t need to eat meat everyday, but try to include protein. 

·         Eat more whole, natural foods as much as you can.  More expensive, but worth it.

·         Instead of eating lots of processed food, if we have ‘easy dinner’ night, sometimes I just steam up or stir fry some veggies.  Much healthier, cheaper & quicker than going to get takeaways or eating processed, packaged foods!

·         If you have the time – walk the long way to everywhere that you can.

·         Include broccoli and other greens in your diet.

·         Tell as many people that you trust as you can, that you are on a weight loss and/or fitness challenge as it keeps you ‘real’ and you will find most people are happy to encourage you along your way.

·         Stop snacking late at night – get more sleep.

If you start feeling down about anything, try to go for a walk in the 'fresh' air for some 'me' time no matter what the weather (ok, be sensible, i'm not saying go walking with your umbrella in a thunder storm lol).

·         Take one day at a time, then one week at a time as you regain your confidence. 
 Try not to eat if you feel stressed.  Again, try doing something else that you like instead, like a walk, listening to music, exercise, etc and I try to remember to pray about it as well and Yes!  Sometimes I do forget to do this, but I try to remember!

Importance of Sleep

Tiredness can rob you of your common sense.  Honest to God.  Part of winning the weight battle is getting enough sleep and sleep is the healer of many things.

When you are tired you can make some bad food decisions and have trouble recognizing when you have had enough.  Don’t let yourself be convinced that if you keep eating or choose what you know you shouldn’t be eating, that it won’t matter, that everything will be alright, and it will magically, not stick to your hips!  Lies I tell you!  We all know that and yet, somehow late at night we seem to hear "Don't worry, it's be fine, it's just..." .  Don’t listen.  Stay focused on your goal.

I have discussed with several of my friends.  Yes, I have the freedom to have friends now and I am so thankful for the wonderful, genuine friends that I have.  We have discussed how we all feel like snacking at night time and how it’s a hard habit to break.

Honestly, don’t get started on that road.  Period!  I’ve found the later that you stay up, particularly being sedentary and watching late night TV or movies, there comes a time, say around 10 or 11pm, where your brain will tell you that it needs feeding simply because your brain is active, but your body is not, so don’t fall for that. Have a drink of milk or something if you have to, but definitely stay away from snack foods, biscuits, peanut butter toast  -  yep this is a great time of night for you to be convinced that this is what you need, but you really don’t.  You need to go to sleep!  This is a tip I learnt from attending a Weight Watchers’ meeting.  Go to bed a earlier!

Judgement

One thing that first motivated me to try was I found myself being judged by some people, not by people that knew my situation, people that didn’t know me would judge me. It kind of became more noticeable, when a new T.V program came out in New Zealand called ‘Downsize Me’.  For those of you that don’t know… it’s a reality show.  A Personal Trainer & a Nutritionist visit a home of overweight people (usually a couple, although once I saw it was two flatmate friends) and once there was a couple where they ate the same foods but she was big but he wasn’t.  (apparently, this was because although he was skinny on the outside, he was fat on the inside).  Anyhow, so they would go into their homes and take all the crap food out and put it on the table, along with a week’s worth of the food they would eat, which typically, would involve huge amounts of lattes, chocolate cake slices and takeaways (otherwise known as takeout in some countries) spread out across the table.  So I got judged, not in this new life, but in my old life, by comments made, that made me more of a closet eater as I almost didn’t even like to eat anything in front of people.  To be fair, sometimes I did eat some comfort food at home – some biscuits or some chips.  But you know, I wasn’t eating that stuff all the time and didn’t have all that crap in the cupboard like those people either – not enough that would fill up a table like these people.  Not even close.  Often an over weight person will simply eat bigger portion sizes. 

And then there’s the lack of exercise.  This plays a big part in it, especially after being so active.  Use it or loose it.  Getting up at some ridiculously early time of the morning to get ready for the office, two hours a day in traffic, to come home often late after working overtime to have to cook, run errands on the way home, pick people up and then deal to a baby and a toddler, stepchild and so on & so forth, plus the stress you’re faced with the problems at home, to finally get to 9.30pm, well ok, people call it an excuse and perhaps it is, but reality was, by then I just want to plop down into the couch with a coffee and biscuits to watch T.V or go to bed.  Where’s the 20 minutes at least to exercise?  Really, who feels like doing a work out or going for a run at that time.  Already getting up at 5.30 or 6.00am, it seemed hopeless.  So I got caught in this hopeless cycle.  I don’t know how I did it really.  I guess I didn’t stop to think about it, I had to because I had to provide for my family.  I think though, that having a baby and having to go back to work too early makes you more tired because your body is still recovering, but you do what you have to do because you love your family.  It probably didn’t help, that when I was pregnant with my first child I had 2 and a half jobs to help make ends meet, because I had uncovered more debt my husband had gotten into that I didn’t know about until people started showing up looking for him, as if pregnancy and working full time at one job wasn’t enough!  I’m sure there are super women who do all that and then more, not sure how much quality time they give their kids, but hey, maybe they are perfect, but again, people will judge you on this and yes it is an excuse, but again, until you have walked through this, you may not appreciate the struggle.

Highlights & Low Points of my Journey

Highlights

Some highlights of my recent weight loss has meant that in the last 3 months, I have gone down two top sizes & one bottom size. I have also been able to walk up to 9.5 kms most days, (altho this has dropped back to 5 km's since I had a child home sick for  7 days then the school holidays.  Too far for my kids to come with me, but I did tell them, we will be doing so me family fitness activities together).  Back into again though and it feels great!  Must work up to a jog though.  Afterall, most people that jog or run seem to drop it a lot faster.  Don't want to loose weight too fast though otherwise it's too hard on your body and you do want everything to shrink back together nicely!

Other highlights include being given a bag of nice, new or near new of quality, clothes from a friend of a friend, who had too many nice clothes that they didn’t wear. Yay for me!  You know, God has been really good like that to us.  Sure sometimes I need to buy stuff.  Yep that’s how it goes.  But it’s not easy when you are a solo parent, but sometimes I will be just thinking how either I will be downsizing again shortly, or the kids have had a growth spurt and then out of the blue – clothes will arrive!  It’s great!  I don’t even have to speak of it, I will have just thought about it.  I’m so appreciative and I really enjoy recycling actually.  Means I’m leaving a lesser environmental footprint on the world!  And not that I care about labels, but some have been expensive!

Another couple of highlights – someone that used to go to WW and that I used to be a fellow Girl’s Brigade member with, when I was a kid – stopped her vehicle on the side of the road, hollered out to me to stop walking, jumped out, ran across the road and said ‘I just want to give you a ‘high five’ for loosing weight, I noticed it when I was driving past the other day and wanted to catch you.  No matter what happens, keep trying, don’t give up’.  Awww, just made my day that did.  Then my mentor from church told me she had noticed my butt had lifted.  Awkward.  We had quite a funny conversation and a laugh about that.  I asked her why she was perving at my butt.  Ok, you just had to be there – we thought it was funny!  But it is fun getting stopped by people in the street and have them say they have noticed, especially when you are having a ‘fat’ day!  So encouraging.  Just one thing though – once I’ve lost more weight, if I ever become vain or arrogant about my looks, please shoot me!  (figuratively of course).  Seriously!  I don’t want to be one of those people.  I don’t like it aye!  Confident yes, arrogant no!

Low Points

Unfortunately, before I had kids (Afterwards I went up to a medium size and that’s fine) but then after the weight gain through depression, well now it means, I’m not a standard size all over and it will fall off wherever it wants, not in the order that I want it to.  Some people, loose it all over at once, for the rest of us, it comes off faster in different places than others.  Also, because I had recently ‘hit a wall’ I still fit my smaller clothes, but I’ll be honest, I’m sure it shows in my face. Ugh!!! Oh well, gotta just keep going forward. 

Also discovered that at my age (early 40’s) carbs are no longer my friend.  We all know the old food pyramid that we learnt in school.  Well I think they need to add the disclaimer ‘results may vary, some people are not suited to having this many carbs’.  Honestly!  You know, I love pasta, but I just can’t eat pasta dishes as often and bread – hardly touch it now.  I can tell the difference when I eat them and when I don’t, even if I stick to my Weight Watchers points allowance!  Unfair!!!  My Mum, right, she lost a lot of weight during a certain time in her life, mostly eating pasta and veggies.  So unfair.  But hey it is what it is!  And for some reason, this new points plan has been harder, although I’ve lost cms faster.  Not sure why that is, but I’m still very grateful!

Good news though, I have this theory that broccoli and cabbage contain this magical ingredient that burns fat.  Really!  Note to self : remember to buy these every week because it works for Me and every little bit helps!

Tonight's Disaster

Well the enemy got the better of us tonight, but he hasn’t won the battle, this is just a temporary set back.  What a night. We were leaving early (I don’t know, about an hour?) to go into town to do a few things before it got dark, on our way to WW and we get out the door, what does my big girl do but fall off our (don’t know what you call it  - next to the front steps, far too small to be called a porch but those of you know where I live know what I mean, anyhow, she managed to fall off it. I guess it had to happen to one of us one day, I nearly did it once.  Anyhow she twisted her knee.  Since we had some time to go I was like.. ‘never mind go inside rest it up then you’ll be alright, well go soon’.  Unfortunately it wasn’t a case of ‘she’ll be right mate’ and we ended up going to the late doc to get it seen to.  Ugghhh.  Great. Not only have I missed my session, which I am accountable for getting to and have to explain to someone.  Well I don’t have to, but would like to, but know she has this drama with her knee. (How sympathetic do I sound lol).  Honestly, she only tripped over and twisted it just the other day.  Mind you, who am I to talk, I have managed to trip up twice in public this week, both times in front of men in cars!  Sigh.   Well I was confident of a really good result and looking forward to going and showing the consultant after ‘hitting a wall’ as they say and fluctuating at around the same weight for a couple of weeks.  This happens sometimes, my other WW friends tell me and that you need to try something different (like changing your exercise routine or cutting out or introducing a new food or something) so happy to say had been doing that this week and feeling positive & healthy.  Anyway, for those of you that don’t know, I have a friend that has had great success at WW and is looking and feeling fabulous.  I’m so blessed to have her as my mentor and inspiration!  And so blessed to have the freedom to have friends!

But kids!  Rather elaborate way to get a day off school if you ask me! (jokes).

Moving On

Thankfully, after we split up I moved out of the district to start a new life for me & my children.  I was broken, depressed and it all seem so overwhelming, how was I going to cope on my own?  Well within two weeks of being out of the environment, people started commenting on how different we were and how we were blossoming.  I had people who had been sitting back quietly watching for a long time, tell me how happy they were for us that we were starting a new life and best of all, I found God.  Now, I’m not here to start a religious debate, or bible bash people, that’s some other website somewhere, but I make no apologies for mentioning this, as I have had some very real experiences with Him, which have been a very real part of my restoration of confidence & so forth, so I will mention it in my story and from time to time, put in some encouraging scripture (and some photos and fun quotes).  I have learnt that although God hates divorce, he doesn’t hate divorced people, and through a local church, I found acceptance, love and forgiveness; and I am happy to say, I have been restored.  You may choose to follow my story or you may choose not to follow it.  The purpose of this blog is to have positive & encouraging comments & stories to help others. 

Ok, so if you think some of blog entries are long, this is really the very short version.  Honestly, I could write a book about it and one day I just might.  And I shall give it this very same title.  Until then, I hope you enjoy following my weight loss & fitness journey. 

How I Got to my 'Dark' Place

I guess sometimes, we just fall in love with the wrong people!  It happens!  We all have flaws and I know I have them too! When you marry you expect that you are going to go through hurdles that life throws at you, that you are going to face them together and that you are going to have to work at it, but overall, there should be more ups than downs.  What I didn’t realize was that this person didn’t just have flaws (as we all do) but he had so many more issues going on than most ‘normal’ people.  I don’t know how this blind sided me but it did.  Thankfully now in my walk in life, I have much more discernment about people – thankfully!!!  In reality, I think I just ‘bit of more than I could chew’ as the saying goes, when I chose to love this person and later, chose to marry him.  Looking back, there were warning signs if I am truly honest with myself, but somehow at the time I didn’t ‘see’ them.  Turns out, not only did he have more issues than most people, but he also had one personality – or front – for the outside world, friends and family and one for me & my girls at home (and sometimes his family)!  His family used to joke about his temper but when we were just living together I used to wonder what they were talking about, as I hadn’t seen it (turns out they were right).  To cut the story short, I ended up being with someone who was controlling, manipulative, verbally abusive and threatening, and at the end of the day, I couldn’t be the only one trying to make it work, eventually, it just didn’t and he called it ‘quits’.  I guess the positive in all this was that I had tried for so long that it really was over, I no longer had love for this man nor him for me, so that meant for me, it wasn’t ‘devastating’.  I mean, that must be really awful.  I can’t imagine what it could be like to have your marriage be over and to still be in love with that person.  It’s funny, I was so used to making excuses for him and his behaviour that I was shocked when someone (not naming names here) told me ‘that’s abuse you know’ I was shocked. ‘Oh no, I said, he just…’ and she was like… ‘hunny, no, that really is abuse’.  I had another person say they had watched my soul being sucked away.  Really sad when you think about it.  How did I get from being a confident, outgoing, happy person to someone so depressed and afraid of their partner??  Not only that but I came to realize how much he lied about me to his friends and family, & not just about me, but too me. Well that was the tip of the iceberg really, because a lot of his stories unraveled after I was out of the house and had the freedom to talk to people.  Let’s face it, without trust (on top of everything else) what do you have?  I’m pretty sure he never had an affair, but he did (and still does) talk a lot of nonsense.    I felt like so much of my life had become a lie! How could I have fallen for this person?  But don’t get me wrong, even if there you no longer love the other person, divorce still hurts in the sense that when you are already broken from abuse, you can feel like a failure on top of it all.  Perhaps now you will have a better understanding how women like myself, turn to food and also are weary of trusting people.  I mean, I tell people how it is or what I think, how hard is it to expect some honesty in return?  Eventually, you’re lies catch up with you!  Oh my gosh – it must be an exhausting way to live, trying to keep your stories straight! 

To top it all off, my husband was overweight himself (he was when I met him, but that never bothered me), but he became more over weight and actively discouraged me from loosing weight and constantly told how much he preferred bigger women (its true, not all men are attracted to slim women), but I realize now that it was really his way of dealing with his own insecurities. 

Well this is how I got to ‘that’ dark place in life.  Which had a spiraling effect on my weight gain (which I also have to take responsibility for, for myself, afterall, I could've handled things differently).

You know, we can point fingers at each other all we like, him and I, to lay blame, but at the end of the day, I have to take responsibility for my part in the relationship.  I have my own flaws but on top of that, on some level, I chose to ignore the warning signs, I chose to love him, I chose to marry him and I chose to live with him for as long as I did.  People have asked me questions like ‘why did you listen to him?’ ‘why did you believe him when said you were useless and this and that’ ‘why on did you have another child to him after the first one?’, to name a few questions.  I know looking back, that it didn’t make sense – why would he say he wasn’t attracted to small people when I was small when he met me?, why did I believe him that I was useless, when I had a successful career, that included promotions, where management asked my opinion on matters and so forth and had other successes in life?  I know, right?  Crazy! but when negative things are constantly being told to you when you are with a controlling person, I don’t know, they seem to start slowly, then before you know it, you are under their spell and eventually you become too afraid and too worn down to stand up to it.  (It’s easy to judge if you haven’t been with someone like that Yourself).

This part of my journey is here to allow other women to identify with my experiences and this is a very real part of how I got depressed & began my struggle with food. 

In the Beginning...

In The Beginning…

So difficult to find a starting point to this story.  My situation is this.  I am a solo parent of two gorgeous, loving children.  I am trying to loose weight.  But it hasn’t always been like this. 

For most of my life I have been a slim, small sized person – of average female height, someone who had a fast metabolism, could eat ‘whatever they wanted’ (although I did prefer healthy, nutritious food).  Yeah I know, you may not guess that now looking at me, but in reality, I only have a small frame, the rest of me is just ‘cuddly padding’ (lol).  I was very active & sporty, although, I was never any good at team sports, which I now realize is not only because I can’t catch (yeah, seriously!), but also because of my particular eye sight problem) and in high school I was one of those skinny ‘gleeky’ kids (yep I was even in the school orchestra, go on laugh all you like) that never got picked for team sports in Phys Ed, but I was into fitness and continued to be so right up into adulthood and had been told many times that I looked like athletic and how ‘lucky’ I was that I could wear whatever I wanted (yeah - I’m not sure about that, but thanks anyway!).  Not only that, but I was one of those annoying skinny people that would say ‘ I wish I could put on weight’ … seriously, what was I thinking??? I had tried & mostly enjoyed, many fitness or individual sports such as :  competitive cycling, archery (always thought of myself as a bit of a Maid Marion), weight training, aerobics, boxing aerobics, step, aqua aerobics, cross-country running, dancing to name just a few.  I liked trying new things, it stopped me from getting bored.  Oh yeah, kayaking & rock climbing, nearly forgot them.

When I was 25 I met my future husband.  At this time, I wasn’t at all interested in him in ‘that’ way, but we became friends (or at least I thought) and we hung out together, sometimes went out in a group and when I was 27, we ended up going flatting.  After a while, I don’t know how it happened, but I started to ‘see him in a different light’ and we developed a ‘spark’.  Enough said on that I’d say!  We ended up living together as partners.  I did miss out on the dating part, but I was naïve enough to think I knew him well as we had been friends for a couple of years and please don’t judge me on that… I wasn’t a Christian at the time, a believer of sorts yes, but otherwise No. (that was the short version...). 

Well, I am not here to disrespect my ex, not at all, (not that he extends that same courtesy to me sometimes but anyway…) it’s not that kind of blog, so please don’t take it the wrong way but this is the very important part of the story of how I lost my confidence, self-worth and got to be in a bad place in life.  I may dislike him, but I don't hate  him.  The best thing I learnt in life is forgiveness.  There is a saying, it goes something like.. "If you don't forgive someone, they get to live rent free in your head", or is that "If you hate someone they will consume your thoughts and they get to live rent free in your head"? Well, something like that, you get the idea.  It's actually quite freeing to forgive!  Forgive Yourself as well for your part in it too!  Move on!

Welcome to my New Blog

Welcome to my new blog.  I’ve never actually written a blog before, nor operated one in any kind of way, but a dear friend of mine, who is a Personal Instructor (and also has a Degree in Sports) insisted that my story may inspire other women, after all, I love reading other people’s stories too!

In a nutshell, I am currently on a weight loss journey and it has it’s highs & lows.  Thankfully, mostly highs, but it’s not easy.  Some people can take this journey on their own, but Me, I am not one of those people and need as many people encouraging me on as possible.  I also need to be held accountable so I have been going to Weight Watchers because let’s face it – no-one wants to get a ‘bad’ result when they attend. 

It all started early last year.  I was in a position whereby I was doing some cleaning each week, which gave me (and God is amazing like this), the exact amount I needed to attend WW meetings each week.  It was on the ‘old’ points plan and I lost my first 10 kgs in 3 months, just steadily losing weight, more-or-less every week.  Then the job I had stopped when the person's funding ended, so on my own, I managed to maintain my weight where I was and I also lost another couple of kgs.  This, combined with other factors, meant that I was in a good mind-set (your mind can be one of your worst enemies in these situations) and was feeling more and more confident about myself (I will discuss that in more detail another time).  Then this year, I put on another 3, I can’t quite remember now that that time has passed, what had happened, but I had a lot of negative things happen together of a very short space of time, I think it was when my Nana passed away & I was dealing with that grief, one of children had been sick & I had an ear-infection and a couple of other ‘bigger’ things had gone wrong in life, no-one’s fault – just life’s hurdles – but all at the same time; and suddenly, these 3 new ones had crept on.  Oh dear, this is not what I had planned for myself and I needed to get my mind back to focusing on my eating plan, after all, Weight Watchers & exercise had worked really well.   Excuses or not, this was my reality and I needed to do something about it.  But you know what, I’ll be honest, WW is not cheap & the cost of living had gone up since so it wasn’t really in my budget to go back and for me, going and weighing in, in front of someone like that, it really did the ‘trick’.

Then I was blessed in such a way, that enabled me to go back to WW and my weight loss re-started and I lost another 5 kgs.  It has been challenging and rewarding.  This new points plan has meant, I have lost the weight in kgs slower than when on the old plan, but I lost cms which is also great.  Going back to help my mind-set has truly been a blessing for which I am extremely thankful.  I can’t really say more than that as it’s confidential, so I’ll leave you with a sense of mystery about that one, but it’s really been one of those ‘God things’, and it just showed me how much I am loved. Recently, I have ‘hit a wall’.  As you can imagine, this has been really frustrating and as a result, I have been having to work harder & try different things (will touch on this in another entry) to keep on track and it has been challenging, but I will never allow myself to go back because I have been restored and have my self-confidence back and my sense of self-worth, which is a fantastic place to be in.

So I guess to really have a successful blog that, hopefully, will encourage and inspire other women, I have been thinking that I really need to start right back at the beginning of when this issue of weight all began.  I’m sure there are many other women who have experienced similar struggles in life such as a marriage break-down,  abuse in a relationship (in any form), subsequent stress & depression, loneliness and an eating addiction (Eek, feels so awful the first time you admit it out loud, but it does get better).  The latter I must say, is often dismissed, but when you think about, food is everywhere and you really have to learn your self-worth and learn to handle being around food.  You may go to a friend’s house and they may choose not to offer you drugs or alcohol because of your background, in order to support you in your journey, but food – food is everywhere (and it’s the cheapest form of addiction).  Even worse, its so easy to use as a weapon against yourself when you are home alone.  As much as it pains me to say it, it was my choice of ‘drug’! 

In conclusion… I hope that somewhere along the way in my ‘blogging’ you may feel encouraged, or want to encourage me or identify with some life experiences that I have been through.  I hope you will pass on this link to any friends you have that need some encouragement, so they know that they are not alone with their challenges.  So my next blog entry will be how I got myself to such a place in life in the first place because it is a very important, actually very essential part of my journey / testimony.  An after all, how more real can it get – baring my personal life on a blog – scary!  Oh and along the way, I will also post some photos!