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!