lookingbackthewayicame

I haven’t dieted since I was 23 thank you for your silent applause and for those who have just thrown something at the screen – it reads better than it sounds.

I did not get a large dose of self-confidence when I was 23 that made me not worry about my weight. I just pushed it down the chain of what I cared about.

I remember looking in a mirror when I was 23 and going ‘yeah whatever’ and that was pretty much that. The funny thing is the moment I stopped being on a diet the weight fell off. I know that’s odd but that’s how it happened.

Fast forward to being in my 30s and I had more to worry about then my weight and that was my relationship with booze…we were really really close friends until I was about 36. With drinking like a fish came smoking like a chimney and between my two besties food just didn’t have a chance and I stayed thin.

But after 3 accidents and some nasty moments it became clear to me that my love affair with alcohol had to end. I didn’t do AA – I just stopped, cold turkey, thanks for playing but you’re out.

I was actually bracing to put on weight and fully expected my 57kg body to miss it’s regular glasses of chardonnay and increase while I replaced alcohol with something else. Funnily enough however I didn’t find the need to replace and so my 57kg frame became 55kg and that was all good.

Around about that time I started a new job with a fair big of stress and much to my wonderment I handled stress not by eating comfort food but with cigarettes, chips and diet coke. Not what you would think of as a diet and certainly not one I would advocate but the weight fell off and it fell off through my next job.

I am going to skip a bit because my life really hasn’t been that exciting but fast forward to 4 years ago and my father got very ill and I was in the best position to help Mum and Dad and I did and worry and responsibility took their toll and once again my weight took a big hit.

I was sitting outside my parent’s house one night having a cigarette and I realised that I could encircle my bicep with my fingers – I was beyond skinny. My BMI was something like 15. Suddenly I realised that I was too thin. About the time I made this realisation my GP rightly prescribed antidepressants. Between my own realisation that I needed to eat more and the antidepressants I have, over the last 3 years gone from 43kgs to 73kgs.

I was keeping nicely on train between 50 and 60kg until my father passed away and then it was a case of grief by chocolate.

Bringing me to my current position of not just wanting to take weight off but needing too.

So why am I blogging about this. Whenever I go to do something now – be it diet, refurbishing furniture or brain surgery – I hit the web. Don’t we all? Well I’ll be honest I do hope any neurosurgeons I may need in the future are not googling ‘brain surgery. But for everything else I think it is good.

Anyway I read and I read and I read and when I was done I read some more and there seemed to me to be nothing wrong with any of the advice given save one thing and that was taking full and complete responsibility for being in the position of having to diet. I didn’t put on weight by accident, it wasn’t an act of God and no one stuffed food down my mouth (although that does sound tempting as I could get by with even less exercise as I would not have to worry about those nasty hand to mouth gestures)

I put on weight because I ate too much and didn’t do enough exercise. What I am going to say next is probably dumb but it is the theory I am going with in the first instance and that is that if I have respected why I put on weight than could the key to losing weight be to reverse the process and to eat less and do more exercise. I don’t think athat I need the Israeli Army Diet, The Water Diet or the Banana Smoothie Diet and I know for absolute sure that I don’t need the to lose baby weight Diet.

What I need is exactly what I said to eat less and exercise more with an aim to lose 8kg in 8 week that will bring me to Christmas and then probably another couple after that. I don’t want to be 43kg again and in fact I would say I don’t know that I really want to slide below 60. I want to get rid of that top heavy sluggish feeling.

And one last comment – I am not dieting for a man, I am not dieting because I am insecure or self-conscious or have low self-esteem. I am dieting because I am overweight and some of it has to go before it creeps up and up and I really am struggling to move it.

So the blog and what it will cover! It will start with my reflections on what needs to change in my life to move the weight, for example, why do I constantly go to the bakery section of my supermarket before I put the fruit in my trolley (oh sad no room for apples because I have the apple pie in – oh well), why indeed do I go to the bakery section of my supermarket at all. How am I – a former exercise junkie – going to induce my now lazy ass back into exercise without going overboard as once I did. The blog is also going to be peppered with some other lifestyle challenges and issues because I am not only starting a diet but a business and a very new life and I am doing it all at once and I know that that is insane but it should be fun to read about. Well maybe not insane – I am after all a woman and, as such, capable of chewing gum and walking backwards at the same time.

I hope people pull something from it. I hope that I manage to lose weight and get in shape without having to outlay thousands in cash or have a brain fart that makes me take diet vitamins and get a yogi in order to get rid of 8kgs. More anything though I want to take lessons from other women and spread some of my own that help others.

I have had an interesting and sometimes difficult journey to get where I am to now that being a great, but bit porky, chick but a bit porky so the diet and other challenges are the next part of what has been an interesting ride and I hope that you will enjoy coming along for the ride.