Sunday, 24 September 2006

A Flabby History

When I was a child I was always extremely skinny and I would be called nicknames at school such as "stick insect". I assumed that I would always be like that - always skinny. It never occurred to me that in adulthood I would struggle with my weight year upon year.

I guess the problems started at around 18. I drove then and I started college at that time. For some reason, I really started to pig-out with food. At lunchtimes we would usually eat in the college refectory which was highly subsidised and it would be a game to see who could eat the most. I also developed a thing for cream cakes from a local bakery. I weighed around 8.5 stones then and I was 5'2".

Fast forward a couple of years and shortly after leaving college I left home and moved in with my boyfriend. He was a vegetarian and I didn't like vegetables so dinner was often just a chinese takeaway and I'd leave him to sort his own dinner out. I also started drinking a lot more then. A few more years later I left him and moved out into a rented flat. This was when the weight really started to pile on. I found a new found freedom in not having to worry about my vegetarian boyfriend so I cooked myself huge portions of Chilli Con Carne or Chicken Tikka, usually washed down with a few pints of lager. By the age of about 23 I had put on a couple of stone and was about 10.5 stone. However, I seem to have gained an inch in height along the way somewhere!

At 25 I moved from Essex to Berkshire and started out renting a little room in a dingy bedsit in Slough. I was very lonely and I had nothing much to do, no friends and nowhere to go so I decided to go on a diet. I did fairly well and lost around a stone bringing me back to about 9.5 stone. I was still fitting into size 12 clothes back then.

But about a year later I met Emma (who I am still with now) and we soon moved in together and got quite settled. Over the years the weight really piled on and on our five year anniversary I had balooned to 11.5 stone. Also, at the time I was out of work, had no money and was pretty miserable in general so I took no care over my appearance. I wore cheap and nasty baggy clothes and made no effort at all.

Something 'snapped' and I decided to try to do something about it. I joined a slimming club which was quite bold for me as sitting in front of a group of strangers and talking about my weight issues wasn't really my thing but I gave it a go and it worked quite well for me. I wriggled my way down to 9st 12 and was asked to become a consultant for the club. This sounded like a good opportunity so I started my own class in my local area and that did well. However, my own weight seemed to plateau and I never got down any lower.

After 7 months, I decided to resign as consultant. This was partly because I felt that I wasn't the right person for the job but also because I started University that year and found that my slimming class clashed with a lecture.

Uni was a funny time for me - my schedule changed every few weeks. Some terms were easy and I didn't have much to do and others were hectic and difficult. To complicate matters further, Emma and I had been discussing the idea of having a baby and we decided to go ahead and try it. In the first year of Uni we went through all the fertility treatment, with Emma being the victim :p. After many delays she fell pregnant on the first attempt and Evan was born on Boxing Day 2004 which was in between the first and second terms of my second year at Uni.

This marked another turning point for me. I decided that I had let my weight get really out of control. I didn't do any exercise and I usually used the old 'lack of time' excuse. Well no more! I joined my local gym with a student discount and started getting up at 6am every day to go workout. As Emma was on maternity leave I had the use of her car so I had the freedom to go to the gym when I liked, and just go into Uni for lectures.

I kept this up for the rest of my second year and lost around a stone again. However, shortly before my second year exams I put the gym 'on hold' for a while. This was a mistake but in the end it made no difference as one week after my exam results were published I found myself in hospital with a ruptured cyst on my ovary. I had surgery to remove the cyst but something went wrong and the next day I was in intensive care. Lots of stuff followed... most of which is largely irrelevant but when I emerged from hospital I sported a new 7" horizontal scar across my abdomen and an 8" vertical scar running from the top of my stomach all the way down to the first scar. Recovery from these surgeries was long and painful.

Months passed and at first I was quite keen to get back into exercise. I foolishly attempted to go back to the gym after 6 weeks and experienced terrible pain as the scars hadn't long healed. I tried again at 3 months and even though I didn't experience that same pain I found that I had a complete lack of energy. This put me off completely. I was now in my third year at Uni and my dissertation had already fallen behind due to the hospital drama. My lectures this year were much harder and I was very stressed in general. I abandoned all thoughts of exercise or weight loss and just threw myself into my studies.

This was a good thing as I graduated with good grades and landed myself a job straight away but my body had suffered as a result. I was back up to my highest weight of 11.5 stone and I'm pretty sure that I was actually fatter than the first time around as I had lost a lot of muscle in hospital (I lost 10lbs in weight in 11 days - thats not fat loss, thats muscle loss.) My clothes were now size 16-18 and I was extremely unhappy about it.

Strangely, my graduation day was the day before the one year anniversary of my hospitalisation. A year had passed, I was fully recovered and no longer suffered the extreme tiredness that seemed to plague me for the first six months. Now that I had a job I could settle down into a regular routine thus I had no reason now not to make a serious effort to get fit, get healthy, and lose all that excess body fat once and for all!

I'd certainly said that before. Ever year I say to myself "NEXT summer, I will look good in a bikini". However, this time there was one element that was never present before - my motivation had changed. I was no longer just concerned about my looks; my health had become the most important factor. The hospital thing scared me, I could have died and I can't begin to explain how thankful I am to be here now. I see people around me just dying on their feet as they get old. Obesity, arthritis, bad hips, bad knees, back backs, breathing difficulties, heart problems, the list goes on. So many of these problems can be attributed to poor nutrition and lack of proper exercise.

I watch my mother deterioate in front of my eyes. I always used to remember her as this feirce, strong woman. Now she is a little old lady who can barely walk, has athsma, emphysema, other conditions that I probably don't know about and her sideboard is loaded with about 2 dozen boxes of medication which she takes daily. She's had one heart attack, a few false alarms, and she's heading towards a knee replacement.

I don't want to end up like that!

So now when I think about what I eat and think about the exercise I do, I'm thinking of the effect that it has on the long-term health of my body. The looks will follow. I started my new diet and fat loss plan at the end of July and so far I have lost 10lbs of body fat, become MUCH fitter, and I'm lifting weights much heavier than I have done in my entire life. I still have a very long way to go, and I don't doubt that I'll have many setbacks along the way (I've already had a few) but I am in this for the long haul and for the right reasons.

My goal is crystal clear - by the 7th July 2007, I will have dropped my bodyfat levels to 25% or lower without dropping my lean body mass below my starting weight of 93lbs. To reach this goal, I would need to weigh around 9st 2. With a starting weight of 11st 7, thats a loss of 33lbs in one year, which should be very achievable. Having already lost 10lbs, I am bang on target to reach my goal!