It’s the type of week I could conveniently be too busy to write about or just fundamentally pretend didn’t happen.
I’ve had ‘one of those weeks.’ I seem to think that every time I write that dreaded phrase it’s a unique occurrence, but reading back over my Transformation Tuesday blog posts it looks like I’ve been feeling that way an awful lot recently. I’m assuming it’s because the initial excitement of starting to lose weight has worn off, and I’ve all of a sudden been dropped into the deep end with the realisation that I have a really, really long way to go. I always knew it would take a significant amount of time given my start weight – which, to clarify, I will not be sharing (I’ve been asked a few times). But it’s as if over the last few weeks I’ve been coming to terms with how long it will actually take to get to a healthy weight and it feels so, so, so far away.
(IMAGE SOURCED FROM www.facebook.com)
It doesn’t help that I’m not fully registering in my head that I’m actually smaller. It’s like I said last week: my clothes are huge and I can kind of see areas that look a lot thinner. This weekend I wore a gingham dress I bought in the Gap sale a size too small a couple of months ago with the intention of losing weight to fit in it, forgot about it and now it’s too big. But after 15 months of being enormous it’s going to take a while for my mind to catch up with my body and accept that I’m no longer that size.
Underlying it all is a petulant recurring thought that it just isn’t fair.
I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I haven’t had a takeaway or fast food in over two years, I generally eat healthily, and I do none of the things that the overweight people in television documentaries do. Yes I’ve overeaten in the past, and yes I don’t exercise half as much as I should, but I’ve never gorged myself silly, existed on a diet of McDonald’s or regularly ate several massive portions in one sitting. I know everyone’s metabolism is different, and clearly the extent to which I overate – which seems an awful lot less that those in the same weight situation on the likes of Supersize/Superskinny etc. – and the impact of my specific lifestyle, made my body react in a certain way.
And that’s fine: everyone’s different. It just sucks.
All this week this silly, pathetic thought has dominated my mind. I don’t want to have to do this – to spend so much time and money losing weight – but I know if I want to decrease the risk of health problems in the future and have a better quality of life now then I’m doing the right thing. I have no doubt in my mind that I’ve made the right choice and I’m heading in the right direction. At times, though, it just feels so unfair that I have to deprive myself of conventional food and drink in order to become a healthy weight – which I should technically be already. I shouldn’t have to go to such extremes to rectify a ridiculous and fully preventable problem.
(IMAGE SOURCED FROM www.instagram.com/elleuk)
However, I know it’s my fault I’m this size. I know it’s going to take time. I know I can’t carry on as I was before. I know I don’t have to do a programme like LighterLife. No one’s forcing me into any of this! It’s just difficult being mature about it all the time and acknowledging the problem, when all I want to do is stamp my feet and moan about how much I hate it all and wish my weight problems would just disappear with the click of my fingers.
It'd be a lot easier to not mention this at all, and carry on each week appearing to be inspired, on track - whether I've had a wobble or not - and deliriously happy with my decision, but that wouldn't be honest.
But, good things never come easily, and the best things are the ones you work for. I don’t think I’d personally appreciate being thinner and healthier if I hadn’t experienced the flipside and known what it’s like to be huge and miserable because of it.
(IMAGE SOURCED FROM www.instagram.com/elleuk)
I stuck to the programme fully till Friday, all the while undergoing a massive battle with myself internally trying to convince myself not to give up. I’d restricted weighing myself to once a day, and for the first time in forever nothing happened all week. This is why weighing myself is so dangerous: I felt so disheartened at my lack of progress since my last weigh in, and so uninspired anyway that I decided to lapse this weekend while in London on a flying visit for London Fashion Week.
Here's the thing: lapsing always feels like a great at idea at the time.
As soon as I got off the train at Euston my brain went into YOLO mode and having spent the two-hour train journey convincing myself that this really was a super and fully justified decision, I intended to do whatever I wanted food-wise. However, I didn’t manage to lapse how I wanted to as there seems to be some kind of mechanism in my body that put a stop to it.
I've been craving salad, so on Saturday afternoon I ran off to Leon after checking into my hotel for a Chargrilled Chicken Superfood Salad. My eyes were clearly bigger than my shrunken stomach and I couldn’t manage anything else for the rest of the day, which was an epic disappointment as I’d planned on a quick trip to Waitrose for whatever naughty food (read: biscuits) were on offer. The same thing happened the next day: after an amazing breakfast at my hotel I couldn’t even look at anything else for the rest of the day. My breakfast wasn’t even big by any stretch of the imagination, but I felt like Violet in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory after she's turned into a giant blueberry: absolutely enormous.
(GIF SOURCED FROM www.all-fades-away.tumblr.com)
Several hours later I began to feel absolutely shocking. My stomach was rolling on the train, and when I got home I had an early night, lying in bed trying not to be sick with acute earache and a throbbing head. I couldn’t shake this until yesterday evening, and had to forgo staying for my LighterLife meeting as I still didn’t feel right. To add insult to injury, as a result of the weekend and the shock of eating conventional food I put on 2lbs.
Combined with everything else I'm not falling off the wagon for ages now. I don't want to feel like this again for a very long time: this gain has rendered the last fortnight obsolete, and it just highlights that lapsing really isn’t worth it.
Silly, silly Emma.
On the bright side, it’s probably the kick up the arse I needed, and that really isn’t a bad thing. Onwards and upwards.
(GIF SOURCED FROM www.inbusinesslife.com)
WEEK 11 LOSS: +2lbs
TOTAL LOSS: 35lbs // 2st 7lbs
No comments:
Post a Comment