Addicted to what keeps you alive.

 I am not a stranger to being overweight. I am fat. There is no two ways about it. I have more fat on me than I should to be healthy. I am not trying to body shame anyone or to suggest that people can't do their own thing. You do you. I am not healthy and in getting there I now have too much fat getting in my way. 

I have tried Slimming World which did work for me. I did lose weight, even during my pregnancy I was losing weight. It was about half a pound a week and I was being checked by medical professionals and I had more scans of my child because I was considered to be a high risk pregnancy. I felt safe losing weight while pregnant. I actually wanted to lose weight in order to get pregnant. Its actually the first piece of advice I read when trying. If you are overweight then try to lose some and things may change. When I got my 10% certificate (the award at Slimming World for losing 10% of your starting body weight) I concieved my son. So I can attest to that piece of advice working for some people. My husband and I both lost a good amount and we both felt better for it. But for us it just wasn't sustainable once our son arrived. Being handed a human to take care of when you are at your most tired and vulnerable is really mean! (But that's another blog post). 

I don't have a vice like alcohol, drugs, smoking etc. Mine is food. I eat to feel better, to have control over something, to fill a need. I like lots of different types of food. My favourites are savouries, carbohydrates specifically. Pasta, potato, bread, nuts, popcorn, crisps. I can count on one hand the food I won't eat. Its not even that I don't like healthy stuff. I really do. I love vegetables, more so than fruit. I like fruit but I don't feel satisfied after eating them. I am happy eating them as full meals or just as snacks. 

But the main problem, is that I eat far too much. I will snack while making dinner. I have midnight trips to the fridge because the idea popped into my head and now I have to do it or I won't sleep. I'll have eaten a full size meal and then I'll want to graze all evening on the sofa. 

When you have a vice or even an addiction to something, most of the time you can quit it. No human body requires alcohol, nicotine or cocaine. These can (with a LOT of hard work I am certain), be stopped and cut out of a life. But you try and live without food. You won't last long. So you need to keep ingesting the thing that you are addicted to in order to live and function as a human. I believe thats one of the reasons I find it hard to lose weight. 

I cannot give up food. I will die. I can reduce what I eat, sure. But with every other addiction in reducing the amount you have you will eventually remove it from your life. That is the goal. You can't do that with food. You cannot cut out food completely and eventually will power gives in and I end up spiralling down again. 

Getting a mind around making healthy decisions about food every time you eat, when its the one struggle you have, is incredibly hard! I am going to try and get better at making those decisions because at the weight and size I am, I am starting to get to the point where I cannot do things I want to do. Fit on a theme park ride, move in the way I want, sleep well, wear clothes that I want. My husband just showed me some underwear that looks amazing!! But they don't make my size. I cannot have those fancy pants and I don't like it. 

I am very emotional around this and many other subjects. It feels like failure. I have failed to keep myself healthy nor my family as they have the same attitude with food that I do. I have failed to do anything about it for years. I have allowed myself to get like this and it is going to be hard to get out again. Anything worth doing is probably hard but I need to get into a better mindset about it in order to do something better for myself. 

So, here's to choosing to feel better. To making better choices across the board. Saying yes to healthier things. Eating is part of it, and the biggest at the beginning, as no amount of exercise is going to do anything good if it is being sabotaged by too much unhealthy food. Well too much food in general.   

I will check in each month to see how I am doing. A blog each month to deal with progress and chronicle any weight loss, size loss, fitness levels, feeling better all that good stuff. I don't want to be obsessed by weight. As I don't care about weight as much as health. Weight is a number on a scale, fitness and health are far better indicators of life. Putting it in the diary now to make another one in a months time. Not rambley like this one but perhaps I will have made some effort by then to make a few better decisions and we'll see. 

Until next time

Xx

.                     Photo by Stephanie Lima