I am fat. Well, perhaps not fat any more but certainly overweight – 3 stone over weight to be precise (if one can regard my GP as precise). Seeing it written down depresses the hell out of me but hey ho, facing up to things is the first step… apparently.
When I was 18 I moved away from home and went to university, I ended up living with 7 other girls (6 of whom I am still friends with). We all liked food (and still do!) and did lots of eating out, cooking for one another and together. I piled the weight on and before I knew it I was graduating 4 years later with an extra 5 or 6 stone of lard. None of the other gorgeous, thin girls that I lived with ended up leaving uni with such a fat arse – perhaps I was eating their food too? When I look back at how much I used to eat I am utterly disgusted with myself. Seriously, I would have maybe 2 eggs on toast for breakfast; perhaps something like waffles and cheesy beans for lunch; curry with rice and naan or a ma-hoooo-sive stir fry for dinner; ridiculous numbers of coffees, cokes and hot chocolates; horrendous amounts of alcohol each evening and then of course the obligatory kebab. I told you, it was disgusting!
Now, ahamdulillah, I haven’t drunk alcohol for 6 years which has immediately cut out a huge proportion of the disgusting eating habits… no need for the “obligatory” kebab and no need for the disgusting breakfast and copius amounts of full-fat coke to get rid of the hangover. I feel physically sick when I think about the life I used to lead and thank God every day for leading me down the right path.
When I started working after university I managed to lose some weight and then slowly lost some more until 2 years ago I was 4 stone lighter than I was at graduation. Hurrah! Still overweight but hurrah! I then got pregnant and put on more weight but didn’t worry about that, I had a baby inside me and all was good 
I actually lost weight at the beginning of my pregnancy as I wasn’t able to keep anything down apart from potato based goods… bring on the crisps and chips! After having our beautiful baby boy Zakaria I was one of the lucky ones. I was breastfeeding (and when I say breastfeeding, I was doing it all day and all night long… for a year!) and the weight started pouring off me. When Zaki was 4 months old we moved out to Algeria for 6 months and when I finally got my hands on some scales I realised just how much I had lost. I was still about a stone above the weight my GP says I should be but I felt AMAZING (I reckon I looked pretty good too)!
We came back to England a couple of months before Zakaria’s first birthday, we got settled and I decided to go back to work part time. I also decided that it was a good time to cut down the breastfeeding so started just giving feeds at night-time. Unfortunately I didn’t decide to stop giving myself feeds so was so in the habit of eating big portions and eating a lot of sweet stuff. Without realising it I have put on 2 stone in the last year!
So, I now have 3 stone to lose in order to be within a healthy BMI range. I’m not that bothered about my BMI, I just want to get my weight down in order to get my confidence back up. When I was thin I felt great, I could wear what I wanted and thinks kind of hung instead of clinging to me. My muffin top is back and it sucks.
I have lost weight using the Weight Watchers plan before so I am back to counting my points and being careful with what I put in my mouth (I just wish my son would follow my lead – the amount of coins and crap that I have had to remove from his mouth is insane… but I digress). My lovely husband has bought me a cross trainer and gives me all the motivation I need in order to shift the lard. I have a target to lose just over a stone before mid-March and I will then re-assess and make a new target for losing the rest. The ridiculous thing is that when I am eating healthily and exercsing then I feel fantastic. When I am eating rubbish food and picking at chocolate and snacks I feel terrible – tired, grumpy, fat and miserable.
I’m not going to write any more about my efforts to lose weight until, insha’allah, I have actually reached my first goal and then there will be no shutting me up! I feel that by putting myself “out there” and off-loading all this then I will have even more motivation to do it. And to be able to stick my tongue out and blow raspberries at anybody that has read this and thought to themselves “yeah right, blah blah blah, you’ll never do it”. So watch out… a load of raspberries coming your way soon in a couple of months.
I’ve heard it said that nothing tastes as good as thin feels. I completely agree with this. However Dairy Milk tastes pretty damn good so I’m beating it off with a stick.
