My Weight Journey

Since Gary has put his story on here I thought I could put mine. I don't really know where to start but probably with my teenage years. 

I don't really remember at what time I started gaining weight but I particularly remember it being after I started secondary school at 11. I remember not eating breakfast or lunch and just coming home and having dinner. My friends started feeding me their lunch to make me eat but I didn't really want to. I don't know what I weighed but I know I was on the larger side and I continued to be so for years after this. 

When I moved away to university when I was 21 I discovered the gym properly for the first time in my life and really enjoyed the exercise. I started to go most days of the week and started to lose weight naturally. I never felt I got to slim or a good weight but this is one of the lowest weights I've been in my lifetime. Interestingly at this time I was eating really badly so it was nothing to do with my food consumption. I never got my BMI down to a normal level and this annoyed me but at this point I wasn't too bothered. 

I moved down to Sussex and was still exercising a lot but I remember starting to get quite depressed about my weight because I could never get to a healthy level and it had started creeping up. Before my wedding I really felt awful about myself so I started WeightWatchers. I actually got on really well with it for a short time and lost over a stone putting me back to that point I reached in Leicester previously. I liked WeightWatchers because it told you exactly how much you could eat of things and everything was defined and measured. However, as we got closer to the wedding and things with Gary got harder we stopped doing this diet. I did manage to maintain this weight though for the coming months. To give you an idea I maintained this weight from January to September. 

So in September I found out I was pregnant, yay, but by October I was in hospital with Hyperemersis Gravidarum, which is severe sickness. I lost weight during this time, as you might expect, and for the first time in my life my BMI was in the normal range!! I did eventually start to gain weight in pregnancy but I barely ate for the duration of the 9 months and my body had shut down and entered starvation mode. 

Due to this after pregnancy I gained a huge amount of weight. I did eat badly at first because I was so happy to be able to eat again but even when I wasn't I just piled on the pounds. I started the Tesco diet and tried to stick with this for a bit but I found that even with exercising and eating right I was barely managing to keep my weight even let alone lose any. So I gave up on that one. I then tried Slimming World which again I didn't get on with. I couldn't understand how it was ok to eat unlimited things of certain foods when I thought they were bad, primarily carbs. How do you know when you've had enough? when to stop? Having lost all my natural food feelings this wasn't helpful and I found that within a few weeks I was not doing the right things and failing. I also barely lost any weight when I felt I should. Therefore I gave up. 

After another few months and yet more weight gain I had reached a point where I hated what I looked and felt like. At Christmas I tried to fit into some old dresses to look nice and nothing fit, even the larger dress I'd recently bought was too tight. So I knew enough was enough and I needed to change. So the next day we started a new diet, a successful diet, a low carb diet. 

I mainly picked the Atkins diet because I knew that people saw success quickly and I desperately needed this more than anything else. To start on a good week. However, as we've travelled through our journey it has suited us far better than I could ever hope. I understand the idea behind it and find it easier to stick with a rule of none rather than some which other diets tend to do. Let me explain. On WeightWatchers you're allowed some "naughty" things as long as you don't go over your points. On lowcarb you're allowed none because if you had some you'd be over the carb count in one mouthful!! So I know I'm allowed none and I'm not tempted to keep eating little bits. What this has meant is that I've lost my sweet tooth, of course I still want it, but because of the results I've seen I'm not really tempted. I also know that if I do cheat then it'll take much longer to get to the weight loss stage again and I'll lose a lot of time. 

So my aim is that by Christmas 2015 I will have lost a total of 6 stone and to have a BMI of around 22. This would get me to my lowest adult weight and in a healthy BMI for the first time (except pregnancy) too. 

How am I doing? As of June 2015, 6 months into the weight loss, I have lost 4 stone 3lbs and am well ahead of target. I am feeling less tired and more energised. I'm now able to run 5Km (not as comfortably as Gary) but the fastest I've ever done so and feeling more comfortable doing it. I'm training for a half marathon and I don't feel any negative impacts on my body. I'm not quite at my pre-pregnancy weight but I just have 3lbs to go. After that I'll be aiming for my pregnancy weight and will hope to continue going downwards. 

I'll try and post some pictures another time to show you the difference, which personally I still can't really see much of but Gary says he can. 

So if you've tried all other diets and failed, why not give it a go? What have you got to lose? (Just weight!!).