Fat Fighters
I am one of those people that is always on some kind of diet.
In fact, I think I have been on a diet since 2006.
I have tried them all, Weight Watchers, Tony Ferguson, Paleo, Michelle Bridges, No carbs, raw food, the 5:2 diet. You name it, I have tried it.
My experience is they all work of course (if you stick to them for more than five minutes).
The thing is, is that I am not actually overweight.
I am a size 10. Yet, I am always on the journey to get ‘skinny.’
My twisted brain thinks I might be just one chocolate muffin away from launching into irreversible obesity.
You see, I have this idea in my head that I need to get back to the weight I was when I was twenty-six. The magical and skinny weight. This number on the scales is not based on any scientific evidence, scans or my BMI (which is totally normal by the way). It is based on my idea that this is what I should weigh. Because I weighed it once and this is when people said I was reallllllyyyyy really skinny.
When I was this magical and skinny weight, life was not better.
I had a stressful job in London and an auto immune problem. I was in a difficult and uncertain relationship. On top of this, I did not own a car and would spend hours walking around North West London. I walked to and from the shops carrying groceries, back and forth to the gym and to friends’ houses. Name the destination, you bet I walked there.
I try to listen to what my rational mind might say to quieten the diet addict within. This is what it would say:
Fact. Clothing does not lie. I have been a stable size 10 for a good seven years now.
Sure, my weight might fluctuates up and down a few kilos or so, depending on if I have been on a holiday, a bread binge, inhaled a bottle of wine, or didn’t train for a couple of weeks.
Fact. Sometimes I am absolute fire with my health and fitness.
I give up booze for four months, train like a demon for an endurance event and plan all my meals out for the week ahead.
Fact. You can’t always live like this. Life gets in the way; dinners, work, friends, living and chocolate.
Sometimes you can’t always be on the money.
What I have realised that is consistent for me and my general wellbeing and health are the three things that I can’t live without.
- Sleep – I need 8 hours a night or else I turn into cranky pants. If 8 hours sleep is not achieved, I am the occasional partaker in a nanna nap. I also have one non alarm day a week as a rule. This is going to be difficult if little people ever enter my life, but it’s my rule for now.
- I keep moving – Even on a ‘bad’ week I will train at least four times. If I am sick. I go for a walk. If I break my toe, I go for a swim. If it rains, I run. I keep myself moving. Not just for my physical health but for my mental health too. There is nothing worse than going straight from office to home and not seeing the light of day.
- Water – I drink A LOT of water. Juice is a no-no and soft drinks are a very-once-in-a-while kind of treat. Coffee is my vice and my bestest ever friend.
What I have realised over time and my many years of dieting, calorie counting apps and training is, that if I skip the gym for a week or two or eat out a few too many times as I would like to, NOTHING WILL HAPPEN TO MY BODY. Well, not in a couple of weeks anyway. As long as I don’t go to doughnut dan daily or eat several packets of tim tams in one sitting.
Sure, I might feel a bit blah for a week until I get back on track. But, I have realised that everyone is too busy looking at themselves and worrying about their own bodies to notice me and my three kilo fluctuations.
Unless I weighed 180 kilos and lost 100, no one would notice my weight at all.
So, I make this commitment now to give myself a break from the continuous world of dieting and chasing that skinny magical number that I will probably will never weigh again.
I am much happier, healthier, smarter and stronger today than the ‘super skinny’ stressed, unsure and anxious twenty-six year old I once was.
And here is a Cheers to that.
