(I was so proud when I lifted this)
So it's been a really long time since I blogged about my lifestyle and my health, and over the last few months I've realised more and more how important it is to not only discuss the good things in our life, but to include the bad things as well. I decided it was about time to start talking more about how for far too many years I've allowed my own perception of myself be shaped by the world around me.
So as I'm typing this, I'm currently classed as being overweight. While I'm not going to include specific numbers on my blog, I can tell you that whilst I've never been considered 'underweight' I've suffered from disordered eating in the past and am still battling with it today.
In my very early teens, my weight dropped considerably as I became more focused on what I ate, or rather how little I ate. Part of this came from the belief I was fat, whilst the other part came naturally through me being a fussy eater. My teenage life was spent with me locked into a cycle of obsessively watching what I ate and going through phases of only eating certain foods. Sometimes these foods would be calorie dense, meaning I would gain weight, whilst others had minimal calories, meaning I lost weight. Throughout this period I was also very active, meaning I burnt more calories through exercise.
Turning 16 bought on some massive changes for me however. First of all, I'd been with my current partner for a few months then, and I'd started to see that he didn't care what size I was so maybe that meant it didn't matter. I also began eating more homemade foods and expanding the variety of foods I ate, which made it harder to track calories. Because of this I slowly stopped tracking calories and began to relax a little. Finally, I started the combined pill (which I was later taken off and swapped onto the mini pill due to adverse side effects). This combination meant I was starting to gain weight, but I didn't care about it.
Fast forward a couple of years and I'd become overweight. I was incredibly unhappy in myself and was desperate for a quick solution. In come the influx of fad diets which included overly restrictive calories, slimfast and the 5:2 diet amongst others. I didn't realise it at the time but all this was doing was allowing me to continue the cycle of starve/binge and I ultimately gained all the weight back and more. Even at the beginning of me creating this blog, what I believed to be a healthy relationship with food and exercise was far from it. This culminated last year in me not eating at all throughout the day, and then going massively overboard in the evenings.
All of this was masked however by the fact that the nature of my jobs means you have to be relatively fit. This allowed me to believe it wasn't that bad and I just masked my unhappiness by wearing baggy clothes and a cheesy grin. While I haven't got a trigger photo like some people have, I do have a series of photos that I look back on now and think bloody hell, what was I doing to myself?
Fast forward to a few months ago, I decided it was time to switch gyms to one with better facilities and redownload the myfitnesspal app. I've spent the past few months educating myself on Nutrition and exercises that strengthen the body, not just burn calories. I've learnt about maintaining a suitable calories deficit that includes a little big of everything, which is by far a much more sustainable way to live as opposed to fad diets. More than this, I've learnt to stop punishing myself if I have a slip up. Along the way I've got my partner to keep me grounded when it seems like I'm getting too obsessive.
It's not a smooth road. I'm currently undergoing tests to see if I have a bowel disease amongst other things, and sometimes the last thing I want to do is focus on tracking macros when my stomach is tearing itself in two. Sometimes in life we really do need to eat a shitnload of food and feel good about it. I just know now that I'm steadily loosing weight and learning to love my body for All the amazing things it can do, which is something I thought I'd never say.
If you made it this far, I just want to say a huge thank you for reading and please feel free to share your stories too xxxx
