Too Many to Say…

Day One, Again: Restarting after a long time off

It has been over six years since I first started this blog. In some ways, a lot has changed in my life since then. In other ways, though, not much has changed at all…

In the last six years I have moved home and changed job three times each, survived abusive bosses, and lived through a painful and seemingly endless pandemic. My ‘pain-factor’, to which I have previously attributed my food addiction and therefore my weight gain, has increased with every new blow, my confidence has been crushed to a point of near non-existence and my weight has ballooned to new a new level as a result.

It’s now time for things to change for the better. I finally have a job I love and am thriving in, allowing my confidence to start re-climbing to its natural level, I am very happily married to a wonderful and loving husband who supports me fully, and I live in a beautiful flat in the countryside. There is no reason why now cannot be the time I finally conquer this challenge I have been facing for the last 30 years and therefore, I am restarting my efforts and restating my goals – coming back into the light!

I have now reached the point in my life when I would like to be able to start thinking about having children. I am the last of my university friends to have not yet taken this step, and my husband and I are approaching being “ready”, whatever that means.

My weight, however, is the thus far immovable obstacle, as it would be unwise for my and my child’s health to fall pregnant in my current state. Heart problems for me and an increased risk of deficits in a child are a good deterrent, but my age and the potential to encounter challenges are the other side of the argument. This is yet another reason now is the time to seriously address my weight and my health.

It is a surprisingly difficult decision to make, to approach this weight loss journey seriously. It requires a complete change of lifestyle, a lot of effort and no small amount of discomfort or pain. This scares me a lot, but I do know it’s manageable. My husband and I do not help each other in this, as we have the same weaknesses, therefore lacking the strength to motivate ourselves, let alone the other, to “do something about it”, to quote Mrs Bott from Richmal Crompton’s Just William on the same topic.

So, a plan of action is required. I know that the most important element for me is to address my eating habits – success in this area will mean that the rest will naturally follow.

I had some small success a couple of years ago with one strategy, which I am now planning to reimplement. I find lunch very boring – inventing and, “much worse”, actually making recipes for it are a great part of my downfall, to borrow a phrase from Hugh Grant in Two Weeks’ Notice. To combat this, alongside portion sizes at dinner, I will eat half of my dinner in the evening, saving the rest for lunch the following day. My hope is that this will prove to be a relatively painless, and therefore sustainable, way to cut calories and ensure lunchtimes are safe.

In addition to this plan, I also plan to cut sugar, within reasonable limits, as I know this helps curb food cravings, and count calories. The latter is more because I am interested in working out how fast, or rather how slow, my metabolism is, so I can plan more accurately going forward. In theory, this should all be relatively easy at the beginning, since I have so much weight to lose, but I know it will get harder and harder as I get any closer to my goal.

So, off I go again – this time towards genuine success!

Ninety-Seven

To live with discipline

So, here I am on day 99 of my challenge and I am back to the beginning. After two months of struggling to keep going with both weight loss and writing any posts due to eating birthday bakes and very high levels of stress at work, I have started in earnest again this week.

My husband and I have, this week, been, to paraphrase Jane Eyre, ‘thrust on to a [new] tack’ and are now working to succeed in our aim. Tim has started a new job, which means we suddenly have evenings and weekends opened up to us to visit the gym together and to properly and wisely plan our meals for the week.

I have designed us (well, me really but company and support always help) a star chart, which include my exercise plans for the week and the number of calories consumed each day. One star is bronze for me and silver for Tim and two stars in one day is gold. A full week of gold stars earns us a full English breakfast for Sunday lunch and, as before, a stone of weight loss earns me non-food treats. I intend for most of these to be related to my feet so, for example, for the stone that I lost before I rewarded myself with a new pair of running shoes, with thanks to my parents-in-law, which were sorely needed and have already made a huge difference.

Alongside my weight loss goals for the year, I have also set myself physical fitness challenges, culminating in and building up to completing the Royal Parks Half Marathon on 13^th October with Tim and his parents. In order to successfully achieve this goal, it will be imperative that I stick to my exercise plan, which will also add an extra incentive. This is a huge challenge for me and Tim as it will be more than twice what we have ever run before. 

You may also notice that there are now two additional fields in the data at the bottom of my posts. This will document total calories consumed and total calories burnt through exercise during the week (Sunday to Friday), to add another layer to the environment of accountability and clarity that I am attempting to build around myself.

However, though extreme stress at work and the season of family birthday celebrations have both lapsed for the time being, it is evident that I need a better defense mechanism against these obstacles to my self-control than I have so far managed to develop.

One of these methods, as my Mum very helpfully articulated in a talk she recently did at my home church, will be worship. She (and I, though to a much lesser extent so far) has real and extensive experience that worship is a surefire way to bring hope into seemingly dark situations, reaffirming your knowledge of the truth and, therefore, alleviating the associated stress and preventing the need to seek unhealthy comfort.

An aspect of the challenge that has now changed is that Tim is doing it with me, which will help hugely; he will be an additional person to be accountable to in a very personal way, he will be coming with me to the gym every week day and he will be thinking along the same lines as me when it comes to planning meals. The fact that we are both doing this challenge together, even though I have much further to go, will help us both stay on track and ‘recover the correct course’.

So, from now on I resolve that there will be no further increases in my weight until I have completed my challenge (it can stay the same for a week, but not increase at all). I also resolve to give up all added sugar, except on isolated, very special occasions, which will curb my food cravings and make it much easier to stick to our plan.

I am aware that I still have not posted about exercise but there will finally be one once I have managed to get into a good and sustained routine. Watch this space…

Day: 99

Lbs to go: 97

Calories Consumed: 7,477 (Monday to Friday due to holiday)

Calories Burned: 1,500

One Hundred and One

Back to Basics: To live within my core values

My name is Elinor and I am starting this blog to document my 101lb weight loss journey. I have always felt uncomfortable in my skin because I know that I am not in the state that I was made to be in. I am embarrassed by my size and have never felt able to indulge my ‘girly’ side because I am unhappy with how I look.

When I started my first year of university I wrote down my core values. Among these was one that stated, ‘I resolve to get help if I consistently fail on one of my core values’. Predictably (which is probably one of the reasons that it happens so much), I have consistently failed on all of them and that one in particular!

So, four and a half years later, I am starting again and properly this time. I am going to make manageable and sustainable changes to my lifestyle in order to finally achieve the weight, size and peace of mind that I have been longing for all of my life.

I have always struggled with self-discipline. This might sound like something anyone could say of themselves but for me it goes a step further as it isn’t just about getting on with things that I don’t want to do or might be unpleasant. I also find it very difficult to motivate myself to do things that I do want to do. It takes up so much of my effort and concentration to do ordinary daily tasks, such as get out of bed, wash and go to work (let alone actually being productive at work), that my health, sleep, fitness and eating habits have always been tossed by the wayside.

This means that I constantly feel like I am living my life trapped in a cage, never able to complete or achieve anything no matter how much I want to (I have always had a reputation for starting things and not following through). It is time for this to stop and for my life to take a new path to success and fulfilment of my destiny and purpose!

I know that it is important, during this challenge, for me to remain accountable to other people. I have tried various strategies in the past, but they have all failed as even that could not provide the required level of external motivation. For this reason, I am turning to what I think is an extreme version of accountability and am going to share my trials, tribulations and successes with anyone who might want to read this and then I cannot escape!

I have always been very good at hiding under the radar and so now I am (rather scarily) coming out of the shadows and into the light!

I need to lose 101lb to reach my ideal weight and so I am going to post once a week on a Saturday with new reason to lose weight (so the quicker I lose weight, the fewer reasons I will need to think of). This blog is going to document my journey to true freedom of mind and body.

Day: 1

Lb to go: 101