Educating myself

As you may have read on my Sunday Summary, I have started jogging again. For months I have been saying that I'll start again in January, and now January is upon us and I've run out of excuses! Whilst jogging is all well and good, in order to lose weight and be a healthier, happier me, I need to diet too. I hate that word. Diet. It sounds and feels so restricting, which in turn makes me feel uncomfortable. So I'm not on a diet. I am making a conscious effort to to make healthier decisions. Concentrate on what I'm putting in my mouth (ahem) and actually think about it beforehand.

I have been fat for all of my life. When I was little it was cute. It was cute and chubby. When I got to my teens on the other hand, it was no longer puppy fat, it was Just. Plain. Fat. I'm not blaming my parents one tiny bit - they tried their damned hardest for me. They'd pile my plate with 'diet' food and we switched to semi-skimmed milk, low fat margerine, water instead of fizzy pop etc. The whole family made a lifestyle change. Biscuits, crisps and sweeties used to be hidden from me (if they were bought at all) but I would find them when nobody was looking, and sneak them to my room. Or I'd use my pocket money and spend it in the pick 'n' mix section on my way to school, and not bat an eyelid at devouring the bag before I'd walked the 10 minute journey to school. All the while, my poor Mam would ask me what I'd had for lunch, and with the back-up of my best friend Ellie, I'd automatically answer 'Jacket potato and beans' or 'A ham salad roll'. Written down on paper (or screen), I am positively ashamed of myself and the lengths I went to in order to deceive people for food, and clearly, my story goes to show that I have nobody to blame but myself.

When I was 15, these pictures of Victoria Beckham emerged:

I was heading into my final year of comprehensive school, and I wanted a change. I didn't want to be bullied anymore, and I wanted to be envied for my figure instead of my hair. I can still remember the day I saw these pictures; it was the start of my Summer school holidays and they were plastered all over the front pages of the daily newspapers. Why? Because Mrs Beckham was so... boney. She had drastically slimmed down to a size zero, and the big debate started about whether or not she was starving herself. A decade later we all know that yes, she was, but at the time it stirred something deep within me. Like many teenage girls in the 1990's, The Spice Girls were my biggest icons and inspirations, and seeing these pictures inspired me to change my eating habits. In fact, I aspired to be like Posh so much that I stopped eating.

I'd wake up at 5am every morning. My Mam started work at 4am, so by the time she came home at 9am I'd have done 1000 sit ups, cycled for 3 miles, and cleaned the house. Lunchtime was always a time where we just grabbed something quick individually, so I could escape without eating anything quite easily. Teatime was when the main meal was cooked and the time when the family sat down together to eat, but I was always conveniently out with my friends. To my parents, I was eating whilst I was out. To my friends, I was eating before or after I saw them. Then before bed it was another 1000 sit ups. I'd survive on water and a couple of pieces of fruit a day. Stupidly, I started taking pills to curb my appetite. I found them in my brother's room, and as he has always been naturally skinny and always training for some kind of sport, I thought they could do no harm. I still have no idea what they were, what was in them, or where they came from. All I remember is not feeling hungry when I took them.

Astonishingly, alarm bells didn't ring. I just studied every bone in Posh's body, and it spurred me on further. I wanted to have her body. This went on for about a month, and obviously I lost some weight. I don't know how much, but I felt fucking fantastic. Until one day, I was out shopping with my Mam and I felt dizzy and weak. I went to the loo and passed out. It was only for a few minutes but I had such a fright and honestly thought that was the end of me. Now the alarm bells were ringing, loud and clear. I just thought that if my idol could do it, I could do it, but it was my moment of complete and utter madness. After that I stopped taking the strange pills, stopped working out, and started eating regularly with my family and friends. My worries about my GCSE's pushed my weight issues to the back of my mind, my old eating habits returned, and the weight went back on.

When I met Gareth I put even more weight on. They say you do when you're content with your boyfriend, don't they? We were eating out a lot, and if we weren't eating out we'd be snuggled in the house with a movie and ice cream, chocolates and popcorn. More weight went on, but it was okay because he loved me just the way I was, as proved with an engagement ring. At 18 I fell pregnant and sadly I miscarried. That hit me hard. Why wasn't I good enough to become a mother? What was wrong with me? What did I do? I fell into a deep, horrible depression and my weight just spiralled completely out of control. Everybody has ups and downs, but I console myself with food. That's the one thing I can rely on to make me happy. A single square of chocolate melting slowly on my tongue is heavenly. Always has been, and unfortunately, always will be. At this time I got diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. It's basically a hormone imbalance that affects my production of insulin, which in turn affects my sugar levels (and eating habits). Because of this, weight gain is one of the bitchface conditions that comes with PCOS. I think I hid behind that excuse for a while - It will be impossible to lose weight because I have PCOS, so I might as well eat what I like. Terrible, isn't it?! Now, 8 years later, this is where I find myself - Obese. Unhappy. Determined.

I am rambling a bit here but I feel I need to. I need to write my weight issues down so that I can truly understand them myself. This is my turning point - with every inch of me exposed, I've nothing left to hide behind and no more feeble excuses to make. So... here is where I stand. Since January 1st I have been eating well. Apart from my McDonald's two weeks ago but the less said about that the better...

I have been using the Couch-to-5k app on my iPhone for my training (amazeballs) and also using an app called MyFitnessPal to record my daily calorie intake. I've been feeling quite smug and have had a little friendly competition going on with Mr L. Everyday I've been hitting less than 1600 calories... so I thought.

Do you know how many calories are in what you are eating? Do you truly know? Look at the packaging and yes, it will tell you, but do you know how much is on your plate? If I have learned anything through calorie counting, it's portion size and control. Okay, I'll give you a hypothetical example with made up numbers, just for arguement sake. 400 calories for 100g steak and chips doesn't sound all that bad, but chances are, there's not 100g on your plate. There's more like 600g, which brings your calorie total to 2400. Doesn't sound so tempting now, does it? And this is where my problem lies. I don't know how much is on my plate. I said earlier that my parents used to pile my plate with 'diet' food - but the problem lies there. Pile my plate. Whilst I'm eating all of the right things, I'm still eating too much of it because it's piled on my plate, so I might as well eat McDonald's everyday. Do you know how many calories my silly McDonald's meal clocked up two weeks ago? I had a Chicken Legend with bacon and mayo, potato wedges, and a banana milkshake. That single meal was almost 1500 calories!! An entire day's intake for most people in one single sitting. It seriously shocked me to the core and if only I'd known sooner.

This is the education I wish I'd had. I wish somebody - anybody - told me all about portion size. It's taken 26 years and a lot of misery surrounding my weight to finally accept that I am stupid. I can't believe something so simple holds the key to losing weight, and furthermore, I can't believe it took me so long to realise. I'll be weighing out my food from now on. It might be a bit weird at first, but until I can control my portion sizes and actually learn how much 100g is of something, I have to do it.

Wow... this post is hella long so I'd better leave it there... Epiphanies FTW. Are you good with portion control? Or were you brought up to eat everything on your (massive) plate like me?

xoxo