In the last few weeks I’ve received some fantastic compliments about how much weight I have lost which over the last four years has adds up to over 80lbs (almost 6 stone).
After asking how much the next question is almost inevitably “How?”
I’d spent years kidding myself that I didn’t mind being the biggest person I knew, that I didn’t have time to get fit or have the money to eat healthily (even though there was plenty of time to watch TV and enough money to buy pizza, chocolate and ice cream).
The truth was I hated it, I hated the way I looked, I hated the way I felt but most of all I hated the compromises I had forced myself to accept and it wasn’t until I was able to admit this to myself that I was in a position to do something about it.
Previous attempts had been all about the big gestures, fad diets and programmes changing reigned supreme and inevitable fell flat on their face.
This time I realised that if it was going to work, if I was going to lose the weight (and keep it off) I had to do something different.
I started looking for small things that I could change, things that on their own wouldn’t make much difference but together would add up to make a significant change.
Over the next 18 months I started choosing diet drinks and cutting chocolate from my lunch, made subtle changes to our dinners at home and started walking (then running) further and more frequently.
As a rule I stuck to one change at a time, waiting until it had become habit before making the next.
At times it was desperately frustrating and I wondered why I was bothering but I tracked my progress throughout so even when I couldn’t feel any change I had the numbers to fall back on.
Now those changes that seemed so difficult have become routine and the changes that felt so pointless have added up to so much more than the sum of their parts.
And the difference is clear…….
I now struggle to climb mountains instead of a flight of stairs!
November 2007
August 2011
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