My Weight Loss Journey

I asked on Twitter not long ago if I should do a Health and Fitness series on the Blog, and the general consensus was that I should, starting with my weight Loss Journey. The first disclaimer is that I am no expert in fitness and nutrition, this is just simply my story and how I lost nearly 5 Stone since I started almost 6 years ago. My second disclaimer is that I am not about to inform you of some miracle weight loss trick, unfortunately to my knowledge this does not currently exist!

So lets start from the beginning. Growing up I was never 'over weight' but I wouldn't have classed myself as of average weight or below. In my later school years I weighed about 10 Stone (63.5Kg), and at 5ft 4inches I didn't carry that weight very well. I hated sport or any physical activity, and didn't know the right food choices to make in order to be healthy. I stayed in the cycle until I left school at 18 and went to university.

University for the first 2 years consisted of no exercise, living on pasta (due to it being cheap), nights out drinking and fast food at 3am! As you can imagine this didn't do much for my waistline and my weight ballooned to 13 stones (82.5Kg). And in all honesty I hadn't even noticed the pounds piling on. It wasn't until I returned home for a visit and stood on some scales. I was blown away by what the numbers were telling  me. It was at this point that I knew I needed to take serious action.

 

I think that half the battle of losing weight is making the decision that you are going to. If you don't want to make a serious lifestyle change then the fact is that it just won't happen. You cannot go at it thinking that putting in effort 50% of the time will suffice. It takes commitment and hard work, not just to lose the weight but to keep it off. This was something I would learn a long the way. 

 

I started off slowly by incorporating exercise videos into my daily routine, my aim was to do at least 30 minutes of exercise 6 days a week. The exercise I was doing was low intensity to start so that I could build myself up to harder and longer sessions. My diet changed, but at this point I still didn't know the right foods to eat. In my mind 2 fishcakes and a bowl of spaghetti hoops was 'healthy'. But I certainly wasn't eating fast food as frequently as before. And even though I was still at university, nights out were limited to once or twice a week. 

 

After a few months of successful weight loss I was ready to up the anti. I joined a gym. This, to me, was a BIG step. I had never liked exercise, and frankly I was down right bad at it. I rarely used the gym at the beginning of my membership, I stuck to workout classes like sculpt and legs, bums and tums. I found this approach less intimidating than the gym. Eventually I plucked up the courage and went into the big scary gym. And low and behold it really wasn't that scary at all. I realised that people go to the gym to workout, not to watch me sweating away on the cross trainer or the treadmill. From then on my routine consisted of 3 hour days in the gym, working hard on every piece of cardio equipment available.

 

 

 

 It took 16 months of this routine, plus educating myself about nutrition and the foods that I should and shouldn't be eating, to drop from 13stone to 8 Stone 3lbs (52.3Kg) losing 4 Stone 11lbs altogether! I graduated university, celebrated my 21st Birthday and felt the best I had ever felt. But it wasn't until I moved home and started a full time job that I realised I just couldn't sustain the amount of exercise I was doing whilst at university. I put on about 1 Stone in weight and worked seriously hard to maintain that weight. I incorporated outside runs and still I was struggling. I didn't understand why I could work so hard in the gym and eat a healthy diet and yet even maintaining a healthy weight was a struggle.

It wasn't until a few years later when I found out why I was struggling so much. Firstly came a diagnosis of an under active thyroid. I finally understood why all this time  losing weight felt like a losing battle. I would have a relaxed weekend on the diet and put on about 7lbs! It all finally made sense! Once on the correct medication, I continued to eat healthy and exercise regularly, but this now I was being rewarded for my efforts.

The second change I made was that I ditched the hours of cardio and substituted it for weight training and High Intensity Training instead. This not only cut down the time I was spending in the gym, making it much more realistic to achieve with a full time job, but also meant that I started to build up my muscle mass. So although my weight on the scales wasn't rapidly decreasing, my body shape was changing. I felt stronger, and healthier, rather than just 'thin'.

   
So although it has taken me 6 years, I am now finally on the right track. I am happy and healthy. I am strong. I completed my first Half Marathon last year and the thought of exercise no longer fills me with dread. I can even say I enjoy it! My goals no longer revolve around what the scales say, but how I feel in myself and my clothes. I still have a long way to go, I would love to be able to do a pull up at some point in the future, I'm working on that!

I could go on all day about my journey and the things I have learnt, but that would make for a very long blog post. In this series I would like to give you a bit more of an insight into my health and fitness routine as it stands now. So stay tuned for that.

I would love to hear about your success stories in the comments, and of course if you have any questions or suggestions for more posts in this series then please let me know!

 

See you again soon,