I'm pleased to publish this guest article from an old friend of mine who has reached their weightloss target. A stay at home mum with two little boys to occupy her time, and has shifted a whopping 36lbs. Prepare to be inspired...
Today is a happy day.
It has been 15 months since I started my slimming journey, and I have
finally reached my original target weight.
Overall, I've lost 2st 8lb and dropped 3 dress sizes.
It was my birthday that kickstarted things. I was thinking
about what I’d really like for a present.
I realised I desperately wanted to shake off the frumpy baggy clothes and
get my sparkle back. Also, I'm a stay at
home Mum with two young boys (4 and 2) and wanted to be able to keep up! I knew that my eldest would be starting
school this September and I genuinely feared the idea of Sports Day and the
Mummies Race. I've never cared about
whether I'm the fastest on the field, but I didn't want it to be completely
impossible just because I was fat.
Something just clicked, and the motivation was there at last.
A friend of mine runs a local
Slimming World franchise, so I
called my Mum and asked her if she’d possibly add a bit to my present by paying
for the first few weeks. It wasn't really about saving money - I just knew that if she’d paid for it, I’d feel
obliged to go!
The next step was setting a target. It was hard to know what to aim for. I looked at BMI charts but just felt terribly
ashamed to have got so big in the first place.
Aiming to be ‘Healthy’ just seemed so far away. So I set my sights a little lower, and aimed
to lose 2st 8lb just to get to a nice round number. It would take me firmly out of the Obese
category, and at least that was something.
For the first few months I found keeping a food diary really
handy. I couldn't imagine saying no to
all treats so I allowed myself a small something every day, but wrote it down
so I’d remember. I keep a small Dairy
Milk in the fridge and will break off 1 square if I really fancy it, rather
than reaching for the biscuits. I’m
better at planning our menu and weekly shop now, and instead of cooking
separate meals for the boys and us, I cook proper meals for the whole family. The fridge has so much more colour and
variety in it now, I love it. I'm also more
active, usually running around the common after the boys, but I also like to
switch on the
Wii Fit once the boys are in bed.
I guess because I have allowed myself treats and takeaways
along the way, it has been a long road, but finally I've arrived at this point. I feel like there’s still more weight I’d
like to lose actually, and that’s okay. I'm going to go for another half a stone and see how that looks and
feels. In the meantime, I've got a huge
reward coming my way. For my last
birthday and Christmas, I asked my family for clothes vouchers, so in 2 weeks I'm hitting the shops for a new wardrobe.
Time to shine!
