I have come to the conclusion that I am definitely an emotional/stress eater. If something comes into my life that causes stress or upsets my daily routine that’s it I am off the wagon.

I spoke last week about my trip to Brisbane in Queensland and my new job. I definitely found it very difficult being outside my normal routine to keep up with the good eating and exercise regime. I met some great people and we did eat out every night (The organisation I work for were paying!!) I tried very hard and just stuck to the salads on the menu but then not preparing it yourself you don’t always know what secret ingredients have gone into the dressings etc. I don’t eat meat so it really cuts my choice down. Plus all the work during the day and studying for exams I was sooooo hungry!!!!

I didn’t want to be seen as a ‘party pooper’ and felt pressures from all sides when the majority of the group wanted Chinese take-away!!!

I did as much walking as I could and Brisbane is very very hilly so that was in my favour, I also swam in the pool at the apartments most evenings but I just know it wasn’t a good work-out.

I thought I would come back home and just step straight back into the routine again but I will be honest I have found it very very hard to get back on track. To make things worse my partner has fallen off the wagon as well and he is back to eating almost the way he was before we started our journey.

The stress of my new job and some tough issues in my personal life have not helped and whilst I know these are bad excuses just how do you step out of that denial mindset again and start to be positive? I have read magazines, scrolled the internet, talked to friends looking for that inspiration that I know in the end needs to come from inside of myself. I have been to the gym a couple of times and to be honest did not get any excitement or satisfaction, the scales haven t moved a kilo in about 4 weeks now. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know………

Interval Training

I had been going to the gym for around 8 weeks and I was very envious of those people who get on the tread mill and seem to run and run and run I can’t walk for as long as those people run for.

I had been reading about interval training on Sal’s website which showed the benefits of burning fat quickly by taking your heart rate up and down.

My body hasn’t moved faster than a brisk walk for probably 10 years. I used to live in London and travelled into the west end on a daily basis. During this time I was always running for buses and trains, I was always in a hurry (typical Londoner), so had to run up and down escalators. I knew I could break out into a run if I wanted to I just wasn’t sure how my body would cope now.

I was starting to think this whole gym thing is ‘mind over matter anyway’. My weight had seemed to plateau and I knew I needed to up the pace.

I went to the gym really early in the morning I knew nobody would be there at that time so if I did make a complete fool of myself such as falling of the treadmill hopefully nobody would see me!!

I walked at a fairly high pace for around 4 minutes then pressed the button and my legs started to move faster I was running……….

I felt my heart beating faster and looked at the timer 30 seconds it felt like my heart was going to burst so pushed the button down to a slower pace wow even though I was really out of breath it was a fantastic feeling. I walked again for another 4 minutes then ran for 45 seconds. Walking again for 4 minutes then finally running for just over a minute.

I know that doesn’t sound very much but I am a big believer in baby steps, slowly slowly. I didn’t fall of the treadmill nobody laughed at me and about an hour after I got home I had a massive rush of excitement I felt happier than I had for a long time, I took the dogs for a walk, I felt like I didn’t have a care in the world…….. I think I had just experienced that gym adrenalin rush that all the gym junkies talk about I was on top of the world……………..

Ann is currently away on business so her weekly post will be a little late.

In the meantime, you might want to read her previous posts to catch up on her weight loss/fitness journey, feel free to comment, we all want to be loved!

Check out Ann’s previous posts.

Who designs clothes for those people amongst us who are on the larger side? As a woman trying to shop for an outfit to wear to an interview, I have come to two conclusions. Firstly, I reckon the designer is a really thin person, who has never had a weight problem in their life. They obviously think that people who are overweight have no fashion sense, do not want to look business like when they go to work and are happy to pay top dollar for clothes that look cheap and are made out of unattractive fabrics. Or….

Secondly the designers have all been paid large amounts of money by slimming companies to make the clothes look so bad that we all run out and spend loads of money to buy slimming pills, shakes and ready prepared meals that I am afraid in the long run just do not work. You get good results to start with but who wants to live on a chocolate milk shake for the rest of their lives? As soon as you start to eat ‘normal food’ the weight all goes back on, plus more, not only are you stuffing up your metabolism, but in the long run I believe these quick fix diets destroy self esteem, and motivation.

I had one day to find something decent to wear to an interview for a job that I was really keen on getting. It was a nightmare the only good thing was that when I tried on clothes in my usually outsize shop I had in fact gone down a size and could just about get into the smaller size.

I have always walked past those shops that to me look so intimidating, stick models in the shop window wearing skirts as big as my belts, bright flashing lights and loud music coming from a dingy dark cave like store. The sales assistants in these shops have always made me feel very uncomfortable with their pitying looks I just know they are thinking ‘nothing will fit her’. Why can’t fat people have these type of shops to choose clothes from, at least make something that I have always considered a chore a little bit fun and don’t ostracise me to the boring bright light outsize shops where there is no choice, everything is double the price and not a model to be seen in the shop window fat or thin!!!!!

I didn’t get anything to wear for my interview that day but went home and delved into the dark recesses of my wardrobe somewhere I hadn’t ventured for a while and found some clothes that I could fit into again yippee. I went to my interview feeling great and got the job!!!!

My experience shopping was good for one thing – it made me more determined to get this weight off so that I could shop for fashionable clothes again. I started looking back on Sal’s old blog posts and found the interval training one, maybe this could be the quick fix I was looking for?????????

So I had lost 2 kilos and I guess that tiny start was the major motivation I needed to keep going. A Week later I hopped on the scales and had lost another kilo and a week later another kilo.

The encouragement I got from my friends and family was fantastic. I started to see people who hadn’t seen me for a while and they all noticed that I had lost weight. One friend of mine who I hadn’t seen for about 6 weeks was overjoyed – it suddenly dawned on me – all of my friends had been secretly worried about me, noticing the weight gain and how unfit I had become.

My friend gave me some magazines on fitness to read and I went home and read the motivational stories of people who had lost 100’s of kilos some of them had taken 5 years to get to their goal weight. There was also some great tips on different ways to exercise.

I have set myself a goal of losing my weight in one year which is approximately 1 kilo a week for the next year give or take a few bad weeks. Don’t get me wrong, I have had my off days recently, I have felt hungry and there have been days when that gym was more like a torture chamber than a pleasurable, fun experience.

I not only started to feel better physically but I realised I had started to laugh again. I started to feel stronger in myself and my confidence was growing by the day. I had been bored in my dull routine job for a while and decided to have a look for another job.

I applied for a few jobs and got a phone call that week asking me to come in for an interview. I was over the moon but, what was I going to wear….. that same old dread came over me again. The thought of going clothes shopping filled me with horror all that trying on clothes that didn’t fit or if they did fit I looked like a sack of potatoes………….

[ Stay tuned for the next installment ]

How do you motivate yourself? I was battling with the aches and pains from exercising plus the demons in my head from the menopause, the exercise just didn’t seem to be working I still felt sluggish, fat, and very low mentally.

The Naturopath had given me some medication to take to help with the hot flushes and insomnia I was also taking St John’s Wort for my low mood all of which apparently takes around 4 weeks to ‘kick in’. The Naturopath also told me because my hormones were out of balance getting my metabolism working and loosing the weight would take a long time to get started. I was following the strict diet of no carbohydrates and lots of protein, I cut out all potatoes, rice, bread, cheese even the wine although I must admit I have refused to not have any wine at all so just restrict it to weekends and a couple of glasses of red.

So how do you motivate yourself? My partner was very good he kept telling me I looked better, slimmer and he could see a difference in my clothes but I wanted results on the scales!!!!

I think I was just expecting too much too soon. I was not in my twenties when the weight used to fall of me and apparently it’s a lot easier for men to loose weight than women so I just had to be patient.

It was hard in that first month to keep going to the gym I did cut back from 4 nights a week to 3 and twice a week I started taking my dogs for a very long fast walk along the beach. The dogs were very pleased to see me walking along side them again not just taking them to the park and throwing the ball!!! I think this really helped to put me in a different frame of mind I sometimes feel like a hamster in a wheel walking on the treadmill. I was obviously fitter because I was now able to keep up with the dogs and was walking a long distance at a fast pace and on sand. I was even starting to make my very fit Border Collie tired by the end of the walk.

It was about 4 weeks since I joined the gym I got up one morning, I felt different and got on the scales (something I hadn’t done for about 2 years before joining the gym), I had lost 2 kilos. WOW you couldn’t wipe the smile of my face that morning!!! But now I had to keep going, there was still around another 20 kilos at least to shift………..

[ Stay tuned for the next installment ]

The next evening we both went back to the gym and we had another good look around. Again, not everyone there was slim, beautiful and young. So my theory was well and truly out the window. My partner agreed that it didn’t look so bad and we sat down with the same lady I had seen the previous evening who went through some pricing options. That was it! We both signed on the dotted line……. For the first time in my life I WAS A MEMBER OF A GYM!!!!

We went back 2 days later and had a very painless assessment where we were each given a programme to follow that suited our current fitness level (my fitness was so low the arrows went off the chart!). The trainer also spoke to us about nutrition and explained that we both needed more protein and less carbohydrate in our diet.

We both went pretty hard at the exercising for the first 2 nights. We spent an hour both evenings on the treadmill and the bikes. I felt very envious that people were not just walking on the treadmill but running and running for a long time. I was struggling to walk at a fairly slow pace for 15 minutes. I tried to follow the programme I had been given but must admit found it very hard. The pains in my legs and arms were indescribable my body was obviously in shock at not having any exercise for so long.

It was hard to keep motivated for the next two weeks and keep going to that gym, plus I did not see any change in my weight on the scales. It was also at this stage that I had decided to see a naturopath regarding the symptoms I was getting with the menopause such as hot flushes, insomnia and it seemed I had undergone a complete change of personality I had become very angry, moody and depressed and I finally had to admit I had been behaving like a woman possessed for the previous 6 months.

I can honestly say I really did wonder at this stage, had we done the right thing spending all this money on a gym membership that seemed to be giving me so much pain, taking up a lot of my spare time and I was not seeing any results…………..

[ Stay tuned for the next installment ]

As I walked through those doors I took a good look around. It was a massive room and … I was pleasantly surprised!! The first thing I noticed was not everyone was very slim, beautiful or young. The majority of the people there looked just like me!!! There were lots of privacy partitions, nobody stared at me, everyone was busy just doing their own thing.

The lady showed me around the gym pointing out pieces of equipment, which are apparently the most high tech in Western Australia. A couple of people came up to me, introduced themselves and shook my hand. The lady giving the tour told me they were personal trainers and everyone was there to help. So far so good, everyone was very friendly.

I was shown into a ladies only room that went straight from the changing rooms without even going into the main gym. Some of the equipment in this room had little personalised TV’s attached to them so I couldn’t even use the excuse of missing my favourite programmes on TV anymore!!!!!!

There was no high pressure selling from the staff and all I walked out of the gym with that evening; was some leaflets on times and prices and definitely a change in attitude – I felt motivated and positive.

I went home and showed my partner the leaflets and prices. My partner is also very overweight and has type 2 diabetes. He won’t take medication and for some reason won’t go to the doctors and definitely will not discuss the condition with anyone.

I knew this was it…. we both needed a complete lifestyle change. Not only did I want to improve the quality of our life but this change might actually save our lives. My partner is similar to me in that he lackes confidence and self esteem and he wasn’t sure Gym membership was what we needed. I gave him a good talking to that evening. I explained to him we would be able to motivate each other and after promising he could watch football for the next two weekends he agreed to go to the gym and ‘just have a look’ …………..

[ Stay tuned for the next installment ]