I'm spamming today!
A few months ago I made a list of reasons that I want to lose the weight. This is just a reflection of how I feel 2 stones into my 6 stone journey:
Changes I’ve noticed so far:
I’m not completely knackered and breathing too hard to talk after just climbing one flight of stairs. I used to be so embarrassed if I had to go to a class upstairs and arrive out of breath (especially if it was the sexy lecturers class), so I used to get to uni 20 minutes early so that I could stand in the corridor upstairs and catch my breath.
I can walk farther and longer and not feel exhausted. I can walk faster too, that’s one of the first things that my little (well, I say little...) brother noticed, he’s about a foot taller than me, and most of that is leg; I used to struggle to keep up with him if we walked to town, and I’d not be able to talk as we were walking; but within a couple of weeks of going to the gym and losing weight I was able to walk at his speed and talk to him at the same time. In fact I now notice that I’m able to walk a lot faster than my mum, who has just gained some weight and is struggling with the same things that I used to.
I don’t get sweaty just walking to the shops. Damp forehead after a 3 minute walk to the shops? No thank you, not anymore! I don’t mind getting sweaty if I’ve done a 30 minute power-walk around the lake, that means I’m burning calories, but jus constant sweating from not really doing anything? Bah so-long pal!
I fit in the seats in the lecture halls at uni!!! It was always so embarrassing if someone sat next to me and they had to squeeze in next to my thighs! Now I can sit between two people and not have to hold myself tightly in and worry the whole way through the lecture that they’re getting squashed because of me. I haven’t tested this on the bus yet, but I imagine that it’d be the same sort of feeling.
Now when people look at me in the street I don’t feel like they’re looking at me in disgust, I sometimes even like to imagine that they might be checking me out a little bit, but that could be mostly wishful thinking.
I can shop in normal shops!!! I can go into Primark and buy things and be reasonably sure that they’re going to fit (even though we all know that Primark sizes are a tad dodgy at the best of times). Shopping has become this new exciting thing, full of possibilities (and paving the road to debt I’m sure, but hey, that’s why I’m sticking to Primark).
I don’t feel like I need pink hair and facial piercings. I’ve got brown hair! Brown! And I actually feel pretty good about it. It used to be before that my pink hair defined me; it was like my safety blanket, it made people notice me, but (I felt at least) that it stopped people really seeing me. I’ve also taken a few of my extraneous piercings out; my lip nose and septum are actually a part of my face now, but the ear stretch and eyebrow piercing just used to help me feel like I was cool, that I fitted in, that I was hardcore, and therefore it didn’t matter that I was fat, and actually the only reason that I haven’t taken my scaffold, nipples or collarbone piercings out is because they cost me too much money to waste! You can actually see that I changed my hair colour accoding to when I lost each stone, from pink to pink and black/brown, and then to pink and light brown, and then to all over brown.
I’m feeling all of these changes after losing only 2 stones, I’ve got another 4 to go, how on earth will I feel then??? I know I’m going to waver, and there will be weeks or months where I mess this up, put weight back on. But what I really don’t want to do is to lose it all and then after six months pile it back on again. I keep on saying, ‘it’s a change for life, do it in a way that’s sustainable’ but is it really? Someone on here mentioned that once you’re fat, your body keeps on believing that you’re fat. You can lose all of the weight, but to your body you’re supposed to be a fatty, so it’ll always be easier for us to put it back on, she said ‘I’m a fat person in a thin person’s body.’ That’s true, we can lose the weight now, but we’re always going to have to eat and exercise like we’re still fat to keep it off. This is a lifelong war, we can win the battle, hell, we can win it again and again, year after year, but what is it we have to do win the war completely? I wish I had some fantastic excuse for why I was/am fat, I wish I could blame it on my mum setting a bad example, or have some medical condition that means I put on weight no matter what I do, but at the end of the day, I’m my own person, and after a certain point there are no excuses. You have to just realise that you’ve done this to yourself because you ate too much and couldn’t be arsed to get up off of the sofa, or out of bed.
I think it was on Miami Ink that a woman said: ‘Being overweight means that there are a thousand little humiliations every day, from being the hottest, sweatiest person in the room, to not fitting in a chair that has arms on,’ (or something along those lines). She was totally right! Losing weight is like wiping these humiliations from the chalk board, you can see the dust on the board where they used to be, but you can also feel the dust on your hands and use it to help you take a grip on your future.
