Confession time

I don't really want to add weight loss stuff to my other blog, so I decided that it might finally be time to start a dedicated weight loss blog, if for no other reason than that it gives me somewhere to display my awards lol. Little bit of backstory, when I was pregnant with Leia my hospital consultant decided that she wanted me to follow Slimming World while pregnant. She offered me vouchers for a free 12 week countdown. At first I was really upset and to be honest quite offended. I have struggled my entire life with my weight and could never work out how I could weigh so much when I ate so little. I pretty much lived on fruit, veg and whatever Mark cooked for dinner. Because my feelings were hurt I was stupid and said no. After spending a lot of time researching the plan online, contacting slimming world and talking with Mark I decided to go for it. Figuring if nothing else it would show that I was at least trying what they had suggested. At first I struggled, a lot. It was difficult forcing myself to try and eat 3 meals a day let alone the parts that made up the diet. But I did have success with it losing consistently despite the fact that I was supposed to only be maintaining my current weight lol. It got slightly ironic when at a hospital appointment a few weeks after starting, I got told off by the same consultant for losing "too much weight". I won't bore you with all the details except to say that at the end of my pregnancy, just over one week after giving birth to Leia I picked up my 1.5 stone award. But from then on I struggled. I could stick to plan 100% and gain, I could go off the rails completely and have a Chinese takeaway and lose weight. I got frustrated when it kind of became a running joke that for every 1/2 pound off one week 1 pound would go back on the next week. For a while I just concentrated on getting my exercise (Body Magic) awards and collected Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum. The only issue that kept coming up again and again was whether I was actually eating enough food in the first place. See with Slimming World lots of foods are "free". The portion control comes from the 1/3 of your plate being "Superfree" (fruit and vegetables except peas, sweetcorn, potato and parsnip basically) and from measured "Healthy Extra A and B choices" (A's are dairy like milk, cheese and B's are for fibre like Cereals, Cereal Bars, Bread, Crispbreads, Dried, Cooked and Tinned Fruit. There are also some tinned soups and oil that can be used as B choices). Then you can have "Syns" (between 5-15 a day) to use on top of that. I could quite easily eat just Superfree foods at each meal. I often forgot the healthy extras entirely and the syns varied between not bothering and using way more than I should of. The plan wasn't at fault, I was, but I just couldn't see a way to fix it. I couldn't force myself to eat when I wasn't hungry, I couldn't increase the exercise anymore because of the pain and my own limitations. So in January I was desperate for a fresh start, so I did something I never thought I would do, I walked into a Weight Watchers meeting, and in doing so I created a whole new set of problems for myself. I paid my money and sat uncomfortably through the meeting, I had Logan and Leia with me and I was terrified that they would make a fuss and people would stare at me. I enjoyed the meeting, but I would be lying if I said I liked the leader. There was nothing wrong with her, I just didn't feel very comfortable with her. I wasn't willing to give up the friends and support I got each and every week at slimming world for a plan I wasn't really familiar with and a leader I didn't feel I could talk to. So I decided to just cheat and pay for both. I was of the opinion that it was my money I was wasting. I thought having to eat a set number of points a day would force me to eat enough and make the slimming world plan work the way it was supposed to. At first I carried on following Slimming World alongside Weight Watchers, just weighing and propointing portions and adding in an extra snack of "free" food, usually a boiled egg or two or some boiled potatoes to make up the points for the day. The first week I lost weight and thought that I had finally found a weight loss solution that would work and that I could commit to sticking to. I decided to try another meeting, with a different leader and really liked it. I really liked the structure of the meeting, especially not having it announced whether I had lost or gained. But I kind of gained what I had lost the previous week and then I gained the following 2 weeks too. I started down a very slippery slope of it becoming less and less Slimming World and more and more easy to just use my points on junk. Seeing it written down makes it look like I was looking for a way to shortcut my weight loss, but honestly that wasn't true. I was searching for consistency, I wanted to be able to do X and lose weight. It drove me insane when I was really good and put weight one and I wondered why I bothered making so much effort in the first place. It frustrated me even more when I went off track by having a takeaway/chocolate or whatever and was rewarded for my bad behaviour with a loss. No-one at either group could understand why it irritated me so much when I was "getting away with being bad". I could give you a whole list of reasons why I struggled so much including hormones, the baby, nan being hospitalised multiple times, stress etc but they would all just be excuses. The reason I struggled was because I hadn't made the decision to lose weight in the first place. It's hard to continue to find the willpower and motivation you need to succeed when you can't draw on the reason you walked through the door in the first place. The only positive thing is through all the ups and downs I made sure I went to group and got weighed each and every week except for a few occasions when the kids were too ill for me to go. It took me until March to get my first "Silver 7" (half stone award)at Weight Watchers. I knew this plan worked for people in the same way I had none slimming world worked for other people. I just couldn't seem to make it work. I tried changing things but I was still following the same on off on off pattern. I decided that I had enough and I needed a break. I worked really hard to get my "Club 10" (10% body weight lost) at Slimming World and then decided that I would call target at a lose of 2 stone. I picked up my 5% award (5% body weight lost) at Weight Watchers closely followed by 2nd "Silver 7" my 2 stone award and Target badge from Slimming World all in the same week of my 1 year anniversary of starting Slimming World. 1 year, 2 stone lost and down from a size 22 to an 18. I should have been feeling really proud of myself but I wasn't. I felt a bit like a failure and a coward for calling target at only 2 stone when I am still classed as obese. To know that I could lose another 6 stone and still be classed as overweight. I hated that I didn't feel like I had the energy to continue making the effort to lose weight. I couldn't see what was so great about losing the 2 stone. I was still in pain all the time, people still looked at me and saw a fat person, I hated the person I saw in the mirror and if anything, while dieting I had picked up the bad habits most people started dieting to lose. Ironic isn't it that I went from practically never eating all the "bad" stuff to almost constantly craving crisps, chocolate etc. I add sweetener to my cereal now although my whole life I have eaten it plain. Then it all went down the toilet. I can't fully explain what went wrong because honestly I don't know. I ate junk, I didn't weigh, measure or track anything and I just couldn't seem to help myself. I gained and I didn't care, well that's not entirely true I cared, I just didn't care enough to find the willpower to stop. I cried on Mark's shoulder because I hated myself for sabotaging all my hard work. I know some of it was being stuck in the house for 2 weeks with sick kids and then half term but mostly it's that the depression is worse, I am more miserable now than I have ever been because I adding my weight into the mix through everything off balance. I have always been bothered by my weight on a level of being fat sucks but not being bothered enough to do anything about it as long as my clothes fitted. But when you start losing weight you become more aware of the size of your body. When folding clean washing you notice that your knickers could quite possibly double as a child's parachute. The maternity jeans that you have practically lived in for the last few years are wearing away on the inside of the legs because of your huge thighs rubbing together. You can sit on a seat on the bus without the bar cutting into your side, instead of being proud of how far I had come I started to despise the person I was, dwelled constantly on what people must have thought of me before. The words fat, lazy, ugly, failure, hideous and many other became my constant companion in my head. Instead of joining in with the kids like I used to, I withdrew into myself. I am not ashamed to admit that I know I have it all backwards, that losing weight should bring confidence and self assurance not lose it but I am just strange I guess. I don't know where to start with fixing the problem. I am not stupid enough to believe that losing weight will solve these problems. If I can't like who I am now at a size 18, and I didn't like the person who I used to be at my smallest (a size 16 before I had Lukas) I can pretty much guarantee I will still hate the person I will be if I was a 16 again or even smaller. So why I am I sharing this with you? more precisely why am I sharing this with you now when I am failing at weight loss rather than succeeding. Maybe it's because I am tired of reading the hundreds of I lost xxx number of stones with WW/SW and my life is so much better stories online, in the magazines etc. They succeeded and that's great for them, but right now reading that just makes me hate myself even more. Maybe it's because I know other people feel the same way I do. I know they feel as alone and as isolated as I do. I know that it's damn hard to admit that you are finding something hard when so many other people can do it without even trying. Maybe it's just simply that misery loves company about as much as it craves love and support. I know that having a blog and being totally honest on it has helped me in the past. I am hoping that it can do the same again. I woke up this morning and something had changed, I am ready to draw a line through the last few weeks and start trying to make the effort again, maybe Nan being in hospital yet again has forced me to find the desire to be in control of something. I got up this morning and I weighed and propointed my breakfast. I tracked it and posted it on the Weight Watchers local Facebook page. I made myself accountable for what I ate. I did the same at lunchtime and I know exactly how many points I have left for the rest of the day. Hopefully I can stay on track for the rest of the day. I am going to keep myself busy this afternoon adding the awards I have gotten so far to the sidebar. I don't really know what I want this blog to become right now, so it's quite possible I will fiddle about with different things until I do. I do know that it's highly unlikely that it will become the recipe sharing, photo posting that a lot of weight loss blogs become, mostly because that's just too much effort lol.