Here's a little potted history of me and my fluctuating weight, which will probably be interesting to nobody ever. Let's face it, even I get bored with it.
So, at the age of 16 I thought I was fat... ha! I wasn't, as photographic evidence proves. However, at 17 when I was in year 12 I developed glandular fever, which sent me into a 3 year decline, probably on the verge of clinical depression, definitely teetering on the edge of chronic fatigue syndrome. My uni years were not the wild times everyone else seems to have had, but days of trying to drag myself out of bed in time for 10am lectures, often failing and spending the entire day on the couch watching soaps and eating... well, anything I could get my hands on, really.
During my final year at uni, my mother went on a weight-loss kick and dragged me with her. I was horrified to discover my weight had ballooned to 74kg, which was pretty chunky on my average-framed, 160cm body. How did that happen? I wondered.
Pretty obvious really, isn't it?
Somehow I got it into my head that my ideal weight - and an attainable goal - was 48kg. I'm not sure how or why this happened. I just know that I've had that number stuck in my head ever since.
Anyway, the diet and exercise kick worked pretty well, and moving past uni graduation and into my first full-time job, things started looking up for me. I made new friends, joined a volleyball team, got a boyfriend and the weight melted off. (Mind you at this stage I was only 63kg, and dropped to 57kg with the help of my first ever gym membership).
Then my boyfriend dumped me and I was heartbroken. Couldn't eat for weeks. When I next weighed myself, I was 52kg. The size 8 jeans I'd bought when I was 74kg, telling myself I'd fit into them someday ... Well, I almost fit into them. (I have hips, though, and they're never gonna not be there, which pretty much guarantees I'm not intended to be a size 8.)
Hello, I thought. This is pretty cool.
And I thought about just ... not eating. Until I got down to 48kg. Because then my life would be perfect. Right?
What happened instead was I met a new man and we very quickly decided we were meant to be together. We got engaged, moved in together, and after a year he got a job in England so off we went.
I promptly developed SAD - seasonal affective disorder. And although I could work whenever I wanted, the work was generally pretty boring and abysmally badly paid, and in winter I'd go to work in the dark and come home in the dark and it was always cold and I missed my friends back home and ugh. I started comfort-eating.
By the time we came home to get married, I was back up around 72kg. Two years later I still hadn't lost it so one day I went 'fuck it' and joined Jenny Craig. In conjunction with determinedly getting up at 6am every single morning and walking for an hour, then as my fitness increased joining a gym, the pounds melted away gratifyingly quickly. Within a year I was back down to 55kg.
I was following a healthy eating plan, not restricting and rarely cheating, so this time when I lost the weight, there was no flirting with my previous anorexic tendencies. I did, however, turn into a gym freak. Unfortunately I also took up smoking. Don't fucking ask me why.
Then I made some new friends and let's just say they liked to party. A lot. And I found out, so did hubby and I.
No details. Let's just say eating was no longer a priority. I was still going to the gym regularly, and I was partying all weekend. Guess what happened?
One day I stepped on the scale and discovered that I weighed 48kg.
FORTY-EIGHT KILOS.
I'd done it. I'd reached my magic number, my all-time, ultimate goal!
Then my parents came back from living overseas and my mum took one look at me and burst into tears.
I found out later she went to see doctors and counsellors because she was afraid I was a) sick, b) anorexic, c) drug-addicted or d) all of the above. When she took a photo of me and shoved it in front of my face, I could actually see her point.
48kg is not my ideal weight. It's far too light for my frame, and at that weight I looked gaunt and ugly and sick. So yeah, actually, that was good for me. Because I let go of that long-held belief in the Magic 48kg.
I let my weight creep up to 53kg. Still going to the gym, just making sure I was eating properly. Stopped going out as much. I was happy. Things were good.
Then something happened. Too personal to share, really, but it was tough. The weight starting coming back, and for the next I don't know how many years I struggled and yo-yo'd and raged against the machine, but my body had decided that it was not happy to drop below 57kg ever again thank you very much, and even that was not easy to maintain. I had to be constantly vigilant. The minute I saw a number above 60 on those scales, it was crash diet time.
Then I had a really bad year in which two really terrible things happened and it was pretty traumatic all round. The weight crept on... and on... and then I got pregnant. (Which was awesome and the best thing that could have happened.) I weighed somewhere in the mid-70s when my daughter was born. She was tiny, 2.5kg. My sister said later that for the whole time I breastfed her, it was as if all the excess weight melted off me and onto the baby. By the time my daughter was six months old, she was a little chubber-chunks and I was back down to 57kg.
Woot!
I stayed around that weight until my second pregnancy, and then I relaxed and ate whatever the hell I wanted. I wasn't worried; I figured I'd drop the weight afterwards as quickly as I had the first time. I hit 73kg when Daughter #2 arrived, also tiny, also a milk-guzzler.
But the weight wasn't budging. Wtf?
I mean, this time around I had a toddler underfoot as well as a baby who was five times as demanding as her big sister had been and slept like shite, and I was knackered the whole time, so instead of putting them both in the double pram at nap time and slogging it through the suburbs as I had with #1, I'd strap them into the car and drive around instead. And when she did sleep, I'd decide I deserved a treat, so out came the chocolates.
Gee, I wonder why the weight wasn't coming off this time.
Anyway, I got fed up with that bullshit and stopped screwing around. I went on a high-protein, low-carb eating plan, used MyFitnessPal to watch what I ate and forced myself to get off the couch. And it took longer - my second daughter was 18 months before I lost all the baby weight - but I got there. 57kg. My new magic number. And I felt great.
Then I got lazy, started eating bread and milk chocolate again (my weaknesses) and slowly crept back up. And up. And up. Every few months I'd throw a fit because my clothes were getting too tight again and get back on the diet, but I never lost more than a few kilos before I lapsed again and gained the weight back with interest. Fast forward a couple of years and here I am, the heaviest I have ever been at 92.5kg.
So, what have I learned?
1. I am not, and never will be, naturally slim.
2. Losing weight is a struggle, more so as I get older.
3. I cannot eat carbs. Much as I love pasta and bread, they just have to be off the menu for me. The good thing is, when I'm eating lots of protein my body doesn't want carbs, or enjoy it when I do eat them. It also doesn't crave sugar.
4. Staying at my ideal weight requires constant vigilance for me. If I want to keep the weight off, I have no choice but to eat healthily and get at least some exercise.
5. I have a tendency to be a bit all-or-nothing. I don't think there's any danger of a dramatic swing from obese to anorexic/gym junkie this time. But the potential is there, so I'll just be aware of not getting too obsessive about this, especially when the weight isn't coming off as quickly as I want it to. Slow and steady, right?
6. I never, ever, ever want to be this big again.
Here I am, then, taking the first step on the hard road back to a healthy weight. I've decided my ultimate goal is 58.5kg, because it's smack bang in the middle of the Magic 57kg, and 60kg, which is the weight at which my size 10 pants start getting tight (or so I vaguely recall; it's been some time since I could fit more than my arm into them).
It is achievable. It is maintainable. I know it is. I just have to not get lazy, once I'm there.
And I will get there.
Anyway, it's the weekend, and that's my first real test: access to all the food in the cupboard all day long and nobody to judge me. Except myself. I think I'll go hit the dreadmill.
While you wait, enjoy this pictorial of my weight over the past 4 years, painstakingly copied into Excel from MyFitnessPal. Seeing it all laid out like that is... confronting. And I'd love to know wtf I was thinking in October 2016, March 2017 and November 2017 that I gained 10kg from the previous weigh-in. I went from 73kg to 82kg in a MONTH! How even?
Ugh. Booty shaking time.
So, at the age of 16 I thought I was fat... ha! I wasn't, as photographic evidence proves. However, at 17 when I was in year 12 I developed glandular fever, which sent me into a 3 year decline, probably on the verge of clinical depression, definitely teetering on the edge of chronic fatigue syndrome. My uni years were not the wild times everyone else seems to have had, but days of trying to drag myself out of bed in time for 10am lectures, often failing and spending the entire day on the couch watching soaps and eating... well, anything I could get my hands on, really.
During my final year at uni, my mother went on a weight-loss kick and dragged me with her. I was horrified to discover my weight had ballooned to 74kg, which was pretty chunky on my average-framed, 160cm body. How did that happen? I wondered.
Pretty obvious really, isn't it?
Somehow I got it into my head that my ideal weight - and an attainable goal - was 48kg. I'm not sure how or why this happened. I just know that I've had that number stuck in my head ever since.
Anyway, the diet and exercise kick worked pretty well, and moving past uni graduation and into my first full-time job, things started looking up for me. I made new friends, joined a volleyball team, got a boyfriend and the weight melted off. (Mind you at this stage I was only 63kg, and dropped to 57kg with the help of my first ever gym membership).
Then my boyfriend dumped me and I was heartbroken. Couldn't eat for weeks. When I next weighed myself, I was 52kg. The size 8 jeans I'd bought when I was 74kg, telling myself I'd fit into them someday ... Well, I almost fit into them. (I have hips, though, and they're never gonna not be there, which pretty much guarantees I'm not intended to be a size 8.)
Hello, I thought. This is pretty cool.
And I thought about just ... not eating. Until I got down to 48kg. Because then my life would be perfect. Right?
What happened instead was I met a new man and we very quickly decided we were meant to be together. We got engaged, moved in together, and after a year he got a job in England so off we went.
I promptly developed SAD - seasonal affective disorder. And although I could work whenever I wanted, the work was generally pretty boring and abysmally badly paid, and in winter I'd go to work in the dark and come home in the dark and it was always cold and I missed my friends back home and ugh. I started comfort-eating.
By the time we came home to get married, I was back up around 72kg. Two years later I still hadn't lost it so one day I went 'fuck it' and joined Jenny Craig. In conjunction with determinedly getting up at 6am every single morning and walking for an hour, then as my fitness increased joining a gym, the pounds melted away gratifyingly quickly. Within a year I was back down to 55kg.
I was following a healthy eating plan, not restricting and rarely cheating, so this time when I lost the weight, there was no flirting with my previous anorexic tendencies. I did, however, turn into a gym freak. Unfortunately I also took up smoking. Don't fucking ask me why.
Then I made some new friends and let's just say they liked to party. A lot. And I found out, so did hubby and I.
No details. Let's just say eating was no longer a priority. I was still going to the gym regularly, and I was partying all weekend. Guess what happened?
One day I stepped on the scale and discovered that I weighed 48kg.
FORTY-EIGHT KILOS.
I'd done it. I'd reached my magic number, my all-time, ultimate goal!
Then my parents came back from living overseas and my mum took one look at me and burst into tears.
I found out later she went to see doctors and counsellors because she was afraid I was a) sick, b) anorexic, c) drug-addicted or d) all of the above. When she took a photo of me and shoved it in front of my face, I could actually see her point.
48kg is not my ideal weight. It's far too light for my frame, and at that weight I looked gaunt and ugly and sick. So yeah, actually, that was good for me. Because I let go of that long-held belief in the Magic 48kg.
I let my weight creep up to 53kg. Still going to the gym, just making sure I was eating properly. Stopped going out as much. I was happy. Things were good.
Then something happened. Too personal to share, really, but it was tough. The weight starting coming back, and for the next I don't know how many years I struggled and yo-yo'd and raged against the machine, but my body had decided that it was not happy to drop below 57kg ever again thank you very much, and even that was not easy to maintain. I had to be constantly vigilant. The minute I saw a number above 60 on those scales, it was crash diet time.
Then I had a really bad year in which two really terrible things happened and it was pretty traumatic all round. The weight crept on... and on... and then I got pregnant. (Which was awesome and the best thing that could have happened.) I weighed somewhere in the mid-70s when my daughter was born. She was tiny, 2.5kg. My sister said later that for the whole time I breastfed her, it was as if all the excess weight melted off me and onto the baby. By the time my daughter was six months old, she was a little chubber-chunks and I was back down to 57kg.
Woot!
I stayed around that weight until my second pregnancy, and then I relaxed and ate whatever the hell I wanted. I wasn't worried; I figured I'd drop the weight afterwards as quickly as I had the first time. I hit 73kg when Daughter #2 arrived, also tiny, also a milk-guzzler.
But the weight wasn't budging. Wtf?
I mean, this time around I had a toddler underfoot as well as a baby who was five times as demanding as her big sister had been and slept like shite, and I was knackered the whole time, so instead of putting them both in the double pram at nap time and slogging it through the suburbs as I had with #1, I'd strap them into the car and drive around instead. And when she did sleep, I'd decide I deserved a treat, so out came the chocolates.
Gee, I wonder why the weight wasn't coming off this time.
Anyway, I got fed up with that bullshit and stopped screwing around. I went on a high-protein, low-carb eating plan, used MyFitnessPal to watch what I ate and forced myself to get off the couch. And it took longer - my second daughter was 18 months before I lost all the baby weight - but I got there. 57kg. My new magic number. And I felt great.
Then I got lazy, started eating bread and milk chocolate again (my weaknesses) and slowly crept back up. And up. And up. Every few months I'd throw a fit because my clothes were getting too tight again and get back on the diet, but I never lost more than a few kilos before I lapsed again and gained the weight back with interest. Fast forward a couple of years and here I am, the heaviest I have ever been at 92.5kg.
So, what have I learned?
1. I am not, and never will be, naturally slim.
2. Losing weight is a struggle, more so as I get older.
3. I cannot eat carbs. Much as I love pasta and bread, they just have to be off the menu for me. The good thing is, when I'm eating lots of protein my body doesn't want carbs, or enjoy it when I do eat them. It also doesn't crave sugar.
4. Staying at my ideal weight requires constant vigilance for me. If I want to keep the weight off, I have no choice but to eat healthily and get at least some exercise.
5. I have a tendency to be a bit all-or-nothing. I don't think there's any danger of a dramatic swing from obese to anorexic/gym junkie this time. But the potential is there, so I'll just be aware of not getting too obsessive about this, especially when the weight isn't coming off as quickly as I want it to. Slow and steady, right?
6. I never, ever, ever want to be this big again.
Here I am, then, taking the first step on the hard road back to a healthy weight. I've decided my ultimate goal is 58.5kg, because it's smack bang in the middle of the Magic 57kg, and 60kg, which is the weight at which my size 10 pants start getting tight (or so I vaguely recall; it's been some time since I could fit more than my arm into them).
It is achievable. It is maintainable. I know it is. I just have to not get lazy, once I'm there.
And I will get there.
Anyway, it's the weekend, and that's my first real test: access to all the food in the cupboard all day long and nobody to judge me. Except myself. I think I'll go hit the dreadmill.
While you wait, enjoy this pictorial of my weight over the past 4 years, painstakingly copied into Excel from MyFitnessPal. Seeing it all laid out like that is... confronting. And I'd love to know wtf I was thinking in October 2016, March 2017 and November 2017 that I gained 10kg from the previous weigh-in. I went from 73kg to 82kg in a MONTH! How even?
Ugh. Booty shaking time.
