My Journey

An Accidental life story

Not really sure how to start this off so thought I'd just say, Hi! :)

I'm a 19 year old girl and have been overweight for years now, my whole
life really. As most people do at some point, I've become utterly fed up with it. I thought I'd start by explaining my reasons for wanting to lose weight and my reasons for sharing my journey with you!

As I mentioned, I've been desperately trying to lose weight for years, not necessarily quickly or with any specific purpose (other than the usual "I must fit my prom dress" and "I want to look good at that party!" Of course) but mostly so that I could feel better about myself. I suppose the real problems started when I got to about 16. As I mentioned, I'd been overweight my whole life and I had probably been steadily (but slowly) gaining weight throughout high school. I never paid particular attention in terms of the scale or dropping pounds but mostly measured myself against others and against how well (or how poorly) some of my clothes fit. In my early teens I was really active; at school I played Hockey, Lacrosse, netball, and karate outside of school I was part of a rowing club and we trained four times a week, on my days off from rowing I used to jog with my mum and along the way I also did a fair few sporty charity things that helped me keep in shape.

Anyways let's get to the point one by one I seemed to drop each sport for one reason or other and eventually was left with just rowing (and of course the cardio I did to keep fit for it) I was still a little overweight while rowing because I just never really cared enough to cut down on things yknow? I mean, I suppose I did care enough, and I knew I was overweight but I always had "rowing" as my excuse for eating a bigger portion etc. Eventually I stopped rowing too. I won't go into the reasons for all this but the last year or so at school was pretty awful for me and I became more and more introverted and less and less happy with everything. Having quit rowing and barely keeping up with my cardio I began to put weight on a lot more quickly. I've always been healthy though so I never bothered too much about it, I simply followed my mother in calorie counting and started to be a little more careful about what I ate. (Unfortunately the school thing came coupled with a best friend issue and I don't think I did particularly well on the "dieting" thing) However, by the time my classes were done and we left for studying before the exams I was in the right mindset, school and it's environment was toxic for me and I now realise was really hindering any weightloss for me. As soon as I left school for good my calorie counting and dieting began to work a lot better, I was far less inclined to "cheat" after a bad day and the result was that I lost about half a stone (3 ish kg) in two months and felt loads better even though it was a small victory. On my 18th birthday I weighed 11st 10lb (164lb) I am 5ft 7 tall and so I was still pretty overweight of course but I felt great, especially when I dressed up in a pair of trousers I'd never fit in before, wore a spaghetti strap top and hit some bars for a birthday drink with my best friend. (Not that I was looking at all but we actually drew the attention of some lovely lads who ensured that the whole night we only actually bought a drink each, after that we were bought drinks all night, very cheap night indeed)

The summer that I left school was something of an eye-opening one for me. I started to follow a lot of Instagram blogs and so on that documented healthy habits and healthy eating as opposed to dieting and from there I came to know a lot more about the things I was doing to my body. Unfortunately the summer was a pretty hectic one and I ended up gaining a fair few pounds back. We went on a family holiday to the US and I think I put on something ridiculous like half a stone in just those two weeks! But I returned knowing a lot more about how my body works and how to acts illy lose the weight in the right ways.

This year, my first year of university, has been a rollercoaster ride to say the least. In my first semester, away form the gorgeous delights of my father's home cooking I lost almost a stone, went home in October and found that I now weighed 11st 7 (160lbs) I was so pleased! (Remember I'd actually gained a fair bit since my summer weight of 11st 10 so I'd lost a lot more than just 3lbs!) Although I wasn't actively trying to or thinking about it hard (I certainly wasn't counting calories) I was eating "healthy" foods or more specifically whole foods, porridge with honey and fruit, home cooked dinners, soup (I don't have an oven where I live so most of my meals were hob based!) and for the first time I think ever I was eating proper portion sizes so even things like pasta for dinner were allowing to keep losing weight.