Right then – the idea for today’s blog post has been shamelessly stolen from the lovely Katie at FatGirlPhD…she knows I am stealing it though…and is quite happy about it too! 
When I started writing this blog, I felt like I was the only one out there in a crazy sea of madness. I felt so uncomfortable with the promotion of faddy diets and the self-hate and loathing that drives people towards them. I hated reading magazines as the airbrushing and adverts drove me crazy. I even gave up on the ‘health’ genre as they began to get a bit too in love with themselves, driving this self-hate and loathing amongst a frankly, fecking wonderful group of people…us ladies – and gents…let’s not forget the gorgeous gents! I wanted to learn to love myself – for me – whilst learning to live a healthier life for my body. When I began reading the delightful offerings from Katie, I felt like I had found a kindred spirit.
I am incredibly thankful for the fact that I am still breathing. My eating habits developed over a lifetime – all thirty two years of it! – with the past decade seeing a particular excess and lack of care for myself. Whilst I whirled through my late teens and early twenties in a haze of great jobs and even better dance music and clubbing – I loved a good podium stint…even at 25st! 
– my health was okay. I had regular checks and surprised all involved in these with great blood pressure, perfect cholesterol, and a clean sheet when it came to my blood work.
However, in my late twenties all of this smugness disappeared – I developed complex atypical endometrial hyperplasia with cancerous cells and got stuck on medication which is used to increase appetites in aids and cancer patients. This didn’t stop me in my tracks though and, despite all of the health warnings, I carried on eating junk food to excess. I was later diagnosed with Binge Eating Disorder…but did little at the time to deal with this, as so little help was available. And then back in July 2012 I was diagnosed with a serious case of type 2 diabetes.
Shit was getting serious!
You kind of know the rest – I started taking life seriously and have gone from 43st 5.5lbs to 25st 0.5lbs via a healthy diet and, more recently, exercise. 18st 5lbs off with a long way yet to go, but life is good…hell, life is fecking great! I adore ‘me’ – as I harped on about last night…but I also adore the thought of being healthy and so will keep working towards this.
I often send thanks to my good old body for sticking with me through these tough times. I have thrown a lot at it and I am incredibly thankful to still be amongst the living…so I thought that I would send it a little note…a la Katie style(ish!)
‘To my wonderful body,
I didn’t give you the best of starts really, did I? Do you remember the packets of Space Raiders from the tuck shop, and that box of Roses we ate that I was supposed to give to a friend for her birthday..the delightful days of primary school…hockey with plastic sticks and rounders with that boy you had a crush on?
From an early age I compared you unfairly with everyone else. You were robust and strong…but I called you fat and ugly and was embarrassed to own you. Whilst all of your counterparts were flouncing around in puffball skirts, I hid you away in ski pants…the joys of the 80′s will never be forgotten!
I doubt that you will ever forget what I have done to you either. The takeaways, the crisps, the sweets…the lack of exercise…the crazy fad diets…the prescription slimming pills that I managed to get my hands on from a ‘friend’…the herbal laxatives we became a little too fond of…the alcohol binges. The occasional glimmer of hope I threw your way in the form of fresh and healthy foods never lasted long did it?
My crazy mind told me that this sort of behaviour towards you was acceptable. I used and abused you and pushed you to your limits. I am sorry…so, so sorry.
For a long while I hated you. I hid you away and thought that you were ugly. I compared you unfairly with the bodies of my friends and came to the conclusion that I hated you…I hated me.
So looking at you in the mirror today is difficult – and not only because the lightbulb has blown! We have war wounds and battle scars and I take full responsibility for these. We have what can only be described as marks resembling a map of the London Underground all over the bloody place. For me, these represent the journey that we have been on together…and the journey that we will go on and have together. Perhaps when we go on our New York shopping spree, these marks will morph into the subway network…wouldn’t that be handy?! You are pretty fecking awesome, so I am sure we could arrange that!
What I used to think of as ugly and horrid now seems pretty amazing. We have been through so much together and you are changing…I am changing. We are getting stronger and fitter and I can actually feel these hard bits in places that there were no hard bits before…I think they might be known as bones!
So there are lumps and bumps, and lumps and bumps on top of those lumps and bumps. We have funny spottiness on our upper arms, and hair…a lot of hair – oh, that’s another thing we have – PCOS! There is cellulite, hard skin on your poor feet that have carried us around for so long, and some sag…a lot of sag. But I now love you.
I really do – I love you for carrying me around and sticking with me when I was at my biggest. There were a few moments when I thought you were going to give up on me, but you didn’t – and so I have decided that I am not going to give up on you and your marvellous imperfections…you are perfectly imperfect and I love you.
There is no such thing as perfect anyway. It’s a myth – remember those magazines I mentioned earlier…that’s where I found my versions of perfect…until that day when we had front row seats at Clothes Show Live – do you remember how secretly amazed and happy I was to see cellulite and a few bruises on the legs of the models? Not that I like comparisons…but it was a delightful moment to see a bit of wobble on a model!
You and I are learning how to live in harmony. We have our issues, but we are getting there. I am learning how I should be treating you and talking to you, and you are reining me in a bit when I get too carried away. I promise that I won’t put you through another aerobics class for a while yet, as your poor knees have taken enough abuse for a while. I promise that I won’t put that crappy food in you again either…after all, Freddie Freelander would not like it if I filled him full of unleaded…so you definitely and absolutely deserve the fuel that makes you operate at peak performance.
On the subject of peak performance, thank you for seeing me through our gym workout today whilst we were getting curious glances from the youth academy footballers in there…and thank you for being able to leg press the arse off that little one! We rocked those weights today!
You make me proud. I love taking you to the swimming pool and I think we have just about perfected our poolside sashay. I think we are doing our bit for body confidence by not covering up and just putting it out there…although I would prefer it if you could keep the nipples in check in the swimming costume – they don’t need to put it out there and say ‘hello’ to anyone again thank you!
So that’s it then body – I love you, I thank you, I am proud to own you. Let’s show the doubters that we can reach our goal of healthy…feck the happy that everyone talks about, as we already have that in bucket loads…but the healthy we need to keep working towards, as the wonderful team that we are!’
Well – that was pretty amazing to write…try it for yourself and spread the word…it’s okay to love a perfectly imperfect body!
Other than today’s penmanship, I spent a couple of hours at the gym, met up with the lovely David and my Mum for a nice chat this afternoon – although I was a little miffed that the pub didn’t serve herbal tea…I will have to take my TeaPigs with me next time. And then I headed on a jaunt to collect a table for my Mum…she’s going a bit crazy on eBay now that her house purchase is going through! As you may have gathered in my letter to my fabulous body, I am not going to be heading to my aerobics class tomorrow. My personal training sessions starts in February and are scheduled for the same time as this class – add the very painful knee joints into the equation, and I have decided just to stick with the aquarobics until the PT stuff starts. No point in buggering up my already buggered knees for the sake of proving that I can get through a class…I proved that last week and so no point scoring is needed! Tonight is proving a decent one…dinner cooked by Mr WLB and I have started re-watching ‘Person of Interest’ on Netflix…it’s pretty amazing, as is the leading man!
Breakfast: Banana porridge (5 syns).
Lunch: Sweet potato, tuna, cottage cheese and salad.
Dinner: Rice, veggies and chicken tikka.
Snacks: Two cheese toasties (HEA and 2 x HEB) and two mini Green & Blacks bars (8 syns).
A gorgeous, yummy food day today. My usual porridge made with water and topped with a banana – great fuel for the gym. Lunch was a jacket sweet potato, topped with cottage cheese, tuna and salad – and I tried a gorgeous lemon and black pepper dressing from Asda today which is syn free and tastes gorgeous with tuna. Dinner was a soy bean and veggie stir fry with rice, topped with chicken tikka chunks. And my cheese toasties had Marmite in…you can’t beat a Marmite and red onion cheese toastie…lush!
Exercise: 5 minutes treadmill, 55 minutes weights, 30 minutes elliptical machine.
Thank you for reading,
Weight Loss Bitch xxx
WeightLossBitch
On a health and fitness driven journey to lose over 32st / 448lbs / 203kgs – yes, it is a considerable amount – I am committed to losing my excess weight without the aid of weight loss surgery, diet pills, or quick fixes…as there aren’t any! Changing my eating habits and building up my fitness levels, along with addressing the ‘head issues’ will be crucial in order for me to achieve my goal. Living in England as a 31 year old super morbidly obese woman can be challenging to say the least. I have been shouted at in the street and verbally abused far too many times to mention; hence the name ‘Weight Loss Bitch’…the day I am just called a ‘bitch’ instead of a ‘fat bitch’ will be the day that I know I have cracked my weight loss! With many reasons to lose this weight I am documenting my journey for a number of reasons. Firstly, I would like to keep a record of the ups and downs, the highs and lows, and the challenges I face with such an enormous task to tackle. Secondly, I would also like to inspire and encourage other people who are in a similar situation and to show them that significant amounts of weight can be lost naturally…with a bit of motivation, hard work, dedication and will power. Thirdly, all of the blogging, Facebook-ing, Tweet-ing, Pinterest-ing and YouTube-ing keeps me occupied and keeps my fingers out of the fridge!
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