The curse of Body Image and Weightloss/gain

We live in the time of Lizzo and a million other influencers/celebrities who celebrate their bodies. We are encouraged to accept our bodies no matter what they look like, fat rolls and all.

But I don’t want to. I don’t like or accept my body when its bigger. When my thighs rub together or (a new thing) my bingo wings rub against my side. I don’t like feeling uncomfortable in my clothes and wanting to hide away from the world.

Also the health concerns of being overweight are huge as I get older, every member of my family, mum, dad, brother and sister have had a heart attack in their 50s or 60s. This cannot happen to me. I need to get in control of my health and weight.

I have had a problem with food most of my life, but the eating issues kicked back in in September of 2022. Always I have turned to food in time of emotional need, in anger, sadness, happiness, stress. I developed a very unhealthy sugar addiction. Most days I would eat sugar in big quantities. I was exercising a lot, which slowed down the weight gain. but if you are burning 2500 calories a day, and eating 3000 you will put weight on, albeit slowly. It’s simple, consume more than you burn and you will put on weight.

By May of 2023 I knew that it couldn’t carry on but didn’t know how to stop the addiction. I braved the scales at the gym and weighed myself for the first time in 8 months. I was 10kg heavier. Back in September 2022 I was okay with my body shape and fitness, I was a size 12-14, I felt good, I could look at full length pictures of myself and not hate what I saw. I needed to get back to that point.

Reaching Out for Help

I reached out for help to my friend, Leanne at my gym around 2 months ago. She runs the most blissful yin yoga classes and offer reiki treatments from her home. I explained my situation and she said why don’t we try a reiki healing treatment working on the sacral chakra where addictions lie.

There wasn’t just food toxicity in my life there were also some bad people. The immediate effect of the reiki was that I blocked and deleted the bad people from my life, people that were generally using me and making me feel bad about myself.

I then embarked upon my mathematical fitness plan.

How I lost 7kg in 4 weeks – Quick Fix before My Holiday

The reiki triggered the change of mindset, I don’t really know how, and I’m not going to question it. I needed to break the sugar addiction cycle and this has worked.

I am working off a mathematical model (I have a maths degree after all!), aiming to burn significantly more calories a day than I am eating. This requires daily exercise where I aim to burn at least 2500 calories per day, all tracked via my Samsung watch and Samsung health App.

I am then using the Samsung health App to track my food consumption and am sticking to calorie restrictions, and am eating anything from 1000 to 1500 a day.

Exercise regularly

I always do 10,000 steps every day, and have all year so an easy one to carry on, this adds on 500 to my burnt calories every day. I will then also do one or two of the following, a swim, a run, a cycle, a gym class or extra steps. This will mean that I generally burn 2500 to 3000 calories per day.

Yes it’s time consuming, but you will be surprised how much exercise you can fit in when doing other stuff. Every phone call I will go into the garden and walk around. I love a podcast so will go out for an early morning or evening walk with my podcast for company.

I have got into a good routine with classes at the gym that I go to every week and will do a 20km/400 calorie cycle before each class. And a 5km run is 30 minutes of my day and burns a huge number of calories. Its also a nice variety, and I am never doing the same thing every day, plus some is high impact, some is low impact.

Eating Less

I am a firm believer in only eating when hungry and I’m not hungry in the mornings. I can survive on a cup of hot water and lemon and a decaf black coffee quite easily.

For lunch I will have something simple like eggs with some salad, or salmon with half an avocado, tomatoes, cucumber, radishes. Hummus and carrots are a winner.

For dinner I will have something more substantial, often the same as the children, fajitas, pasta with chicken. Always loading up the plate with a pile of salad/vegetables.

I am avoiding eating red meat and large quantities of carbs and am not drinking caffeine (unless its a tiredness emergency).

I haven’t stopped drinking alcohol, but am limiting it to a gin and slimline tonic, 104 calories for a double. And I am still getting my sugar fix, but in a calorie limited way. I love the mini ice cream cookie balls, 104 calories each. Just one of those in the evening will fulfil my sugar fix. A cornetto ice cream is around 200 calories. Its’ just knowing what things are in terms of calories and keeping track of what you eat.

As I eat throughout the day I will track the calories consumed and try to focus on only eating when hungry. This hasn’t stopped me eating out, I chose the healthier options. I have had Turkish food a few times, where grilled chicken with vegetables and rice is an amazing dish. We are headed out for Greek dinner tonight, again its just choosing the fish or chicken options and enjoying the fact that someone else has cooked it for you!

Its also very important to consumer at least 2 litres of water per day, more like 3 litres on a big exercise day.

Tracking my results

Every morning I record the previous day calories burnt vrs calories eaten…every week I have a deficit of around 8,000 calories. It varies by day, some days its a 700 deficit, others its 1500 depending on how active I have been. Last weekend I walked 23km in one day, that was A LOT of calories burnt.

Weight fell off quickly, 5 kg gone in the first two weeks, then 1 kg per week in week 3 and week 4. I have checked this with my gym and its fine, weight does fall off significantly in early days of weight loss and because I’m doing a lot of exercise it compliments the plan.

I am happy, the health professional are healthy and Im not far off getting back to my 2022 body shape and weight.

7kg in Bags of Sugar

I shared an Instagram story last week of 7 * 1kg bags of sugar and it resonated HUGELY with my audience. I have never received so any DMs from my followers (100s of messages!) , asking me how I did it and saying congratulations. So my comments on wanting to lose weight, and not accepting my bigger body are a common thought. We are all thinking about/worried about our weight. Hence writing this article. I hope it helps!

Another great tip is to move to weighing yourself in kgs rather than stones. We have all had a lifetime of the ‘right’ weight in stones forced at us. I find the measuring in kgs much easier. Ignore the BMI measure which is a pile of rubbish, and aim for a weight and size where you feel happy. For me this is 70 something kgs.