I Don’t Want To Be Fat Anymore!

Honestly,  I never [ever] thought I would be an overweight person. All my life I was skinny and I was always able to eat whatever I wanted without it showing anywhere at all.

Yes there was a period of time in my teens where I maybe had a little extra padding but even so I was never fat and it never bothered me.

Before I had children I weighed 60kgs and I am 1.68m tall. This is spot on about what my weight should be for my height.

Then I fell pregnant with my first child and I ballooned. I hit over 100kgs. I didn’t cope very well with that pregnancy or birth, and I can’t say I lost all that extra weight fast but I did lose it all over a period of just over a year.

As fate would have it the same month I hit my pre-pregnancy weight I realized I was pregnant yet again. Thankfully my second pregnancy was much kinder on me than my first. I only put on 14kgs which I understand for some women would be a huge amount of weight to put on when pregnant… But when you compare it to the 40kgs I gained in my first pregnancy then you can understand I was very happy with 14 kgs.

And then after the birth of my son the weight dropped off me like crazy. My son was (and still is) a little piggie when it comes to eating and I was breastfeeding. Within 3 weeks of giving birth to him I had not only lost all my pregnancy weight but I had also lost a few extra kilos. I was actually too thin and I didn’t feel strong at all.

All the way through breastfeeding him I was too thin and sickly due to the amount that he drank.

So I weaned him when he was 13 months because I was struggling to sleep and I was exhausted. It was taking too much of a toll on my body.

I then gained a few kilos and I was a normal healthy weight. I can’t recall my weight, it was just a normal (ish) weight for me and I felt good. I felt right. I even wore a bikini on the beach that year.

It would be lovely if my story stopped there wouldn’t it? But it didn’t.

Putting On Weight After Quitting Smoking

I decided to do something that I had been too scared to even really attempt in my life. I made the decision to stop smoking. I was well aware that quitting smoking can come with a little weight gain and I was perfectly fine to become a little chubbier in the process.

The fact that I managed to successfully quit smoking is amazing, however I was not prepared for how intense the urge was to pig out eating. I was not prepared for the fact that over the following months I gained 18kgs – more weight than I put on when pregnant with my son.

The big difference was that I didn’t lose it. For a while everyone congratulated me on “my pregnancy”, much to everyone’s embarrassment when they realized I am not pregnant. Then people stopped congratulating me, because I moved past looking pregnant to just plain fat.

For a while the weight around my stomach felt like a foreign object, like it wasn’t a part of me. It was an awful feeling. There was a sensation like I was wearing a moonbag or something else around me, that I could just not take off… but it was a part of me and eventually it began to feel normal having all this chubbiness around me.

I made a few half-hearted attempts to lose the weight. The thing is that life is so busy and as a mom that works from home I am constantly juggling so many things. Each time I made an attempt to lose weight it started well and I started to feel the weight shifting each time… and then life caught up with me and I lost the motivation.

She Said WHAT?

It will soon be 2 years since I quit smoking (on 01 October 2015) and even though I have only been fat that short period of time I can see how cruel and nasty people can be. I don’t think it is intentional, more like their brains are not engaged when their mouths start working. It is clear some people just don’t take care with the things that they say.

An example is when I went to the corner cafe a few months ago and the cashier said “Oh you’ve gotten nice and fat” [Jy’s lekker dik nou ne].

Like OMG? WTF? I’m sorry what the bleep did you say? (Trying to keep it PG here folks when I really just want to drop a few F-bombs)

I can only imagine how horrible it must be for people that have struggled with their weight their whole life. I still find it hard to wrap my head around the fact that people just say things like that.

I’m not sure about you, but when I was a little girl my mommy taught me that if you have nothing nice to say, you say NOTHING!

I am 18kgs overweight and I wonder what other people that are more overweight than me experience? I can only imagine and my heart goes out to them.

My daughter laughed at me a while back and called me a “fat mom with boobs” when I got out the shower… oh the humiliation!

Stuck In The Fat Cycle

Moving around is harder with my extra flesh and getting clothes to fit me is a nightmare. I don’t want to wear a sack, I want to wear pretty clothes and I want them to fit me nicely. I don’t want to have to get my husband to rescue me out of a too tight top!

I’m tired of wearing only stretch clothes because that is all that is comfortable for me now. I want to wear jeans and a cute top (without any tummy hanging over!).

I haven’t really bought any new clothes for my larger physique because I just can’t accept it. In fact I find myself wanting to buy clothes in my “not fat” size… because you know I will be thin again right?I just can’t bear to buy any fat clothes.

Gaining weight is both a mental and a physical problem and the cycle just gets worse.

I can see now that the more weight I put on the worse I feel about myself, the more demotivated I become and the harder it is to exercise, to move my body.

It’s Time For Change and Commitment

Now I have been changing my habits already in a very big way and I think that is why my weight has stabilized at about 78kg. I have started eating healthier by cutting out most junk food (chips, Coke, biscuits, chocolate) except on movie night which is Saturday night.

However stopping most junk food is not going to take away the chunky bits is it? Yes it is a start, which is awesome but I need to put more in there.

While I have made a few attempts at losing weight and getting healthy I always opted for a softer approach, I tried to lose weight. Now while that is all nice and sweet I don’t think that is the same as making a firm commitment and setting solid goals for myself.

Trying is not good enough anymore. The fact is that I am unhealthy and I am not happy with the way I am right now. I feel now that I need to make a choice between “trying” and “doing”.

Previously I didn’t want to get hung up on losing a certain amount of kilograms in a certain time frame because I felt it was unhealthy, and I still do in a way. However I need to now set myself firm goals and I need to set out to achieve them.

I am not interested in setting unrealistic goals, like having a 6 pack in 3 weeks time but I do need something that I need to strive towards.

My Weight Loss Goals

So here are my main weight loss goals:

• I will be feeling comfortable in a bikini by January 2018 – and yes I will come onto Youtube in my bikini – fat or not!
• My weight loss goal for January 2018 is 65kgs – so that is about 13kgs to lose in 17 weeks, so it is less than 1kg a week to lose.
• I will be wearing jeans again by January 2018.
• I will have created positive, healthy habits that help me to maintain a healthy weight.

Every Wednesday I will be sharing my goals and achievements with you all in a blog post and a Youtube video, if you are also struggling to lose weight then I hope you join me on my weight loss journey.

This week I am going to put my focus on getting my head around this weight loss journey and plotting my short term goals, as well as starting my exercise program.