Preparations

Today, L and I went up to our local supermarket to buy loads of produce for the week ahead.

In terms of food, I decided almost straight away that I didn’t want to follow some kind of bizarre fad diet. What I want to do is cut out processed food – entirely because I believe that it’s healthier – and watch my calorie intake.

In order to achieve the former, I plan to eat only whole, single-ingredient foods. To achieve the latter, I’m using an app I’ve found on iOS called Lifesum. It’s a typical calorie counting app but it also grades your meals in terms of nutrition. I’m a teacher who’s always achieved good grades: being graded will keep me motivated, as sad and pathetic as that sounds.

Exercise-wise, I primarily plan to cycle. It’s something I’ve always loved doing and I really want to make it a proper hobby. I suppose you could kind of call this a separate resolution that merely facilitates the main one of losing weight and getting healthy. I’ll be tracking my cycle rides with Strava (another app) and posting them on my blog here 🙂

I hope you’re prepped, diary, for days and days of food pictures and exercise pictures and cycle ride rants and weight loss updates.

Tomorrow, Monday, my first day back to work, it begins!

Let’s do this!

Hello, 2016!

I realise this is probably hugely eye-roll inducing, but I have made a 2016 New Year Resolution. Or, rather, a few.

I’ve decided to document the journey, largely for myself (though I do understand that the online community can provide you with a wealth of support when you need it), with a series of blog posts throughout the year. I’m essentially just treating this blog like an online diary.

So, at the beginning of the new year, I’m forced to think about and reflect on the past 12 months. For many reasons, 2015 was one of the worst and best years of my life. It was definitely a year of extremes.

Not to start this blog off in a morbid way, 2015 was the year that I lost my dear, loving Grandma. She’d been ill for a while with terminal cancer so the end was inevitable and unsurprising. It didn’t make it any less devastating, though. As it stood, the end was as good as it ever could have been… it was quick and painless and she was surrounded by those she loved. My first experience with loss, the whole thing has had a massive effect on me.

It also, in hindsight, left me clinging onto food to comfort me in a way I’ve never really known before. I think, in the many months since she passed, I used it instead of burdening L, my girlfriend with my pain. It ended up doing the opposite, though, and L has been worried about my relationship with food to the point where I’m sure she’s wanted to leave on a few occasions.

Food addiction, and that’s what this is, is a terrible, terrible thing. I’ve become really deceptive – hiding food in cupboards so I can eat it behind locked doors – spending all my money on food when we need the money for bills. Lying. Angry when I’m challenged.

It’s bad.

And it severely needs to change.

This isn’t the first time I have tried losing weight and eating healthily. In fact, it’s possibly the tenth time. Before I went to University, I lost 48lbs and ate a high protein, low carb diet. I also went to the gym frequently and was quite happy with the way I looked.

But slowly, year on year on year, I gained the weight back.

2016, looking at it now, seems very much like a turning point for me. I’m at a fork in the road and it’s entirely clear which road I need to take.

Aside from that, 2015 was the year that I graduated from University with a good degree in Law and French and got a job as a languages teacher. I’ve never been so proud of my achievements yet so ashamed of the way I’ve been acting. Like I said… year of extremes.

Anyway, since the main purpose of this blog is to document my journey to health, it seems only right to weigh myself…

Off I go to the scales…

CURRENT WEIGHT: 20 stone, 13 lbs or 293 lbs.

GOAL WEIGHT: 210 bs

WEIGHT TO GO: 83 lbs

Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. Just a little bit daunted by the task ahead.

But I will do it. I can and I have to.