Tuesday, 10 July 2012

19 stone in a day - nah 3 years but still amazing!

10th July 2012

Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.
WOW to Kellie and Tracey who have both been trying to earn as many Activity ProPoints as they could this week, they’ve had a little competition going on between them on facebook, they ended their week with 70pp earned for Tracey and 75pp for Kellie – both awesome, so well done ladies.

Another awesome yesterday was Denise achieving her 19 stone weight loss mark, which is just beyond comprehension isn’t it!  Three years sticking to it, that’s really hard work, and what keeps her going is a before photo on her phone and all the support she gets from everyone else.  I can’t explain how proud I am of her, and all my members to be honest, because it is such a tough journey at times.
Last night I covered a meeting in Pelsall and I told them my Weight Watcher story, it’s been a while since I did that in a meeting and I enjoyed realising how far I have come, how much I have changed since losing my weight and becoming a leader.  Actually personality wise I haven’t changed but I have allowed myself to be the real me, I used to hide the real me and put on a front I think for fear of looking silly, I’m not sure, low self esteem I suppose.  It wasn’t just losing weight that gave me the confidence to be ‘ME’ it was learning to love myself and accept myself for who I was warts and all.  I’d lost weight so many times but was still never happy, still wanted to be slimmer, more toned etc  whereas this time I almost always look in the mirror and think ‘yeah you’re okay’, don’t get me wrong I have my “dog rough” days but they’re few and far between.

I think what cheers me the most is realising that when I did decide to let everyone else see the real me, it turned out they actually like this version, she’s quite popular, that makes me smile when I think about it.  There’s no better feeling than being accepted for who you really are.  None of us are perfect, but that’s what makes us so amazing, for example I know  I talk too fast, even faster when I’m excited, I do try to slow it down but I don’t always remember, I do everything too fast – eating, drinking, walking everything except running actually which I wish I could do faster but you can’t have it all.
So if you’ve tried so many times to lose weight before and failed maybe you’re only working on half of the problem, its not just about weight loss, it’s about learning to love and accept yourself regardless, when you do that you’re more likely to want to take care of yourself too.  It’s true, I eat much better now, yes I still indulge but overall I want to feed my body good healthy food that will fill me with energy and nutrition, and by doing so I’m much healthier and happier.

As we talked about enjoying the journey in the meeting, instead of going for the all or nothing approach, it was great to see so many nodding heads, better to lose slowly and enjoy your food than to lose 1/2stone one week, then crave everything the week after because you overdid the dieting the week before!  The people who have long term weight loss success make small changes that they are able to keep going, rather than being tough on themselves, working harder and setting big challenges.  It’s been proven that big efforts to make a change can be counter productive because they trigger the fight or flight response in the brain which stops us acting positively towards our goals.  We feel we’ve failed when really we’ve just sabotaged ourselves by setting too enormous a challenge!
So today decide to be realistic, look in the mirror and realise your beauty, acknowledge how wonderful you are and work on one thing at a time, you’ll be amazed how it helps you to shrink a little at a time. xx

No comments:

Post a Comment