Balance

Despite banging on about how I was going to lose weight over December, I was a big fat failure and gained a stack of weight. Shocker! I spent my holidays sitting at home and eating like it was my full time job and the scales reflected these poor choices when I weighed in on January 1st 2012 at 82.5 kilos (181.5 lbs). Ouch.

This is number is interesting for two reasons. Firstly, it is exactly what I weighed on January 1st 2011. Secondly, it is the highest I weighed on the scale all year (apart from on the 1st day of the year of course). What a way to end the year!

So I am choosing to take the positive from this and recognise how fantastic it is that I maintained my weight for the whole year. It is the first time in my life that I have neither lost or gained weight in a year, so that is something to be happy about. Of course it would be better if I was at goal weight and maintained, instead of 15 kilos away from a healthy weight, but we can't have it all.

While I am trying my best to see the positive in the way I maintained my weight all year, I am not so delusional that I can't see that I made a lot of mistakes. I spent the entire year on some kind of diet (or breaking my diet) only to lose and gain the same 5 kilos all year. I could have saved myself all that pain and heartache and just eaten a balanced diet instead of killing myself with diets and exercise for no result.

Not only that, but if I had just eaten normally and moved slightly more and eaten slightly less junk I could have not felt deprived and lost even just half a kilo a month. Half a kilo a month would obviously be 6 kilos (13 lbs) lost in the year and much better than the big fat zero kilos I lost.

So the lesson I am taking from this year is that the dieting has to stop. I know I have said this many times before, but I really mean it this time. Right now I feel fat and bloated and my clothes don't fit me and I would love nothing more than to starve myself down a few kilos until I feel more comfortable. These behaviours have to stop because 2011 proved that it doesn't work and it is a miserable way to live.

I have to be a bridesmaid in a beach wedding in just 7 weeks and I want more than anything to plan a massive diet and try and lose 7 kilos before the wedding. It pains me to say that I am not going to do that. I am going to eat sensibly and I certainly won't eat perfectly, but if I eat well enough to lose a kilo over the course of the month, than I would hope that is a kilo that will never come back again.

I would love to be able to finish 2012 and say that I lost between 5-10 kilos over the course of the year and I didn't feel deprived and I didn't have to diet and I can keep this weight off forever. I just need to reverse 25 years of dieting mentality first, so this may be easier said than done, but I am going to try.

Source