Helloooo!!
I realised today, completely by chance, that exactly a year ago I started my experiment in doing Weightwatchers my own way - it's been a year of Weightwatchers Plus, as I dubbed it at the time!
A simultaneously eventful and completely non-dramatic year - here's the run down of what happened when I decided to track and get curious about myself and how I eat, without there being a diet in sight:
- In lbs - 14 gone. At one point, just after Christmas I was down 17lb, but right now it's 14. One stone gone without dieting.
- In clothes and inches - some gone. I couldn't tell you how many, and I'm pretty much still the same official clothes size as last year, but what was once uncomfortably tight is now fitting properly.
- In miles run - a fair few. One of this year's tentative goals was to get back into running and, in a fit of enthusiasm over Christmas, I entered a 10k for this month. I did it in 1 hr 16 mins on a very hot, sunny Sunday a few weeks back, but the most important thing was it encouraged me to start running again, and also to get over notions of how a perfect run should look - sometimes I run hard, sometimes I have lots of walking breaks, some faster, some slower - but I count them all as good runs done.
- In realisations about how good exercise is for my mental wellbeing and my emotional resilience to life in general - profound. Once I stopped having any notion of what exercise I should be doing to lose weight or tone up or burn calories, and started concentrating on what I actually enjoyed and how I felt, I realised that moving is good for me in more ways than the obvious. I couldn't honestly say how much it's contributed to the lbs or inches lost, but it's definitely helped me sleep better at night and just generally improve my mood.
- In learning to accept myself and my body - leaps and bounds. Not strictly linked to doing Weightwatchers Plus, but once I decided to let go of the idea of a dramatic weightloss makeover, I realised that I had better learn how to live with myself how I am and like it - I did a lot reading around self-acceptance, turned my Instagram feed into a stream of body positivity love and inspirational people of all sizes, bought myself some lovely clothes that actually fit - which is revelation for anybody that's ever struggled with waiting to fit back into the clothes they used to wear - and basically filled my head with the idea that my worth as a person is not linked to my weight or size. It's percolating in slowly, and it's heavenly to be able to say that I haven't looked at myself in disgust or anything approaching it in the first 5 months of this year. I've stopped trying to suck everything in and pretend I'm smaller all the time (like that ever fooled anyone??), and I'm getting easier around photos that show me and not the filtered version I'd like to see.
So you see - small changes, but also profound ones. It's weird to say that I probably feel more at ease with my body and like myself better than I have at any other weight or time since I was a teenager and first encountered the scale and social pressure. When I very first set out to leave dieting behind I said to myself that it was time to either find a way to stop fighting the food and lose weight for good, or accept myself at the weight I was at .... I really had little belief that it would be the second one and just put it out there as an option whilst thinking really I wanted to lose the weight. But the reality is that I've ending up working on both together.
I lost pretty continuously from last June until January this year and then I had a bit of a blip where for 3 months in a row my weight fluctuated up slightly. At the time I put it down to different things - in February when it first happened, I thought it might just be Christmas catching up with me late and I'd had a short break away all inclusive as well. In March, when it happened again, I shrugged and told myself it was my week's ski trip in Italy and I just had taken my eye off the ball a bit. Then I had a further tiny gain in April and the doubt's started niggling in that I was doing something wrong or that maybe this was the weight I was meant to be. In May I started losing again, but it wasn't until I was reading a blog today that something clicked with me - the author was talking about giving up dieting and how she maintained for the first 3 years, then without trying the weight started dropping away. First 10 lbs in 6 months, then another 10 over another 2 years .... and it occurred to me that weight loss has never been a straight line journey and I'd conveniently forgotten that.
Weight loss, as the author reminded me, is the product of many environmental factors coming together - calorie intake, type of food, activity levels, sleep quality, stress levels, hormone and chemical balances in the body - and it suddenly makes sense to me that I might not lose and might gain in the winter. As the winter progresses and all the excitement of my November birthday and Christmas wear off, I tend to get a bit lower - less active because it's so dark and cold outside, craving heavier comfort food, sleeping more or just curled up on the sofa. In the spring, my activity levels naturally go back up again as I want to be out in the sun and fresh air, and I start work on the garden and DIY projects - it therefore makes perfect sense that I might have a change in my weight during that period. I find the fact I might have a natural rhythm to the year to be quite comforting somehow!
And so I go into a second year of this experiment excited to see what happens. I'll tell you one thing though: I'm going on holiday to Bali in 3 weeks time and shopping for some holiday clothes, and in particular a bikini, has been the most stress-free and non-judgmental process this year - that alone is worth its weight in gold!!
