First of all, after quite a long absence, I think I may owe the people that normally read this an explanation. I don't know how long this blog is going to be, but hopefully not long enough to make you drift off into a comfortable sleep.
The last blog I wrote I was really feeling positive about being back and feeling great about the future. I was looking forward to losing the extra pounds and reaching milestone number 2: namely finally getting under 12 stones. I had about 3lbs to go to reach it and so I was very confident. Unfortunately, for about a week, that was the only time I would be motivated or confident.
Last week, for some bizarre and unknown reason, I let everything (except the exercise weirdly) go. I stopped eating healthily, I stopped watching my calories, I stopped walking - the only thing I was doing was still exercising in the morning. I don't know what started it off, but I do know that, by the time it finished, which was this morning, I had gained 5lbs.
When I look back critically at the last week, I notice feelings of anxiousness, lethargy, no drive or passion or motivation at all. Everything I normally do to stop myself from overeating wasn't working. No matter how much I talked to myself, I always convinced myself that eating something mice, something fattening was the way forward. I didn't want to not eat, so to speak. It was almost as if, subconsciously, I was deliberately sabotaging my own journey.
I wasn't sleeping well, but I can put that down to a couple of things. Firstly the drink. I drank a lot last week and always had an excuse on hand as to why I was: there was a match, I'd already had lots to eat, I wanted to relax in the evening - all complete rubbish and I am sure that I knew it. But I'd still find myself nipping to the shop to buy a four pack to watch the footy with, with the obvious crisps or chocolate or something else I should be rationing. This, obviously, made me go to the toilet a lot during the night and also made sure that the sugar, converted from alcohol, kept me awake for a lot of the night. There were also pangs of guilt and discussions with myself that I would start afresh the next day, but the only thing I started fresh was a new four pack.
The eating was much worse than the drinking. The eating was constant. The eating was like something inside of me had snapped and I wanted to eat everything, even though I knew I was not hungry and didn't really want anything. I was eating because I could and because I didn't care. And I really didn't.
I gave in to every craving and this made the cravings become worse; I would find myself picking from the fridge and this made me go to the fridge a lot; I would go to the shop for milk and bread and find myself buying crisps and a chocolate bar too and eating both in the car park and then having something else when I got in. I was in the same mode I used to be when I would give up in other diets - a 'sod it, I may as well carry on now' attitude. Then there were the takeaways, and there were a lot of them. I think that if I had not been still doing the exercises in the mornings, that the 5lbs would have been more like 8lbs. As it was, when I stepped on the scales on the Friday and it read 3lbs gain, I didn't stop. I carried on thinking that I'd done the damage now I may as well carry on until tomorrow.
It's not until now, when I look back over the week that I feel the anxiety and depression I was experiencing. I was playing things over and over in my mind. Everything that had happened with school and lockdown, all the holding it together and keeping going and motivated and trying to be as positive as I could be for myself and my family suddenly came back to haunt me. This manifested itself in a lack of drive, tiredness and no willpower, as well as a deliberate determination to sabotage my journey and show myself to be a fraud.
Thankfully I caught it in time and, although I have gained a lot of weight this last week, I am back to my old, determined and motivated self, who wants to carry on and get to the end of the journey. And this starts with this self-reflection. I lost my way and, on day 173, I found myself again. I know I have to communicate with friends and family and make sure that I talk through my feelings and help me to continue my journey and to be at the place I want to be.
I know that losing the weight I put on this week isn't going to be easy to get rid of and it will probably be double the time to get it off that it took to put it on in the first place, but that will be my lesson, my way of reminding myself that eating rubbish and not caring will not only make my moods worse, it will also mean working twice as hard to remove it...and that is something I do not want to do. I like working hard, but I don't want to work hard to remove something I had already removed and was proud of.
So here I am, back again and, having found my drive and determination and my love of being healthy, I will keep it going. Remember, even if you have a massive blip, like me, there is always a way back if you are determined not to give up. If you fall, pick yourself up, dust yourself off and keep going: stay strong!
Therefore, until TOMORROW, and it will be tomorrow, stay safe and stay strong.
Thanks for reading.
Sean.