5th November 2020
It's just over a year now since I started seeing the N.H.S. dietician. At that time I weighed in around the 19 stone mark and I had already lost a little weight, mostly by cutting down on the size of my meals. It had been very slow as back in January 2019 I had weighed 20 stone and 4 pounds. My advice from the dietician at the time was...
Change cereal to a high fibre one,
Continue to have three regular meals,
Continue to use a small plate.
Not really a lot of help, but it was a start. By the time of lockdown this year my weight had gone down to 17 stone 11 lbs, so I had continued to lose weight, mostly by adjusting my diet to what I liked to eat within my calorific allowance. After that I had to start working things out for myself a lot more and I am now around about 14 stone, so what I am doing seems to be working.
I am eating in a balanced way and have cut down greatly on the amount of sugar I have, but I have always been aware that this time I would not deprive myself of anything I really wanted to eat.
I know from experience that the minute you do that, you want it more and in the end you inevitably give in, and possibly binge, then you feel bad and guilty. Now when I think about this, we all need to eat food. Food is the thing that keeps us alive, but it also can cause so many problems at different levels for so many people. The other times I have lost weight – this is the sixth and hopefully last attempt – I had been in a close circle of people also attending the same weight loss group as me. We all would be doing the same diet plan and following the same rules. This must be the same for anybody who attends a weight loss group or follows the latest diet trend. Are they aware of other, possibly better, ways of losing weight, not only in a healthy way, but also keeping it off?
When I started writing my blog back in 2014, I was really looking at how weight loss was affecting me. I used the internet as a medium to get my blog out to anyone who may wish to read it and take from it what they may. It is still that way but because I have had to do so much more for myself this time, I have been using the internet and social media to see what I can learn and to find out what other people are doing. There is so much out there and so many, many, different ways of thinking. Food remains the same, but the emotions that surround it are enormous and diverse. The same thing that can give so much pleasure can also cause so much pain, guilt and sadness. Now, it's not really the food that causes a lot of this, but how it's perceived. When I read about people who want to lose weight for whatever reason, and there are many reasons, there is often a lot of sadness. Sometimes it's sadness that causes someone to eat, or sometimes it's sadness caused by eating. I can relate to this so much. It shouldn't be this way, there should be no issue around what we eat if we live in a society where food is plentiful. In parts of the world, and sadly even in more prosperous countries, there are people who can not get enough food to eat and this is a true sadness that should not exist in our modern times.
Food is also causing real problems for other reasons for people who have easy – too easy – access to it. These can often be fuelled through pressures of image and thoughts of what is classed as being “fat” in a society where being “fat” is frowned upon. Some use food as a method of control, denial, method of reward, and then it's not enjoyed because of guilt.
Where this happens there are also so many who use this to make money by “helping” people to alleviate these problems. It is all so confusing. I have read so much this past year about diets, eating disorders, what's good, what's bad, what we should all be doing and I am sure I will share my thoughts on some of this as I continue to write my blog.
I am not an expert, I have never been, but I am beginning to learn what is good for me. What I do know, is that food is not some terrible thing that I should be afraid of. If I solve my issues that I feel I have with food, it can only make my life and health better. I continue to learn as much as I can to be the best I can and not to have as many issues around food.
Until next time,
Jackie
x x
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