WHAT A DIFFERENCE A SCARF MAKES!

 27^th March, 2021

As I start to write this, I realise that it is a year since I restarted my blog. Writing it has helped get me through this last year and given me a way of expressing what was going on in my head. It's been a strange time, with much sadness, but hopefully better things are on the way. I don't think any of us will forget what has happened in the last twelve months and memories and the lessons learnt will stay with us for many, many years to come. In my last blog I mentioned that I was trying to conquer my fear of the scales and putting weight back on. There is no reason really why I should feel so anxious, I have now established a pattern of daily eating, but still the fear is all too real.

I did manage to go the ten days without weighing myself, and when I did I was just under the fourteen stone mark, so no damage done! I decided then to wait another two weeks before my next weigh-in, which will be Good Friday, so just before Easter. You never know, I might eat one of my Cadbury Creme Eggs that have sat in the fridge since Valentine's Day! :-)

I last stopped writing my blog the first time, just about the one year mark, so I am certainly concious I need to carry on and be accountable to myself to carry on all my good work and not slip back into bad habits. As much as you read that it takes so many days to change habits, it doesn't always work that way, but you can but try. (Cheese alert here!) You have nothing to lose except weight! :-)

Back now to the title of this blog entry. I've added to my writing this week two photographs of me wearing a scarf. These photos couldn't be more different in oh, so many ways. I have loved scarves for many years. There were times when I couldn't have a great choice of clothes, but I could always add a scarf. The vibrant colours would always cheer me up. In my first marriage I often wore traditional Punjabi clothes while I was in India and also when visiting the Gurdwara (Sikh Temple) here in England. Part of this dress was a chuni or dupatta, a long scarf used for covering the head whilst inside the temple. They were in beautiful colours and always felt so good to wear. It became a habit for me to wear a scarf. There were many times in that marriage that times were hard, you clung on to those things that made you happy, feel special and almost safe.

Now, here's the thing... When I look at that first photo, which was taken when I weighed about twenty stone plus, I notice that I am pulling the scarf across myself. I am trying to hide behind it, not show my body and the true extent of my size. I do remember thinking that at the time, which seems so silly now. There I am in a beautiful blue blouse, trying to hide behind a colourful scarf. What on Earth was I thinking? In my mind I suppose I was using my scarf as a kind of comfort blanket.

Moving onto the second photo, taken recently on a day out in the sunshine. As you can see, I still have a scarf, but now nearly seven stone lighter I'm wearing it for a completely different reason. I still feel complete wearing one, but now it has become an accessory to add colour to an outfit. I am at last now beginning to enjoy putting my outfits together and my love of clothes and colour continues to grow. I am loving experimenting and wearing new combinations each and every day. The two photographs are so similar and yet so different at the same time. Still the love for colour, but now no reason to feel awkward or hide. No reason to feel ashamed, but to feel proud of what I am achieving and looking forward to enjoying every minute of the adventure. I look at the photos and know that I am not ever going back to how I lived before and the way I felt then. I look forward to the Summer and all the fun I will have finding new ways to dress. I have a lot of catching up to do!

Until next time,

Love, Jackie,

xx

I AM NOT A COOKIE CUTTER

 

17^th March, 2021

Someone once said to me, “You are not a cookie cutter”. I had never heard the term before, but I looked it up and basically it means not having the same configuration or look as many others, or being identical. I suppose I have always been different and like different kinds of people, cultures and other things. I have never wanted to be the same. I like the unusual and interesting, and with “normal” things look for a way to change them. It applies to many things – interior design, food, what I like to wear and jewellery. I love the unusual, and I like to be me. It's not always an easy way to be, but I am what I am.

Now, when it comes to weight loss, and keeping weight off, I am beginning to realise it is the same. As I have said before, everyone is different. The way they think, their lifestyle, their physical make up, the foods they like – all are different. How much weight they have to lose, why they have put weight on and their ability to exercise all affect the plan that they need. This is why the “cookie cutter” approach will not, and does not work. You hear the phrase “diets don't work”. You lose weight and you put it on. You yo-yo diet over time, and diets don't work.

What really doesn't work is the cookie cutter plan that is given to everyone. That diet that you see in the magazine, or on the TV or internet, or given to you by the slimming club that everyone goes to. They are out there for so many people to see and do. If you only have a few pounds to lose, that can be bad enough, but if you have a lot of weight to lose, you want to get it right. Many years of losing weight and putting it back on is not good for your physical or mental health.

Years ago I used to teach Indian Cookery. Each week I would hand out the recipe of the dish we were going to cook. The basic idea, the guide lines and the method. The difference then between a recipes you would see in a book and what I was doing, was that I knew my student's preferences, how hot or spicy they like their food. I was able to teach them to take the basic recipe and change it to the way it suited them. When you buy a recipe book, it's the same for everyone, but it can't tell you how to change it to suit the individual. It's the same with weight loss. 

With my other attempts to lose weight I just did what I thought I was supposed to do. Eat a lot less, cut right back on the calories and exercise. It's as easy as that!

No, that didn't work. Yes, I got results. Fast results. But the weight came back on again and again. I really hadn't learned anything.

This time around, I knew it had to be very different. I had to make my own plan on what works for me as an individual. I had to adapt the way I ate and, because I can't exercise in the traditional way, find out what I could do instead.

Now I have lost nearly all the weight I want to lose, I am moving on to the next stage of keeping it off. That's the bit that not many diet plans talk about. They don't oftain don't talk about mind set or how you don't put the weight back on, which is the scary bit. It scares me a lot, but I am beginning to deal with it in my own particular way.

I am trying something called “reverse dieting”. From what I understand, this means slowly increasing what you eat whilst monitoring what happens. The end result should enable me to be able to know just at what level I can eat food and stay within a given weight.

I still want to be able to lose a little more weight, but I must also be able to know how to stabilise it. It is a work in progress. At the moment I am not getting weighed every day. The plan is to eat within reason and then weigh myself after ten days and see what happens. I am quite anxious about all this, but it's the only way I can see what happens to me. It's all part of the plan (she says confidently). I need to find out just what is right for me. By doing it this way I will continue to learn how this all will become sustainable. That is, I believe, the key to it all. A weight loss plan that is individually tailored to a person's needs. That will hopefully suit the non-cookie cutter part of my nature. It is beginning to work for so many other people and hopefully it will work for me. I am going to get weighed tomorrow, my ten days are finished and we will see what happens.

My story continues...

All for now, until next time.

Love, Jackie

xxx

MY BLOG

 2^nd March, 2021

The sun has been shining, which is always a bonus, and my husband Steve has had a week off work. It would have been the date of the second attempt for my son and his beautiful fiancé to get married, but once again Covid has intervened, and the lockdown is still on. Fortunately, another date has been arranged, and we are all hoping that this time it will go ahead and we will, finally, all be together. We have not seen my son and his fiancé for a year now, and my daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren since last August, so it will be lovely to get the whole family together again soon.

2014 was when I last lost weight, and it was the birth of our Grandson that inspired me to do it. Back then I just slipped back into my “dieting” habits of eating less and less to get to a good weight loss each week, and worried purely on my looks rather than my health. I know now it was bound to fail, as many attempts had failed before, but back then I didn't know any different. I knew what I needed to do to lose weight in a healthy way, but that didn't mean I was going to do it. I wanted results, and I wanted them quickly. I was waiting every week for the group leader to see my results and tell me how well I had done. That was all that really mattered, and of course my family telling me too.

Now, don't get me wrong, encouragement is good, but if you have not got the right mindset all the work is for nothing. So many “diets” fail, because they are not fitting into your lifestyle and giving you a sustainable way of living. That is why it has been so different this time around. I was doing it for myself, the only person that saw the scales – when I finally got some – was me, and I didn't have to worry about going to group meetings every week and worrying if I had, or hadn't lost weight. During lockdown I had plenty of time to look at just why I wanted to do this and look at the best way to do it for me. I will now finally get to the reason why I am writing this post and the title I have chosen :-)

When I started to lose weight back in 2014 I also started to write this blog. I can't now remember exactly why I decided to put my thoughts down this way. Back then I think I just wanted to document what I was doing for my grandson to read and the internet seemed the best way to do it as opposed to writing a diary. That is how it started. A way of putting down my thoughts on what I had been doing. I discovered that I really liked writing, but then after a while it all stopped. I had started to put weight back on and my new found love of writing was put on hold because deep down inside I felt that I had failed and didn't want to talk about it.

Fast forward to 2020, and for many reasons, which I have mentioned before, I started to write it again. How different it all seems to have been this time. I think when  I started to write before, I didn't really realise just what it meant to me. I was just writing it to tell others what I was doing. I think that is still there, but this time it was also there to help me clear my mind. To be able to talk to myself when no one was around and truly express my feelings. Now I do know that other people do read it, and that is great, but I don't know who they are, and makes it so much easier to say what it is that I want to say. If I helped just one person that has read my posts, well that would be marvellous. If one person thinks that they are not alone, that others have the same struggles and have beat them and now think that they could do the same, it really helps me to continue putting pen to paper.

I do love to write, and being able to clear my mind as the words go down on paper is such a benefit to my now different way of life.

When I first started my blog, I really didn't know about many people who were doing the same for their weight loss. There must have been some, but I didn't really look that much. These days so many have Youtube channels and I really do love to watch them and seeing other peoples experiences and advice. Youtube is not for me, but my writing will carry on. My blog has meant so much to me in so many ways. It's something I love to do, and it helps keep me focused. It makes me accountable to myself, and in the future my grandchildren may read it and hopefully understand more about their Nan Nan. Goodness knows what they will think, I may never know, the same way as I don't often know what other people who read it think. What I do know is that it is an honest account of me, my journey, my highs and my lows. And that, after all, it all that really matters.

That's all for now, until next time.

Love, Jackie

xx

YOU LOOK WELL!

24^th February, 2021

Three or four times recently I have had someone say to me, “You look well!”, which is nice, and I do know what they mean, but what does it really mean? I presume that what they mean is that you have lost weight and look good, but that is not what they have actually said. Losing weight was never mentioned, and they are not always people that know me well and what is going on in my life. I can't help thinking that really it's a strange thing to say. Are they saying “I have noticed you have lost weight, no I can't say that, so I will say you look well”? Would they say when I was overweight “You look unhealthy”? I am not sure that they would. Yes, it's nice that people give you a compliment, but saying that you look well is a strange use of words.

I was reading somewhere that you shouldn't say to someone “Have you lost weight?” because it could have been lost due to illness or mental health issues, so I suppose you can't win if you do feel you want to give someone a compliment. I myself would say to someone I know “You are looking good”, but perhaps if it's some one you don't really know, and you don't know their story, it might be better just not commenting at all. Then, someone might be upset if no one notices. :-) You just can't win.

Ramble apart, how do you always know how someone's health is? When I lost weight before, people would say I looked good, but I knew I hadn't lost weight the healthiest way I could, and my health may not have really been that good. Nobody knows how you eat but you. Even when a medical professional want you to lose weight, if you do it they have no idea of just how you have done it. The only way is by looking at blood tests, etc. but that doesn't always tell the full story. It can be great, someone has lost a lot of weight, but it doesn't mean they have done it in a healthy way. I suppose that what I am saying is, be genuinely interested in someone and really try to know them and what they are doing.

On a slightly different note, what also suprises me is how the weight loss industry can jump on someone's success and use it for their own benefit. Whether it's writing up a story in a magazine with photographs when really they are not sure, or care, if that person has followed their particular program, or, as has happened to me, a slimming product wanting me to sell their product to others when I myself have never used it at all.

I think what is going through my mind as I write this, is that when you are trying to lose weight and be healthy, it is your journey, and your journey alone. It's lovely when friends and family offer support and compliment you, but that's people that know you or know your story. It can be a very long journey if you have a lot of weight to lose, and people don't notice for quite a long time. So, be strong and remain true to yourself. Know just why you are doing something, and be proud of you yourself and of your achievements. Do your best to achieve the results you want, don't be used by those who want to gain from your achievement and take the compliments that are given to you.

Above all, don't overthink things, unless you have a blog to put your thoughts into :-)

Until next time,

Love, Jackie

xx

NEARLY A YEAR ON

 

21^st February, 2021

Well, we are now nearly at the end of February. This time last year we were not aware of what was about to hit us, and we were about to start living in a completely new and different way. This year I have learnt so much and have really started to live and think in a very different way. I have thought about the new me and have started to put so many new things into play. I have lost up to now 6 stones and 4 pounds (that's 88 pounds) and would like to lose another 2 stone. However...

I am beginning to think that I do need to have a new plan. I have not lost a vast amount of weight since November, just going down and then up a few pounds around Christmas time, and then back down again. Now don't get me wrong, my weight loss has been slow and this is a good thing, but I feel that I now need to look at my health more. As we move into Spring, and later on into Summer, I need to be as healthy as I can within the limits of my physical ability.

It's not always about looks. To feel that you look good is important for your self-esteem, but it's not just the gift-wrap that makes the present. How I look will help motivate me to look after myself more, but I am more and more aware that I have lost weight before and put it back on. This happens to a lot of people, but there are ways to stop it happening. I have to now think about what I am going to do going forward. We have had a couple of mild, sunny days this week and even though it is cold and grey today, warm weather is on it's way. I always feel it's so much easier to feel more motivated when the sky is blue :-). I would really like to weigh around about the 12 stone mark, two stone down from where I am now, but at the moment I think my priority is to maintain what I have achieved so far. I am only now beginning to really realise just what I achieved and I definitely don't want to lose it.

Before, when my weight crept back on it was so slow, maybe 7 pounds a month, and I would like to say I was unaware, but in truth I was in denial. I didn't want to get weighed, because I didn't want to admit what was happening. I really had learnt nothing. I stopped thinking about what I was eating, didn't get weighed and, lo and behold, the pounds crept back on. I justified it to myself by thinking it caused too much stress. I had put myself under the pressure of cutting my food back so much that I always felt like I was starving. Even though I liked the way I looked, and got so many compliments, I always felt hungry and deprived of the food I liked. I could only keep this up for so long. I love food, good food, different foods and to deprive myself of them was not going to end well.By reverting back to over eating the foods I loved without any form of monitoring was just going to take me straight back to square one.

I heard something this week that is so true. A “diet” is not a straight line with a start and a finish. It's a circle, it's ongoing, it is a way of life. And as a way of life, it has to be something you can happily live with. That's not as easy as it sounds, but it's the only way it can last and be a sustainable way of living.

After a lot of thinking, my plan for moving forward is this. Between now and the end of April I will work on ways of maintaining the weight I have lost, while adjusting my food accordingly, ie. not worrying too much if I lose weight for the moment, but being happy to remain the weight I am. Any weight loss would be a nice bonus, but it is not my main aim. I want to learn more about how to incorporate more things into my eating plan and give myself a more varied diet. I will then move forward into the beginning of May with stage two, and for the next six months hope to lose a little more weight.

To achieve this and not make the same mistakes of the past, there will be monitoring of what I weigh and the foods and calories I eat, but in a more relaxed way. I feel I have to do this to now settle into a new way of living and not let history repeat itself.

Will this work this way? Well, I am not sure, but I think I am learning about myself and the way that I look at food. There is no straight line for me, just hopefully a better kind of circle. I am, and will remain, as positive as I can be as I roll towards better weather and better times than what we have had recently.

That's all for now,

Until next time,

Love, Jackie

xx

HOW A BELGIAN ASTRONOMER FROM THE 1800s HAS AFFECTED MY LIFE

 

17^th February, 2021

B.M.I.

Those three letters B.M.I. What do they really, really, mean? Putting it as simply as I can, the Body Mass Index is a value made from the weight of a person and that person's height. This calculation was worked out by Adolphe Quetelet, a Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist, between 1830 and 1850. It works out roughly if a person is underweight, a normal weight, overweight or obese, but now in modern times it is questioned for so many reasons. There are so many things this equation doesn't take into account and I know for me that I would never now be able to reach a normal weight by this calculation. By my doctor's ideal weight template I should weigh between 8 stone, 13 lbs and 9 stone 6 lbs. If I ever reached that weight I would question just how healthy I really was, and I would never ever be able to keep myself at that weight. Years and years ago, when I did go to a slimming club, my target weight given to me was worked out from this equation, and until I reached it I would keep on paying my weekly fee. It may be different now, as I say I haven't been to one in many years, but many people still don't realise that different people of a similar height and weight can look different, and for many different reasons.

I myself can find it all very complicated and confusing, but there are some very interesting videos on Youtube about how two people of the same B.M.I. may, for whatever reason, look very different. I only know how the B.M.I. scale has affected me over the years. I can never, ever, remember going to the doctors and being the right B.M.I. I have never, ever, been “normal” :-). I have been told off so many times. From being 21 stone and a UK size 26, right down to 11 stones and a UK size 12, I still didn't fit the equation.

Many years ago I was refused varicose vein surgery because I was two stones overweight and the wrong B.M.I. Five years ago – nearly six now – I was refused joint surgery because my B.M.I was not 25 and we won't talk about how that same specialist said that fat people could not keep themselves clean and smelt, and didn't heal as well as they could because of infections they caused with bad hygiene. I weighed less then than I do now! When I went to see my present orthopaedic specialist, my B.M.I. stood at 43 and he said because of policy my B.M.I. had to be 35 or less. I thought at that stage “fair enough” and I got it down to that point. Now, until they can operate, I have to keep it below 37, but at least it's not 25 as the other so-called “gentleman” said. The B.M.I. equation has caused me personally a lot of stress over the years, but I do feel with many health professionals the area of the correct weight is, at last, softening. Perhaps one reason being that they themselves find it hard to conform to the ideal weight, although it still doesn't seem to stop some :-).

Perhaps one day the old B.M.I. equation will be taken down and filed away in the medical history archives and we will be treated as the individuals that we are. We can but hope, or at least we can be treated with a little more understanding and sensitivity when it puts us into a particular group.

At the moment, my B.M.I. stands at 32.6, down from 47.3. My present weight is 14 stone and my height is 5 feet and 5 inches and my dress size is a UK 14/16. I am still considered to be around 4 stone overweight and still in the obese group.

I will stay where I feel is right for me and not give that old equation a second thought.

That's all for now, until next time,

Love, Jackie

xx

WHY DO YOU REALLY SAY "DIET'S DON'T WORK?"

 

14^th February, 2021

I hear the words “Diets don't work!” so many times and those three small words can mean so many different things. If you would have asked me up until very recently “do diets work?”, I would have probably said not really. Diets, or to use the modern term “Weight Loss Programmes”, do work short term to help people lose weight, but the majority of people, mostly sooner rather than later, put it back on. It can be so much harder to maintain your weight loss than it is to lose the weight in the first place. Now this is where a lot of the confusion starts. “Diets” in themselves are only made to aid weight loss for a fix, a quick fix mainly, to lose weight. Most people want to lose weight quickly for whatever reason. It may be a few pounds for a special occasion or a holiday, followed by probably eating a lot on that occasion and then the pounds come straight back on.

Same really for when you lose weight for health reasons. It's the number on the scales that matters, not really, honestly, how you are getting there, and you don't really get any advice on how to keep it off. Most of the time the medical profession only what to know that magic number on the scales or your B.M.I. which is no real indicator of your true health.

The weight loss industry want you to shed those pounds over and over again, and even if they do offer you some kind of maintenance plan, it's not in their financial interest for slimmers to lose weight and keep it off long term. The majority of slimming clubs will have their short term members who want to lose weight for a holiday, etc. There will also be the ones who keep coming back because they have put weight back on and want to lose it again, and then there are the ones who keep coming back week after week, year after year, because they want to maintain their loss.

There is nothing wrong with this, if people are “happy” with it, if going to a club is for them, but I disliked going to slimming clubs. I hated the whole idea of being publically weighed, and following a diet that I quite often found complicated and restricting and didn't fit into my lifestyle. Even when I went to the N.H.S. group, it told me how to lose weight, but not how to really keep it off, or why i put it on so easily. I can't have been the only one that felt this way. For all the people that are in the magazines having lost weight, there are ones that feel like they have failed.There are those people who have lost weight, found the diet really easy and look great in photographs, and YOU have failed. Well, you haven't failed – the system has failed you. Diets don't work because, for many reasons, they are not complete, well monitored, or are simply not meant to work. The weight loss industry would not have survived over sixty years if their “diets” worked. They may have seemed to have changed things over the years, but their goal is still the same – to make money. Until recently the N.H.S. have put so much emphasis on a number on a scale and not so much on how and why you have really got there. What is becoming a worry is that when you realise that there is so much emphasis put on the number on the scales, but not on how the person is achieving the weight loss. Just what are they doing to achieve the loss? Knowingly or unknowingly so many want to get to a weight without really knowing what they are doing to their bodies. I know that I have done that in the past. Just wanting the weight to go down, without thinking about my health and wellbeing. You lose weight as quickly as you can, you look good, people comment on how good you look and then you go back to your old way of eating and, lo and behold, the weight comes back on.

To really lose weight the best way you can, you need to be prepared to lose it slowly, so slowly that no-one notices for a very long time, and be satisfied with that. You also need to look at what eating plan works for you and do your research to find out what is a sustainable way of living for you, you alone, and do it in the healthiest way that you can.

It can be so slow, so soul-destroying sometimes, with no quick fix, but when you begin to see the benefits they will be with you probably for a great deal longer, because it took a long time getting there. After all, if it takes a year or two, when you look back it's really no time at all if the results stay with you.

So, yes, I agree that “diets don't work”, but think about what you really want, no excuses, be honest with yourself, really look at yourself and work out just what is right for you. Do it for you, just you, and see where it takes you.

That's all for now,

Until next time,

Love

Jackie

xx