Drastic Change Required!

suziorr1981

Hi All,

So my name is Suzi. I'm a 31 year old single (until recently) mother of 1. I work part time (in a kitchen!!), I am nearing the end of my degree, I'm the vice chair of the local PTA and I mentor troubled teenagers. I'm 5 ft 1in and weigh in at a whopping 16st 4.75lbs according to my very old weight watchers scales!!

After I had my child 8 years ago I joined weight watchers and after a year had lost 3 stone which was AMAZING!! But when I stopped my food diary and going to meetings the weight slowly crept back on! I am AWFUL with food.......it's just never been a priority in my life. I could go a couple of days forgetting to eat until I got the shakes and needed a quick fix! Usually something chocolate based or a savoury snack.....basically cupboard junk food. Then I would stuff my face with it for a few days until I forgot to eat again. Obviously this is no way to think about food or to treat my body! When I first saw how much weight watchers intended for me to eat in a day written down in front of me I felt physically sick wondering when in the day I would have time to fit it all in but I managed it and found the food diary definitely helps me to keep a track and remember I HAVE to eat normally before I binge!

I haven't really tried many diets since then.......I did Atkins for a while but the fact that I am not really a red meat eater a) made it difficult to maintain and b) caused me to end up with gallstones followed by a surgery to remove my gallbladder. I suffer now with abscesses and lesions around my groin and armpits. After several visits to the doctors, emergency hospital operations and constant questions the only reason the doctors could give me was that I smoked!!! Funnily enough I started getting these problems when I was 13 years old and I most certainly wasn't smoking then! I took this to be that I would just inevitably be stuck with having abscesses for the rest of my life UNTIL I saw an episode of embarrassing bodies. It's not a programme I would normally watch BUT as fate would have it there is a reason for my condition. It's not treatable and I can't remember what the doctor called it but it's basically where I am obese my sweat glands are getting clogged up and can't release the essential things they need to so it swells up under the skin.

Genius!! I MUST lose weight to try and stop them clogging up....why had no one ever told me this before?? To boot I want to start a family with my new partner later in the year and I know that at my age and being overweight conception can be more difficult so if I start now I can maybe be fit enough when the time comes!

I started on Friday 18/1/13 without the aid of calorie counting tools or a diet plan. I literally just wanted to be more concious about what I was eating and make myself eat 3 meals a day again rather than snacking on rubbish when I felt a twinge of hunger eventually! Sitting in Nero with the other school mum's and endeavouring to try my first ever porridge I explained my plan to the other mums. My friend Sue then told me all about a diet she'd read about, the 5:2 fasting diet. I'd never heard of it before but when I considered that I normally skip meals on a regular basis it sounded quite doable.

I carried on eating normally through Saturday, keeping a note on my laptop of what I was consuming and then I researched the 5:2 diet where this site and the phone app came highly recommended and FREE!! It must be fate was all I could think! I down loaded the myfitnesspal on my phone and started calculating the previous days food. I never knew my intake should only be 1600 cal a day until I filled in my profile and I'd been working towards the average of 2000 cal a day for women. I was surprised that the first day I'd eaten well and only ate about 1900 cal (I know this is not in my target now but at the time I was pleased I'd managed under the 2000 cal mark.) The second day was even better coming in at 1800 cal. I decided to go on the basic of the 5:2 diet and only eat 500 cal on Sunday and Monday.....I wasn't quite so successful but I managed to only go 100 cal over on the first day (where I forgot my phone and couldn't calculate the calories until I got home) and then only 50 cal over the following day.

The fasting part wasn't as easy as I thought..........I don't like to be told I am not allowed to do something so psychologically, although I tend to skip meals easily of my own accord, by telling myself I wasn't allowed to eat it was almost all I wanted to do! I felt a little weak on the first day, slightly tired, had a bit of a headache but all that passed by the second day knowing I could eat what I wanted the next day. I know I was boring my boyfriend and my child senseless with my constant diet talk so I found a 5:2 diet site on facebook and joined it! I started to chat to people and found out that most don't do 2 days fasting consecutively as its more of a strain on the body. Then I found out there is a calculation I should have followed and that I shouldn't be eating 500 cal on fast days but I should actually be eating 25% of my daily cal allowance!! Oh dear! Not much I can do about that now but I won't let it defeat me. I just need to plan better for next weeks fasting days.

I bought the 5:2 diet book on my kindle and it's made for quite an interesting read. Although I mainly want to loose weight there are several health benefits involved which to me seems like an added bonus! I'm loving the myfitnesspal app on my phone to! Everything seems to be made so much easier now a days when you want to lose weight! I will eventually incorporate fitness into my diet plan but at the moment life is so busy fitting more in just seems impossible for now. I'm thinking of getting back into my wii fit and the zumba on the wii in the next week or so when my body adapts to the diet more PLUS it means I don't have to go out and wobble in front of other people until I feel ready to do so!!

I'm actually really excited now! I have been braking the cardinal rule of NOT weighing yourself too often and have kept track daily this week for some reason. I haven't always logged it on here as I want to keep Friday morning as my official weigh in time but so far my scales are feeling less pressured! This week although it's the unofficial amount and may change by the morning, I've lost 6 whole pounds!!! Nearly half a stone!! YAY!!! Obviously this is only due to it being my first week so I am losing a lot of water retention right now and hopefully will get to a steadier rate of 1-2 lbs a week in the next couple of weeks.

One very noticeable change in my metabolism so far is the regularity of my bowl movements. Previously I would go once anywhere between a 1-2 week period.....I know how wrong this is!! Now I am having to go on a daily basis!! I'm assuming this is because of the new dietary habits and am super impressed! I am also however taking Bladder Wrack pills with each meal and multivitamins which I never took before now.

I would love to hear from other people in a similar situation......if only to feel like I'm not alone! I'd like to be able to offer support and feel supported rather than that I am boring people who don't understand where I am coming from.

I don't know how to add people as friends on here yet as this is my first day on the site on my laptop but if anyone wishes to add me or tell me how I go about adding people please let me know as I would like to celebrate your losses with you all to.

Many thanks,

Suzi

P.S. Probably far to long an introduction and would have been better as a blog! If you read ALL of it thanks for your time and sorry I waffled on so long!! :embarassed: