Begin at the Beginning

Who am I?

I am the lone porketeer, conspicuous in my determination to preserve my online anonymity – picture aside, since half of my face is obscured by a handy stuffed devil which I am symbolically attempting to eat. More mundanely, I am a twenty-one year old administration assistant and soon to be masters student who is fat. And like so many others of my ilk, I’ve decided that the path to world domination/being slightly less porky lies with blogging about the journey. So here I am.

What are my goals?

I have never experienced many of the things that other obese women have. I’ve never had to get a seatbelt extension on a plane. I’ve never experienced breathlessness walking up a flight of stairs or tying my shoes. I’ve never had a tug-of-war conversation with myself over a chocolate bar or a piece of pie. I’ve never broken down in tears in a changing room when I couldn’t find anything to fit me. But as it stands, I am a UK size 16, languishing near the bottom of the “obese” BMI category, and for the first time in my life, my ankles hurt. They hurt from lugging around extra weight that I don’t need. And that worries me.

So my goals are thus:

• To transform my ungainly 220lb and 5′10″ body into a much svelter 160lb mean machine through healthy eating and exercise.
• To actually learn to enjoy exercise instead of loathing it.
• And finally, to see if I can learn something about myself along the way.

Why now?

Despite not suffering through my weight, it’s always been a lifelong obsession for me. Both of my parents are overweight and both are obsessed about it. Throughout my childhood they swung wildly between binging and strict starvation-exercise regimes egged on by one another. For most of my life I’ve had no idea what a truly healthy routine should consist of.

As a consequence, I’ve flirted with diets throughout my life. My first and third years at university were characterised by excessive weightloss, followed by unbelievable weight gains. Now, a year after I graduated with a degree in psychology and anorexic tendencies, I’ve finally figured out that being healthy doesn’t include a binge-starve cycle at all.

My original start weight was 252lbs around this time last year, but I lost 32lbs from a variety of crash diets and other unhealthy means. Since the weight didn’t go back on, I’ve decided to include that loss – mostly just to see how far I’ve come!

Also, as I mentioned, my ankles hurt. The pain isn’t excruciating, and I’m far from my highest weight, but it is unexpected. I do a desk job. I get a maximum of 3,000 steps per day under my belt. My body has no reason to be complaining unless it’s down to the stress of my weight on my bones.

When am I planning to reach goal?

The simple answer to this is, when I reach it. My initial goal is 160lbs, but that may be too heavy for me, since I’ve deliberately set it above my “ideal” weight as defined by BMI. I have a large frame, and I value muscle over skinniness, so traditional assumptions based on BMI would probably see me shooting for an impossible goal. I want to be able to maintain my new weight, whatever it ends up being, and not having to workout for hours at a time whilst living on a few lettuce leaves. Life’s too short for that kind of torture.

How am I going to lose the weight?

Finally! I’m glad you asked.

After having experimented throughout my life, I’ve discovered that I am a typical lazy fat person. I am the very definition of the stereotype, the couch potato who stuffs down crisps and junk food whilst vegging in front of the tv, piggy little eyes glued to the screen. If it were up to me – and it has been up to me since I moved out of the parental home four years ago – I’d spend most of my day near horizontal. I give fat people a bad name.

On the other end of the spectrum, once I gain focus, I can be extremely tenacious. And I mean to the point of obsession. At the height of last year’s dieting madness, I was surviving on less than 500 calories per day, and 5 hours of sleep. I worked a physically demanding job at a cinema which required me to be standing/sweeping for up to 12 hours at a time, as well as studying for my finals, partying every night and going to the gym as often as I could manage. Needless to say, the weight dropped off. But at the same time, my hair had started to fall out, I hadn’t had a period in 3 months, and I was hollow with hunger. I was a wreck, albeit a slim one.

So, there are two sides to every diet, and those are mine. As a consequence, I’ve decided not to take the hell-for-leather approach that I usually do, and instead gradually introduce new concepts into my life, as recommended by just about everyone who has ever lost weight and successfully kept it off.

The first step is admitting you have a problem. The second is posting it up for the world to see, so here goes:

Wish me luck!