Sunday 14 July 2024 – 2 stones down!

Today I hit my 2 stone weight loss. I actually hit it on Wednesday, then it went up a bit, down a bit and finally settled back to exactly 2 stone today. I saw the first photo of myself where I didn’t immediately hate myself. I zoomed in and thought, hey, not bad.

I was delivering a training workshop in London on Thursday with my friend and co-author Kay Woodburn. We had a large group, 50 people, and I stood there, in the middle of the room, feeling far more confident that I would have 2 stones ago.

I still get nervous every time I present. I think it shows that I care. But, despite having about 25 years’ experience of delivering training events, the one factor that has the biggest impact on my confidence is how I look. I know that I have never judged anyone that I have worked with on their weight rather than their performance, expertise, or experience, so why do I assume that is what everyone is thinking about me?

It doesn’t help that the book we have written is called ‘Grittitude – Choose your own life story’ and is all about creating the life you want. What credibility can I have talking about creating the life you want, when there is something so clearly evident about my life that I am not happy about? Well, that is changing. I am not even sure how it will feel when this weight is gone. Will it change who I am?

I have always maintained that it will not. I will still be me, just me in smaller clothes. But what if it changes me in ways I cannot even imagine yet?

When I look back at all of the very worst photos of me, they are all of me having a great time somewhere. Being fat has never stopped me doing anything I wanted to do. Admittedly, when I have seen the photos afterwards, it has given me a pretty horrible reality check, but it couldn’t take away from the fact that I still went on the holiday, went to the party, rode on the carousel.

I am now on week 10 of the skinny jab. I feel that I have started to settle in to this new way now. The last couple of weeks has followed the same routine;

Monday – feel queasy, can hardly eat at all – weight down a bit

Tuesday – slightly queasy, can hardly eat at all – weight down a bit

Wednesday – feeling better, able to more – weight down a bit

Thursday – feel fine, eating is ok, still not hungry – weight same or up a bit

Friday – I want carbs!! Carbs for breakfast, lunch and tea! It’s not hunger, but it is a bit of ‘food noise’ – weight same or up a bit

Saturday – weight up due to all the carbs, so have a zero-carb day to prepare for main weigh in on Sunday

Sunday – ‘official’ weigh in and jab day, feel ok, weight back to what it had been on Wednesday, but down for the overall week. The day when I am most likely to let myself cheat a bit, e.g. bit of dessert, something sweet.

So, I am feeling good. This has been my smallest weight loss since I started, but I am feeling less obsessed by it all now. I will be very happy if I continue to lose 1-2 lb every week. Now that the initial 2 stone has gone, I feel so much better, that the urgency has reduced, and now I feel like it can go slowly, as long as it continues to go.

I still have five and a half stones to go to target, I am still very fat, but I feel confident that I can trust myself to not obsess over every carbohydrate, every 0.4lb going up and down. I am ready to focus on the weight loss over the week, not expecting to see it every day.

That is what I will keep telling myself, anyway.

Today I have started my new pen. I am choosing to stay on 5mg for another month and will order another 5mg next time.

Because I expect to be on the medication for many more months, I do not want to go up a dose until the current one stops working. I want to keep the option to increase for as long as possible. And while the weight loss has slowed a bit, I am still feeling queasy the day after the jab, and still feeling the effects of the appetite suppression for the whole week.  When I say that by Thursday I can eat more, I mean that I find myself fancying something, but if I actually stop and think about it, I am fancying it, but I am not hungry.

Yesterday lunch time my hubby was making a ham sandwich and I thought, that looks nice, I’d like one of those. But then realised I wasn’t hungry. So, I had one single bite of his, just to have the taste, and I was happy not to have any more.

My hope is that, because my journey will be long, that these new behaviours will become my new habit. Checking, am I hungry? Opting for ‘just one bite’. Choosing a carb or non carb day.

That’s the plan!