Shalimar, I can totally empathise as your sort of post was the sort I used to make on the low carb forum I joined several years ago.
However. I’m going to be a bit blunt here and I hope nobody will be offended. The turning point for me for starting low carb was approaching 50 with a dodgy back, doing nothing I enjoyed because I didn’t ‘deserve’ it till I was thinner, tired all the time, spending most of my time asleep on the sofa after work, no joy at all in life.
Another forum buddy called me out on the way I kept starting, cheating, blaming my own silly self and my own dodgy health, and how ultimately, it was down to ME to make that difference. She was 66, had been grossly overweight her whole life – she had her babies when she weighed in at well over 20 stones, and still carried with her the humiliation she’d been made to feel. Even that, her husband running off with a skinny b*tch, her health deteriorating to a point where she rarely left the house, wasn’t enough to make her stop.
One day she sat down aged 64 and realised that if she lived as long as her mum (unlikely, with her health problems) she had just 12 summers to achieve everything she wanted to achieve in her life. Just 144 months. She determined that she was going to spend six of those months investing in herself to ensure she could travel, study, love life and feel good about herself for the last lap.
She did it one day at a time, one hour at a time, one mouthful at a time. She walked everywhere, had swimming lessons as that was the only exercise she could do without harming her back. She never, ever cheated, (which is all ‘falling off the waggon is – just a nicer way of saying you cheated yourself), used to post regularly about how she didn’t care how offended her friends and family were when she refused food – she was totally selfish – and she lost ten stones in six months. Her turning point was when she realised that she didn’t actually have to DO anything, she simply had to STOP doing things. Eating rubbish. Starting diets. Making excuses for herself. She was an inspiration to me, and adopting her attitude helped me lose seven stones, and keep it off.
We can all talk about ‘easing ourselves in’ and ‘starting again tomorrow’ and making commitments and discussing our plans to start sometime soon. . I’ve been doing that for months, blaming my diabetes diagnosis, waiting for things to happen. But ultimately, you have to grab yourself by the scruff of your neck and work hard to deserve that JOY. I can still remember the utter thrill of seeing those scales go down, week by week, feeling myself getting fitter and stronger, loving it. I want to feel that way again and if it takes three or four months of NOT sabotaging myself, at all, I know it is worth it.
Julie, my Forum buddy, has stayed slim for seven years and has completed an arts degree, written a book and travelled extensively, crossing off two countries a year from her bucket list. I hope her story inspires people here as much as she inspires me.. MK x. 😃
