In four weeks’ time, I will be twenty-six years old. I am 13st and 7lbs (189lbs) and only 7 stone off my target. This is entirely achievable, although I think I have to bring my daily calorie amount down a little to manage it safely. This means that in a year I will have lost 5st and 8lbs – 78lbs – without significantly impacting my lifestyle. Sure, I eat less and work out more but that hasn’t taken away from what I do as hobbies or general interests – if anything it has added to it. But, inarguably, there has been change and that is what I am posting about today.
Biggest change? Eating habits. This is probably obvious but that doesn’t make it any less important to discuss. I do eat less – and less often. I now nibble at nibbles, rather than devour them en masse, and I snack on fruit over crisps or fast food. Deserts I avoided anyway but I’ve started having these now as a good way to compliment an otherwise-healthy meal when I’m low on calories so I don’t have to stuff my face with spinach leaves or other salad in a confused binge eating session. I very rarely have crisps at all now, and only drink sugar-free drinks (for the most part. Recent Red Bull moments have basically banned that from my list of acceptable drinks altogether), both of which have been a massive influence in both my weight loss and general eating habits. I still have these things occasionally, but nowhere near as often or in as large amounts.
Second biggest change is the amount of physical exercise. Again, this is pretty obvious if you talk to me or read this blog but it is, again, still important. I am walking places more, running places more, randomly doing press-ups or sit-ups occasionally when I’m bored or waiting on something. I find myself more able – and more willing – to exert myself physically and do physical labour or activity. It’s a pretty awesome feeling, and very liberating. Sure, actually doing actually requires effort but it seems I’ve got a lot more of that to give now.
Next a little bit of a negative; I’ve become more judgemental of my appearance. Conversely one could argue (as I’m sure one of my brothers would) that caring more about you appearance isn’t a bad thing and I can’t disagree with that statement. It just becomes a bit of an issue when I find myself judging how I look compared to how I want to look, rather than how I did in the past. I think it’s not necessarily fair on myself and might make me appear vain. I also worry about how my hair looks, which isn’t a thought that’s really gone through my head before now. This concern does, however, provide a constant source of motivation. I just hope it hasn’t made me overly-critical.
Apart from those changes I’ve noticed my conversations have become a lot more focused, or at least I have had a lot more focused conversations. This happens to anyone who gains a lot of knowledge very quickly on a specific subject, I think, and since my friends know I’ve been finding out a lot about the subject so they have been asking me questions about this specifically – which is a compliment – so I don’t think I’ve lost my ability to have diverse conversations. However, I do take interest in a lot of conversations and articles that I previously would have ignored and my twitter account is plagued by any number of fitness/diet related tweets from myself or people I have followed purely for that reason.
I have a lot less free time. This is probably a good thing – I used to spend my time on a whole host of time consumer and fairly unproductive tasks and time-spends. I now feel I achieve a lot more on each and every day, which is immensely satisfying, and I really appreciate it when I spend an evening relaxing or by myself. I’ve recently reaffirmed to myself that I am cripplingly introverted, and part of my apparently perpetual exhaustion is propagated by my plentiful public activities on top of work and personal life. I wouldn’t say I don’t enjoy it, but I am very busy now. I get very little time to myself – yes, this is totally my choice but if I want to enjoy my life I have to do things I enjoy, right? Seeing friends, doing things, actually indulging in my plethora of hobbies, they all take time. Really it’s a bit of a timetabling miracle that I find time to get my blog entries done some weeks.
I’ve also become more grateful to people – for a lot of things. Support, encouragement, little phrases I used to consider just lip service have all started to mean more to me (probably because I think I’ve earned it) and each and every time someone says something along those lines to me it makes me feel like I have achieved something. So I am grateful, for that and also for everyone who comes to the gym with me, even if it’s not every week, or talks to me about food and dieting or shows their support in other ways, great or small. It has shown me exactly how good my friends are and I can only be grateful to them for it. I hope I show it enough, and regularly.
Lastly I have become a lot more judgemental and damning of people who are selfish or ungrateful. I am guilty of behaving in this manner – hopefully a lot less often now than previously – but this has been something I’ve tried to actively remove from my behaviour. I find as detestable in myself as I do in others, and I’ve found it a good judge of someone’s character to see how they react when I tell them they’re being ungrateful. People who throw it back in my face and say they have nothing to be grateful for, or that they deserve better anyway, are the kind of people I’m trying not to associate with.
It’s mainly due to a fear I’ll start replicating this behaviour, which would be horrible. I tried to explain it to someone as them spreading negative energy and attitude, and that it would infect my spiritual balance. I was only being semi-serious – I do believe that a person’s outward expression of energy and emotion can strongly influence another’s, but I was trying to see how far I could push the argument before they called bullshit. It was about the time I started talking about their negative energy creating evil spirits which then escaped from them and tried to possess others she started getting suspicious.
The point behind this tangent is that I’m trying to avoid this behaviour in a very proactive manner; I’ve come to understand that if you focus too much on what you think you deserve other people will start thinking you deserve lesser and lesser amounts. I forgot that for a short time recently and my general life satisfaction really did take a hit as a result. Yes, you absolutely have to live for yourself BUT you also have to live with other people, and they will be far more willing to offer you things if you offer something to them. Unless they’re a complete ingrate, at which point you should let them know and/or leave them to it. Alone.
So that is how my diet and weight loss has affected me, from my point of view. I would love to hear any feedback or opinions friends and/or readers have had from either seeing me in person or from a change in tone, style and attitude in my writing so please let me know – yes, this partly an attention seeking, ego-feeding request (to which I can unashamedly admit :D ) but it would also be very interesting to know what people thought. So let me know, and let me know as well if you’re dieting or have changed your eating or exercise habits recently how you think it has affected you. Comparing stories is always good – we could have a camp fire with smores, if we found a low-calorie smores substitute.
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