Love the Skin You're In!

[Rukshana666]

Right up until the age of 35 I lived a diet free life, eating and drinking anything and everything that moved and never put on an ounce of weight.

At 35 it almost felt like a switch had been turned off and from then on anything I ate would show on my hips, my stomach, my face and anywhere else it could find the space. As I used to joke while eating chocolate, ‘I can either eat it or rub it on my thighs because that’s where it’s going.’

From then on started my battle with the bulge and I tried every diet known to man and some I even made up. Some worked temporarily and some didn’t. In case you haven’t tried the cabbage soup diet, it really works but only if you can stand the wind. And once you have tried it you will never be able to look at a cabbage the same way again.

When I fell pregnant I realised this was possibly the only time in my life I would be able to eat anything I liked without a side order of guilt. Anyone else who has made that mistake will know it’s sooooo not worth it! By my 2nd trimester I was so huge I would rock myself to sleep trying to get up from the sofa. By the end of my 3rd trimester I was a whale. This made me think – if swimming is so good for the figure, how do you explain the whale? However I digress – by the time I went into labour I was as large as a planet and had to airlifted to the hospital through a hole in the ceiling.

After having my baby it was almost as though the switch which had been turned off had now flipped over to reverse and I was piling on the pounds in my sleep.

Once again I tried the more recent fad diets that had emerged onto the market. Atkins, Dukan, and even tried Weight Watchers. None worked permanently. I stopped Weight Watchers after a few weeks as I was fed up of the lady telling me it didn’t matter that I hadn’t lost any weight or that I had put on 5lbs, the fact that I was trying was what mattered. But more importantly they wouldn’t let me rig the scales like I could do at home. They probably also got fed up of me saying each week at the weigh in – ‘Scales scales on the floor, give me a reading I adore’.

Then I decided to go on a little known diet I had read about years ago.

Here it is –
If you eat anything before 8am – it has no calories
If you eat anything white – it has no calories
If you eat something and no one sees you eating it – it has no calories.
If you eat something from someone else’s plate – IT HAS NO CALORIES!

I went on this diet for a month and I lost 30 days.

A friend of mine told me to go to the gym and that would work. It didn’t. I went to the gym everyday for a week and nothing happened. Then she clarified for me that I had to actually DO something in the gym. I asked her what she thought I should do. She said, ‘well at least go there and lift something’. I don’t know what she was talking about; I was in there for a week lifting my coke bottle, my mars bars and everything else that went into my mouth.

In all seriousness I HATED the gym. I hated feeling like I was either a hamster on a treadmill or a cyclist going nowhere and I had to do this while watching mindless television which faced the exercise machines so I couldn’t even get away from them.

Then another friend introduced me to running. [Thanks Kate] At first I hated that as well. I could barely run 500 yards before I needed oxygen on 120 litres a minute.

Then I began to enjoy the fresh air and the change of scenery each time I turned a corner. I loved being a voyeur as I jogged along, observing people. The man doing battle with his dog as he walked him – the dog pulling at the lead because he wanted to go and roll in the mud... the dog always won.

The little 2 yr old girl who stopped to pick up an autumn leaf and look at it with the utmost curiosity and then show her mother like she had struck gold.

The builders on a site who would whistle at me and then ‘woof’ at me when I gave them a wave. [I will never tire of that!]

And soon without realising it I started to run further and faster than I had ever run in my life, all the time encouraged by my friend. [Thanks again Kate!]

I lost all the weight, was in the best shape of my life and felt GREAT!

Then something called ‘life’ happened and I got caught up in the usual trap of not running one day and then the next and I stopped for a bit and then didn’t take it up again. I got fed up of being on a constant diet and constantly feeling hungry. I put on some weight again and then realised I was trying to achieve the unachievable. I was trying to get back to my pre baby weight but I was older now and my metabolism had changed, my life had changed and I didn’t have as much time or energy as I used to due to the above. Yes you can read that and say these are all excuses and perhaps sometimes they are but what I did do was come to terms with the fact that I would probably always be half a stone heavier than I wanted to be and I had to either learn to live with that or kill myself trying.

I decided on the former. Today after coming full circle, I am at a weight that I have accepted will be with me for the foreseeable future. I still run to keep in shape and be fit. I still look at my friends [yes Kate you are one of them] with envy as they have the will power to do what I can’t. I still say, ‘lucky bitch’ under my breath and sound like I am coughing when I meet my friends who can still eat what they like and never put on weight.

I still have the magnet on the fridge that says, ‘Lord if you can’t make me thin at least make my friends fat.’ [I am still waiting for my prayers to be answered]

So it took a lot of willpower but I finally gave up dieting!

And yes there may come a day when I will want to shed that half a stone and will go mad trying the latest diet and there might come a day when I start running again like I am trying to catch the Concorde, and there might come a day when I actually lose that half a stone and keep it off for a whole week!

But till then at least I am loving the skin I am in and if there is a chance this has hit a note with any women out there who feel the same then if you can get to this place, it’s pretty good and not as stressful.....
.....but how long will it last... let’s hope it lasts a little longer than my New Year’s resolutions!

Rukshana Horwood