Hello.
My name is Zoë.
I am 26 and after 9 months of writing a blog for workI decided I would like to try my hand at writing my own piece of stuff on t’internet.
I know it’s very hard to begin a blog without some kind of focus. The focus of this blog has been eating (ha!) away at for some time. I guess all my life really.
I am overweight. Fat. Chubby. Big. On the large side, a bloater, roly poly, not as tall as I am wide.
This has been the case for all my life really. It would be very easy to blame my mum and dad and say they never said no, but that wouldn’t be true. I was sneaky. I would gauge how much food was available for all and ensure I got the biggest possible share. I would take 3 biscuits when I was only really allowed 1. I always finished my plate and always always hung around for pudding and never said no to a drink and toast before
Coupled with a complete hatred of P.E. at school (not easy when the school in question was a county hockey legend) – if they’d had a pool I like to think it was a different story but that is neither here or there I grew upwards and outwards and just accepted that I was never to be one of the smaller girls. I was the funny one, everyone’s friend, no one’s girlfriend…but what the heck? You’ve got to take what you can get.
My overly large physique has never particularly bothered me. No, I can’t really ever buy clothes from TopShop. Yes, I get bored by shopping because trying things on is so frustrating. Yes, a massive part of my fear of rollercoasters is due to the face that I’m scared that I won’t fit in the seats. But. It’s me. It’s always been me. It’s never put me off wearing what I want to, or going out in ridiculous outfits *ahembacklesswondersahem* just because it’s the fashion. I was always the girl who said “Yes. You can be happy and fat.”
So. What changed?
Fast forward to 2011. 2 years since I shed 2 stone for the beautiful Wonder Wifey’s wedding (after which I still didn’t fit into the beautiful bridesmaid’s dress-fucking Warehouse sizing!). I was faced with redundancy and losing the job that I had invested so much in over the last five years (in a restaurant, eating whatever the hell the chefs cared to make me – again not good for my constitution) and no idea what I was going to do with my life.
The Beautiful LS let me know of the possibility of a Trainee Event Manager position where she worked which was handy as she was about to embark on her own adventure teaching in Spain. After a sequence of events with A that I like to call “The Back and Forth Emails”, I was offered the position. That was in March 2011 and I began the first week of April. That was it – finally doing the job that I had trained for and dreamed about for 8 years.
I love my job. I mean, you know people say that and you don’t really think that they mean it and they are only saying that because they feel they should? That isn’t me. I LOVE MY JOB! Yes there are couples that I would rather not see too often, but when it comes to their big day if I can help to make it go without a hitch then it gives me massive warm and fuzzies.
The only reason that I have not chained myself to the venue and had it tattooed on my forehead? My eating habits. I eat all day. I sit behind a desk and eat chocolate and biscuits and drink coffee with sugar and pies for lunch with crisps and toast laden with butter. It is a nightmare of my own volition. Which, I believe is truly avoidable with some light discipline from yours truly.
Cut to last night, New Year’s Eve. I had already decided to start this blog in the New Year, but at midnight, when I found myself sobbing into a half drunk bottle of champagne about the fact that I was 26, alone and with nothing to look forward to I knew that it had to start this week. I realised that I was the one holding myself back, not seeing friends because I dont fit into any of my clothes anymore and I don’t want them to think I am some sort of pig. I want to be happy again, I want to find someone who makes me happy, I want to be that person that everyone wants to be with and a leader not a follower. I need to take a stand and be my own person. To get back my confidence and find my fun factor. All of this starts with feeling better about ME!
So, in a very roundabout way, that is why I am writing this blog. I am starting my regime tomorrow, Monday 2nd January 2012 (I didn’t start today as I knew a hangover day to start a diet is really not advisable). Exercise 5 days a week – I will be starting to run, (hopefully with the help of BFFSIL) 5 days a week, with my days off from work being rest days, and decent eating. I know you have to do both, I need to make the change and I hope it will be one for the better.
My first goal is 17th March – a wedding at work that is close to the bone for a mixture of reasons but more of that nearer the time.
As I have said on my title – and to quote a friend of mine SeeJayGee – It’s not about losing weight it’s about not looking fat anymore.
I promise not all posts will be this long but it has been very cathartic!
Over and out on the eve of the new me
Zx
Operation Zoë 