Who Am I?

Without wishing to digress into a philosophical daydream, I thought I'd better expand on the 'About Me' section, and explain a bit about what has lead me to this point.

So. I am 24.5 years old (and now feeling very like Adrian Mole - but you can learn a LOT in 6 months. You can also lose a lot of weight in that time, so yes, it IS relevant...) I overuse the ellipsis (...) which will no doubt annoy me as much as it annoys you (eventually). I live in the country, I love the outdoors, and I love food.

I have been overweight since I was a child - not huge, not obese (some of the kids nowadays.... Christ! You wouldn't have got many of those in a Titanic lifeboat) but overweight. Solid, maybe. I have clear recollections in primary school of never wanting to be the volunteer for those fun little 'calculate the weight and convert it to imperial' type exercises - I'm pretty sure my weight as a 9/10 year old was 50kg which is 7 stone 12 lbs. That seems like a teeny tiny amount to me now, but when you consider that the average for a 10 year old girl is 5 stone 7 lbs... not good.

At the age of 14, I weighed almost 12-and-a-half stone. That was 10 years ago! From then, my weight didn't fluctuate much and when I finished my GAP year and went to uni, I still weighed about the same. I am 5'6" (1.68m), by the way, so that was a BMI of 28. Click here for a BMI calculator, by the way. That's officially FAT.

I have dieted on and off since the age of 16. I think the lightest I got to between the age of 14 and 19 was 11st 12lbs (BMI just under 27 - so heading in the right direction). Then uni happened - and a few weeks in, I got a bad case of glandular fever and ended up in hospital. After going home, I still couldn't eat for a few weeks and dropped to my thinnest since my pre-teens - and yet STILL weighed over 11-and-a-half stone. No bloody justice!! Needless to say, once I started eating again I had to make up for lost time and put on weight very quickly! Over the next few years I tried the odd half-hearted diet and yo-yo'd a little.

On 1st January 2006 I decided enough was enough - I HAD to lose weight. I started on a low-carb diet, and was pretty successful. I dropped the first stone relatively quickly, but then weight loss slowed and motivation diminished (would you like to get the violins out now?) and I'd have a naughty period, put a few lbs back on, then be good and drop half a stone - so overall I was losing weight gradually, but a bit like 2 steps forward and 1 back - ie getting nowhere fast!

So. Action IS needed!! Since 01/01/06 I have lost 2 stone (hurrah!) but weighing in at 12st 12lbs with a BMI of 29 there's still plenty to go to be 'healthy'. I know people who have been very successful on the 'Lipotrim' diet - initially total food replacement, going onto the careful re-feed, and finally maintenance program. I feel I need the kind of program which will help stop me cheating (and surely not eating any food will help stop me having 'just a little bit more'!) and help me get to my target weight quickly.

More on targets and goals in the next entry!