So I find myself standing in a Whistlestop at Paddington
Station in silence holding a packet of Fruit Pastilles, for a good three
minutes, just staring at them – there are two very wrong things with this
image. Firstly, is the monologue that is
going on in my head whilst holding said pastilles, and the fact I look
mental. Secondly, I don’t even like
Fruit pastilles.
How has it come to this?
How have I become a person who is holding a packet of fruit pastilles in
a train station, whilst inside her head I am saying “you only want these because
you are tired, stressed and upset after that work meeting? You will only feel better for ten
minutes. You will literally only store
this as fat, around your belly (where sugar lives on our body.) If you are prepared for that then buy the
pastilles, but don’t kid yourself anything else will happen… Like I said,
mental. On my dark days I curse the
names Sarah Wilson, Nicole Mowbray, James Duigan and David Gillespie. But really they have opened my eyes to the
answer to the answer to my long term problem with my weight and my emotional attachment
to certain food groups. In order to keep
me focused and honest, as well as to hopefully educate and inspire others as I
have been, I have decided to write this blog to track my progress from the very
beginning. It is scary and exciting as I
have no idea how this is going to end.
If I believe in what I am reading, and I live by this lifestyle which I
believe in, then I should be typing this at a natural, healthy body weight in
the next 12 months … Well here goes!
One day about a month ago I was reading the Daily Mail
online and I came across an article by Nicole Mowbray. It was like opening a page in my journal and
reading a description about my life (ok, apart from the fact she cycles to work
every day and is 5inchs taller than me).
Here was this woman who thought she was making good food choices yet
found herself overweight, tired and overall not feeling her best. The reason I was so drawn to Mowbray is because she
started at a size 16, as I am currently and did all the things I thought were
right – lots of low fat yogurt, agave syrup not sugar, organic dark chocolate,
loads of sushi, restricted carbs, not too much fat, good grains – but was not
losing any weight! In fact she, like
myself, was gaining weight! Then she
realised what her diet was dominate in – SUGAR.
Now I had read The Virgin Diet about four months ago and while I had
enjoyed it found it just so depressing to keep up (no wheat, dairy, corn, sugar,
soy, peanuts … and three other things) I had fallen back to old ‘healthy’
habits. I did really like a lot of the
points JJ Virgin made though, specifically about sugar. Sugar is the current ‘devil’ of the food
industry and like most people I have watched and read lots of research about
it. However it was on reading Mowbray's book
and then the subsequent books by Wilson specifically, that a light bulb went off – I AM A SUGAR
ADDICT. A tough pill to swallow
(especially without the spoon of sugar Mary Poppins chases her med’s with) but
it was true. Here I was shovelling sushi
filled with mirin, entire melons (one of the highest sugar fruits), litres of
Coke Zero, low fat granola, low fat soya yogurts, lindt dark chocolate …. In fact
I was CRAVING these foods like an addict, but hadn’t made the connection that
this was in fact just SUGAR I was eating.
I would drink on the weekends (sugar again) and then do the standard
hangover Sunday with carbs and sweets.
How much damage could just the weekend do? Well I am 31, and in the last three years I
have gained 3 stone through what I thought was ‘healthy’ eating. I have had a tough 3 years for personal
reasons and I have can now definitely see that during the course of this I have
become addicted to sugar to self-medicate the stress and emotional challenges I
have been facing. But now it is time to
make a change! I still may have a lot
going on in my personal life that is challenging but I need to sort my health
and my weight out if I am going to stand any chance of sorting the other stuff
out.
I used to have a blog reviewing restaurants, and cocktail bars. This blog is going to be more of a journal, where I will share my sugar free highs and lows, products and recipes that I have found great and just generally my experiences while changing my life - I am a normal, chubby, greedy girl who eats with her heart not her head; if I can do this anyone can!
