Face the Fats!

Hi There Everyone!
I’m back on the blog after a few months of coups, threatened cyclones and no Internet connection, and am looking forward to chatting with you about the inevitable topic of the New Year amongst women - weight loss.

Before I get ahead of myself, for those of you who are new to the Family Room, I am a Nutritionist, from Sydney, currently living with my lovely family in the glorious isles of Fiji, and am a devoted follower of thefamilyroom gang.

Anyway, weight loss.

How many of you have vowed that this is the year and bought gym memberships, clothes 3 sizes too small for when you’ve lost enough weight to fit into them, and made statements like “no more carbs for me”, while piling low fat pretend foods into your trolley????

Well if the answer is “yes, I have”, I can promise you you’re not alone.

How’s it going so far?? And how on earth did you choose a method of shedding kilos with all the diets and craziness out there???

From Atkins to Oprah to South Beach and the Zone, it’s not an area for the fainthearted and often requires a degree to not only understand it all but to work out which method is going to work for you! And then you get people like me who come along and tell you something you may already know but don’t want to hear……DIETS DON’T WORK!! That is if you want to keep the weight off. Believe me I’ve tried them all and they just don’t work.

I was at a party on the weekend standing next to a woman nervously nibbling carrot sticks to keep from gorging on cake and ice cream. Surprise, surprise, she’s on Atkins – for the 4th time!!

Let me back up a bit. I have no problem with a weight loss diet for quick results if a person has diabetes or heart problems for example. If someone needs to get weight off fast for medical reasons so they can have surgery or treatment, more power to them. I have put people on those kinds of diets. Diets for healthy people, that involve fast weight loss and restricting foods dramatically, only to return to those foods, don’t work in the long run, we need something different. We need a lifestyle change.

Success comes by doing things differently. We’re going to get the same results if we keep doing things the same way. Just look at my Atkins friend.

Weight has always been an issue for me. I had bulimia as a teenager and have struggled with food ever since. The only time I ever successfully got weight off and kept it off for any length of time was when I was about 21 and was an exercise junkie. (I was also dating the owner of a gym at the time! It wasn’t all about the exercise!)

Then I happily got married a few years later, (thankfully not to the gym owner) started a family and my weight went horribly wrong again. In between babies, I had problems with my gall bladder and for 5 months, I literally had to go without any sort of fat, or I would experience horrendous abdominal pain. Needless to say I lost 20kgs, which was great after having a baby, only problem was, I had the surgery, went back to eating normally, had another baby and boom, stacked it on again.

Since then, on and off I’ve tried 100 different diets, especially as nutrition is my focus and interest, and it’s just hard work.
I’ve lost a few kilos here and there but really, I can’t keep blaming pregnancy as the reason for my pudginess, my baby is almost 8!!

So in the months leading up to January, I thought a lot about whether or not I would set off again on the road to en-light-enment in the New Year and how I would do it if I did. I read and wrote things down, I thought about all the things that have and haven’t worked in the past and all the reasons why I would like to lose weight.

Here’s a snippet of what I came up with.

Yes (deep breath, screwed up face, ugh, reluctantly) I will go down this road again and no it won’t be like before. I set a goal of 15kgs by the end of the year, with around 8kgs of that before the end of April, I have to look good in an outfit for a wedding in Europe and you can’t feel frumpy wandering the streets of Paris and Rome!!

One of the reasons why I will do it again – cheesy and very Loreal, but “because I’m worth it and because I’m doing it for me”. I really am. I’ve come to a place where I actually believe that I’m worth this journey for all it will do not just for my thighs, but also in me as a person.

I am happy to say that since January, I’ve lost 4 kgs and I’m having fun (mostly). The honeymoon period is definitely over and it’s hard yards, but the mental shift is really helping.

Next week I’ll tell you what I’m doing and how it’s different from before.

I’ll also include some really practical tips and some recipes that will help you.

I’ll leave you with your first tip, ‘You’re worth it too”…..

Lv Jane