Every day happiness

For someone with an extremist personality, creating a happy medium is often hard to come by.

Over the last few years, I’ve chased goals (and achieved them) due to the constant voice within me striving to approve.

At my smallest I weighed 8 stone 3lbs, a few lbs shy of the anorexic bracket for my height. Society told me this weight was an achievement, I had finally reached the ‘thin ideal’ despite the fact that the relationship I had with myself and food was far from ideal. The desperate need to be skinny had completely taken over my life, and it suddenly became a numbers game, weighing a certain weight, fitting into a certain jeans size, the amount of inches baggier my favourite shirt was…

Since when did we become so obsessed with numbers? The idea that a certain number dictates level of achievement, level of commitment, level of passion. The number of hours spent in the gym, or the number of minutes spent with loved ones is ignored. We forget the sacrifices made to chase that superficial dream.

10 reasons you're not losing weight

We are a nation that has grown to be pretty good at excuses. Stemming as early as childhood, with ‘the dog ate my homework’ one liners and now is just as frequent with people trying to get healthy. This is something I know first-hand, as I too, was once the queen of excuses. I often found myself creating a web of reasons why I wasn’t losing weight, and using them to justify why that bit of cake was definitely deserved. Here are my 10 reasons why you’re struggling to lose weight, and if you can relate to these, it’s probably time to stop moaning and start doing.

Who Am I?

Throughout my life I have found it very difficult to surround myself with a large group of women, and I am mostly comfortable within a very male dominated environment. This is largely due to the fact that I have found a lot of women I have come across to be catty and a large number of males to be honest and much straighter to the point.

Although I am proud to be a female and I have very strong female role models in my mother and grandmothers, I often find it hard to believe how presumptuous women can be. This is particularly something I have found since getting into fitness, which I hope never become. 

Perspire to Inspire

So I’m currently 18 weeks out from my first ever competition, a situation completely out of my comfort zone which is pretty much the reason I have put myself forward in the first place.

The fitness industry seems to be full of a lot of women who mask their unhealthy mind-set behind a couple of raunchy photoshoots and instagrammed pictures of oat porn.

It is probably not unrealistic to presume that a lot of girls who will be beside me on stage in September will not have had to have shifted the amount of weight I have. I am by no means saying that is there fault, but girls who have never had weight-gain issues will probably never know the struggle it takes to get comfortable in your own skin.

Everything in moderation.

Since turning the corner from fat to fit, five years ago, I have at times struggled with overwhelming moments of guilt when consuming what society tells us are ‘bad foods’.

Segregating a food or food group as forbidden, naturally enhances its desire. The forbidden fruit complex, or in this case, the forbidden flapjack.

This was always a detail of fad diets such as ‘slimming world’ which perplexed me the most. Labelling food as ‘syns’ only makes my overactive imagination imagine an avocado shaped devil doing a striptease…. and I won’t even go into their unlimited muller light policy!

Speaking from experience, I know the power that giving labels to foods can cause on your overall mental state, and often deprivation of certain foods leads to binging, guilt and over-excessive cardio ‘compensation.’

Like Attracts Like

Well, it's been a while since I found myself blogging and I guess I will take that as a good thing on this occasion, as I've been taking the time to work on my inner peace and discovering some things about myself and those around me.

I think its dreadfully important to take some time out to be alone, and often time alone is forgotten about as part of a day filled with work, social events and families. 

I am a strong believer that unless you can find enjoyment within your own company, you will struggle to attract those who will ultimately enhance your life.