A Little Bit More About The Shrinking Me

So where do I start? My name is Katherine and I live in the UK in the lovely county of Berkshire (Near Windsor and not too far from London). My aim is to get to 182lbs 169lbs (revised Jan 1st 2013) and started this journey at 223lbs. I have been over weight from about the age of 10. There isn't really anybody to blame it on. I could have had a better education about food from my family and it is defo where my attitude towards food has come from but that only lasts until you are an adult. Once you have the power to control your own thoughts and actions it is only you...

I have always wanted to lose weight but have never succeeded. I might have lost 3lbs or so but then have just put it back on. The only time I have rapidly lost weight was with an ex when I was 18. He made me feel so incredibly bad about myself and I am sure if I had stayed with him I would have gained an eating disorder as looking back I would say I was in the very early stages. I lost 42lbs ( 3 stone) in less than 3 months, lost my confidence and became incredibly paranoid that everybody was looking at me but for all the wrong reasons. After I got the strength to break up with him I put the weight back on and then some more.



While at Uni

I was very happy in a relationship for 5 years while at Uni and I put on quite alot of weight here. My ex was very much into cooking and we had alot of dinner parties. He also didn’t really take so much care in his appearance, don't get me wrong he didn't look like a slob at all but didn't care so much about clothes and didn't follow fashion or trends. So of course I was influenced and happy and either did I. We were in quite a close knit community and didn't go clubbing or to bars very much it was very much a pub and house party scene. Then after Uni and after I started to branch out I bit our relationship came to an end and I realised this life wasn't what I wanted. He was 10 years older than me so his lifestyle was very much embedded; our break up was not easy... in the least. All our friends were really HIS friends and when we broke up I woke up one morning with nothing in my world. We lived together and so he moved his stuff out and I was left with no friends and a very sparely furnished flat that had been our home for 3 years. On top of that my ex had a mental breakdown, tried to commit suicide and was put into a mental hospital for 3 months. I was very much the evil person who had caused all of this to happen. I was lucky enough that I was surrounded by fantastic people in my job (a waitress) who embraced me with everything they had! I lost alot of weight during this period as anybody does during a break up.

Once I had recovered from the break up I had the best time for a good 2 years, working in the hospitality industry is so much fun but also includes alot of hangovers. It is too long and I have too many stories that would make anybody blush to tell now but needless to say so far it was the most fun period of my life BUT during this period my weight was good, I was down to 182lbs (13 stone) and no matter what I ate wasn't putting on any weight. I lived off cold pizza, restaurant food and alcohol and it now worries me how much we drank, my eating habbits were so bad and there was not one thing about my life that came anywhere near to healthy. The drinking defiantly had a huge effect on my digestive system... anything I ate...anything…was out of me within 5 minutes of eating it. So this is how I managed to stay thin and the fact I was too busy having fun to really eat properly.

They are not actually grabbing anything and I worked with them!

182 lbs

 While working in Hospitality I met my boyfriend (Biggy) and slowly I started to put the weight back on. I stayed in hospitality for about a year and a half and in that time moved to become an assistant manager of a sushi restaurant. Here I piled on the lbs which is ironic as sushi is supposed to be so healthy for you but I hated raw fish at the time so just ate all the fried food and also hated the job, could have free food and did long hours so ate quite alot. I also wasn't going out as much, was eating all those "special meals" you have when you first start going out and was very very happy with every other aspect of my life.

Biggy and Me

Weighing in around 222lbs

After leaving hospitality I started the dreaded office job and again the lbs just kept on coming. The office I was in was quite small but the girls I worked with were not the most healthiest and although we would all be on diets we would talk about the diet while eating doughnuts. Looking back we should have used "we will start tomorrow " as our catchphrase! Again I hated the job and Biggy and I were going through quite a rough time due to our working hours (he was still working in a bar) and the fact that we had left the city we lived in and moved 40 minutes away to my parents’ house to save money.

During this time we went to Mauritius and this is when I got to my heaviest... a whopping 231lbs. On average I had been always around the 222-223lbs mark before. The holiday we went on was “all inclusive” and boy oh boy did I seem to go for it! I did lose that extra weight when I came back from holiday but no matter what I did just couldn’t go lower than 220lbs even though I thought I was doing everything right.

I then started my current job, I work in a nice office with people that don't over eat and actually eat really healthily and I love my job. In my first week of being in my new job I lost 5lbs. It just goes to show that your environment has a huge impact on your eating habits. When I started I just thought to myself… enough is enough. This is my opportunity to start again, I had left my old life behind, Biggy and I were starting a whole new chapter of our lives and I was so ready for the change.

I am now on the path to eating healthily. Biggy is very supportive and I don't think ever realised I had put on as much weight as I had. Biggy is the person I will be with for the rest of my life and he makes me want to be the person I know I can be and we will have the life I want. He takes care of his appearance, he wants the things I want.. a big house, a nice car or 2, nice things to put in our house.... We are materialistic but not in your face with it. I want to be the person that goes with that life. Not a fat blob who you can see, somewhere deep inside, wants those things but never embraced it as was too fat to fit in.

I know to some I will sound shallow but for me this is what drives me. I have never taken much interest in clothes or fashion, beauty or make up. I have wanted to .. I just didn’t have the figure to embrace it. I am firm believer in dressing for your figure and never felt proud enough or confident enough to embrace my 223lbs body ( I didn't want to either as I knew that I was fat).

Since losing weight my love for fashion and clothes is growing. Nothing crazy but just knowing that I am on route to getting the figure I want and I am finally able to wear clothes that show off my shrinking figure. I am learning about what to wear and what makes me feel good. I am more confident with people and slowly am building on my self-confidence, not the confidence that people see but the internal confidence which is so important.

On the right track - 205lbs

This whole journey has so far been a massive lesson. I have read a number of diet books that although some of the things they say I don't pay any attention to alot of things made sense to me. I also read a Nutrition book and have tried to really understand what food is. This is the first time in my life that I have actively tried to lose weight and have a)lost a considerable amount and b) kept it off! I know that this journey is going to be hard and I know that there are times that I will relapse, I also know I have a long way to go to hit my goal and still so much to learn.