Quitters never win, blah blah blah.

I've been fighting a weight-loss war for years.  Over my 7 years of blogging I've tried organised diets and doing my own thing.  I've seen highs and lows.  In 2011 I managed to get down to a size 14 and dropped to my lowest weight in nearly 20 years.  Since that time it's all gone horribly wrong, and I've been unable to sustain any kind of weight/inch loss.  The past year has brought the menopause, stress, anxiety, physical and mental health problems, increased caring responsibilities, increased work demands, and life has just overwhelmed me.  I've always been an "emotional eater" and used food as a response to stressful situations. 

In the past 6 months I have gained - wait for it - a stone and a half.  Even through periods of sticking to an organised diet, and eating healthily, there has been inexplicable and rampant weight gain.  Which, my menopausal friends tell me, is probably hormonal and stress-related.  Which has, in turn, completely messed with my mind.  Apart from the weight gain, the past six months have been mainly a time of complete doom and gloom, when at times things got so dark that it scared me.  For most of June, July and into August I literally couldn't function and most days I just wished that I didn't have to get out of bed, that I could just escape into sleep rather than face the world outside.

I have been taking Kalms for the past three weeks and the difference has been astounding.  My panic/anxiety attacks have been almost non-existent; I'm sleeping better, and the dark fog which has engulfed me in my daily life is now beginning to lift.  Living with depression is like a sentence hanging over you, you know that it's always going to come back sometime, but those times when you manage to chase it away is like the best feeling in the world.  I now have the clarity to make plans and major decisions about my life (more news to follow, hopefully soon) and in the immediate future I've decided to quit dieting and go back in time to when I didn't have such an oppressive, guilt-ridden relationship with food, when I didn't have so many hang-ups about points/calories, and just focus on the only thing which really works: exercise and sensible eating.  No more weekly weigh-ins, no more slavery to the scales! 

They say quitters never win, but quitting dieting is a good thing for me right now.  I've decided to draw a line under the last six months, and choose to enter the post-holiday/pre-Christmas period - always a difficult one for me - with a new, healthier attitude to life.

In the meantime though, there's the small matter of that forthcoming holiday.  Over the coming week I've scheduled a rigorous exercise regime which (a) will help me to cope with what is potentially one of the most stressful working weeks in a long time, and (b) will boost my fitness for the Croatian adventure.