Obese, apparently

The word stared out of the web page in big blue letters.

OBESE.

There it was, the official announcement. Your BMI (body mass index) is 32.5, and you are obese with a capital O.  Not overweight, but o-freakin-bese.  A minimum of three stones from the top end of your healthy weight range. 

Thanks for that.  Rewind to exactly one year ago, when I was two stones lighter, I decided to rejoin WeightWatchers and was going well until my mum got ill, add to that a lot of other personal stress which set in motion what you could best describe as a 'breakdown'.  With my mental and physical health shot to pieces, I ate my way to obesity and now find myself taking the "before" picture once again, frustrated that most of my favourite clothing is now out of bounds to the new, obese me, and remembering those times in what feels like the dim and distant past when I could effortlessly power-walk my way to and from work instead of taking the bus because my legs hurt so much now.

It is the beginning of a new year, but this time round I'm taking a new approach.  I am not joining a diet class or a gym; the weight gain was down to "emotional eating" so logically, I am going to lose it through "emotional weight loss".  For there will be days when I will want to eat soup, and fruit, and low-fat stuff, and drink lots of water; just as there will be days when I will want to eat sweets and crisps and drink wine.   I will not punish myself if I've gone off the rails for a day.  It will be all about moderation, and mindfulness, but will also take account of the stress and anxiety which seems to dominate my life these days.  To return to official 'dieting' would just be one more stress to add to an already long list.

So the diet bores can do what they want.  They can join their diet classes, count their points, 'Syns', checks, whatever.  I've been there, done that, but at this point in my life I've decided that's not for me any more.  I'm re-establishing my relationship with food, on my own terms.

The thing which really worked for me in the past was exercise, which is the absolute key this time round.  Why do I need to join a gym or go to classes if I have an exercise bike, a mini stepper, hand weights, a spring rowing exerciser, a powerball, a Slendertone waist belt etc etc at my disposal?  Exercise has also been shown to improve mental health and I would agree with this, given that when my own mental health has been at its lowest point, it has always been at a time when my physical fitness levels have been poor, and never more so than now. 

So I am heading into 2015 with a positive attitude and a determination to lose the weight I gained last year.  No goals, no timescales, just small steps.  And no more obesity, please. 

I am now taking a break from blogging (and the internet) for a while to go and do some "life stuff", declutter my house, find somewhere to store all the Christmas presents and sales purchases, settle into my part-time working routine...and catch up with a lot of things before Eurovision national finals season takes over my life!  Of course I will also be throwing myself into that fitness regime.  I will be back at the end of January to update on my progress!

Breaking bag (or how I learned to love my shopping trolley)

Being a non-driver who does a lot of walking, it was inevitable that I would end up injuring myself as a result of carrying shopping bags which are far too heavy.  And that's exactly what happened a few months ago, and I finally made my mind up that after years of carrying heavy bags, enough was enough.  Drastic measures were required.  

I bought a shopping trolley. 

And since that time, I haven't looked back.  It was possibly my best purchase of 2014 and has changed my life.

Something else happened since I bought the trolley. In October 2014, the Scottish Government imposed a charge of 5p for every carrier bag provided by all retailers, (where these bags used to be free).  This is to ensure that people recycle their bags, but hasn't entirely been a successful move.  For example, I previously re-used my supermarket carrier bags as bin liners, but have now ended up buying packs of bin liners, which instead of the supermarket bags are now filled with rubbish and ending up in landfill, thus defeating the purpose of the exercise. 

Since the carrier bag charge was introduced, we now gleefully take our stash of carrier bags from rival supermarkets with us, probably much to the annoyance of those stores who, although trying to boast 'green' credentials, would like nothing more than their customers walking out of the stores with 'their' bags, advertising 'their' products.

One knock-on effect of the introduction of the carrier bag charge has been a slow but noticeable increase in the number of people turning up at my local supermarkets with their shopping trolleys in tow.  Either that or I may have started a trend among my fellow shoppers!

So, forget the notion that trolleys are only for "old grannies" well that's not true.  Anyway, who cares what people think?  Don't worry what people say, get out there and wheel your trolleys with pride.  Your health matters.  Your back, shoulders and arms will thank you for it, trust me :)