Woah man, take it easy.
So I'm a little overweight, but who isn't? It's not like it's going to hurt me in the long run.
WRONG.
People always underestimate how important health is and often overestimate their own health. I know I do sometimes. This blog has two purposes; to help you guys with some nutrition, fitness and general health tips and also as a diary of some of my health and fitness problems, progress and achievements.
Let me give you some background information about me so I don't come across as a crazy fat chick eating burger after burger screaming "WHY AM I SO FAT?!"
Now this will all sounds bad to start with, but
read this until the end. I have always struggled with my weight, even when I was a mere 54kg when I was 18. I never ate what I considered to be too badly, I didn't drink much. My belly was a little flabby although I didn't do any exercise other than incidental exercise (walking around campus, climbing stairs, etc). When I was 19, I decided to change this after my boyfriend told me I was carrying a little extra. So I started those weight loss shakes.
They worked! I lost a good, few kilos and got down to about 50kg. Looking back, I was tiny, but still felt fat (again, the jiggleness of my itty bitty belly from lack of abdominal muscle).
When he and I parted ways, I decided to take up exercise as my vice.
I joined a gym for 3 months and got a little buff! I was doing an hour and a half every day - 40 minutes of cardio and an hour and 20 minutes using every weights machine. I felt great! I had more energy, was looking a bit better, felt a bit stronger... Until I couldn't afford a gym membership anymore, so I had to stop going. I had put on quite a bit of muscle mass, so I had gone up to 60kg. Despite not going to the gym anymore, my weight stayed at 60 and didn't budge.
To be honest, I have forgotten how I ended up getting to 65, but I did. Just age perhaps? It might have slowly started to creep back on over the period of 12 months or so after I stopped the gym. Either way, no matter what I ate, I just stayed at 65kg, fluctuating occasionally to 68kg. That was what I call my "weight threshold", a point you get to where no amount of quarter pounders and sundaes will budge it up further, it's the highest it'll ever get.
When I was 22, I decided to take up
pole dancing for fitness and a bit of fun. I fell in love with the sport! It is all kinds of amazing but more on that later. I increased my strength a little from it but no major changes.
I also went overseas for the first time to Croatia. Beautiful place and amazing food! Too amazing. I had somehow put on 5kg in the 10 days that I was there. 5kg above my weight threshold. How can this happen?!
When I came back and saw the pictures from my holiday I nearly died, I looked terrible. There were jiggly parts that shouldn't be jiggling. One friend even said "you look like you just had a baby but haven't lost the fat from it yet." Harsh perhaps, but true!
Being that I "had no time for exercise", back on the diet shakes I went. I started downing the diet shakes again. Same old story, two shakes a day, 2L of water, protein and veggies for dinner, fruit. Mix it up by having the meal at lunch sometimes after a plateau, blah blah blah. I also started doing 30 situps (10x 3 different types) and 20 pushups every morning.
After 6 months I got down to about 60, 61kg and was looking pretty good! I was practicing pole at least once a week, taking up burlesque classes and eating, well, not a whole lot. I occasionally would even have chips and the shakes just kept doing their thing. I came off the shakes and just began eating relatively well.
Then I got a horrible flu. My body goes into shut down/starvation mode and I start to store fat. All I eat is toast and soup. I can't move much so I stop doing my situps and push ups and fall out of that routine. So I put on a few kilos. Kinda stayed around the 68kg, again, give or take a few with fluctuation.
Then I met a lovely boy who was very keen on taking me out to dates. To avoid being at "the parents'" places, we would go out and eat just about every night. This took a toll on both our wallets and my health. My partner also had quite a sweet tooth, something I wasn't overly used to myself. Suddenly I also became a bit hooked on refined sugary things like ice cream, apple pies, lollies, etc.
Most of my clothes weren't fitting, my face looked chubby in photos - I now weighed 75kg.
I nearly fainted when I read the scales and tried another. Same result. Back to the diet shakes!
They didn't work.
My body had seemed to develop an almost immunity to them. I shed 2kg in the first week and then nothing, no matter how much I switched up my one meal of the day.
Back to the gym!
We both signed up and started to go every day at 5am. Once I got into the routine, it was fantastic. I had a real routine going with doing 40 minutes of steady state cardio and about 15 minutes on weights. I also began to take some post work out protein and prework out drinks. Whilst I rekindled my love for fitness (a habit I truly love, but can fall out of the routine very easily), I wasn't getting any results.
I began reading up about fitness and also realised that I'd like to become a PDHPE teacher. So I took the plunge and left work and began full time study doing my Bachelor of Health and Movement (Sport) that has since, also taught me a lot.
I had switched to the cross trainer as my cardio weapon of choice as I found that my legs built muscle rather quickly and weren't just retaining post work out type fluids after a bike session. I had noticed an improvement on my VO2 max (basically, my oxygen intake - how quickly you run out of breath) but nothing else after my steadystate training on the cross trainer on level 5 with a heart rate of 165bpm for an hour. My belly got less jiggly, but still no where near where I wanted to be, no weight change.
I had pondered that I perhaps had a hormone problem, like my thyroid. I had a blood test but all of my hormones and blood sugar levels were normal. So I began some PT lessons. Whilst I lost a bit of centimeters around
the waist, my weight wasn't budging and my muscle mass wasn't going up
either. We switched some things around, I began free weights instead and
did more HIT cardio which I could only do for 7 minutes or so. With my weights, I would do 3 sets of no more than 12 reps - if it was more, I'd up the weight. I was also on a diet that consisted more or less of eggwhite (and one whole egg) for breakfast, protein shake, usually a chicken salad for lunch, protein shake, a few nuts and protein (chicken, turkey, occasionally steak or more egg) with spinach for dinner, 4-6L of water a day. Again, maybe 1cm a fortnight on and off and no change in weight or strength (besides my ever building legs).
This diet didn't seem to be working, so I consulted the nutritionist who assessed my body fat, water percentage and my food diary. My body fat was a whopping 40% and I was told I should be at 20%. Overall, I wasn't eating bad foods. She switched me to a low GI diet which I tried for 4 weeks, no change.
I had read a few interesting articles about cortisol which I had never heard of. Cortisol is a stress hormone that can be stimulated by either too much stress and overexercise. As I was going 6-7 days a week, I thought this was it, the reason why I wasn't losing weight!
Cortisol tests showed negative, it was perfectly functioning. How annoying.
After 6 months of this with all the switching and little working, I gave up. I wanted a quick fix. So I went to the doctors who of course calculated me as obese because the BMI is a ridiculous system for individual assessment and was only designed for population use. But in this instance, it worked in my favour. I began to take duromine. I started on the lowest dosage and tried to still keep my food intake the same to keep my metabolism rolling. I finally started to lose a bit of weight. I would get dizzy during intense workouts, so I had to turn it down a notch. A few more cm and kg came off and I got down to about 69kg. After 3 months (max limit for duromine a year) I stopped the duromine and continued my exercise. I didn't really lose anymore, it was as low as my body could go. I was looking fairly firm (for my size) and generally pretty happy with myself. I was a good size 12 again instead of 14's. Along with the duromine, I also got 4 visits to see an exercise physiologist who gave me some exercises.
For another view, I saw a natropath. My iridology report reflected some interesting things about my liver (probably the duromine affecting it), stress, some pain in my right shoulder (from pole dancing) and something about my stomach (I had previously had an endoscopy showing that I had a hiatus hernia, not any kind of gluten intolerance, etc). She gave me some alternative diet plans which I tried to follow and also suggested some teas for my belly pain. She also mentioned that my difficulties in weight loss might be a lack of enzymes, a supplement I'm yet to try.
Uni went back and the gym just stopped. My partner was working odd hours so he wasn't going either which didn't help. Despite doing a PDHPE degree that involved at least 3 hours of fitness a week and my 3, hour long dance classes a week I began putting on weight again. This disheartened me, my diet worsened. The weather got colder, I wanted more hot chocolate and apple pies. Fat again. Clothes began to no longer fit once more, the fatface returned in photos. I began my exercise physiology which was really enjoyable. I learnt even more about fitness and tried these circuits that had been designed for me, 3-4 times a week.
I'm not going to lie, I didn't do exactly how much I was told to do, perhaps about 70%. In saying that, I definitely did enough that should have reflected some results. My body fat had come down by 1% which was good news. In the time that I was seeing my exercise physiologist I had tried three different kinds of circuits with no success. He was absolutely puzzled. My weight had gone up by 1kg every month I had seen him, now standing at a glorious 76kg once more. He mentioned that he had only seen results like this is PCOS (Poly-cystic Ovary Syndrome) clients. After a day or two of solid research, I immediately rushed to the doctors, this would HAVE to be it. I had many of the symptoms; fatigue, restlessness, forgetfulness, depression and anxiety, weight loss difficulties, absent periods (although this was probably attributed to my implanon contraceptive) and mood swings.
All tests show negative. Blood sugar, testosterone, androgens, cholestrol - all fine. As you could imagine, I was at wits end right now.
This more or less brings me to the here and now. And I somehow put on a bit more weight over Christmas (but who doesn't?), up to 78kg.
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This blog is to kickstart me again. I have a few measures in place (more on that later) and I figure the more I vent and write, the more I have to stick to things, they become real. Also if anyone starts reading this I'll feel bad letting people down.
So stay tuned! Follow me on this (magical?) journey through discovering even more health, fitness and nutrition information, sharing my knowledge and (hopefully!) my successes with you!
-MM
