And here she runs!

Please say hello to my NEW! and FLASHY! running shoes! I live in the country and thus I run a lot in the woods, so I've decided to invest in a pair of beautiful Brooks Adrenaline ASR shoes. And after reading One Twenty Five's post about her finishing her first half marathon, I got somewhat inspired and decided to get back to my running schedule again.

The run was beautiful! Crisp air, snow on the mountains, sunshine, my GPS watch actually worked, and I ran for a whole 30 minutes!

The Manual

Once more, I'm going to start all over again... and this time, I'm going to make it!

Obey my Weight Watchers plan. Weight Watchers always did the trick for me, as I get to eat enough, I get to eat healthy, and no sort of food is forbidden. I might join a Weight Watchers weekly meeting again, but so far, I know I can do it on my own.

Count points and write down everything. EVERYTHING which passes my lovely lips! I've made a fancy little Excel sheet to serve as my food diary.

Eat 5 servings of vegetable and fruit each day. No big deal for me, as I LOVE the fresh things. I will, however, stick more to the veggie side and avoid eating too much fruit sugar.

Drink 2 litres of water each day. No big deal either. Will add some fruit and herb tea for a difference.

Have breakfast. This sounds a little difficult first --- my sleeping schedule differs a lot from my work schedule! However if I don't have enough time to have breakfast at home I will take my cereals and fruit with me to work.

Bring my own lunch to work. I'm going to avoid the lunch at my workplace at all cost. I can't control how much calories and fat is in this food. If I still have to eat at my work's cafeteria once in a while, I'm going to chose a piece of grilled meet or fish and some salad.

Stock the freezer with pre-cooked portion-sized meals. This will help me a lot after work, when I come home hungry as a bear, to avoid the usual McDonald's drive through and Ben & Jerry's shopping.

Cook meals Weight Watchers style. No big deal either. I have a whole rack of their cookbooks and love their simple, delicious, balanced meals. If it wouldn't be for chopping the veggies!

Eat slowly. Enjoy food. Chew. No distractions when eating! No newspaper, no girlie magazine, no TV, no internet, no nothing. Chew slowly. Savour the taste. Swallow first, then take another mouthful.

No stress eating. No pressure eating. No comfort eating. This is probably going to be the hardest part, especially as I work in healthcare and there's usually sweets and cakes from the patients' families EVERYWHERE. I'm a BIG emotional eater, I take comfort in chocolate when I'm stressed/depressed/sad/under pressure. I will need to develop more detailed strategies for this point.

Eat moderate. Chocolate is allowed. But only one or two pieces, not the whole bar! Cake is allowed. But just one piece, not half of the cake! Ice cream is allowed. But just one scoop, not the whole container!

Exercise 4 times a week. I LOVE sports, and I'm a very outdoorsy girl. I will need to get some regularity to my workout schedule (and some goals maybe?) and workout even when I'm stressed and tired from work. I tend to be lazy, stay at home, curl up in my bed when I come home tired, even though I KNOW that a short run in fresh air will make me feel a lot better.

Further suggestions are appreciated!

I KNOW I CAN DO IT!

The Fat

From time to time I plan to entertain you with my thoughts and theories about why I'm fat. The whole thing is complex, so there'll be lots to talk about.

Let's face it: I'm fat. As of today, I weigh 125.1 kg at a size of 1.81 m. Of course it's not the fat itself which keeps me away from being the superfit, superbeautiful woman that's inside me, it's the issues that come with being fat. It's the wall I built around my inner self which articulates itself in my fat body.

My weight has been troubling me for as long as I can think. Already during kindergarten I regarded myself as fat. I don't know where this idea came from, definitely not from my parents or my friends. It was only 4 or 5 years ago that I looked at old photographs and came to realize that I was COMPLETELY NORMAL at that young age. This realization made me cry my eyes out! Of course I've never been a petite little girl; I've always been taller than everybody else and had an athletic body, I did lots of sports and liked jeans better than fancy pink dresses - but at least I wasn't fat as a kid.

It must have been around the age of 9 or 10 that I started developping a serious eating disorder. I had no self-confidence (after all, in my mind I was still the fatty from kindergarten), I was a bit nerdy, I was top of the class, I got boobs pretty early, plus I had red hair and freckles, so a few kids from my class started teasing me. It was just teasing like children tease each other from time to time, not too bad, but it hurt my soul deeply. I desperately looked for some comfort and finally found it - in binging chocolate and ice-cream.

The following years alternated between binging and dieting, my body continuously putting on more and more weight (hello yo-yo effect!). Puberty was especially traumatizing, and I was so hopeless about my weight that I sometimes wouldn't ingest anything but caffe latte and diet coke - for weeks! I was especially desperate before I moved away for university. This was going to be a completely new part of my life and I didn't want to be labelled as "that fat girl" right from the start. So I didn't eat for 3 months in a row and finally ended up in hospital with a life-threatening pancreatitis. Due to the lack of food my pancreas had decided to digest itself. To this day NOBODY, not even my parents, knows that this was caused by 3 months of fasting. Yeah, in case you've wondered: I DO have an eating disorder.

I reached my highest weight (BMI 42.8! A monster!!) during a phase of depression in my early twenties which was so bad that I needed therapy. Luckily my then therapist did the only right thing to save me and sent me to Weight Watchers. A completely new life began, I re-learned eating, started sports again, overcame big parts of my self-consciousness, and finally shed some pounds. I've been doing Weight Watchers ever since for the past couple of years (sometimes very rigorous, currently less rigorous) and dare to say that this turned my life upside-down: I've changed EVERYTHING! I made new friends, reconnected with old ones, discovered new sports (running! rock climbing! cross country skiing! mountaineering! swimming!), lost my fear of approaching people, am generally more open, eat healthy, and learn to enjoy my life. I can honestly say I'm a happy person now.

So why am I still fat?! Good question, Watson. No matter how hard I try, I cannot get my weight into a healthy, slim range. I've tried everything: more sports, less sports, more fiber, more protein, less fruit, less fiber, not weighing in, ... everything. But as soon as I get close to a magic number, a switch in my head flips, my fatty mind tells me in that Darth Vader voice: "You are nothing. You don't deserve to be slim." And I obey and remember my old habits and binge.

I simply cannot take the risk to lose even more of that magic fat wall which I've built around my soul. If there wouldn't be that wall, someday someone could get close. And this would scare the holy bejesus out of me.

Long Hello & Short Goodbye

Hello world!

Well I guess I'm supposed to write something witty. After all, this is my first blog, my first entry, and I'm not going to write about what I had for lunch yesterday. Oh wait, I AM probably going to write about what I had for lunch yesterday!

Let's face it, I'm fat. As of today, my BMI is 38.06, which means not only overweight, but simply FAT. I've been struggling with my weight since primary school, slimming down, getting up, slimming down, and getting up again. Hello yo-yo effect! I can proudly say that I've been on a diet for two thirds of my life and have almost constant record of my weight since the age of 15 on my computer.

I'm sick of doing this to my body. I want to become the healthy, fit, beautiful woman that is hidden inside me. I know she's there! She's crying to be set free!