My 20 Week Letter to Slimming World

20 Weeks of Amazing Slimming!

In the last week I have reached a few milestones which have made me look back at the last 20 weeks. There have been very few low points emotionally/motivationally. There have been lots of lows week after week on the scales. :) Mostly there has been lost of "HIGHS"! (pun intended) I literally have felt so amazing sometimes it has almost had a narcotic effect!

As with many a slimming story, mine started with a visit to the doctor. I had a red "rash" on my left shin, that didn't seem to be going anywhere. In January I decided I wanted to fly home to South Africa to see my family, but something told me I needed to go see the doctor about my leg before getting on a plane. Thank goodness for that prompting, as it seemed that the rash was related to poor blood circulation in my legs, which obviously increases my risk of deep vein thrombosis, a killer on long haul flights. Naturally, like every other visit to the doctor over the last 7 or 8 years of my life, the doctor told me I was seriously over weight, that my ailment was as a direct result of my weight, and that I seriously needed to lose weight. DUH?! This time though I was sent home with a reccomendation to join Slimming World, and told I shouldn't fly home to see my family until I had lost a considerable amount of my excess weight. Additionally, the whole "thrombosis" thing was seriously playing on my mind.

So I found my closest group, and figured, I'll give it a try, and see how it goes. I wasn't exactly excited and don't think I actually had any real positive motivation at the time, but felt a nagging negative motivation that if I didn't at least try to do this seriously, that I was never going to get to see my dad ever again!

My First week was lack luster, and a feeble attempt at Food Optimising, but thanks to my lovely wife, most of my meals were 100% Optimised with 0 Syns and I managed a 4.5 lbs loss. I was surprised. Maybe this could work. So week 2 was slightly better effort, and I only lost 3 lbs. At this point I think the negative motivation was fast transforming to desperation, who is friends with determination and the driving force was quickly gaining speed. To say I was disspointed with the 3 lbs loss was an understatement. It was time to kick this up a notch and start losing some serious weight!

As I sat in group after that 2nd week, Image Therapy was almost pointless for me because my mind was elsewhere. I was busy hatching a plan to keep me 100% focused, increase my motivation, and make sure there was no ESCAPE PLAN! I decided I would not only start a blog to track my losses, comment on my feelings, set goals, post photos and display all my "shineys" (Award stickers), but I would post links to my blog on Facebook, and tell everyone I know, Family, Friends including old school friends I havent seen in years, Work Colleagues and everyone at church, what I was doing and how I was getting on. The idea was that it would be embarrassing to fail. Embarrassing to have a gain. Embarrassing to cheat. And that all that pressure to succeed would kick start the momentum to get losing, and keep losing!

It worked perfectly! I post at least once a week after weigh in, sometimes more often if I think I have something to share. Take and update photos every Monday. That 3rd week, I eventually found my positive motivation and started "Happy Slimming". I had started getting used to the new meals, and tried some of the Slimming World recipies, which were all a HIT! Some of the best tasting meals I have EVER eaten! Where had this food been my whole life??

Week 4, something else changed. A good friend from South Africa, who now lives in Canada, had started noticing what I was doing. Our correspondance had been reduced to the odd "Hi how are you" catch up on news conversations that good friendships sometimes fall into when distance gets in the way and face to face communication is reduced to once every couple years. It was good to speak to him, and we used to have a very good "direct" relationship before. Open Honest Caring "Tell it like it is" type stuff, and he decided for me that I was goign to start walking, and wouldn't listen to any of my arguements about why I couldn't! Eventually, to shut him up, and secretly, to prove him wrong, I agreed to walk once a day a mere 200 yards.

It's probably a good time to explain that I hadn't been able to walk my kids to school for about 2 years. School was only about 600 yards up the road, but the round trip would have left me with severe back pain which could have left me almost bed ridden for a day. I would have broken out into a sweat and been red faced. Walking was not something easily achieved in my 28 stone frame!

Never-the-less, I got up and out to walk 200 yards every day for the first week. Then 300 yards every day the next, then 400 yards. This was now week 6, I had lost a little more than 1.5 stone and been eating nothing but healthy food for 6 weeks. Needless to say my energy levels were starting to spike and the 100 yard increases were no longer enough for me. Over the next couple weeks I was jumping through 600/700 yards to 1100 yards. the few weeks after that saw me stretch it to 3, 4, 5, 6 even 8000 yards! I had become obsessed with getting outdoors and walking.

The whole time I Food Optimising and I actually had started to realise an amazing cycle that i was experiencing. As I was eating healthy > I had more energy > The more I exercised > The more I wanted to eat healthy > the more energy I had > The more I exercised. The 2 go hand in hand, and I was starting to love the person I was becoming.

Fast forward to Weeks 19/20. The milestones:

Last week Thursday I ran 5 km in 41:40 minutes A personal best, improving by 3 minutes the personal best I set only a week earlier. Previous to that I was doing 5km in 50 minutes, prior to that it took me an hour. Prior to that ... I COULDN'T WALK 5 KM!

Last Saturday I walked 14 km. As I passed the hospital and thought about how far I had come, both on that walk and over the previous 19 weeks, and I couldn't hold back the tears! I wept as I walked, so thankful for the changes I had made in my life. And wept some more thinking about how confident I was that I WOULD reach my target weight within the next year!

Last Weigh-in, Week 19, I not only dropped below 150 kg that I had been wanting to get to for years, but I had also reached 325 lbs, which means I have lost 20% of my starting weight. Which also means I am now 40% of the way to my target weight since Target is 50% of my starting weight!

Thank you Dr Carolan,
Thank you Dad,
Thank you Karen,
Thank you Slimming World,
Thank You Steve,
You have already changed my life, and I'm only 40% of the way there!