Body image, again.

This is not an actual blog post as such but just a collection of random thoughts given the portrayal of women and body image of the media following my recent googling of Queen Mischa Barton resulting in the discovery of some horrific, nasty articles written by both pathetic bloggers and major news outlets given the fact she has now gained a little weight and looks like a normal person:

• WHY is Jennifer Lawrence held up as some sort of spokeswoman for women that aren't skinny in the media? The whole basis of the breakout role of Jennifer Lawrence's career is that her body is at such a prime level of physical fitness that she is able to WIN THE HUNGER GAMES. No, Jennifer Lawrence does not look as skinny as some individual actresses in the media. But she is clearly a very slim, slender and attractive woman and trying to hold it up as anything else is incredibly demeaning and patronising to all of us that aren't size 8s.
• WHY are women held up as a failure for putting on weight or a success for losing weight? Well done Jennifer Hudson, you are now thinner and therefore deserve to be more successful! What a shame Mischa, you now look like a normal person, no wonder your career isn't as successful as it was! 

It is clear that to be an equal darling of both the media and Buzzfeed articles you need to either:

• Be one of the like, <5% of the population that can stay slim without trying (and even then, good luck adjusting once you're over 30!)
• Go to the gym 6+ times a week and ensure 90% of your food is lettuce, chia seeds and protein shakes

But the important thing to ensure is:

• To always talk about how much you love cake and fries and burgers and pizza so you remain relatable. 

I haven't written in this blog in ages as A) I don't have much to say as finally rather than constantly obsessing over how much I weigh I'm kind of living my life and B) it's beginning to make me feel uncomfortable. I re-read some of my earliest posts the other day and some of them I find a little shocking. I mean for example, THIS post to pick a random is so indicative of a person who is lost in an endless binge starve cycle and has no body confidence that reading it makes me just want to give my past self a hug. I was at a healthy weight when I wrote that blog post but even just re-reading the individual sentences just makes me itch and crawl as I can remember the true self-loathing I felt and the tears that were in my eyes as I wrote it. I mean just to give you an example this picture was taken a week after that post was written: 

That is NOT someone who should have been crying for hours as they'd eaten a Twix they hadn't accounted for in their insane weekly food plan created three weeks in advance in some bizarre Excel workbook they'd created for themselves and spent an hour a day curating.

I don't know what my point is really. I think basically I am slowly coming to the realisation that somewhere inside my head I was a bit ill and had a warped perception of what I actually looked like, and all these thoughts are out there recorded on the internet and it makes me sick. I hate the fact I allowed myself to be talked into getting into that ridiculous mindset.

I know most of my readers are people that write similar blogs so all I can say is this: 

• Think very carefully right now about your relationship with your own diet and whether you are on this diet for the right reasons.
• NEVER lose weight to keep anyone else happy or because someone else thinks you should. Whether that's your boyfriend, husband, friends, family or whatever, make sure you lose this weight for yourself and not someone else. 
• If someone shames you for your body they don't deserve to be in your life.
• Eat what you want when you want it. I'm sitting writing this next to a pizza. YOLO. 

And here is my pledge to myself that, perhaps in the future, if I feel like it for the right reasons, I'll cut down on unhealthy food and step up the exercise. But I will never, ever count another calorie or point or Syn or anything ever again. All this promotes is an obsessive, unhealthy attitude that takes literally YEARS to break. And I would urge anyone reading this to think about doing the same. 

Sticks and stones

I don't own any photos of myself from between the ages of 18-20. I'm not tagged in any on Facebook, I don't have any pictures on my computer, I threw all my physical photos away. I took many hundreds, thousands of photos of my friends and I during this time but they are all gone. Therefore, unlike the vast majority of people my age, I have for the past couple of years not had a firm idea of what I looked like during this time, just my idyllic mental picture.

However, I've always thought of being 19 as the peak of my physical attractiveness. I've always thought - that was when I had a nice body. That's when I had good hair. That's when I wore my make-up well. That's why people were attracted to me at that time. I just looked better.

Tonight by chance I stumbled across some videos from when I was 19 for the first time in years. I was shocked to look at myself and see that I in fact objectively look absolutely no better than I do now. I'm probably about the same size, my make-up is terrible and I have a dodgy fringe. Why have I always remembered myself as being hot at this time?

And then I remembered, that was a time before I ever went on a diet.

That was a time where I'd happily gone my whole life eating what I wanted just when I was hungry. 

That was a time when I'd spent a couple of years cyclically going back on forth around the same half stone depending on how active I was at any particular time. That was a time when sometimes, yes, I was about three or four pounds overweight. I remember a doctor telling me once when I signed up to a new GP at university, "you're about 4lbs overweight." And I remember thinking, "It's fine as no one would ever guess that I weigh that much as I carry it fairly well don't I?"

I was 21 the first time anyone told me that I should go on a diet and since then it has not ever been the same. At my absolute all-time biggest I was about a stone overweight. I look back at that time thinking "Oh god I was hideous I was so massive how disgusting." In fact I was about a size 14. 

After two and a half years of constant binge/starve dieting and then suddenly and dramatically giving it up I think I'm finally beginning to get back normal eating habits. Well, that's not true, as my eating itself was always normal, in that I had three meals a day and never starved myself or anything. If anything it's less 'normal' now. But it was my relationship with food. Every second of my life I was acutely aware of what I was next going to eat and when. Every time I ever deviated from the plan - for ANY reason - I felt like the worst person in the universe. Every time I ever weighed myself, which was pretty much every day, and I had put on any weight, I just felt useless and unattractive and disgusting.

Now I feel like my relationship with food is much more healthy. If I want a burger, I will get a burger. If I want more chips, I will get more chips. If someone offers me a chocolate mini roll but I don't really fancy it, I won't eat it. I don't really think about food unless I'm already hungry. I've allowed myself to actually get hungry for the first time in years because before I was afraid of how much I might eat if that ever happened.  

So now I don't even know how much I weigh, I just know that I just about fit into size 12 trousers, which probably means I'm no longer overweight by prior experience. I wonder how long it will be before my body image isn't on my mind 50 times a day. 

I wonder if ever again I will be able to feel nonchalant about my own body like I did when I was 19.  

I actually don't want to feel like this, I don't want to be sitting here thinking about how much I weigh. As there's a part of me in my head that knows I am healthy and that I look fine. But there is just another part of me somewhere else in my head that just won't shut up about how much better I would look if I was thinner. About how much better I would look if I just looked like I did when I was 19. 

But the fact is, despite the way I remember it, the pictures prove I wasn't even actually thin at 19. I just didn't know what it was like to have someone call you fat.

2014 Goals

Happy New Year to every wonderful and flawless human being that reads my blog! I know I am at a weird spot in the blogosphere, kind of floundering toward being a 'running' blogger but with still not the vaguest clue what I am doing and unable to provide any of you any guidance or advice. However, I hope you all continue to enjoy reading about my ridiculous adventures.

I'm going to try and set some CLEAR and SUCCINCT goals for the year (with clarity and brevity being two things I forever struggle with):


Fitness
* Complete 10k race in March
* Be able to run 10k with zero walk breaks (Am realistic enough to know this may not be possible before the race - but is the goal for the end of the year)
* Start doing more of other kinds of exercise other than running
* Enter ballot for Royal Parks Half Marathon. Go with whatever card fate deals me on that one
* Avoid going more than two consecutive weeks without doing any running

Food/Drink
* Eat more fruit and vegetables - the aim is to get my 5 a day 5 days out of 7
* Drink more water
* Continue to never try chia seeds
* Eat the food I WANT when I WANT IT. Nothing is off-limits, nothing is banned. If I want a burger, GET THE BURGER. Basically - have a healthy relationship with food, as a starve/binge cycle is not doing anyone any favours (I have pages, and pages, and pages of thoughts in my head that I could write about this - but I'll save it for a more pensive day)

Happiness
* Try to be nicer and stop using humour as a shield
* Take my makeup off at the end of the day at least 6 days out of 7 (I am currently AWFUL at this)
* SAVE MONEY!
* Cut down on use of taxis
* Continue to have a positive relationship with my own self-image.


I'm going to have to start 'properly' training for the 10k pretty soon (EEK) and will be writing up my ridiculous attempts all up on here. x

New Blog Title

Follow my blog with Bloglovin
Hi all,

I used to be over at Losing Weight The Lazy Way but you can now find me here. New Year, New Me and my reasons for writing a blog have changed!

I can lie and pretend that this post was intended for actual content, but basically I need to claim this blog with bloglovin and thought I would write a little prose to make it a bit less impersonal.

I'm trying to transfer all my bloglovin followers over, but if you fancy getting ahead of the game you could always click above! ;)

Thanks to you all for your continued support.

x

2013 - Keep on surviving

So as I type this opening sentence we have approximately 26 hours left of 2013. Why not jump on the blogging bandwagon and review it?

One thing I can say for the year of 2013 is that I am sure I will always remember it. It's not going to be a 1997 or 2004, forever lost in the wilds of my memories being unable to identify any specific event that may have have occurred. I've had some brilliant highs and some terrible, core-of-the-earth scraping lows.

I remember clearly at the end of September sitting on the floor of my old bedroom in my parents' house, surrounded by empty mugs of tea and hyperventilating, with no idea where I was going to live and what I was going to do, and thinking to myself "This is rock bottom. I am always going to look back at this and think, that was rock bottom." And you know what? I was wrong. I have never been as scared as I was for those few weeks of sofa-hopping around South London. I have never felt so lost or afraid and I have never listened to so much Kelly Clarkson. However, I have never felt so 'the opposite of alone'. The amount of genuine support, both practical and emotional, I had from so many people - family, friends, colleagues, even people from the internet I'd never met-  was INSANE and you know what? I bounced back sooner and higher than I could have ever imagined.

November & December of 2013 have been two of the best months of my life. I feel like over the past few years I had, so slowly I hadn't even really noticed, lost my control over who I was and what I wanted. Finally, I feel like I'M BACK AND I'M AMAZING. Because you know what? I am amazing. I may be slightly chubby and have minging feet, but at the same time I'm hilarious and have great hair. I don't know if I'll ever look in the mirror and totally like what I see (spending three years as a teenager being called ugly and annoying every day of your life will do that for you) BUT I look in the mirror now and I don't hate myself. I think, particularly if I've already done my make-up "You look okay. Perhaps even above average!"

I write this blog weighing about half a stone less than when I wrote my end of year blog in 2012. Most of that weight loss to be honest I can't really chalk up to anything more than a bout of extreme stress followed by a change of lifestyle meaning there's less junk food around the kitchen. However, weight loss really isn't my priority anymore. My priority is to be happy and (somewhat) healthy, both physically and emotionally. And more importantly, to continue to have a positive relationship with my own self-image.

Most importantly of all perhaps, when I wrote my end of year blog in 2012 I'd have struggled to run to the end of the road and back. I write this blog in 2013 being able to run 5k 3 times a week and having signed up for a 10k in March. Despite my chronic unfitness throughout my life and my utter aversion to physical exercise, I have accidentally discovered a love for running through nothing but my own amazingness (i.e. actually sticking to the plan and CARRYING ON TRYING.) If that's not something to love myself for I don't know what is.

My only New Year's Resolution is - Keep on surviving.

My favourite workout songs of 2013

Something you should probably know about me is that I am a MASSIVE pop music fan. I've only ever once ran without music which was when I did my 5k race as headphones weren't allowed. I just about managed to cope because of the sheer adrenaline and excitement of being in a race, but otherwise I literally could not imagine how horrific it might be to run without Eye of the Tiger and Survivor egging me on. Running's a really good way to listen to a new album and sometimes a proper TUNE coming on can really inspire me to go faster.

Anyway, I thought I would make a playlist of my favourite running songs that were released in 2013 (these aren't my favourite of all time of course - but I will save that for some sort of massive 100-song mega playlist at some point.) (My usual running playlist has 450 songs on it and counting). This playlist is 40 minutes long so is perfect if you are training for a 5k and feeling like being reflective over the year. 

Be warned: This playlist, much like me, is NOT 'credible' 

$$$ex - Vanessa Hudgens vs YLA

Work Bitch - Britney Spears

Roar - Katy Perry 

Heart Attack - Demi Lovato

I Need Your Love - Calvin Harris ft. Ellie Goulding

#thatPOWER - Will.i.am ft. Justin Bieber

Pompeii - Bastille

I Love It - Icona Pop ft. Charli XCX

Summertime Sadness Remix - Lana Del Rey vs Cedric Gervais

Do What U Want - Lady GaGa ft R.Kelly

Can We Dance - The Vamps

PS - My favourite workout song of all time is Miami 2 Ibiza - Tinie Tempah & Swedish House Mafia. I seriously do not like it at any other time except if I am exercising but when it comes on during a run I am ON IT. Give it a go. 

Motivated by new clothes?

Christmas came early for me this year when SportsShoes got in touch and asked if I wanted to try out some new running gear as part of the Fashionably Fit campaign to get me motivated to get out running in the winter months. This could not have come at a better time for me because as you know I massively got out of the habit of running for three whole months and I was absolutely thrilled. I chose some new running gear and I cannot believe I am about to put a full length photo of myself in exercise clothes on the internet but here you go - remember the camera, and the fact this was taken on CHRISTMAS DAY, adds 30 pounds.

Nike Running Jacket* - was £35.00 when I picked it, but reduced to £29.99 now!, c/o SportsShoes.com

(Barely visible) White vest top - I think this was from Marks & Spencers?! 

Karrimor Running Tights - £10.99, Sports Direct

Nike Flex 2 Women's Trail Running Shoes* - was £55.00 when I picked them, but reduced to £39.99 now! c/o SportsShoes.com

Now I'm not going to beat around the bush here. This is seriously high quality stuff at pretty amazing prices and I genuinely do thoroughly recommend this website.

I'm used to basically getting the cheapest of everything for sportswear - I ran in Tesco and/or Asda leggings for months. My old trainers were £15 from Sports Direct and unbranded. I always thought they were okay, but that was until I tried these trainers. As well as looking SERIOUSLY COOL (neon much?!) they feel like walking on air. I'm used to my feet feeling like I've been dancing all night in massive heels after a casual 5k, but these are so light and speedy it's unbelievable. I would be lying if I said I chose these trainers because they were trail running shoes as opposed to because I liked the blue/pink colour combo, but they are perfect for running on the beach and I'm sure they'll fit in well with all the running in parks I'm hoping to do once I get back up to London.

I am utterly in love with these trainers. Shoes come and go, but every now and then a pair will come which you will love like they are your own children. The last pair like that for me were my amazing Topshop Athena boots, and I never thought that I'd feel the same about a pair of TRAINERS, but there you go, I do. Let's have a look at another shot of these absolute beauties:

They are actually so pretty I might cry sitting here looking at them.

I don't feel the same kind of passionate, all-consuming love for my running jacket as I do for these beautiful trainers, but it is a pretty ace piece of equipment. It's the first time I've ever had a running jacket, but I thought it would be really useful for the winter months, and I was right. The annoying thing about running in the winter that I have found is that it's freezing but at the same time running makes you hot so you don't want to be trudging around in your eskimo gear. This jacket strikes a lovely balance between the two whilst also blocking out the dreaded 'rain'. It's also good to be a little more high-vis in these darker months. Plus, perhaps most importantly of all - it co-ordinates with the soles of my trainers.

Back to the question originally posed to me by SportsShoes.com - does having nice running gear motivate me to run in the winter months? Well in the same way as my Topshop Athena boots motivated me to learn how to spend a whole working day in heels, these beautiful trainers are TOTALLY inspiring me to run in the winter months. I keep them in display on my room, partly so on occasion I can look at them and sigh, and also because every time I see them I just want to get laced up and off out for a run, with my jacket to keep me suitably warm and dry. To the extent that yesterday I went out for an elusive Christmas Day run, and not only that, it was my longest run of all time ever (only 3.5 miles, don't get too excited - but still - slaying those records!)

Goodbye all, I hope this review has not been too useless given my lack of technical knowledge as a beginner, but I just wanted to give my perspective on what I genuinely thought rather than using random jargon! (in case you didn't grasp, my genuine thought was that THESE TRAINERS ARE MY NEW GOD!) I will be browsing SportsShoes.com with an intent to spend some of my Christmas money on productive equipment rather than merely make up giftsets.



xxx

PS - 2 days ago I started a Twitter page for my blog. If you're reading this and have Twitter I'd love it if you could give me a cheeky follow as I'm feeling a little lonely - I'll be tweeting all about my adventures with beginner running and some of my friends have told me that from time to time I can be 'quite amusing' so GIVE IT A GO.