Stats: 24F 5'3 SW: 141 CW: 116 GW: 115
When I was a young girl, my mother always said to me: “You’ll never be thin. You’ve inherited my child-bearing hips. I’m sorry.” I knew, even then, that her ‘sorry’ wasn’t an apology. It was instead an assurance to herself, a strengthening in her belief that the reason she wasn’t thin was because of her frame; her daughter being chubby proved to her that it was the fault of genetics, and not her poor eating habits or laziness. In other words, she was never talking to me when she said that. She was talking to herself.
Growing up, I was always on the cusp of being overweight. I knew I had bad eating habits. Think eating an entire sharing-bag of crisps for my school lunch. Think going home and making a beeline straight for the snack tin for a couple of ‘treats’ before dinner. Think crisp packets and chocolate bar wrappers lying in the crevices of my bed, left over from snacking before sleeping. I was a serial snacker. In fact, it’s a wonder I wasn’t any bigger than I was.
This continued when I moved away from home and into shared accommodation during my first two years of university. I don’t think I put any extra weight on, but I certainly didn’t lose any either, and my snacking became only slightly more sophisticated. I always cooked dinner, but I was partial to eating out for lunch, cooking up a ‘snack’ of midnight noodles and gyoza, and, worst of all, downing cans and cans of Pepsi Max every day. My only exercise was walking to and from lectures; when you live a five minute walk away from campus, it is a joke to even call it exercise.
It wasn’t until I moved to Japan to study there for a year that I started taking a bit more care of my body. I cut out soda completely. I started controlling my portion sizes when snacking: I bought a small bowl from the nearby 100-yen store and vowed only to eat the amount of crisps that could fit into it a day. And I walked everywhere. The main hub of the city I lived in was roughly an hour and a half away from my apartment, and I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say I walked there and back at least once a week. I travelled to various cities with a friend, and we walked everywhere then too.
The pound was strong against the yen back then, and I wanted to enjoy myself and experience all there was to experience while I was there, so I was eating out a lot, but the portion sizes in Japan are reasonable - unless, of course, you go to a ramen bar, but that really was a treat every once in a while. Most importantly, I was learning to control my snacking, to walk, and to actually enjoy food, and treat treats as exactly what they are: treats.
It became reality that I had lost a substantial amount of weight one day when my friend and I glanced at my visa photo. “Wow,” my friend exclaimed. “You look so different.” I did, and I felt different too. I felt more confident, more sexy, more me. I realised that my weight had been holding me back all this time, and it had been literally and figuratively lifted from me.
So, when I returned from Japan and my mother saw me at the airport for the first time in a year, it was no surprise that she was shocked. “You’re so skinny!” she exclaimed, ‘skinny’ of course being considered negative. Because I had shattered her belief. Because I was proof that, even on her child-bearing hips, she could be thin if she tried. So, to make herself feel better, in her mind I was ‘too skinny’.
Unfortunately, after living in the UK again for a few years, the weight slowly crept back on. I had slipped back into my old snacking habits, and although I still wasn't drinking any soda, I was eating out for lunch every day and would always have a dessert after dinner. I did not reach my highest weight again, but I was closer to that than my lightest.
Remembering the confidence I had at my lightest weight, I decided to get serious about returning there, and staying there. So, on 23 April 2019, I started my CICO journey by eating an average of 1200 calories a day. Now, I track everything I eat on MyFitnessPal (always making sure to remember drinks and cooking oils!), I go to the gym once a week and make sure I go for a long walk, usually over 10,000 steps, at least once a week. I no longer snack, unless I have the calories to fit in something small. These have all become habits that I hope to keep for a lifetime.
Today, I stand at 116 lbs, (52.5 kgs), 1 lb (0.5 kg) away from my goal weight. When I hit my goal weight and start maintaining, I intend to focus on gaining muscle to reduce body fat.
I am doing all of this for myself, but I also intend to show my mother through my actions that, above all, understanding CICO and exercise are key, and that having ‘child-bearing hips’ does not mean neither she nor I will ‘never be thin’.
This sub has been a huge help, even though until now I've only ever been a lurker. I hope my post can help someone realise that they have control when it comes to weight loss, as that was an extremely important part of my journey.
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