Beauty. Fashion. Lifestyle.
Posts tagged Happy
It’s Taken a Year, but I’m Here
19
11 years
Last year I realised something about myself… I was slightly overweight and I was unhappy, I lacked confidence and, to be honest, I wasn’t as healthy as I could have been. It was the photographs from my dad’s wedding in August 2011 that made me realise I wasn’t the person I wanted to be. It wasn’t necessarily the extra pounds that bothered me, but my own lack of motivation, so I set about fixing the issues that needed fixing. It just so happened that these fixes also meant that I started to lose the excess weight. Earlier this year I posted about my health and fitness regime. At the time of posting I had already lost 12 pounds, but I still had a little way to go. Now, exactly 51 weeks after deciding to change, I have reached my target! In total I have lost 25 pounds, which in 51 weeks is a very gradual weight-loss of around 1/2 a pound per week, and I now have a ‘normal’, healthy BMI of 23. I couldn’t be happier with my progress and I feel I have really succeeded in changing my lifestyle for the better.
The changes I decided to make were very serious to me. Faddy diets and weight-loss plans didn’t even cross my mind as I knew the results wouldn’t last (even if they were fast) and they only targeted one tiny part of what I wanted to change. Instead, I looked at my diet, saw where I was going wrong and altered it. I have been vegetarian for eleven years and have always cooked healthy meals for myself, so that wasn’t the main problem. The problem was snacking. I have a sweet tooth and in between meals I would always snack on chocolate, biscuits and cake, several times a day. I now avoid snacks unless I actually need one, and then I’ll choose something healthier. As a result, I appreciate my main meals a lot more and it’s made me realise that the snacks I was eating before were very unnecessary as I can survive without them! They were eaten out of habit or boredom, if anything, which is a pattern I am very glad to have broken. I by no means deny myself these sweet things… In fact I still eat them quite often, I just eat less of them. I used the MyFitnessPal application on my smart phone to track my meals too, which I found helped a lot as I could see if/when/where I was going wrong.
As well as eating better, I started to exercise more. I used to find exercising quite a chore, but now I really enjoy it. I’m not sure how I managed to change my mindset on this so easily, but the sheer determination I felt to change my lifestyle drove me forward and made me want to exercise. The more I did it the better I felt, and the better I felt the more I wanted to do it. Believe it or not, my main source of exercise is simply walking. I walk whenever and wherever I can and it really has helped. I also find the Wii Fit really useful as the fun element of it distracts me from the hard work! I have noticed a great difference in my health since starting to exercise more. I used to suffer from asthma which was aggravated if I exerted myself too much, but now the asthma is so much better and I hardly ever need to use my inhalers, which is a massive bonus.
As I got healthier, my confidence grew. In my case, a healthy body really has lead to a healthy mind. In February I started Bewitchery, which I would never have done this time last year, and getting positive feedback from my lovely readers has helped me a lot, so thank you to all of you for helping to boost my confidence. As Bewitchery grows, my confidence grows, which helps me in other ways too. I’m far more assertive now than I was a year ago, which has definitely helped with my university work, I now feel comfortable wearing clothes such as shorts and strapless tops, which I would never go near before, and I feel confident that I can achieve whatever I put my mind to, which is the most important thing I have taken from this.
Overall, I am now healthier, happier and more confident, both in my body and my mind. I’m glad I took the steps to change my lifestyle for the better and there’s no looking back now. This is me and this is how I want to be. It’s been an amazing year full of personal achievements, and here’s to many more to come!
Naomi x
