Fat Loss Tips.

Learning how to lose weight is probably not something new to you. Many people who struggle with losing weight suffer a sense of isolation and low self-esteem. I know because I count myself among them. I struggled to overcome my issues with food and weight loss for 27 years. I hid behind fat as I grew up, choosing to miss out on adventures and life’s experiences. I watched enviously as my sisters went out each evening looking slim and attractive, brought home boyfriends and told stories of what they’d been up to.

Being overweight was my excuse for everything, I didn’t go out because I had nothing to wear that didn’t make me look fat. I believed I couldn’t make friends because I was fat and that no one liked me because I was fat. I believed that no boy would ever fancy me or love me because I was fat. I was unhappy because I was fat – or so I thought at the time – and that was my excuse for doing… nothing.

My weight increased year on year as I grew up, and I believed that only by starving myself or going on the latest fad diet would I lose weight. During short periods when I was ‘thin’, I thought all my problems had been solved, but starvation diets are not sustainable, so each time, after about one month, the weight gradually went back on.

One day, at the end of my latest starvation diet, as I stood in front of the mirror scrutinizing my newly achieved size-6 body, I became aware of a voice inside my head telling me how fat my thighs were looking. The voice also told me that I was pathetic

As I listened more closely to this inner voice, I realized it sounded familiar. In a flash I was transported into my past, and heard the way my mother used to talk about herself. She was always dieting and would constantly criticize herself, saying she was ‘fat and disgusting’, as if one equated with the other. She would say, ‘It doesn’t matter what I do, I can’t lose weight’ or ‘I only have to look at a cream cake and I put on weight.’ I also recalled the words of my father, who used to tell me, ‘You’re just big-boned’. These and other ‘helpful’ comments were transformed into personal beliefs that I would hold for years to come.

I would always be fat and that if I was no longer losing weight, then I must be putting it on. This was ludicrous and suddenly I knew it. Just a few weeks earlier I had been thrilled with my weight loss. For the first time in my life I realized that no matter what size I was, I was programmed to find myself ugly. It was a major turning point. I suddenly realized that my self-image was faulty, and no diet would change that.

At 10 years old and weighing just over 8 stone (54 kg), I was confused that while nothing pleased my parents more than seeing me eat all my dinner, the children at school teased and bullied me every day of my life for being fat. (I now realize that they were teasing me because I was a victim of low self-esteem, not fat.) This was the point when I first became aware that it was food that made you fat. I have always been a logical soul, so when a neighbor introduced me to the idea of calorie counting, I lost no time in embarking on my first-ever starvation diet. At the age of 10 I was eating as few as 150 calories per day.