Live For Food

In my very first post I talked about my relationship with food and my growing interest in it throughout my life, and how eventually that relationship turned slightly unhealthy.  Here is my story continued…

Following the realization that I was putting on weight, at a rate of about a pound a week as it turned out, I knew I had to do something about it.  I was just about to hit the next big number on the scales, and I had gone up to the next clothes size, and that finally signaled that enough was enough.

Initially I began cutting back on the portion sizes that I served up to me and my husband for dinner.  We had been guilty of eating two chicken breasts each with a jar of cooking sauce between us – basically four portions between two.  We would also eat a whole frozen pizza each when a serving was half a pizza.  I would serve the most enormous helpings of pasta and rice, so I started weighing it out instead.  I cut back on my lunchtime snacking habits and didn’t buy anything extra to go with my lunch if I brought sandwiches to work.

This was fairly successful and I lost a steady half a pound a week for about three months without even feeling that I was on a diet.  Then I got hold of a particular diet book, which encouraged reduction of portion sizes, making healthier choices, and making lifestyle changes one slow step at a time, together with light exercise.  To my mind at that stage a diet had always meant restriction of food, or particular food groups which I knew I wouldn’t cope with and this diet approach seemed quite revolutionary!

Fast forward eighteen months and I had lost my excess weight.  What started off with a diet book turned into keeping a food diary and calorie counting, and it did the trick.  Finally I was a healthy weight again.  However I realized that I couldn’t go back to my old habits or I would end up back in the same place again.

Thus began a journey into weight maintenance.  Its about five years later now, and I have achieved weight maintenance – for now anyway! I’m about half a stone heavier than the lowest weight I managed to reach and I circle around the same few pounds over a period of weeks.  However to be honest it still feels like a continual battle at times.  I do have to watch what I eat, I have to balance off the good days with the bad days, I need to have strategies to cope with food that other people make for me or on social occasions, and I have to do some kind of exercise continuously.

Despite losing the weight I think I was disappointed initially that I didn’t look better than I did after what was quite a big achievement, and that the journey was never going to be over.  I realized that fitness and health are two different things.  Losing weight doesn’t suddenly give you a flat tummy, and it’s quite possible to be petite and curvy.  The realization that the smaller you become the less food you need I also found quite irritating!

So where does that leave me?  Pretty much in the same place I started!  I love food but I know that I have to balance my portion sizes and eat healthily, whilst at the same time its important to me to enjoy food without it becoming a daily chore to think up different meals to cook every single day.  This blog is partly to try and help me focus on the positive aspects of food, the enjoyment I get from eating and cooking whilst acknowledging that balancing calories in and calories out is not easy for many people, and to let people know that weight maintenance is achievable.

Onwards and upwards…