Lifestyle Makeover - an introduction

Welcome to my blog.  My name is Lady Pepper and I'm beginning a quest to improve my lifestyle and hopefully loose a bit of weight in the process.  I'm inviting the entire world to join me in this quest in the hope that I might inspire others to change their lives as well as letting the world see my struggles and triumphs. 

Me with my two dogs ... This was me at the worst of it.

I am an average Jane.  I am not a celebrity and I am not a rich woman which means I cannot afford a nutritionist, a private chef or a personal trainer.  Much like many other women in the world.  I face the same struggles that many of us face and I feel it is time that a voice of a normal average person should rise out of the mass of weight loss and diet fads.  I don't propose to have all the answers but I hope by writing this blog that I learn a bit along the way and maybe figure out what works and what doesn't.

So a little bit more about me.  I am in my late twenties and currently a house wife.  The only children me and my husband have at present are of the furry variety.  I wish to be a good healthy example to any future children that will grace the lives of me and my husband.  Therefore it's time to stop being lazy (for there is no other way to put it) and clean up my lifestyle.

Me on my wedding day, not quite the slender and healthy bride one aspires to be.

This means introducing to my life healthy eating and a healthy diet as well as exercise to my life.  These are things that are currently lacking.  These things will ensure that I live a happier, longer life for my children as well as have energy to enjoy them.  I hope that I will pass on to them the importance of eating healthy and exercise, two values I believe are increasing important in this modern world. 

All my life I have struggled with weight.  My weight has gone up and down.  Currently I weigh about 104 kg.  Not a lot you say?  Well for my build it is.  At my heaviest I weighed about 115 to 120 kg.  I'm not entirely sure but I was weighed at the doctors at 111 kg and I know I increased in weight after that before losing the 10 to 15 Kg I have currently achieved.  This was achieved simply by giving up the thing that caused me a huge amount of stress.  I was in a very bad situation with my job and after having a mental break down I had to give it up.  Now six months later I am well enough to move forward from it.

It is here I wish to discuss BMI.  My height is 163 cm.  This means for my BMI to be what is considered in the safe range I have to weigh about 66kg.  That's a weight loss of 44kg.  However my build will not support this.  I believe it would be too dangerous for me to get down to this weight.  My current BMI puts me in the morbidly obese category.  I certainly don't feel morbidly obese.  Over weight, maybe heading towards the obese side, but certainly not morbidly obese.

You see BMI is based on averages.  Averages are used to find the middle values, to normalise populations.  So if you look at a large number of people on average they will be within a certain range of values.  But that does not stop people from falling outside this standard model.  So if you are like me, short and stocky, this can mean that these averages do not apply for this build.  For instance I have a friend who is nearly six and a half feet tall but only weighs 65 kg.  That is a healthy weight for him.  My husband weighs the same as I do but he is about a foot taller than me so he still looks very lean.

I don't not advocate that you disregard medical advice with regard to weight loss.  You should never disregard a doctor's advice for the advice of a blog.  This is not what I am blogging about.  I do have a problem with modern measures of weight loss and gain and this is my opinion.  Mostly weight loss definitions focus on a very normalized ideal of the human form and it does not allow for those who do not fit this model.  I say this because I have lost weight in the past and I have achieved my goals previously.  It was a hard fight but I did it.  And when I was at my best I weighed 89 Kg.  According to the BMI charts I was still morbidly obese despite being able to run about 5 kilometres a day and being at the height of my fitness. 

This is me at my best.  Quite a difference.  This is where I want to get back too.

This is because I was mostly muscle and carried a lot less fat.  Muscle weighs much more than fat, any personal trainer or doctor can tell you this.  So a person can become very fit and healthy but weigh a lot more than expected.  I was building muscle at this stage of my life and therefore as the fat fell away it was replaced with much healthier muscle. 

I find it important also to redefine what is healthy.  Because we are blasted in this world with images of rail thin celebrities and sold this image as the idea of healthy.  For a woman my age its between 21-32% of my body weight.  For men it is much less.  Women need to have a healthy amount of fat, which I have read should be located primarily around the hips and thighs, to aid with bearing children.  While this seems like a high proportion of body fat, carrying a child to term is a horrendously energy intensive and demanding act for a woman.  Without this amount of fat on our bodies we would be at risk of serious harm or death from carrying a child and the human race would simply not be able to continue. 

To be healthy is different from being thin.  Not all women are blessed with the tall, thin, straight up and down build that the few lucky people who become Hollywood stars possess.  So being healthy means we have to let go of the illusion that Hollywood sells us.  I will never weigh 55 Kg or whatever feather weight most of these women weigh.  I have embraced this.  I have learned to accept it.  I accept who I am.  I have learned to accept myself and my body because this is the only body I will ever have and it cannot be that of any model or singer or actress that currently grace the many magazines out there.

This doesn't mean I don't realize that I do not have an issue.  I am an unhealthy weight.  But I will not beat myself up if I do not reach 66 Kg.  I will not be unhappy with myself if I do not get to being a size 8 (I think this is referred to as a size 0 in the US).  I will never be this size.  I will set myself achievable goals and fight against a world that wants me to be overweight rather than healthy. 

In my next post I am going to discuss goals.  I'm going to talk about setting a reasonable goal and then about taking little steps to reach the goal.  This introduction I admit has been longer than I expected.  But I hope that those who read this will be intrigued enough to stick around for future posts and hopefully follow my journey towards living a healthier life.  It's not going to be easy but I'm in it for the long haul.