So I was planning for this to be the
first blog post of my shiny new website but it’s having a few technical niggles
at the moment so rather than lose the momentum of my new blogging efforts, I’m
posting it anyway. I’ve loving my new
enthusiasm for blogging, but he trouble is there are a million things I want to
cover so I shall have to resist the urge to waffle on about everything and
attempt to keep some focus.
It's all about me...
I’ve generally tried to keep personal
and business stuff separate so far but maybe more about me and why I’m doing
what I’m doing may help with building an online rapport and bring more of a
personality to the business so why not!
A girly girl I am not; never have
been. No brothers or sisters so male
cousins were my usual playmates when I was younger. I was much happier rooting around in the pond
for frogs than dressing dolls so maybe it shouldn’t have been a surprise when I
found a love for heavy music and heavy weights!
I’m also not a subscriber to the princess mentality; I need to make and
take responsibility for my own future rather than wait around for someone to
ride in on a rainbow unicorn and hand it to me on a sparkly platter.
So here I am. Been into lifting heavy iron things since 2008,
and whilst I’m not ready to step on stage in a sparkly bikini (and
realistically never will be!) I’m reasonably happy with where I have got
to. There a lot of phases of motivation
where I want to live in the gym mixed with periods where I’m a lot more random
with it. But the one thing that stays
pretty constant is food and what I call my non-negotiables.
Random illness issues a challenge
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| Obligatory random cartoon reference |
Let’s back up a bit, to 2008 when I’d
recently found my love for the gym, was doing well at uni and had also found a
good bloke too (which is always a bonus!).
All was going smoothly when I acquired a random lump on my bum. Never a great thing to find, especially when
you have no idea what the heck it is and it keeps growing to the size of a golf
ball! Eventually it went, but then more
appeared in other places too. Cue
numerous trips to the docs and a variety of suggestions as to what it was
(insect bite, bed bugs, MRSA(!)) but nothing to actually help apart from
various courses of long term antibiotics. Which didn’t actually help. Brilliant.
So after a few months of putting up with more random lumpiness in
various places I did what any self-respecting inhabitant of the 21st
Century does and consulted Dr Google.
Always a bit of a 50/50 scenario as to whether you’ll find the info you
need or just convince yourself you’re one of the 8 people in the world with a
rare tropical disease. Luckily for me it
was the former and I knew what I was dealing with. Well it was good and bad at the same time as
it turned out to be something potentially very horrible, lifelong and painful generally
without any successful cures. Again,
brilliant. I had a new nemesis which I
needed to deal with; Hidradenitis Suppurativa (HS) was it’s name and I knew
that I needed to move away from conventional medicine to beat it into
submission. Which I did. Go me (*shakes pom poms).
Food is power
Again, anyone who knows me knows that I
love to eat. Lots. If I went out for a meal there would
generally be 3 courses usually with a pint of lager (just in case you were
doubting my non-girliness). I could eat
a lot of people under the table and I liked it; food made me happy. But having this hideous illness didn’t so
something had to give and I took that hard initial first step of realising
things had to change and made the conscious decision to change what I ate. I started off fairly conventionally by just
cutting down on the ‘obvious’ junk stuff, followed the general healthy eating
guidelines but kept on with bread, diet drinks, margarine, 1% fat milk
etc. That didn’t really cut it though so
I consulted Dr Google again and came across some HS groups where people had
realised that a certain group of foods had been affecting them and cutting them
out had seen results. So it was bye bye
nightshades (potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers mainly) along with continuing to
cut out the junk and there were results.
I was a lot less lumpy than I had been in a few years. As elimination diets recommend, I tried to
reintroduce these foods over time and it turned out that it was just potatoes
which affected me so tomatoes and peppers were back on the menu again. I’m sure a lot of people can relate to the
feeling I had of ‘yay I know how to sort my problems’ mixed with ‘wwwaaahhh, I
can never eat my all time favourite food (chips) again’. But my non-princessiness kicked in, I took a
dose of Woman Up and just got on with it.
We are now at 16 months since a chip last passed my lips.
However, although the lumpiness was
definitely less frequent, for some bizarre reason it had moved to my eyelash
follicles (I know, WTF is that all about!) and whenever I got a lump it was
right there for all to see (quite literally!) so there was still work to be
done. I decided just to go for broke and
cut out anything processed and hey presto; Me 1, HS 0. That is how I have stayed for the last year
and a bit and I can honestly say that 99% of the time I really don’t miss my
old way of eating. Why would I when it
came with such horrible baggage? The 1%
is just the time when I really fancy fish and chips, or a bakewell tart or a
chunk of French stick to accompany my butter, but I very rarely give in because
it just isn’t worth it. Case in point,
we went on a caravan holiday last year so food options were a bit limited. I went along with everyone else’s food a few
times (Shreddies, wholemeal bread and wholemeal pasta – nothing major) and a
couple of days after coming home I had a new eye beastie which took over a week
to get rid of. Not doing that again!
Which brings me back to my
non-negotiables I mentioned earlier. No
matter how tired I am, how many hundreds of jobs I have to do, how little food
there seems to be in the house, I will not eat rubbish. It just isn’t worth it to me. Instead of having a cheese sandwich, bag of
crisps and a bar of chocolate for lunch, I’d rather play a game of ‘freezer
bingo’ and end up with a random assortment of frozen leftovers because I know
it won’t make me ill.
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| 6 months post baby - plus about 2 stone |
It’s probably also worth mentioning that
I have had a weight loss journey in the past too. Whilst pregnant with my now 3 year old
daughter, I ate anything that wasn’t nailed now. I was allowed to right?! So when she was born I had an extra 3 stone
of lard I needed to lose. I tried a few
different things; Weight Watchers (my previous blog post lets you know how I
feel about WW now!), the 5:2 diet and general calorie counting which got me so
far, but it still didn’t solve the health problems even if I had lost a couple
of stone. In March 2014 I embarked on a
9 week Body Transformation which I got on pretty well with and it helped me
realise the way I need and want to eat long term. Ideally, I’d probably go with a Paleo
approach but as I do still love food I tend to go about 80% Paleo and just add
in a few carb options too.
So that’s my history and the reason why
I started LHB; to try and help other people improve their health and get
elements of their life back by changing what they eat and how they live. I’m not going to pretend it’s plain sailing
for everyone; there are demons and circumstances which make it hard but I’m
also not going to make excuses. You’ve
just got to suck it up and get on with it.
The person in charge of your future health is you and you are the one
who will make or break it. If you need
help then that is what LHB is here for; to give you a programme to make the
changes in a way which maximises the chances of you keeping it going long
term. We are also here to get the word
out that healthy is the new skinny.
What’s the point of fitting into that size 8 bikini if you feel rubbish
inside? Our programmes focus on getting you to a healthy place first, and then
looking at the weight loss once you have got the right habits embedded to take
forward.
Anyhoo, enough of the marketing spiel, I’m
off to turn up the Rammstein, throw some heavy things around and eat some good
food. Wanna join me?
