Guest Post - Danielle from A Blog From Blackpool

Today's guest blog is written by Danielle from A Blog From Blackpool.

My Life In Diets

For as long as I can remember I have been dieting or meaning to diet. When I was a baby I didn’t eat, my mum went backwards and forwards to the doctors but I refused all solids. My mum would spend hours trying to get me to eat and a successful meal would be minuscule, but as soon as I started school, I began to eat normally almost overnight – my mum was thrilled and relived. I could eat what I liked and I was constantly praised for eating and during primary school I went from skinny to chubby.

2000
I started high school very aware I was bigger than most, by the time I was 12 I was 5”5 with 34C boobs and a size 12-14. Yes I was bigger than most of my friends, I wasn’t huge but I felt like an utter elephant. Instead of dieting sensibly I crash dieted. I spent the rest of my high school year’s starving and binging. My weight crept up. Outwardly, it was never an issue I was good at sport and I had lots of friends, but inside I always felt a bit rubbish. By the end of high school I ran on autopilot. Starving myself in the week and binging on alcohol and junk at the weekends. I went through phases of only eating 100 calories a day or only eating protein. Sometimes I would pretend I didn’t care and go for weeks eating the things I usually denied and sometimes I would be wracked with guilt after every bite. I thought I could control my weight but in reality I was gradually gaining and forming habits that have been difficult to break.

2005
At college my diet got worse, I would eat greasy hangover cures in the day and go out 3 or 4 times a week drinking and I would stop off at a takeaway on the journey home. I wanted to be the life and soul of the party I longed to recapture the popularity I had experienced at high school and always being up for a night out was part of that.

2007
Then a few things changed. I left college and hadn’t done as well as I should have. The relationships I had at college dissipated and I was left looking at an exhausted mess in the mirror and I hated what I saw. I realised that everything I didn’t like was mostly my own fault. I started Slimming World in my gap year and lost 2 stone.

2008
When I started University, I tried to stick to the Slimming World way but I struggled. I didn’t like spending my money on food and returned to my high school ways of starving and binging. I lost another 9lbs during that year but it was mostly down to stress, illness and stopping drinking almost completely.

2009
The next year and a half my weight fluctuated but stayed around the same mark. I moved back
home and the stability stopped my starving/binging cycle. I was thankful I hadn’t gained all the
weight I had tried so hard to lose.

2011
My new year’s resolution was to lose weight. I started counting calories but when I am faced with a choice between a banana or a milky way I will always chose the milky way. I could see my old habits returning for me if I know I have 1500 calories a day it’s just too tempting to not eat all day in favour of a tub of ice-cream in the evening. Not very healthy. In February my mum suggested we return to Slimming World and I jumped at the chance. We go together on a Monday I am building a positive relationship with food once again. Last time I let University get in the way but this time, I have determination by the bucket load. Slimming World is a really healthy diet and I’m having steady losses of 1-3 lbs per week. I am still allowed treats and a portion of Ben and Jerrys at the end of the day doesn’t mean I have to starve the next, but I will no longer let people lead me a stray or use circumstances as excuses for self sabotage. This is what I want and now I am on the right track, nothing can stop me.

Danielle xx