Being Featured in ‘Heath & Fitness Magazine’
As I walked out of the studio, towards central London, I found myself reaching into my bag to find my phone and call my mum to share my delight.
I’d been given the chance to share my story; it wasn’t just about losing weight and becoming healthy but the chance to tell how much it really did change my life. As I spoke, I realized that I could hardly remember how I filled my day before I found fitness, friendship, and confidence. I realized that I’d come a long way from the girl who spent Sunday wallowing in bed with a box of pain du Chocolat.
We should always keep in mind that perfectionism doesn’t make us happy, trying to be ‘perfect’ has a high price and often makes us miserable.
I wasn’t representing ‘perfect’, I was representing the girl next door who never gave up and because of this some of my dreams have come true.
January is the month we fall into the trap of ‘My life will be so much better if I weigh a stone less’ or ‘I will run 115 miles each month so I can be like ‘Miss XYZ’ and ‘This year, I will aim for no less than perfection’. If you take anything from this post, please let it be that ‘a 70% success rate is often all you need to feel satisfied’.
When I lost weight, I found me and a new lease of life – My body is not ‘perfect’ but what I’ve achieved still surprises me to this day. I’m not sure why, but people seem keen to gloss over the ‘background’ work when painting a picture of what they have achieved. Let me tell you this; when I climbed on a regular basis, there was plenty of times I failed to reach the summit and backed off various rock routes. I was not a natural runner, as a matter of fact, I ran 10/11 minute miles for many years. I could hardly control my joy at finally achieving a 30 minute 5km and never imagined I’d cruise 25 minutes!
A few weeks before I went to the Alps to climb Mont Blanc, I went to a local lake and kept jogging loops until my legs would hardly carry me any longer, which was the point I walked – 20 miles and many hours later, I knew nothing would stand in my way. My aim? To prove my critics wrong, to prove myself wrong, to remind myself that I would never go back to being the girl who could hardly walk a few miles.
Do you want to change yourself in 2016? It could be that all you need to change is your state of mind. Woody Allen once said ‘80% of success is just showing up’…Whatever your dreams are, show up and give it your very best shot, then whatever happens, you’ve not failed.
People have asked me how I lost weight; If I am honest there is no ‘one for all’ diet or a magical number of calories, as a matter of fact, the hardest part is maintenance. To lose weight, I walked whenever I could, I kept a food diary and ate a really balanced diet. Due to the fact, my diet had been so atrocious, making sensible changes made a huge difference in a short amount of time.
During the last few years, my objectives have evolved around maintaining the right kind of nutritional balance and working on my fitness levels. Last year I spent 10 weeks testing theories behind ‘The perfect Body’ and you can read all about this here.
Aiming for non scale victories is satisfying and often a lot more attainable than we realise.
I wish had taken photo’s of ‘behind the scenes’ of my shoot, however I felt a little embarrassed and unsure if I was *really* good enough to be there with the likes of Susie Chan. The reality was that everyone was down to earth, the dressing/make up room was bursting with good vibes and an incredible array of clothing.Admittedly my photo has caused some amusement with my family and friends, the professionals make posing look so easy – I was almost trembling and desperate to return to my comfort zone…
But we all know the truth – Nothing great happens in your comfort zone…
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Is losing a significant amount of weight your objective for 2016? You may enjoy reading this post about what people don’t tell you about losing weight..
I rarely climb these days but If you are interested in my climbing history I have a log book here.
Many thanks to Health & Fitness Magazine for making one of my dreams come true and enabling me to share my story.
Katie
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