Shinsplint
New member
Hi. This is my diary about the ass-kicking I'm hoping to give myself to finally get into action, dispense with the pathetic excuses and become all that I want to become in life. I'm an Australian chick in her 30s, unemployed, unattached, living at home on a poverty string and watching my life drain away while I drown myself in a 15-year-long sugar addiction. In my 20s, I never thoought I needed to be responsible for my own health. I thought things would be magically okay, even if I stuffed my body with crap. But after 30, I started to realise life is short... and youth is even shorter! Also, seeing some loved ones close to me get cancer and some pass away without fulfilling their dreams really brought the message home that we are not guaranteed tomorrow. I used to always think, "I can lose weight or do this or that any time... so why bother now?" Well, enough is enough. Nobody is going to hand me my life on a platter, like I've been waiting to happen.
So here is the challenge. Over the last 13 or so years my weight has been slowly creeping up from the healthy 63kg I used to be, size 10 and physically fit, doing aerobics twice a week, even jogging... to the current 88.5 or so kg I weigh now. I got here through one basic principle: eating shi*loads of chocolate, sugar-laden foods, carbs like croissants, Shapes, Twisties, pastries and anything that could make my butt go, "OWCH! Don't go there, girl!" and NOT exercising regularly. I have never been a big eater. In fact, I've always been a picky, fussy eater. But my weakness is that when I find something I like... I EAT and EAT and EAT it - I eat it until I make myself sick... and then I recover and eat it all over again! If I become irreversibly sick of it, I just go onto something different and start eating that. I've gone from M&Ms binges to Cadbury Breakaway family choc blocks to dark chocolate bricks of chocolate sold by the kilo to Caramello blocks to Honey Logs to ice-cream.... and the list goes on. Every new product that comes onto the shelf is almost guaranteed to find a welcoming audience and connoisseur in me. Over the past 15 years I have spent the equivalent of a deposit on a house on junk food. I reckon if I had saved that money instead of buying crap to poison my body I would be living in my own inner-city pad today instead of rooming in my folks' place and having almost nothing to wear even if I did have a job.
So that's the situation as it stands. My plan is to kick sugar for GOOD. I want to start with the obvious junk foody type foods and work up to the sugars in other stuff like low cal biscuits and such, until I am completely sugar free. I've basically found that sugar screws with my brain. I am not myself when eating this crap. I have lost jobs, friends and really great opportunities because I've been 'stoned' on my sugar addiction. It's made me:
-depressed;
-irritable;
-bi-polar;
-paranoid;
-anti-social;
-dumber verbally;
-memory-deficient;
-hazy;
-fat;
-poorer as my money gets sucked into dentists' pockets;
-infertile; and
-bloody miserable
The reason I haven't been able to do something about this sooner is mostly because I never really looked at it as a PROBLEM while I was indulging in it. Sugar is such a socially acceptable substance that nobody really thinks of it as a DRUG. But that is exactly what it has been and is for me. I've been using it and abusing it exactly as a heroin addict uses and abuses heroin, to forget life's problems and numb oneself to the pain of life. I use it to feel happy, loved and excited. I feel comforted when I eat it; life around me seems rosier and warmer and friendlier. I feel kind of free, in a way, as if I can do anything. But as one former drug addict put it: "Drugs may give you wings but they take away the sky."
So, in my sky-less place now I've got no other option for my life, as I'm backed into a corner. I have no job, no money, no partner, no prospects. Almost no brain, as sugar has almost driven me mad and sometimes I feel like I can't even function. So I really have nothing left to lose but this fear that life will be dull and cold and lifeless without my drug of choice.
My strategy:
-replace sugar with something else I love to do (in this case, working out/dancing and reading - I have joined the gym and a book club);
-seek professional support: I am being referred to a psychologist to help me sort out any emotional crap which could be pushing me to sugar without me knowing;
-seek out the company of supportive people (I have awesome friends and family... I am doing this even more for them than for myself... I've put them through so much shi* I couldn't even begin to make amends in this lifetime, but I will try);
-above all, see sugar as my personal enemy - I'm sure it's fine for many people to live with, but it's not fine for me. I have to get a revelation of this fact, finally, and get hating already.
Obstacles to overcome:
-my anxiety about just about everything in this world;
-emotional ups and downs that cause me to retreat into my sugar den;
-my biggest enemy: laziness.
Goal:
I might as well have something to aim for. I am aiming to kick sugar completely before the end of September and to get down to my goal weight, 59 kg by 2nd April 2011. I've worked it out backwards, taking off about a kilo or so a week, and that's the date I ended up at. It's quite a coincidence, because that date is actually a very important date for me: I was born on that day!
So the goal has even more significance.
This is actually my third diary on this site... I was thinking this was pathetic but tonight a smoking ad came on the TV and the line at the end went:
Never give up giving up.
This really inspired me to continue fighting to shake off this addiction and even if I have to die fighting, a sad, out-of-shape spinster with rolls hanging down over my low-cut budget jeans, I will still be fighting and say I died fighting. After all, what are today's battles made of? If food is our biggest killer, isn't it a worthy enemy? And doesn't any worthy enemy call for a fight? And doesn't any fight that's faced with courage and the support of awesome friends stand even a small chance of being won?
Anyway, this site is probably the only thing, aside from the nice people at my gym, that gives me any hope to reach my goal. I've been lurking here for years and seen the awesome progress people have made in their lives and been really inspired by their stories. It's a real shake to the soul to never give up and never lose hope! Well, that's it for this entry. Thanks for reading. Hopefully, my next post in here will be for the purpose of posting a weight loss or some such awesome thing. Bring it on mama!
So here is the challenge. Over the last 13 or so years my weight has been slowly creeping up from the healthy 63kg I used to be, size 10 and physically fit, doing aerobics twice a week, even jogging... to the current 88.5 or so kg I weigh now. I got here through one basic principle: eating shi*loads of chocolate, sugar-laden foods, carbs like croissants, Shapes, Twisties, pastries and anything that could make my butt go, "OWCH! Don't go there, girl!" and NOT exercising regularly. I have never been a big eater. In fact, I've always been a picky, fussy eater. But my weakness is that when I find something I like... I EAT and EAT and EAT it - I eat it until I make myself sick... and then I recover and eat it all over again! If I become irreversibly sick of it, I just go onto something different and start eating that. I've gone from M&Ms binges to Cadbury Breakaway family choc blocks to dark chocolate bricks of chocolate sold by the kilo to Caramello blocks to Honey Logs to ice-cream.... and the list goes on. Every new product that comes onto the shelf is almost guaranteed to find a welcoming audience and connoisseur in me. Over the past 15 years I have spent the equivalent of a deposit on a house on junk food. I reckon if I had saved that money instead of buying crap to poison my body I would be living in my own inner-city pad today instead of rooming in my folks' place and having almost nothing to wear even if I did have a job.
So that's the situation as it stands. My plan is to kick sugar for GOOD. I want to start with the obvious junk foody type foods and work up to the sugars in other stuff like low cal biscuits and such, until I am completely sugar free. I've basically found that sugar screws with my brain. I am not myself when eating this crap. I have lost jobs, friends and really great opportunities because I've been 'stoned' on my sugar addiction. It's made me:
-depressed;
-irritable;
-bi-polar;
-paranoid;
-anti-social;
-dumber verbally;
-memory-deficient;
-hazy;
-fat;
-poorer as my money gets sucked into dentists' pockets;
-infertile; and
-bloody miserable
The reason I haven't been able to do something about this sooner is mostly because I never really looked at it as a PROBLEM while I was indulging in it. Sugar is such a socially acceptable substance that nobody really thinks of it as a DRUG. But that is exactly what it has been and is for me. I've been using it and abusing it exactly as a heroin addict uses and abuses heroin, to forget life's problems and numb oneself to the pain of life. I use it to feel happy, loved and excited. I feel comforted when I eat it; life around me seems rosier and warmer and friendlier. I feel kind of free, in a way, as if I can do anything. But as one former drug addict put it: "Drugs may give you wings but they take away the sky."
So, in my sky-less place now I've got no other option for my life, as I'm backed into a corner. I have no job, no money, no partner, no prospects. Almost no brain, as sugar has almost driven me mad and sometimes I feel like I can't even function. So I really have nothing left to lose but this fear that life will be dull and cold and lifeless without my drug of choice.
My strategy:
-replace sugar with something else I love to do (in this case, working out/dancing and reading - I have joined the gym and a book club);
-seek professional support: I am being referred to a psychologist to help me sort out any emotional crap which could be pushing me to sugar without me knowing;
-seek out the company of supportive people (I have awesome friends and family... I am doing this even more for them than for myself... I've put them through so much shi* I couldn't even begin to make amends in this lifetime, but I will try);
-above all, see sugar as my personal enemy - I'm sure it's fine for many people to live with, but it's not fine for me. I have to get a revelation of this fact, finally, and get hating already.
Obstacles to overcome:
-my anxiety about just about everything in this world;
-emotional ups and downs that cause me to retreat into my sugar den;
-my biggest enemy: laziness.
Goal:
I might as well have something to aim for. I am aiming to kick sugar completely before the end of September and to get down to my goal weight, 59 kg by 2nd April 2011. I've worked it out backwards, taking off about a kilo or so a week, and that's the date I ended up at. It's quite a coincidence, because that date is actually a very important date for me: I was born on that day!
So the goal has even more significance.This is actually my third diary on this site... I was thinking this was pathetic but tonight a smoking ad came on the TV and the line at the end went:
Never give up giving up.
This really inspired me to continue fighting to shake off this addiction and even if I have to die fighting, a sad, out-of-shape spinster with rolls hanging down over my low-cut budget jeans, I will still be fighting and say I died fighting. After all, what are today's battles made of? If food is our biggest killer, isn't it a worthy enemy? And doesn't any worthy enemy call for a fight? And doesn't any fight that's faced with courage and the support of awesome friends stand even a small chance of being won?
Anyway, this site is probably the only thing, aside from the nice people at my gym, that gives me any hope to reach my goal. I've been lurking here for years and seen the awesome progress people have made in their lives and been really inspired by their stories. It's a real shake to the soul to never give up and never lose hope! Well, that's it for this entry. Thanks for reading. Hopefully, my next post in here will be for the purpose of posting a weight loss or some such awesome thing. Bring it on mama!
) a shout and we'll do what we can to get you through it. There has been many a time where I've been craving something and I've come on here instead. This place is such a great resource for you, utilise it and keep on updating!
