IT CAN WEIGHT UNTIL MONDAY

'I'll start eating well on Monday'. What is it with Mondays or the first day of the month or year, that justifies any changes we want to make? Perhaps it's the prospect of starting something on a 'clean slate' or perhaps it's just a good way to procrastinate. Either way, once the journey finally begins, it's hard to stay on track.

I've always struggled with my size and although I managed to shed a considerable amount of weight a few years ago, I've gained a few kilos back that I am desperately trying to lose. (Obviously not as desperately as I feed my insatiable desire for chocolate.) It is a real struggle.

I grew up in a family and culture that loves food! I have to say, that I was not much of a foodie, and often, I just ate because I needed to. This behaviour morphed into something more neglectful during my school years. I wouldn't eat. Not because I was trying to starve myself, just because food was honestly the last thing on my mind. And when I got home, and remembered that I had not eaten the whole day, I would suddenly realise how ravenous I felt and would devour anything in front of me. My poor eating habits, coupled with the misconception of normal portion size (I have two food-loving brothers to thank for that), ensured that I had developed quite a terrible relationship with food.

Genetics have definitely made it a bit difficult as I have inherited a body type that is quite stocky and susceptible to weight gain, but that excuse aside, I was never really conscious of my eating, and that mind shift made all the difference!

I've always been quite an active girl. I dedicated a lot of my time to swimming and dancing in my school years and continued to play in several action netball teams when I started university. At one stage, I was playing netball twice a week, and swimming and playing squash in between. I was also a committed boot camp member and was at the peak of my active lifestyle when I was training to become a Zumba Instructor. (You would think that I had a bod like a fitness guru at this point, but my eating was so bad, no amount of exercise made any difference to my physique).

Then disaster struck.

I dislocated my knee, damaging it quite badly. I would love to say that this happened in a dramatic interception across the court or a graceful fall while demonstrating a sexy Latin dance move, but it happened in my passage, at home, and I was doing very little.

My tendons didn't snap, so I didn't have to have an operation, thank goodness, but they were stretched quite badly. I had to go to bio-kinetics for several weeks and I was in pain for about a year after the injury. Even once I was able to climb stairs without discomfort and walk with less of a gangster swag, I was forbidden from any sport that caused sudden impact to the joints.

Suddenly, I found myself thrust into a world where I could no longer rely on my active lifestyle alone. I guess it was always my 'scapegoat'. I would always justify my weight by being able to say that I was fit. And I was. Strong too. I figured that if my body wasn't going to change, even with so much exercise, that I would just always be a big girl. What was great, was that I learnt to just accept my body as it was, but what wasn't so good, was I surrendered to never being able to change it. And we should NEVER just accept being powerless in our lives.

I remember, in the midst of my recovery, crying in the shower because I could barely place all my weight on my right leg without feeling like my knee was going to separate from the muscles holding it in place. I also remember thinking how strong and amazing anyone with a disability needs to be to overcome every day tasks, and feel motivated enough to keep going. And all of a sudden, I was thankful.

Thankful for my health, and my body. And knowing that I had a choice, everyday, to treat it well. And I wasn't. I had no more excuses not to.

For a long period of time, I could not be as active as I wanted to be, so my focus shifted elsewhere, to my food.

I started the Dukan diet, which cuts out processed food, sugar and unhealthy carbs and replaces them with loads of protein and veggies. I know that this can be considered a drastic choice, but this diet really worked for me. I didn't have to count calories or weigh my food, I don't have the time and the energy for that kind of approach, and I started making really good lifestyle changes. More significantly, I went from eating dinner only, to eating several times a day! It took me a few weeks of breaking old habit and forcing breakfast down my throat, before I was waking up with the desire to eat, but sure enough, I got into a good routine.

Besides being food conscious, the thing that worked best for me was being prepared (The only thing better than buying stationery for the new school year is buying containers to organise your grocery cupboard!Oh the joys of being a perfectionist!). If I didn't have lots of Tupperware with my healthy snacks and a healthy lunch ready to scoff down in between teaching time, I would fall off the wagon.

Now that I'm married, the wagon is not even on the road anymore! It has been almost a year and a half and some of those sneaky kilos have crept back in! The 'First Year Spread' is definitely a thing! And when your husband can basically eat half a loaf of white bread, smothered in Nutella (oh the chocolate!) in one day, and not even watch the scale change, it feels like the battle to eat healthily has already been lost. So I am forced to look at my eating habits all over again.

I want to feel more energised and more comfortable in my skin! I have the power to change how I'm feeling and how I'm eating, and knowing that I did it once, gives me all the confidence to do it again.

So, I am attempting to start TODAY! On a Wednesday (give me strength) because it cannot weight until Monday!