Summer body: Made in winter

I’m currently in my spring body now but I’ve been working hard since January to create my summer body – it’s well known that summer bodies are made in the winter!

The photo below shows one of my running tops and it is certainly true in my case – I do really like cake, but also food in general and as someone with a history of emotional eating, my weight loss journey has been an up and down road over the years.

Having been overweight my whole adult life I have never known what a slim body and freedom around food feels like. I have had some screwed up brain wiring when it comes to food; eating not only for comfort but also happiness, excitement, boredom and fear in addition to the actual hunger. I’ve struggled over the years when I have tried to actively lose weight, losing some then gaining some. I’ve been determined and shifted a few stones through pure sweat, focus and grit but when life happened as it inevitably does, it knocked me sideways and the focus, grit and hard work was gone and I slipped back into old ways – putting the weight back on again.

This was when I was trying too! There have been many years where I have not tried to lose weight as I was perfectly happy as I was! I have always loved fashion and looked after myself when it came to the way I dressed. I would wear the latest clothes and follow trends, and I’d always do my make-up and wear pretty jewellery. No-one ever commented on my weight, I was accepted as I was, but because I wasn’t monitoring what I was eating, the pounds crept on over the years until I reached a size 24 clothing (UK size) and started to find that my fabulous fashion choices were limited and that was my turning point – I couldn’t have that.

This was a blog post I wrote a few years ago called Weight loss: Before and during. It was called this because I hadn’t yet reached my ‘after’. I’m still working on that, it takes time. In this post (follow the link) you can see me looking much heavier next to a picture of how I looked when the post was written. Right now I’m about 1 stone bigger than the slimmer photo of me in that post – an up to date photo of me is below.

As you can see, I’m enjoying my sessions at the gym and I have written a series of three articles for BritMums surrounding the fitness work I’ve been up to, which were sponsored by Nuffield Health who supplied me with a 3 month membership to their Wakefield branch. You can read my posts on BritMums at the links below – and each article contains some useful tips that may help you with your own fitness plans:

Locating my inner motivation

Variety is the spice of exercise

The busy mum’s guide to working out

I’m still working toward my summer body and to help support myself better, I’ve made some changes this year. More planning (both of my meals and my workout sessions), more compassion when I have a wobble as we all do (and if I do eat a chocolate bar or a burger it really isn’t the end of the world) and more belief that I can do it because I can and I will.

I have posted motivational videos about weight loss and transformation, so if you are interested in that then please subscribe to my YouTube channel for the latest vlogs. If inspirational sayings are more your thing then follow me on Instagram where I regularly upload them amongst my lifestyle shots.

Are you working on your summer body or do you already have it? Let me know in the comments!