I used to work at a gym (back in my uni days).
So many good times and happy memories.
But so much pressure
(not from others, but from myself). I only worked on reception but I was constantly seeing hot bodies come in and working out. It's funny because I never, ever noticed the people that were overweight, because to me, I was the only one there who was overweight. Everyone else looked better than me. Again with my
warped sense of body image.
I never really let it show as I relied on my personality to get me through.
So I started working out.
Spin classes were my favourite. I soon became addicted doing 2 a day some days plus other workouts in the gym. It was kind of easy to work out at the gym when as soon as you finish work you were there.
I liked the idea of being in a dark room, with loud music pumping, imagining going on a journey on my bike. I liked racing other people and knowing the fact that in my eyes, I won the race as I tried my hardest, even though nobody else was racing.
But it wasn't enough.
I was doing promotions for the gym and honestly thought how could I be fat and promote a gym so I had to step it up
(should read step it down) in regards to food intake.
I looked like this and thought I was fat.
Sorry it's not very clear. It is a scanned photo from the years before digital cameras. I am on the left
(see I still have boobs no matter how much weight I lose and yes they are real).
And I had a flat stomach and no muffin top like this,
but still was not happy.
Food was my biggest battle.
I soon began to hate food. I would aim to burn more calories that what I ate. So if I consumed 500calories, I would make sure I burned 600 calories. I never understood the whole calorie thing. I just knew that to lose weight you had to follow the equation of calories in = calories out. However I never knew what that equation meant until I recently read
exhotgirl's blog about Basal Metabolic Rate.
Click here to find out your BMR.
So anyway food became too hard and I decided I would just make it really easy for myself and just eat
1 (yes one) piece of fish a day!
Sometimes if I was really hungry, I would have 2 pieces. It was a real splurge to have 2 pieces. How pathetic is that! I used to take so many vitamins to make up for the lack of v&m I was getting from not eating food.
I cringe at the amount of damage I would have done to my body but at the time, it did not even come into my mind. When you are 20 years old, none of that seems to matter.
Something had to give. I remember the day that it did. I had worked out in the morning before work, came home and decided to go for a run around my local area. It was about 8:45pm. I had been running about 20 minutes when my heart started to feel funny. My head started to go blurry and I knew something was very wrong. I was scared. I had to get down before I fell down. I needed water desperately. I basically crawled my way to someones tap at the side of their house and sat there leaning against the wall drinking water. Breathing. Just breathing.
Thoughts of being found like this, what my parents would think, finding out the damage that I had done to my body. That was enough for me. Enough to say no more.
I soon left the gym and began to eat more (a lot more). The weight crept on and the exercise disappeared. And then the other side of the extreme became my life but that's a whole nudda post!
It is so important to understand where you have come from. What worked and what didn't work as it all leads to where you are now.
Part 2 will be coming soon with more on me at my biggest (shudder)!
The other extreme!
