The Terrible Twenties: Weight

Surprise surprise… my blogs are back! The cheek of me to pop back up after not posting for over a year, just spilled some tea and vanished. Honestly, I’ve had a rollercoaster of a year, from entering the terrible twenties officially to the hundreds of mental breakdowns over every tiny detail of my life. Dramatic or what haha!

When I hit the ripe old age of twenty one, I was hit with an overwhelming sadness of not being a teenager anymore. There is almost an invisible pressure that we are now supposed to have our lives together, whether that means saving for a mortgage or starting our journey into the corporate world, I wasn’t ready for the change. I went from worrying about whether I should spend my last £10 on shots at my local pub to money management and my career. If you’re an avid blog reader of mine, you will know I’m the worst at addressing my feelings or asking for advice, you will genuinely have more luck getting blood out of a stone haha…

I loved blogging, I used to receive such lovely messages from you all, some of you relating to different topics, some of you just feeling heard and for me, it was unreal. This blog for me was a way for me to deal with my thoughts, almost like talking to someone who isn’t there, it was and still is my holy grail. The relief I would feel once I posted was so refreshing and I owe you all a thank you for keeping my spirts high through hard times. My mental health unfortunately took a huge plummet last year, I put myself through hell and my body took the stress of it. Nobody prepares you for the transition from a young girls’ body to a women’s body. I don’t like to speak about numbers but, to give perspective, I sky rocketed from 7 stone to 9 stone in the space of 10 months. There is nothing wrong with either of these numbers and a women’s body isn’t defined by their measurements. This is something I wish I could have engraved inside my head as a constant reminder every time I look in the mirror.

Back in May last year, I started to notice a huge difference in my body. My hips had widened, my arms had got bigger and my thighs a little thicker. At first, I embraced the weight gain, enjoying the new lumps and bumps in the form of boobs and a bum, something I quite frankly lacked previously haha! My confidence was at a record high, and I would leave the house, headphones on full volume and imagining I was the ‘main character’, just popping out to the shop... honestly I could cringe now haha! Across the span of a few months, it seemed my positive attitude had been aggressively replaced by this disgusted, ungrateful attitude towards my weight gain. This spiralled out of control, to drastic calorie deficiencies, pointless limited eating and making myself ill. It makes me sad to think of all the time I wasted criticising myself in the mirror and not loving myself and the way I looked. I hated my body and I hated myself. It was like I had made myself the one to blame for my weight gain. Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten that burger? Maybe I shouldn’t have ordered that takeaway? Why don’t you stop being lazy and go to the gym? The way I made myself feel was awful, I was my own bully and I had to deal with my own thoughts for months.

Nothing changed for me. It was an everyday thing of wake up, get ready, cry for an hour, throw a tantrum over my clothes not fitting. I was already exhausted, now add a 9-5 job in recruitment and now we’re whipping up a crazy mix haha! I spent my holidays abroad last summer, wearing my sirong in the pool and looking like a squashie from my stomach making a rare appearance… I could kick myself now! Even if I was having the best time ever and my mind was always distracted with something else, somewhere up there, there was that ongoing self-consciousness. It’s so frustrating, these are our prime years, we are supposed to worship our bodies and embrace the power we have as women. Eventually, I had enough of the sleepless nights and the missed events from feeling flumpy, I needed to reach out for advice and who better to go to than the angel in my life, my mum >3

My mum is my best friend, she is unapologetically herself and I adore her so much. We had an open and honest conversation, well she spoke and I had a breakdown haha… She reassured me she was with me on this crazy journey and I started therapy within a few months. It was the best decision I ever made! Therapy is such a taboo subject, there is such beauty in having the courage to admit you need support and you shouldn’t feel embarrassed about it. It was amazing how over time, my thoughts started to appear positive, in fact I was the nicest I have ever been to myself. I accepted the extra weight and completed the dreaded new clothes shop trying my new larger sizes (even if every shop’ size 8 & 10 fit different lol). Every morning I would admire myself in the mirror, appreciating just how lucky I am to have the body I’m in and give more credit to the person who lives within it. My body is so powerful, it will create new life, it encases and protects the most important functions for me to live the lovely life I have. The idea of falling in love with yourself all over again is a vision I recommend to anybody…. “People often say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I say that the most liberating thing about beauty is realizing that you are the beholder.”

Don’t get me wrong, I do still have my down days where little things like my jeans being too tight or my skirt busting out the seams, will be the cause of my moodiness for the day haha! Sometimes, I’ll skip the cheeseburgers and large cokes in a strop with myself then three days later, I’ve scoffed a Chinese and I’m halfway through ordering a white chocolate crepe. That’s life, the crazy, the random, the negative and the positive. We must remind ourselves who we are, our purpose and just how strong we are. Surround yourself with people who love you, who will remind you when you need it, just how amazing you are. Your journey will get so much easier and one day you’ll wake up and look at pictures of yourself from previous years and be so glad you munched that big mac 

I hope this blog helps you find some peace of mind so that you don’t feel alone in this, so many of us experience this at some point in our lives. I know how difficult it was for me at first to accept there was a problem and allow myself to offload the overload of baggage I was collecting in my head to someone who could take the weight off just slightly for me. Do it, reach out to someone, steer clear of googling ‘how to lose weight fast’ and ‘best things for weight loss’, don’t explore the never-ending spiral of the lasting domino effect it can have on you.

You are beautiful, you are kind, you are brave and better days are definitely around the corner for you! >3