Boys boys boys…. Cocktails and clubbing.

Clubbing.

It’s something I haven’t done in YEARS. Literally. Which is probably the case for many people, but given I’m only 26 I often think that clubbing, bars, nights out drinking etc, should have played a much bigger part in my life than they have. Truth is when I was at school, college and even university I did enjoy the odd night out, but they always left my feeling unattractive and unworthy.

Whilst enjoying a night out dancing and drinking with friends is the true purpose of clubbing, it only takes one visit to a club to know that the agenda of most younger people in there is to “pull”, and “pulling” is something which happens based entirely on your looks, or a least, your ability to look good in a skimpy outfit.

I’ve been fat since I was 16, so never experienced a night out as a slim, attractive woman. ( Excuse my self compliments )

Boy is it different going out when you wear a size 10 dress than it was when I wore a size 24 tent.

I’ve never had much luck with men. I have been victim to many cruel jokes, fat bets, and pull the ugly girl games during my youth and therefore my confidence on a night out is VERY low. I often wonder “why” someone would be interested in me, and have problems trusting people who pay me compliments.

The old me would want to shake them and scream “why are you lying to me?”.

But new me is slowly starting to believe the compliments. In fact if I may struggle to get through doors soon given the amount of compliments I’ve received re my figure over the weekend.

But on Saturday night I finally saw what it was like to enjoy a night out as a “normal” person… ( referencing my weight here, I’m  not normal in the head, but you all know that)

Whilst I am spending time with a certain lovely man, I am actually still single and whilst searching for men wasn’t the purpose of the evening I am a little bit of a flirt in general, so flirting with men was an inevitable part of any night that included me and alcohol.

Myself and my friend Claire spotted a large group of LOVELY men as soon as we entered our bar of choice. It’s not often you see a group of 13 men who are all good looking, in shape and well dressed. A pitcher of cocktails later and we were flirting our arses off with the whole group. There is nothing like a whole group of good looking men willing to dance and flirt with you to give you a quick confidence boost.

In the days of old Hazel flirting with good looking men would have terrified me.  Actually expecting anyone to be interested in me was science fiction. So imagine my surprise when the tallest and best looking guy of the bunch whom I’d been drooling over since I set foot in the door shows an interest in me, even picking me up above his head in the middle of the dance floor.

Now I know that hooking up with someone in a club is shallow and meaningless, but as part of a one off let my hair down night out I think a few cheeky kisses on a dance floor with a VERY good looking young man is nothing to be ashamed of, in fact quite the opposite.

Whilst everyone knows I’m looking for love, and that’s not something I intend to look for or find in a nightclub, it’s a major realisation for me to know that on looks alone I am now attractive to the opposite sex.

So now I’m back to reality, recovering from a hangover and looking forward to a date with a man who actually likes me for me.

But I have a little more confidence, a little less fear and a whole lot of good memories.

 

100lbs and done….

This week I stood on the scales and saw a shocking number. 142.2lbs. My heart skipped a little beat as i realised if i was still that weight in 24 hours I would have lost 100lbs. About an hour later I realised that with the bank holiday my brain had become mixed up, and was actually my official weigh in day, I HAD ACTUALLY LOST 100LBS!!!!  

I remember those scales saying 242lbs almost a year ago, and boy how things have changed. 

I found this post, one of my first on this blog. 

“A loss of 100lbs was the original goal I set myself when I finally decided to go ahead with surgery. While 100lbs isn’t a lot for some surgery patients for me it is a substantial amount, and the perfect amount to take me from Overweight to Healthy on the BMI Scale.

I have never wanted to be “skinny”, but “slim” is a word I can only imagine someone using to describe me. Curvy is much more likely, but my definition of curvy is distorted by reading too many issues of Heat Magazine, and curvy to me now means Kelly Brook, who I believe is a very toned sized 10. Not exactly curvaceous.”

 

Sounds about right. Here I am, not even 10 months later and that goal is a reality. I am that slim curvaceous woman ( ok, my boobs have vanished and my arse has shrunk tenfold but theres still some curves there ) 

Yesterday i went clothes shopping and caught sight of my reflection in the changing room mirror. 

“Dear god girl, you need to eat a burger” was my first thought. A thought I’ve never had in my life before when looking at own my figure. I am actually slim, maybe even skinny on my top half. 

My hips, thighs and bottom are still a size 12, but my top half has shrunk to a tiny size 8, my bust from a 42DD to a 34B, ( practically non existent ) and my frame looks quite petite, a word I never thought would be used to describe myself. 

Whilst I am not yet 100% happy with my body, who is? I think I’ve decided that my weight no longer needs to change. i don’t need to lose anymore. I have no desire to look like a skeleton. I have a BMI of 22 now, a weight of just above 10 stone, and jeans that don’t resemble a small tent. I am content. 

I do need to work on toning up a few places so I jiggle less, and my skin becomes a little tighter, but no one is perfect. 

So I guess now I am at the end of one journey and at the start of another, and as a fellow blogger once said, 

“Losing weight is one thing, keeping it off is another”

Well Tracy, challenge accepted. 

Looking good….but for who?

This will be a controversial post. I know this before I’ve even typed a word of content. 

I’ve recently been reading a marriage advice book. No I’ve not secretly got hitched over night, it was recommended to me by a person whose advice I trust completely, so I started reading it, and how pleased I am that I did. 

In a controversial chapter he talks about a husbands desire for his wife to be attractive. It was written in the early 80’s when feminism was less popular than it is now and i expect the advise went down a lot easier than it would in todays society. 

He talks about how many women ( and men ) gain weight once the honeymoon period of a relationship is over, and how by doing this we are neglecting one of our partners main relationship needs, to feel attracted to your designated other. 

When I think back to my past relationships this advise really touches a cord, in a way that I never really thought of before. 

My most significant relationship ending resulted in a devastated, heart broken Hazel with a shattered self perception and completely robbed of any confidence I once had. At the time I was angry and rejected that he left me for a slimmer, prettier, blonder, bigger boobed model. It meant I wasn’t good enough. 

But reading this book today made me look back it the relationship in a different way. When we met I weighed 11 stone, I was blonde, I wore make up, short skirts, heels, and always looked “glam”. We fell in love. 

Two years later I weighed 16 stone something, never removed my jeans and trainers, had mousy un-straightened hair and refused to take more pride in my appearance. I wasn’t even resembling that girl that he once fell in love with, so it wasn’t really his fault that his feelings toward me changed. It was my own decision to take less pride in my appearance which then affected his feelings towards me. It takes two to tango. 

A few years earlier I briefly dated a man who was very wrong for me, but very early told me he’d ended things with his last girlfriend because she got fat. I was outraged. The fact I was a size 14 maybe at the time never bothered him, but he had his “lines” and if I ever got past them he would tell me I needed to do something about, and if I refused to act on it then he would not hesitate to get rid of me. 

I was appalled. However, I stayed with him. I gained a little here and there, but if I did he told me, and I acted on it. Knowing that my weight was a big deal to him helped me to keep it in check. We broke up for different reasons, but i never let myself go within the relationship. 

Maybe if my more serious boyfriend had vocalised his concern about my bulging waistline, my lack of care in appearance etc, things would have turned out differently. Maybe not. But surely it’s a persons right to expect their significant other to be that same person they fell in love with. To not change so drastically in a way they don’t like that the relationship is broken because of that change. 

I can hear the cries of outrage already. 

I’m not saying we should all leave our other halves because they gain a little weight, or cut their hair in a way we don’t find attractive, but it bares reference that if someone began dating a certain person, that is the person they wish to continue dating, not that person hidden under an extra 100lbs. 

Now I’m back on the dating market I can see if it from both sides. Of course I’m agreeing to dates with people based on their looks, their personality, etc as it is at the present time, if it changes I might feel differently about them. So where as before I’ve hooked a man in whilst at my best then allowed my standards to slip when I’m comfortable, that will not be happening ever again. 

So whilst I did lose weight for myself, and I feel so much better for it, I now feel that it’s important to remember in life that my appearance doesn’t only affect me, it affects everyone around me, and for those reasons alone, it’s important that I commit to these changes I’ve made, forever. 

Hunger games….

I’ve noticed recently that I’ve been eating more often. I usually abide by the principle “little and often” to keep my metabolism going and my blood sugar levels neutral, so usually eat 4-6 small meals a day, totalling 1400 calories. However recently I have been finding myself “hungry”.

I used to define hungry as “wanting food”. How wrong I am.  When my brain asks for food I tend to assume that must mean my stomach requires food. How wrong I am.

My brain has been getting hungrier by the week, and sometimes only an hour after eating lunch I begin to feel “hungry” again, often stopping off at a shop for a small snack, which might often be a two finger kitkat or something small, but “treat worthy”. It’s not bingeing, I tell myself, so that makes it ok. If I only eat one, or two I am remaining in control. It’s allowed.

But while it may be “allowed” according to my warped brain, I don’t really need that food, and I don’t really want it either. I want to eat healthy. I want to shift this last 15lbs or so. I want to fuel my body with the right nutrients. So why does my brain keep asking for chocolate if it’s not really hungry?

I decided to do a little experiment today, at 9.30pm last night I ate my “last meal” and went to sleep with the intention of not eating today until I felt hunger, real hunger, caused by my body actually requiring food.

I felt fine on waking. My brain asked for my usual bowl of porridge, but I wasn’t actually hungry, just missing the habit of eating breakfast. I drank two cups of coffee instead and kept myself busy.

By 10.30 I was studying at the library, a protein shake hidden in my bag for the inevitable hunger pangs that would soon arrive, but by 11.30, still nothing. Normally by this time I would have eaten breakfast and a snack, occasionally a second snack also.

I drank another coffee ( decaf this time )

I stood in line for my coffee staring at the counter full of mouth-wateringly good cakes and cookies and whilst I had an urge to eat every single one of them, I wasn’t actually hungry. I didn’t “need” any food.

By 2pm I was back home and coping well but decided having not eaten since 9pm the following day I really should give my body some nutrients. I drank a protein shake, and kept myself busy some more. I’d managed to go 15 hours without anything but coffee passing my lips, and I still wasn’t actually hungry.

Why did I therefore struggle on a normal day to go a mere three hours without drooling at the thought of my next snack? It obviously isn’t real hunger that makes me eat, but the desire to eat the food I have prepared.

I understood this logic back when my fridge was full of chocolate cake and left over pizza, but now I find myself so excited about my next meal of dried dates and greek yoghurt that I obsess over how soon I can eat it, and munch dried apricots out of the bag because I like the taste.

Whilst I admit eating dried fruit and greek yoghurt in larger than normal portions isn’t exactly unhealthy, I don’t need that food, and I certainly don’t want the extra calories. So why am I doing it?

Hunger is defined as our bodies way of informing us that we need food in order to keep it running effectively. Appetite is our physical desire for food, a mere trained response to the sight, smell and taste of delicious foods we have eaten before.

I learnt today that it’s actually a different part of our brain that sends us false signals to eat based on anything other than real nutritional needs. This part knows our habits, our behaviours, our addictive desire for food in certain circumstances, and it sends signals encouraging us to eat every time we enter a scenario in which we normally associate with food.

If we often check the fridge as soon as we arrive home from work, our brain will eventually send us signals to do this every time we arrive home, regardless of our actual need for food. Our brain picks up the habit and reinforces it, day after day.

Every time I give in to my desire to eat because I think I’m “really hungry, I must eat this chocolate” I’m actually training my brain that at around 11.30 it desires chocolate, and if it asks for it, it shall receive.

What I need to do is break the habit. Simple as.

Now that I know I can actually go 15 hours without feeling hungry, I can no longer delude myself that some addictive desire for chocolate one hour after my breakfast is an actual NEED.

I can tell myself what I know now for fact, that this is merely my brains response to a formed habit, that the message being sent is just junk mail, to be sent to the trash and never thought of again.

If I can do this on a regular basis, my brain will form new habits to replace the old ones and I can start to eat nutritious food, at regular intervals, because my body really needs it, not because my inner fat girl desires a treat.

Big Plans….

It’s been 8 months now since I had my Gastric Sleeve, and besides helping me to shed 95lbs so far the sleeve has opened up my eyes to a whole new world. A world of protein powder, kettle bells, chia seeds and spinach. A healthy world.

Every day I learn something new about living a healthy life. Whether it’s from my facebook friends, the YouTube WLS community or my fellow bloggers, I am always learning.

The more I read and research and the more I learn about the world of health and fitness the more I become intrigued, desperate for more knowledge. So with that in mind I enrolled myself on a Level 3 Diet and Nutrition Diploma.

I really love helping people through this blog and through YouTube and my journey has inspired me to change careers so that I can keep helping people discover their own path to a healthier lifestyle.

Of course I have a long way to go, but my ideas for my future business are forming slowly and I really think their is a market out there for my new venture.

Whilst my training will take 1-2 years to fully complete I can continue to inspire and help others through my blog and social media and hope that you won’t mind me sharing anything I learn along the way.

Here’s a little bit about my new venture and where I hope it will go in the next couple of years.

Inside Out aims to provide sensible advice for achieving a life that is focused on health and happiness. We aim to raise awareness of the relevance of appropriate nutrition for good health and wellbeing via one to one consultations, small group workshops, and informative publications.

We will interact with individuals wishing to make changes to their diet and lifestyle to achieve personal goals,  with a special interest in tackling issues that may have led to obesity, emotional eating, or eating disorders such as bulimia and binge eating.

We feel that the best method to bring about lasting changes is to tackle our issues with food and weight on an internal psychological level and an external level with regard to fitness and food.

This will enable individuals to end their unhealthy relationship with food forever and leave them healthier and happier, Inside and Out.

To keep updated on my progress with this venture follow me on twitter @InsideOutCo or my personal account @Hazimax

How eating junk food actually makes you hungrier… and how to choose not to eat it.

I used to be a junk food addict. McDonalds, KFC, Krispy Kreme donuts. You name it, if it was tasty I would eat it, and in LARGE qualities. But I always felt that eating this food never actually satisfied my hunger. A large big mac, fries and milkshake and yet I never felt full. It turns out there was a scientific reason why.

Insulin. 

We all know what Insulin is, it’s the drug we inject diabetics with, it’s the thing my personal trainer is always trying to teach me about to stop me from scoffing regular chocolate bars. But I never realised how Insulin really works until now.

Simplified, Insulin takes any calories you eat that are sugar and turns them directly into fat. It does this before you get chance to burn them off, so a run on the treadmill, a session at the gym, nothing can stop that 500 calories you just ate from chocolate turning into 1/7lb of fat on your body. Nothing.

I’ve often heard people talk about how our bodies are genetically made up to regulate our weight. It’s why weight loss is so hard, and our desire to exercise so low. Every time we exercise our brain sends signals to our bodies to refuel, to consume those calories we burned off with more food, so that we don’t go into starvation mode.

So say your body naturally burns 2000 calories a day. This means it requires 2000 calories a day to “run efficiently”. But what if 500 of those calories you ate came from sugar? The insulin in your body would have turned those calories straight to fat, not allowing your body to use them as fuel, and your body is 500 calories down. You’re in starvation mode. So your brain sends signals to your body to eat 500 extra calories, to meet your daily requirements.

It’s easy to see how a pattern can form in which we eat more food, but the wrong foods and therefore our bodies are never being fuelled efficiently.

Currently 80% of the food available on supermarket shelves are laced with added sugar, and this is before we then add in fast food joints, restaurants, coffee shops etc. It’s no wonder we as a society are obese.

So how do we stop eating junk food when it envelops us as a culture and we know the food tastes good. We learn about nutrition, we learn about how that delicious food is really affecting our bodies and make a conscious choice about if we want to eat that food and accept the affects of doing so. Or we make a better, more healthier choice. It’s entirely our own free will. 

I find that finances can also help make junk food more unappealing. Yes, I know that pizza is going to taste amazing, but it’s going to cost me £10, and once I’ve finished eating it I still won’t feel satisfied? I’ll need to spend more money to buy more food that my body needs instead? Maybe I’ll just give the pizza a miss and skip straight to what my body actually needs.

We now live in such a society that junk, processed, hyper palatable food surrounds us at all times. It’s on our TV screens, in our magazines, on billboards as we drive to work, in the petrol station, at the pharmacy, on every shelf at the supermarket. It’s impossible to hide from.

So how do we resist? We become aware. We realise that any food that comes in a package has been marketed, that means its made to be tantalising, designed to grab your attention, to get you hooked, to tempt you into handing over your hard earned money for this product. Food companies are making food for the sole purpose of making a profit. They don’t care about your health. They don’t care about your wellbeing. They certainly don’t care about your waistline.

All they care about is how much money they can make from you as a consumer, and the most successful way to do this is to sell you food that you don’t need, but that tastes good and will leave your body craving more of it.

The only way to avoid this vicious cycle is to make a conscious choice. We need to make this conscious choice every day, every single meal time, every single time we see a new product that promises to deliver some new flavour sensation we MUST try.

We can choose to give in to the marketing, to the peer pressure of society, to the inner fat girl voice in our heads that wants to taste the chocolatey goodness. or we can choose to listen to logic. To our brains, and our bodies. We can choose to fuel ourselves with REAL foods that provide our body with the nutrients we need to truly function correctly day by day.

As soon as we accept that we have free choice in this matter, every single time we come across food, we free ourselves from the constant terror that food brings us. We don’t need to eat just one more burger before the diet starts tomorrow, because the food will still be there tomorrow if you wish to eat it then, the processed food is going nowhere fast, you don’t need to stock up incase of a famine.

By giving ourselves a choice to make we put our own life and own health and happiness in our hands. No one else’s.

Yes, you may feel addicted to food. Each singular choice may be a struggle. But it’s your choice to make. No one else’s. And it will get easier with time. The more you choose to listen to your body rather than to the devil on your shoulder requesting french fries, the more power you will give yourself, and the easier it will be to make the right choice at the next opportunity.

I’m not saying we should eat perfectly 100% of the time. No one should strive for perfection because it’s inevitable that we will fail. But if we strive to make every choice a conscious choice, then we free ourselves from the guilt of overeating, from the restrictions of dieting, and we accept each choice for what it is.

Our own decision about what to put in our body. 

And with each choice we make, we agree to accept the consequences of that choice, because it was always up to us to decide.

 

The skinny….

Watch this AMAZING documentary starring Dr Robert Lustig. It will change the way you see food, and the desire to eat it.

Battle of the yoghurts…

Greek yoghurt.

It’s high protein, it’s low fat, it’s delicious. What’s not to love.

The problem is picking a greek yoghurt to enjoy out of the large collection on offer. But having recently started researching more into the foods I eat, I discovered not all greek yoghurt is as good for you as it claims to be.

Here’s the most popular greek yoghurt around the blog scene.

As you can see from it’s advertising the yoghurt it sold as “nothing but good”. The packaging itself even states “all natural”, so you’d be suprised to learn that some flavours contain up to 19g of sugar per yoghurt.

The products is very well designed. It screams healthy yet tasty, yet the nutritional label shows something very different

Strawberry Fat Free Authentic Strained Yoghurt

14gPROTEINper/serving

0gFATper/serving

Yes, it’s fat free like advertised. The “yoghurt” section at the top of the yoghurt it’s all that bad. But 20% of the yoghurt is the fruit layer at the bottom, only 8% of which is real fruit. that leaves 12% of the yoghurt that is practically sugar. Pure sugar. Not even “healthy” sweeteners or naturally occurring fruit sugars. Actual cane sugar. The worst kind.

Chobani didn’t used to list sugar in their ingredients list. They disguised the fact that sugar was a main ingredient, and as a result had to fight a lawsuit, in which they lost and changed the packaging to help consumers make a more informed choice.

But look at the packaging and the advertisement of this yoghurt. If you didn’t carefully read the label, and even if you did, but weren’t really “looking” you would think it’s a healthy, nutritious, good for you food choice, when in fact it’s anything but.

The recommended sugar intake for a person per day is 30g Maximum. So this one “health food” is 2/3 of your daily limit. Shocking, and yet so many of the bloggers I see eat Chobani on a regular basis.

I myself was about to go hunting for these yoghurts yesterday to try them. It was only in the process of searching online about where to buy them I found all these information, and thank god I did.

This is the brand I currently use, and will be sticking to from now on.

Ingredients

Pasteurised skimmed cows’ milk, live active yoghurt cultures (L.Bulgaricus, S. Thermophilus, L. Acidophilus, Bifidus, L. Casei)

Nutritional Information per 100g

• Energy 57 kcal (243 kJ)
• Protein 10.3g
• Carbohydrates* 4.0gOf which sugars 4.0g
• Fat 0g  Of which saturates 0g
• Calcium 104mg (13% of RDA**)
• Sodium 0.038g
• Cholesterol 0mg
• Fibre 0g

*naturally occurring lactose sugar, no added sugars.
**RDA: Recommended Daily Allowance

No added sugars at all.

It’s easy to see how we as consumers get mislead by food manufacturers and advertisers. We think we are making informed choices about food by looking for labels that promise “no fat” or “all natural”, but these labels on the front of the packaging mean nothing.

It’s the label round the back, and specifically the small print we need to be reading.

Size normal….

On a day to day basis it’s hard to find something that motivates me to make the right decisions, to eat well, to exercise, to avoid junk, to keep positive.

Obviously the overall desire to be slim, healthy and happy is my lifelong motivator, but on a day to basis sometimes I require a more visual motivator I can relate to.

Yesterday I went shopping at The Trafford Centre, a mall type place in Manchester. Usually my shopping consists of browsing book stores, getting a coffee, and avoiding clothes shops at all costs, but yesterday I wanted to try on high street clothes.

A new shop Forever 21, has opened up after years of success in the USA so I was desperate to browse through the racks of clothes that I’ve spent years lusting after and never been able to fit into.

For the past 10 years I’ve shopped at Evans, New Look ( plus size department ) and supermarkets, and since surgery I’ve still been shopping at Asda, Matalan and general cheap type places. High street stores were “out of my league” “scary” and sold clothes “too small to fit me”.

Walking into Forever 21 yesterday U was overwhelmed by the sheer amount of clothes in front of. So many options to choose from, so much variety of style and colour, and what’s more everything in sight was available in a size that would fit me.

There sizes are american so I had no idea where to start when it came to trying on clothes. I found a top I liked and took 3 different sizes to the changing room with me.

Large was baggy and loose, Medium was fitted around my breasts but loose around my stomach, and shockingly small fitted my like a glove.

Small??? Size S??? This must be a joke.

I ended up buying a Large size shirt, but with intent as it’s a baggy loose fitting oversized denim shirt so I wanted it to be big and baggy, but the feeling of trying on that size small t shirt left me thrilled for hours.

As I queued up at the tills I had time to observe the other customers within the shop, and in true Hazel style, my first reaction was to compare myself to them.

But my usual self hatred and criticism was no longer a valid response. As I looked around the store I saw girls my size, girls bigger than me, women a lot bigger than me and wearing very unflattering outfits I would never have dared to wear in public.

I carried on people watching as I left the store, observing that 90% of the women around me were now the same size or bigger than me, something I have never experienced before.

For the first time ever I felt good about myself in a public situation.

I realised that whilst my goal may be to wear those size 10 jeans, or that XS t-shirt…..what I had achieved was something so much better, I was now size normal.

 

Shame and loathing in Bolton…

It’s said that consuming sugar has the same effect on your body as taking high class drugs such as heroin. This week I have become all too aware of my addiction to sugar.

Way before surgery I tried to self diagnose my problems with food. Did I have binge eating disorder? Was I compulsive overeater? What was my actual “problem” with food, all food.

I read books that told me not restrict the foods I eat, to allow myself treats so that I never feel deprived, and I read books that told me to forever avoid trigger foods, junk foods and anything I had no control over. Knowing which advice to believe was a challenge.

My therapist preferred the first method, everything in moderation, and that’s what I’ve done for the last year or so. If I restrict too much I get tempted to binge. So my survival tactic has been not to restrict too much.

Lately however I am becoming seriously addicted to junk food, to sugar. Chocolate, sweets, popcorn, anything sweet and sickly and I want to devour it. Which is fine, If I could stick to the suggestion portion size, but I cannot.

This week I discovered an amazing popcorn in Marks & Spencers. 113 calories for a mini bag, 5 mini bags sold as a multipack, Perfect I thought, every time I go to the cinema I will take a bag and munch away “guilt free” as the packaging advertised.

How wrong I was.

The first bag was delicious, but throughout the whole movie my mind was working out how long it would be before I could devour another, which I did the second I arrived home, followed by a third.

The next day I consumed the next two. Then bought 3 more multipacks from the shop and began consuming those too.

I knew something had to be done, but it kills me to throw away food, so I hid them from myself for a day.

But I knew they were still there. Taunting me.

I wasn’t even hungry but I felt the need to eat them stronger than anything I’ve ever felt before. I ripped open two bags and poured them into a bowl to snack on.

I devoured the bowl, merely tasting each piece for a second before shovelling the next one down along side it.

Then I opened the next multipack of 5. I could see what I was about to do but I couldn’t stop myself. I poured all 5 packets into a huge bowl and began to eat.

They tasted awful. They tasted like shame. Like guilt.

And then….I caught a reflection of myself in the mirror.

I saw the shame and guilt written all over my face.

I would not allow this to happen to myself. I was in control.

I took the remaining multipacks and my current bowl and poured them one by one into the dustbin, covering the contents with bleach to ensure I wouldn’t be tempted to go back and find them later.

Then….and I’m not proud of this part at all, but my policy is honesty. I walked upstairs, looked at myself in the mirror with disgust and vomited up the contents of my entire stomach, until I felt empty.

Empty and dirty.

My feelings of self hatred and disgust looked right back at me in the bathroom mirror, and I knew I had to stop eating sugar, eating junk, eating any of it.

The gastric sleeve I had is about a lifestyle change yes, it’s about eating everything in moderation, but it’s also about being healthy and sensible and treating your body with respect. Today I did not do that.

So no more.

No more chocolate. No more sugary sweets. No more crap. Not ever.

I am a drug addict. If I have even a single bite then I start the battle all over again.

Rehab starts this very minute.

I can beat this.

I am strong.