Then it happened

Weight loss is a strange thing in that you don’t really notice it happening. Yes, you see numbers change in front of you (hopefully) every day you stand on the scales, but what does it really mean ? What does 5Kg of weight loss really look like ? Changes in your body do, however, get noticed by other people, particularly those you don’t see everyday. On the Friday of the second week of my journey I was at almost 7Kg down, over a stone, and I met up with two friends I hadn’t seen for a couple of weeks and to protect their identities we will call them Bominick and Bolin. Both Bom and Bol instantly commented on the weight loss, how obvious it looked. I said it was just the clothes I was wearing etc., but no, they were adamant it looked like I had lost some serious weight. So there you had it, in 10 days I had made a change that was externally obvious, and I couldn’t of been happier.

I had heard before that 1 stone is the magical figure to hit before people notice the difference. As much as watching the reading on your scales drop is motivating, there is no better feeling than hearing ‘have you lost weight’, or ‘you look good, the weight loss suits you’.

I also noticed a few other changes happening, and some of them weren’t subtle. Back to Bom and Bol – I was wearing a T shirt I hadn’t been able to wear comfortably for some time and I didn’t feel self conscious that it was pulling on my big belly and accentuating and already significant problem. I was also wearing jeans. I haven’t wore jeans for 3 or 4 years now as it was more comfortable to wear jogging bottoms or a pair of utility trousers I got when working on an event a few years before. But this day I decided to put on jeans and the button did up, and not only that, it didn’t feel as if I was getting cut in half with them being so tight. The other not subtle change came a few days later when getting ready for work and I was putting on my suit. I picked up a white shirt that normally presents a problem as it is an 18 inch collar and I need 18 1/2 or 19 to be comfortable. Not only did the collar button do up without issue, but I could also put two fingers down the collar without cutting off circulation to my fingers and my neck. Dramatic change come with just a small loss of weight, it was the sign I was looking for that I was doing the right thing.

There is a trade off to all of the above, and a few months ago I did something really stupid. I threw away all my old clothes in a fit of despair as I spat, ‘why bother keeping them, I’m never going to fit into the fucking things’. Ooooops