I've been toying with the idea for a couple of weeks now as to whether or not I want to start a weightloss blog. I love writing and I have a blog that my family and friends follow about my adventures overseas but I just don't think they'd really care about what I'm eating or how much I exercised. In my 4th year of university, I lost a lot of weight and one thing that really helped me was blogging. I blogged on a really supportive site and made online "friends" that really helped me get through my journey. It also helped to keep me accountable and keep track of my successes. I don't have a lot of time (do any of us?) but I am going to try and post at least a quick update every day on here and see how it goes.
As for a quick intro - my name is Stephanie and I am 27 years old. I am a teacher in Guangzhou, China. I've been living here for just over a year and have about 9 months left on my contract. After that I'm planning on moving back to Toronto and continuing my career in corporate training and eLearning. My goals for the next 9 months are to save money, work on my masters and lose about 50 more pounds. I've been on this weight loss journey for about two months now and have lost just over 21 pounds. I've been overweight basically my entire life. There was a short time at the end of university that I got healthy but it didn't last for long.
I am addicted to Jillian Michaels' podcast and this is one of the reasons that I know this time will be different. She has talked a lot about figuring out why we are overweight and how until we figure out the why, we'll never be able to keep the weight off. She says that being overweight affords everyone something and it's up to us to figure out what this is. In the past few months, this has really caused me to have a revelation. I have been so successful with so much in my life - I always did well in school, I was a great basketball player, I have excelled at every career path I have tried - but I just have never been able to keep this weight off. I've realized that it's because this weight gives me an excuse for the one area that I haven't been so successful in - my love life. Sure, I've "dated" guys but I'm 27 and I've never been in a real relationship. This is the time in people's lives where they are supposed to be finding "the one" and putting their lives together and I am alone traveling the world. Being overweight is a convenient defense mechanism. It lets me blame being alone on my size, afterall if I was skinny, there would have to be something wrong with me right? I've also realized this is one of the reasons that I've spent so many years overseas in Asian countries (2 years in Korea and now 2 years in China) - because it's yet another convenient excuse as to why I'm still alone. Now don't get me wrong, I know that getting healthy isn't automatically going to cause guys to start lining up on my doorstep but it will give me more confidence in myself and until I truly believe that I am worth loving, I'm never going to find someone.
Anyway, living overseas defintiely complicates things a bit. I don't have an oven so I've basically been living on salads. The good thing however is that I don't have the constant pressure to go out for dinner or drinks with my friends. I don't have a support system here, which is one of the reasons I joined DietBet. I went a bit crazy and joined three different bets. I'm in Jillian's Beginner Shred Challenge, Francy's DietBet and the 6-month Transformer (Sept23 - Mar 22). It's going to be a bit of a challenge to lose 4% of my body weight in a month this far into my journey but I am really excited to see the results at the end of The Transformer challenge!
Looking forward to supporting each other!