I have wanted to write a post on my weight loss for a long time, but I have never been able to do so till now. I need to be truly honest with you and myself and it has been a hard journey, that has had plenty of ups and downs.

For as long as I can remember, I have always been carrying extra pounds, even in primary school but it got serious when I hit about 18/19 years old. The constant drinking, partying, believing I could eat 6 McDonald’s in a week and always driving everywhere and not being active probably was a big trigger, along with the extra weight I gained using the contraceptive implant, emotional binge eating and suffering from serious depression for months at a time, it all added up to me deciding to make a change in January 2014.

January 2014 I weighed in at 261.1lbs, took some pictures and was shocked and disgusted to realise that I was tipping the scales at 18st 6lbs. I never ever saw myself as big as this, and it was a complete shock to me. I spent a while super upset, not knowing how I let myself get that unhealthy and then I decided to make a change. I joined my local gym and started tracking my calories using Myfitnesspal and lost 10lbs in a few months.

After that, life carried on, I lost motivation for the gym and I got a boyfriend who encouraged partying and eating out a lot. I seemed to stay in the 240-250lbs but I still wasn’t happy with myself. Summer 2015 I then motivated myself again back to the gym, and that’s when I fell in love with lifting weights. I loved that I could see my strength improving but having no clue I just carried on doing ‘a bit of this and a bit of that’, still being encouraged by my then boyfriend to not hit the gym but keep drinking and eating out which was a terrible cycle.

Sadly, the final kick in the butt was our relationship ended. It wasn’t mutual and I was left feeling absolutely heartbroken and needed something to focus on so I switched my gym to Pure 24/7 which is open 24hours and I took charge. I wanted to get serious about lifting, so I had some personal training sessions to get my form sorted and I started a 12-week program from bodybuilding.com which involved me going every day. I never thought I would make it to the twelve weeks but I did it, hitting 78 days in the gym out of the 84 and now I couldn’t imagine not going every day which is an incredible change.

Writing this post today I am the lowest weight I have ever been, weighing in at 211lbs. I have officially lost 50lbs in total and have completely changed my lifestyle. I have learnt so much from so many incredible people in the fitness industry now and hoping to learn so much more.

My current routine now is using Myfitnesspal for tracking my food, I follow IIFYM (if it fits your macros) loosely and watch my macros, I eat at a deficit of 1950 calories and still have the odd treat here and there. I hit the gym every day, mixing it up with either weightlifting or HIIT cardio. I am looking into getting serious with powerlifting and looking to dabble in boxing as well.

I hope I haven’t rambled too much, I just want to say it hasn’t been an easy journey but I can look back now and see that because of me, I have done this. I have dragged my bum out of bed when I didn’t want to, I have refused to binge on all the chocolates and I made all the choices to lead me to where I am now. I still have such a long way to go before I get to where I want to be, and I have other parts of the journey to work on too, like loving myself and finding some confidence, but I just want to say that if your new in your journey or even near the end, you are amazing and you can do it!

Update: I am currently ‘cutting’ which is a super fancy way of saying dieting now, and you can read all about my plan here and make sure you follow my weight-loss diary updates.

If you have any weight loss questions, please ask away! I probably haven’t explained a lot but I am always happy to answer anything! Are you on a weight loss journey at the moment? I would love to hear all about it!