YouTube Channel

Hi everyone!

 

A few weeks ago I posted an update called Confidence and YouTube, if you haven’t read my post you will find it here: https://justacountrygirl24.wordpress.com/2016/11/05/confidence-and-youtube/.

I’ve been thinking about starting a YouTube channel some more over the last week or so and, as of today, I’ve decided that I am going to start a channel. I want to see how much I am changing every week and if I slip up the vlogs will give me something to look at to remind me of how far I’ve come both physically and mentally since starting my journey.

Every week I will give you a weigh in update, show you what I eat every evening, give advice about weight loss and talk about how my week has been. I’ve decided that I’m also going to give a more detailed explanation of my depression and binge eating disorder, because I know that I’m not only person who has experienced depression at some point in their lives or is going through the same long and difficult process right now.

I’ve decided that I am going to post my Slimming World videos on Fridays, which is the day after I weigh in, so everything that happened at group the night before will still be fresh in my mind.

I am currently filming an update for my last weigh in so if you’d like to subscribe to my channel so that you don’t miss a video you will find me here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnYmhj9XLUiG_g8h_k81qjg (160lbslighterlife).

You can follow me on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/Gennie_2909.

You can also follow me on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/1995_gennie_sw/.

 

Love,

Gennie xxx

 

Slimming World Update and Weight Loss Goals

Dear friends,

 

So, in a week when Donald Trump became the president of the United States, I lost 2.5lbs. On top of that I finally got my 1 stone award by 0.5lbs; I would’ve gotten it the week before but frustratingly I stepped on the scales only to find that I had managed to lose 0.5lbs. To say I was annoyed is a massive understatement.

Despite my disappointment at the scales, I did learn something quite important to the success of my weight loss journey that I probably should’ve known when I started at Slimming World. It’s the reason why I’ve managed to lose four stone more than once in the last two years.

For me stress has a bigger impact on my weight losses than anything else; it doesn’t matter how much exercise I do. If I don’t stress or worry about what’s going to happen when I stand on the scales at the end of each week, I get bigger losses. Knowing this is all well and good until Wednesday night, which I’ve started calling Wednesday Night Worries, that’s when I poke, prod and pinch myself while looking in the mirror and come to the conclusion that I haven’t lost anything at all that week.

My weight loss goal for the end of this year is to lose another 10kgs, which will mean that I will have lost 40kgs in one year, (40kgs/88lbs/6 stone 4lbs). As of right now I have lost 29.9kgs (29.9kgs/66lbs/4 stone 10lbs), which means that I only need to lose 10.1kgs (10kgs/22lbs/1 stone 8lbs) to achieve my goal. Now, given that I’ve only ever managed to lose about 4 stone up until now, the thought of being able to tell people that I’ve lost 6 stone in less than a year would be amazing.

Losing 6 stone won’t be the end of my weight loss journey because I will still have another 5 stone 7lbs (34kgs/77lbs/5 stone 7lbs) to lose before I will be anywhere near a healthy weight range. It would be a great start to 2017 knowing that I have a very achievable amount of weight left to lose.

That will be a total of 74kgs/16lbs/11 stone 9lbs lost in about two years, and as a person who has struggled for most of their life with food addiction, compulsive eating and depression that would be an achievement that would prove that you should never judge a book by its cover.

Love,

Gennie xxx

 

 

 

Confidence and YouTube

Dear friends,

 

 

How’re you all doing now that the coldness of November has started to set in? It’s currently half past four in the afternoon and the skies across the United Kingdom are officially black, I don’t mind it when the nights get longer in October but I hate the way it creeps up on me in November.

 

My Slimming World weigh in went okay this week, I lost half a pound which was a massive disappointment considering I’m two pounds away from losing a stone on Slimming World and I lost three and a half pounds the week before. I honestly didn’t think that I would last very long on Slimming World’s Extra Easy Plan, but after twelve weeks I’m proud of the fact that I’ve lost an average of one pound a week.

 

Before I started losing weight, I had no confidence in myself or anything I had done or wanted to do for my future. I wanted to be an author or journalist, but had no faith in my abilities, as a result no one ever had the opportunity to read my stories. I did a course in creative writing at Open University and I think it gave me the confidence boost I needed for my writing, after that course finished my style of writing grew at the same rate as my confidence.

 

I watch a lot of weight loss videos on YouTube to find the motivation I needed to start my weight loss journey, and I could never understand how plus sized women could have the confidence to film and post a vlog of any kind without worrying about what the trolls will have to say. I certainly wouldn’t have had that confidence three years ago but now I understand that to get the confidence I need for YouTube, I needed to start being selfish and do something about my weight for no one else but myself.

 

I know that I haven’t posted any updates for a while and because I feel like I’m letting you down by not posting something, I decided to make some changes and start my own YouTube channel as a new home for my updates. As of right now, I don’t have the finer details of how my YouTube channel would work set in stone, but what I can say for certain is that the vlogs will be posted on Fridays because I weigh in on Thursday evenings and by the time I get home it’s almost ten o’clock at night so depending on timings from week to week I should be able to have my update filmed and uploaded by sometime Friday afternoon.

 

I still plan to post things on here but how would you feel if I did start filming my weekly Slimming World updates instead of blogging them?

 

Love,

 

Gennie xxx

Boobs, Bras and Weight Loss

Dear friends,

 

 

In the last eight months I have lost a massive amount of weight and in the process I have found old clothes, which eight months ago would’ve been thrown away for being too small, are now airing on the side of being several sizes too big for me. The majority of the clothes I own, all from a time of me being in great denial that what I wanted to wear just didn’t look right or fit the way I wanted, are found in the men’s section because of the limited range of options in most plus size clothes stores. The majority of their stock is aimed at women who are much older than myself and actually like having floral prints on their t-shirts. I am not one of those women.

 

Now, I know that to most people this would be the perfect excuse to buy new clothes, but for me and my weight loss journey it makes very little sense to waste money on clothes that won’t last for a full season. I wear the same outfit to weigh in at Slimming World each week, and every time I put my jeans and vest style t-shirt on and notice it’s that little bit loser around my belly it allows me a moment to feel proud of the fact that I’m finally achieving something that I’ve been struggling to do for as long as I can remember. 

 

Recently I have noticed massive changes in certain areas of my body, one of the areas I have noticed the changes the most are my boobs. Put simply, I’ve lost so much weight that I have had to give up trying to go bra shopping. That part of my body is shrinking too quickly for it to be worth the money and effort that goes into being measured and finding something in my size, only to walk out of the shop without anything. 

 

To save money I have turned to sports bras. The elastic doesn’t cut into my skin, my boobs are held in place quite comfortably, there’s no need for me to worry about any kind of underwiring, or uncomfortable material irritating skin. Yes, my back fat bulges around the top slightly, but I can keep wearing the same bras while I’m still losing weight and won’t have to worry about buying new ones until it’s absolutely necessary. 

 

Last night, I tried on a one piece swimsuit that I bought over the summer and never actually wore. For the first time in my life I didn’t feel uncomfortable with the way I looked in a swimsuit. The only part of my body that didn’t look great was, once again, my boobs and that is because my boobs have shrunk quite a bit; it took some shifting to make them not look quite so flat or squashed. 

 

Is it just me who has noticed changes in strange places because of weight loss?

 

 

Lot’s of love,

 

Gennie xxx

Mental Health Day

Dear friends,

 

Today is #worldmentalhealthday and for me it’s a day that has a very personal meaning. Normally I have no interest in days like this but because I have suffered from depression for the last ten years I feel like I should at least do a small part to remove the stigma attached to mental health. My journey to changing the quality of my mental health started at the beginning of this month because I knew there was something wrong and it wouldn’t do my weight loss journey any good if I didn’t try to do something about it.

I didn’t tell my Granddad the true reason I’d booked an appointment at the doctors solely because I didn’t want to give him another reason to worry about me. What good would it do if I did tell him and it turned out to be something else entirely?

Turns out I was right, it is the dark cloud of depression that I’ve been trapped under, but the scariest thing about this is that I’ve been trapped in the dark never-ending spiral of depression since I was ten years old. The reason for my massive weight gain, anger, suicidal thoughts, hating myself, and having a lack of emotions finally makes sense.

In telling my Granddad what the doctor had said two things happened. Firstly, the first thing my Granddad said was “Is it your life making you feel that way?” It’s not my life that’s made me hate myself. It’s being a victim of nasty bullying at school because of my weight, it’s feeling like I have no control when it comes to eating because I’m a binge eater, it’s losing my Mum at the age of fourteen and not dealing with it in the right way. Why wouldn’t I feel depressed with all that to deal with in my teenage years?

Secondly, I learnt something very important about the female side of my family. My Mum and Nan, who were both my best and only friends, had never told me and probably because they were both embarrassed. My Mum and Nan both suffered from depression when they were the same age as me. Maybe if they were still alive I could ask them for advice that would help me deal with my low moods a lot better.

I would love to be able to tell people about my depression but the fear of being judged for it and have them see me in a different light because of the stigma attached to people’s opinions of mental health. It puts me off wanting to socialise with the few friends that I do have and all that happens is I isolate myself from the world even more.

I understand why there is a stigma attached to mental health; it’s not an illness that you can see and not have to ask sometimes invasive questions about. My attitude towards mental health has only changed because I’m suffering from depression, but if I didn’t know that I have depression I don’t think I would try to understand it. It’s not a disease like cancer or a physical disability. How can people be expected to understand something when they can’t see the symptoms?

Lots of love,

Gennie

Slimming World Diaries Week Ten

 

Dear friends,

This week’s post is a short one because although life has been very chaotic for the last month or so, none of it has been worth blogging about. I’ve tried to write something but with a lack of motivation nothing comes of it.

Thursday marked the end of my ninth week at Slimming World, which happens to be the longest I’ve stuck with something like Slimming World to lose weight. I’ve tried Weight Watchers, a complete nightmare that I don’t want to repeat ever again, I’ve tried SlimFast milkshakes because it was something I remember my Mum using to lose weight, I’ve been tricked into trying protein shakes by TOWIE celebs and YouTube reviewers, I lasted about three months and having two shakes a day didn’t work in the slightest.

I joined the gym and it made a big difference. I lost four stone at least four times and kept finding it again. Its kind of become a curse for me to lose four stone and not get much further; even when I know that it’s now or never and it probably didn’t help that I hadn’t stopped binge eating on crisps and sweets everyday. But something changed in my head on my cousins birthday back in April this year and I started taking my fifth attempt at loosing weight a lot more seriously.

My cousin’s sister-in-law to be suggested to me that I try Slimming World and for once someone else’s advice on losing weight actually worked, but only if you don’t count what happened on the scales in the week before my birthday. I’m not proud of it but I gained 4.5lbs that week, what a great twenty-first birthday present that was.

It might sound very strange but having the gain, which I knew would come eventually, made me more motivated to do everything I can in between group sessions to get the biggest losses I can. So I’ve gone from not wanting to lose more than two pounds a week to wanting to lose as much as I can every week. So, my group leader was right when she said that I could be losing a lot more weight each week; I didn’t have the motivation to achieve big losses.

I’m very proud to tell you that I lost 3.5 pounds this week, which is the most I’ve lost in the whole ten weeks! So I’m keeping my fingers crossed for another good loss like this, preferably above 4 pounds but as long as it’s a loss that’s the most important thing.

Lot’s of love,

Gennie

Sunshine Blogger Award

I started this blog out of pure boredom. I didn’t expect anyone to read my posts or like them or start following my blog. I’ve never shared any of my posts with my family because I know that my Granddad is a technophobe and thinks it’s completely weird to share anything through the confusing world of the internet. He always tells me not to overshare, but in the world of blogging what’s the limit when it comes to sharing personal information?

All I write about is myself in the most honest way possible, and when I started I didn’t think that anyone would care about half the stuff I talk about because there are people with much more exciting lives than mine. But apparently people like my blog because I’ve been nominated for a Sunshine Blogger Award. Thank you so much for the nomination KiwiOnTheLoose!

Here are the rules for the Sunshine Blogger Award:

1. Thank the person who nominated you
2. Answer their questions
3. Nominate fellow bloggers who you follow
4. Give them ten questions to answer

My questions from Kiwiontheloose:

1. Have you ever been fired from a job?

No, I have not.

2. What was the last movie you saw in theaters?

Bridget Jones’s Baby, best film of the year.

3. What has happened to you as a result of blogging?

Since I started blogging I feel more confident and comfortable in voicing my opinions on things. I know that someone out there will at least agree with me to a certain extent, even if they are complete strangers.

4. What is a bad habit you have that you wish to correct?

I have the really bad habit of procrastinating; if I know that I can put something off for a while I will do that in a heart beat.

5. Where do you enjoy blogging the most? At home on the couch? At a local coffee shop sipping a speciality drink?

I don’t have a specific place to blog in. It’s mostly about when the mood strikes me to blog and what I’ve been inspired to write about that day. But I mostly blog on the family computer and I’ve been the only person to use the computer since we got it.

6. What is your favourite gift you’ve ever received?

When I was fourteen years old I got my first flat screen TV and it was my favourite gift because it was the last present my Mum ever bought for me before she passed away.

7. Have you ever experienced something close to being in a fairytale?

No, I don’t think I have.

8. If you could have a meal with anyone (alive or otherwise) and pick their brain, who would it be and why?

For very selfish reasons it would have to be my Mum, who passed away seven years ago. I think I would just like to know that she’s okay and happy wherever she and my Nan are. Why wouldn’t I want to cherish another moment with her?

9. What is #1 on your bucket list?

I don’t have a bucket list so I don’t know what my number one thing to do would be.

10. Have you experienced being in love? If so, what was the moment you knew you were in love?

I wish but I’m a twenty year old whose still a virgin and never had a boyfriend so the chances of me being in love are kind of slim. Sorry.

I nominate:

xmeganlisa

Southern By Design

Questions for you to answer:

I’m going to do the same as the person who nominated me and keep the questions above.

1. Have you ever been fired from a job?
2. What was the last movie you saw in theatres?
3. What has happened to you as a result of blogging?
4. What is a bad habit you have that you wish to correct?
5. Where do you enjoy blogging the most?
6. What is your favourite gift you’ve ever received?
7. Have you ever experienced something close to a fairytale?
8. If you could have a meal with anyone dead or alive who would it be and why?
9. What is #1 on your bucket list?
10. Have you experienced being in love? If so, what was the moment you knew you were in love?

 

Love,

Gennie

20th September 2016

Dear friends,

 

Yesterday I had my first session with a therapist and I feel like I actually got some advice that is going to help me improve my mental health to a certain extent. I don’t have the best history with therapists or councillors so I’m taking everything she tells me to try with a pinch of salt. Her advice was to get out of bed at the same time every morning no matter what time it is so that my body clock understands the difference between waking up and going to sleep everyday.

When I go to bed it isn’t to go to sleep, I go to bed to watch TV programmes that I know my Granddad doesn’t like in the slightest and chill out. I go to bed not feeling tired, spend a few hours playing around with my laptop and I don’t get to sleep until at least three in the morning. Normally, my thoughts and worries keep me awake at night.

Last night I decided to make a change and actually give her advice a try. So, I took a sleeping pill, found a notebook and pen and started to write until I fell asleep. It took an hour and a half, but I did eventually fall asleep at half past ten at night. I haven’t fallen asleep at half past ten since I was in high school when I would get up at six in the morning. I woke up at half past eight and strangely felt very refreshed; for once in my life I actually wanted to get out of bed.

I hate getting out of bed when I actually have to let alone when I don’t need to. Having said that I’m going to carry on forcing myself to actually get up instead of rolling over and going back to sleep because I don’t want to get up. I don’t enjoy having to take sleeping pills every night; so maybe writing things down and changing my sleeping habits will be what helps with my weight loss and my depression?

Love,

Gennie

15th September 2016

 

Well, today marks the end of another week at Slimming World and with every week that passes I enjoy the process even more. This week I lost half a pound and I’m very proud of my achievement because it means that in six weeks I lost half a stone (that’s seven pounds if you live outside of the United Kingdom). To some of you half a pound probably isn’t that big of a deal but to me it’s another achievement in my weight loss journey to getting my life back.

I’ve come a long way since the start of my journey; when I think back to how I used to look I don’t feel anything but relief and pride. Relief because I’m not that person anymore and pride because of how far I’ve come both physically and mentally. I’m very proud of how much I’ve changed on my own; but the cycle of being overweight is stopping with me. I am not going to allow my own children to make the same decisions I made because I don’t want them to hate themselves as much as I hated myself. That would probably be the biggest mistake I could make as a parent who knows how hard it is to be that overweight especially as a teenager.

I was thinking about how much weight I’ve lost all together and after some very complicated converting of weights I was very shocked when I worked out that I’ve lost 3 stone 9.5 pounds (51.5 pounds or 23 kilograms) in the last five months.

While this is a big achievement it is slightly dampened by my own fears; I’ve never lost more than four stone, every time I do I hit a brick wall and I gain the weight back again. I’m 4.5 pounds away from that number and I’m worrying about how I’m going to get over that hurdle; I don’t know how I’m going to do it, especially with my birthday being two weeks away, but I do know that I’m not going to let anyone or anything get in the way of me leaping over that hurdle.

I hope that sticking with the Slimming World will be the thing I need to make that happen.

Love,

Gennie

Journaling

Dear friends,

 

It’s been seventeen days since I last posted anything and I’m sorry. It’s no excuse but I have been on sleeping pills and antidepressants since the beginning of this month and I feel like I’ve been walking around in a daze ever since.

I’ve grown up in a time when having a diary or journal was a big deal; it was like a sacred book that teenage girls only shared their inner most thoughts with. They held secrets of teenage crushes, daydreams and silly little things that would probably make us cringe and wonder what we were thinking when we wrote the entries if we flicked through the pages ten years later. It was a book that no one else was ever allowed to read and was normally hidden in a draw, under the bed or under the mattress.

I was one of those girls who always bought a journal, with every intention of writing something, no matter how random, every day for as long as possible before it would be forgotten about in the chaos of everyday life. My journals always had a padlock and key on the side to keep my secrets safe, but the padlock would remain locked and the pages would remain ink free. I didn’t have the kind of attention span that could be dedicated to something like a journal when I was a kid.

I love being able to write my feelings down through my blog posts; but I want my blog to be more than just a world where I force myself to write something based on a random word. I want my blog to be a world where I share my life and my inner most thoughts; I want to be able to express myself in a way that can connect with people, I want to find something that could go towards helping to ease my mental health.

I’ve tried daily blogging before but it didn’t work out very well because I didn’t know what I wanted my blog to be or where I wanted it to take me, I didn’t know the first thing about blogging when I started. But now I feel like I’m ready to dedicate time to my blog and develop it into everything I want it to become.

Maybe using my blog as a journal will be my answer to that?

 

Love,

Gennie