My journey begins here

The Year is 2013

My name is Margaret-Rose

I am Māori , I am 27, I am married.

I weigh in at 175kgs,

my hips 156cms,

my waist 127 cms,

my bust 145 cms,

I am a size 24 -26 (NZ)

or

 4XL – 5XL, depending on the brand.

Despite what society tells me how I should be feeling about these measurements, I am genuinely happy at the size I am, I feel sexy in my own skin, I love my muffin tops and handles, my legs, my chunky knees, I love how clothes look on me. I love being me, sure there are things to complain about, but my size and weight is no longer one of them. For a long time I wasn't happy and many a time I have tried to loose the weight, but it always seems to come back 3 times as much, as soon as I have fallen off the wagon.

Sure there are things I wish could be better, every girl at every size does, because that is what life and today’s society (as modern as it is) encourages. But I am over feeling sorry for my fat self, I love being me and this I find is what has been making me happy lately, plus all the options we have these days to look fabulously fashionable.

Last year I decided I had enough of putting myself through horrible diets, gruelling exercise regimes and guilt-ridden weight-loss programs. I was always feeling depressed and yes guilty about eating something that was not on the right food list. I sure as hell am not going to live my life that way.

I know people may think that is a huge COP-OUT, but to be quite honest I do not care what you think! I am not going to spend 365 days a year, every year feeling guilty and hating myself, that certainly is not healthy for me.

My New Years resolution was slightly different to what I had planned for it to be last year. In December, I sat down with one of my workmates to talk about loosing weight this year, we talked about a whole lot of different options and what we both agreed upon was that we weren’t going to deprive ourselves of things we wanted to do and eat. Yes I want to meet with my workmates every Thursday evening to have a drink or three, so the consensus was;

“BETTER FOOD CHOICES AND BEING A LITTLE MORE ACTIVE”

That is all it was really, but I think we all have a tendency to think that simple changes like these above just don’t work, I truly believe now that I won’t ever loose weight if I go on another damn diet, I am the happiest I have been in a very long time, I don’t want to spoil it.

Yes, there are some people who probably think I’m crazy, I know that being this size is not great for me health wise, this is the only concern for me, I want to be around for a long time, I want to have heaps of children, I want to walk on my maunga (mountains) again, I want to strutt around in a bikini one day, even if it’s a plus size one, but I need to learn to love myself so much, that it’s absolutely impossible to hate myself, which is the only time I believe I can start making changes to my lifestyle and make a difference to my health status.

This is the journey I am referring to, thankfully my sisters have jumped on board with me this year, they both are so much more disciplined then I and I haven’t really explained my whole philosophy to them yet, all I have said to one of my sisters so far is if it takes me a whole year to loose 20kgs, then it takes a whole year. Slowly but surely is the sign of a lifestyle change are my thoughts. All I know is that I want to be happy and excited about doing it, not pressured.

My journey home. It starts here.............................