Losing focus and an inspirational woman...

I think the hardest thing about any weight-reducing and exercise regime (still can't bring myself to use that hateful word 'diet') is keeping the momentum going.

The first week you may be full of resolve, what you need to achieve is clear and besides, it's fun to have a new project, something to direct your attention towards.

Similarly, during those weeks where the weight has demonstrably and undeniably dropped, it is easy to keep going with it, the results are in, it's paying dividends, and you are happy to keep on going.

It has been scientifically proven
that you can't watch watch this programme
without a glass of wine in your hand..

The trouble is those weeks when nothing happens; your weight either stays the same or even creeps up a little and frankly you're bored of doing stomach crunches and jumping jacks. You're heartily sick to the eye teeth watching 'Two Greedy Italians' without a glass of wine in your hand. You are tired of being this person whose whole life has been hijacked by this 'self improvement' bullsh*t and you just want your old life back again (even if you know damn well that your old life meant being immensely dissatisfied with your appearance).

So yeah, last week was a bit like that. Belligerently I bought wine mid-week and ignored any form of exercise, telling myself that life is too short and besides, who cares what I look like?

I think we all have these sort of weeks so I'm not going to beat myself up about it. But it's important to keep the eye on the prize and that's where inspirational stories really help.

I met my friend P when I lived in the desert city of Al Ain, close to the Omani border. We both hung around in the same group of expat women, all of whom were relatively new to the country, and all of whom were dealing with the bizarre, frustrating but quite often hilarious way of life in the UAE.

Collectively we would meet up at the mall for coffee, or get drunk at the Horse & Jockey, or at each other's villas (remember that 80s party? I wish I had more pictures...)

P was a bit of a yo you dieter and as far as I knew had battled with weight on and off over the years. Funny thing is, it's only recently when she posted photos on Facebook of herself back then, that I realised how overweight she was at the time. It might sound a little disingenuous but I didn't really notice, mainly because she was smart and beautiful and a good laugh.

She's been on a weight loss journey of her own, with the help of Slimming World, and she has been steadily losing weight over the past three years. Like everyone's her life has had some dramatic ups and downs over this time, but she has stuck with it and kept going and simply not allowed anything or anyone to stop her.

I'm so impressed with her resilience and feel - and sorry to come over all American here - but humbled by her journey. I've had a lot less to lose and yet have figuratively and actually stamped my foot, pouted my lips and made a big deal about it. Compared to what P's had to go through, my journey is hardly worth mentioning.

To date she has lost almost 80lbs and is half a stone away from her goal. She looks amazing, more beautiful than ever, full of youth and vigour and has a wonderful future to look forward to. I'm dead proud of her.

P, I hope you don't mind me mentioning you in this blog post, but you gave me such a shot of inspiration into my arm this morning, I simply had to.

Race you to the finish line!x

Baby weight and why we should leave new mums alone...

(I'm not writing about myself today since I have absolutely nothing to report. However an article I spotted on Facebook earlier lead me to writing today's post...)

I try not to read celebrity gossip too much, the obsession with weight and appearance drives me nuts. However I must admit to silently cheering last July when Kate Middleton, several days post-partum, appeared to the world’s media looking, well, five months pregnant. In a time when it is only acceptable for post-baby celebrities to look as if the pregnancy and ensuing baby never happened, I felt that Kate was particularly brave.

We seem to have forgotten that gestating and delivering a baby takes a huge toll on our bodies and we don’t simply ‘shrink back’ to pre-baby bodies overnight, even if the media would have us believe otherwise by endlessly printing annoying ‘How I got my body back’ articles.

Now I'm not claiming my weight-gain has anything to do with my last baby, it hasn't. I got back into shape fairly quickly after I had him in fact. But I do think society puts enormous pressure on women to lose baby weight quickly, and this can often tip women into despair if they don't manage it.

A controversial picture has been doing the Facebook rounds recently, featuring mother of three fitness enthusiast Maria Kang looking super slim in a bikini, surrounded by her baby and two toddlers. Overhead is the caption, ‘What’s your excuse?’

Aside from the astonishingly patronising tone of this, Ms Kang seems to miss the point that most new mothers are exhausted, sleep deprived and otherwise occupied in the weeks and months following childbirth, and the last thing they need is to see photos of smug post-baby fitness fanatics berating them for not being in similar shape.

In a recent study, Dr Julie Wray of Salford University found the accepted wisdom – that it takes just six weeks to be ‘back to normal’ after giving birth – was a fantasy, concluding that it takes closer to a year for a woman to fully recover. Certainly this has been my experience, although I too have succumbed in the past to the pressure to lose the baby weight as quickly as possible.

After having my first child – fueled by a story I’d read about Catherine Zeta Jones on a treadmill just hours after giving birth – it became a point of pride for me to regain my pre-baby shape. And so, as soon as I got home from the hospital I embarked on a ludicrous 80 sit-ups a day regime in a desperate bid to flatten my stomach. Nobody told me that my abdominal muscles needed eight weeks just to knit back together and that the sit-ups were actually preventing this from happening. I only discovered my error when I complained to my district nurse that my stomach seemed make a funny triangular shape whenever I sat up!

Sometimes I think our generation of women have gone slightly mad, going to enormous lengths to disguise what is only natural; as if inhabiting a post-baby body is something to be ashamed of rather than celebrating. Back in my mother’s day, women stayed in hospital for two weeks after giving birth; these days we’re sometimes home in a matter of hours! Again the message seems to be ‘pull yourself together, stop making excuses, and get back to normal quick sharp!’

And it’s not just the media that exerts this pressure, other people – especially women – can be remarkably tactless at times. Three days after giving birth to my youngest child I returned to the delivery ward to complete some paperwork. The nurse behind the desk – yes a health professional - eyed my still-swollen abdomen, laughed and said ‘are you sure you’re not still pregnant?’ which frankly went down like a lead balloon. I’d like to say this was an isolated incident, but annoyingly the same hilarious comment was made several times over the following days. Lucky for me it was my fifth baby, so I knew quite well that it takes several weeks for the uterus to descend back into the pelvis again, but to a new mum the first sight of a post-baby belly can be quite a shocker.

And so, as a bit of a veteran of pregnancy and childbirth, I’d like to humbly offer some advice to new mothers or those who are soon-to-be, and it is this: Chill! Enjoy your new bundle, cuddle them, bond with them and, just for a while, forget about what you look like, because at the moment it really doesn't matter. Babyhood is fleeting and you won’t get this time again. Your favourite jeans will eventually fit – I promise – but for now just be kind to yourself.