I was asked to submit an inspirational story about myself at work the other day. If you're asking why, the best I can offer is that my company is a little odd... Awesome, but odd. Anyways, I put together a recap of the great "fat-struggle" that was my life...

Here it is if you're keen on some random reading...

Obesity in South Africa is on the rise. 70% of all women and 40% of all men above the age of 35 are overweight. Obesity is an ugly word; it’s a personal word and an offensive word. But it was also a word, which in 2007, you could comfortably use to describe me. At 27 years old I weighed a whopping 117 kilograms. Healthy diet and fitness regime were foreign concepts to me.

I’ve often had people ask me, how did you get to that size? The simple answer is that it’s easy. I was a fat kid, a fat teen and a fat adult. An average woman, who leads an average, healthy lifestyle will consume around 1940 calories per day. Now look at a Cornish pasty for lunch (776 calories), or two ham and cheese sandwiches (704 calories), or 5 cups of coffee a day (400 calories). Now add breakfast, dinner, snacks, juices and the total just keeps adding up.

My best friend visited me one day and told me about a diet she was on. She’d changed her eating habits completely and was going for weekly weigh-ins. Before I continue, I have to say that losing weight is not a physical thing, it’s a mental thing. Yes, you have to eat the correct foods in order to lose weight; but that’s not going to happen if you can’t get control of the hamburger or loaf of freshly baked bread hanging around in your head all day saying “eat me, EAT ME!”

So I started the “diet”. It was not a diet, not by a long shot. A diet is something you go on for three weeks, get bored with it, lose two kilograms and put on four at the end of it. This was a lifestyle change. R700 per month, two bottles of the most revolting medicine, a weekly injection to speed up my non-existent metabolism, and the healthiest eating plan I had ever seen meant that I was broke and grumpy (fighting constantly with the hamburger in my head).

I was blessed though. I had my best friend… Who would make me grilled chicken salads at lunch time and phone me to keep me constantly motivated. As the years and months went by I lost the weight. It took almost three years to lose the 48 kilograms that I lost, but it was worth every step.

Yes, over the past year or so I have put on a few more kilograms that I would like to, but that’s about to change. “Diet” and an exercise routine will see me back at 70 kilos, which is my goal and ideal weight.

Just so you know...

... I LOVE my husband.

They said what? Really? Are you sure?

*NASTY LANGUAGE WARNING*

I’ve come to the conclusion that book reviewers (not all, and yes I’m generalising… bear with me here) are bullshitters… or liars… which of the two, I’m not sure.

My cousin wrote a book on parenting; a topic which he knows nothing about. The reviewers gave it positive feedback. Said it was enlightening... amongst other things. Look, I got through around 30% of the book (unfortunately it was free on the Kindle store, so I opted to download it to see how “great” the book is). The book is crap. Sorry Daniel, but there’s no other way to put it other than, it’s crap. Really crap…

The book is, essentially, badly written, full of typos (have we never heard of spellcheck?), a sad excuse to complain about his ex-girlfriend and his (non-abusive) alcoholic father.

At the end of the day, he made some stupid choices, and decided to have a cry about it in a really, really awful book, instead of doing what the rest of us would do… man-up and move on.

Sorry Daniel, you get a 0 out of 10 rating from me.

Fast Forward...

... to April 2013!

Me and my hubby (pulling his funny camera face)

Wow, I knew I was behind in my posts, but I never realised that the last time that I stopped by was in 2011! Holy snackwich!

Ok, well... Big changes have happened between then and now. I got married! I finally found Mr Right, and I actually don't know what life was like before I met him.

I also changed jobs. Not such big news, but definitely a positive in my life.