So.
How did we get here?
On my first day of uni, my microwave meal set off the fire alarm. It was a sunday morning and I lived in uni halls. When the alarm goes off, everyone has to stand outside till the firemen come. The firemen would walk through the crowd to the flat that set it off, shouting loudly on the way “who set this off?”. A sunday morning in uni halls means people sleeping off their hangovers. Standing outside on the lawn in various states of undress wasn’t really how people wanted to start their Sundays, and causing that wasn’t really how I wanted to start my uni life.
And that’s the story of how I came to exist on a diet of take-out, junk food and boxes of dry cereal in first year of uni (lol, jk, I just liked crap). It took one term to gain like 10-15kg and then a couple more months to gain the rest.
I was sick one weekend and by the time I re-surfaced, I kept hearing comments that i’d lost weight. So when I went home for some holiday, I started to eat three times a day. I would have the occasional ice lolly or apple and when I went back to uni, I had lost a couple of kg. I started cooking and making myself eat three meals a day. I didn’t count calories. Then I started taking a bus at 6am to meet up with two girls I barely knew to run for 12 minutes. When I started running properly later, it was kind of hilarious to me how little 12 minutes of running was. Then I started running on my own and increasing the distance and eventually I was doing 3 miles a day, everyday, rain, snow, shine.
The final piece of the weight loss puzzle came from a 10 day hospital stint for malaria- I think it was 10 days, but it was so long ago, I can’t remember for sure.
I maintained that weight for three years, and then I moved back to Nigeria. Mate, you know how they say pride comes before a fall? I would never ever ever ever have thought I'd be back here. Again.
I’ve had sooooo many false starts all rooted in doing the quickest thing- it wasn’t until I looked at my old tumblr that I realised that it took a long time the last time but I eventually got to my goal. If I had just chosen consistency, I might have been further along in my journey now.
This isn’t some call to action post- I’m not about to state all my weight loss goals and do weight check-ins. I mean, I might, who knows, but this isn’t what THIS post is for.
This is just you know, a celebration of the second month of a new year, so goal 1- lose weight.