I am now 27! This fact, despite a lot of celebrations of my birthday involving a 2000mile train trip across the country, an ice bar, and a lot of Jagermeister, really only dawned on me today when discussing our respective ages at work and one of our senior managers who turns 40 this year. I actually thought she was already in her 40's, but naturally you don't say that out loud, it doesn't make for career enhancing stuff!!
So what's the relevance of the age? Well nothing really, in a lot of ways I still feel like I'm 18 or younger, just that now I kind of have more of a sense of who I am than I did then, and then that thought led onto: well who are you? I'm sure you're thinking that this is sounding far too introspective to be good for this sort of blog? Well bare with, the inner emo needs to out itself once in a while.
So how do I define myself? Gay? Yes! A geek? Certainly! I pride myself on not following convention, but then, and hypocritically so, like to follow convention when it suits me! Creative? Yes, but it probably doesn't get out as much as I would like! A railway professional? Yes, my career, after my friends, is probably the most important thing in my life! So then were do I define myself as fat? Well actually I don't. I generally speaking, and this is odd, do not think of myself as a "fat" person.
Now you're thinking, Col, have you lost your mind and ended up with some kind of reverse body-dismorphic syndrome? No, and it's not about size, its about mindset. I am aware of my size, aware of it more than most, but its not how I think of myself.
Now this is important, as it helps me on this journey as "this" is not "me" and in the mind set I am in now, it makes me more and more determined that in a year to 18 months, I'm going to be vastly different in size than I am now!
So where does my age come into this post? Well for the first time in my life, and I am aware this is a dangerous statement to make here, I feel like I am in control of the factors that affect my weight. My motivation is locked into this course now, and the things that I am doing, planing meals, making packed lunches, going to the gym, actively pushing myself at the gym and having the organisation to go!
Now I wouldn't consider myself an expert, but the basics of nutrition and exercise are essential for someone on this journey, and I would say that I know more than most, I think a few of my close friends who I talk to about this journey have been surprised just how much I know about putting a fitness plan together, but like a fire, there's a triangle of things needed to make it burn, and knowledge is but one.
Secondly, there's motivation, and again, age plays a factor here, again, it shocks me that its been 10 years since I lost the weight before. When I was doing all of the media and press interviews before, I used to quite bluntly (and playing the media headline game I have to admit) say "I would be dead before I hit 30 had I not turned my life around!" Well turns out that there's actually not that much time left before the big three-zero, and that thought, sobering as it is, still scares me. There's other motivators too of course, image for me being the biggest one!
Lastly, and the third side of our "weight loss triangle" is mindset. I'm not quite sure where this comes from and if I did, I don't think I'd have ever regressed, but its different to motivation, motivation is what keeps you going, mindset is what draws everything together, I have always had motivators to want to loose weight, but getting those motivators, the technical knowledge and the mindset right all at the same time is a battle of its very own!
My point here, the connection, is that sometimes you need certain things to align before things can happen, and whilst, yes I am 27, maybe its taken all of these years for these three parts of the weight loss triangle to combine in me to make this fire burn?!
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