How does that work?

Walk into the weights section at the gym. What do you see?

You probably see a hell of a lot more males than any other gender. You also probably see a mass of lean people with muscles that are pretty toned, if not positively rippling. That is because these people work hard at the gym and eat a very lean diet.

What do you do, though, if you are a 250lb, 5'9" female with a love for exercise and muscles of reasonable grade steel hidden under a solid layer of emotional eating? You get the hell in there with them, of course.

Welcome to my blog/vlog.

I have always been an exerciser. My one shining light of health. I love it all. Swimming 5 days a week as child and gym at least 3 times a week since. Gym can involve strength training, cardio machines, cardio classes or yoga type classes. My physique lends itself better to strength but I love the exhaustion of feeling you 'gave it all' in a hard cardio class. Go big or go home!

I love food too, though and I emotionally eat on an almost daily basis - I'm not proud of it but it happens. I am positively hangry when I don't eat for a while and I am always drawn to high saturated fat, high carb foods. I am also a health care worker in my day job. I see firsthand the physical effects of eating too much food and choosing unhealthy foods regularly.

So, why blog/vlog?

I want to change my bad habits and be motivated to keep my good ones and frankly, I don't have the willpower if I don't have accountability. That's what this is - accountability. If I have to write down my successes and failures in a public forum then they are real. If I can inspre someone else to overcome their low self-esteem and take up a healthier lifestyle too, that would be fantastic bonus.

As often as I can I will blog my workouts, achievements, areas for improvement and how I'm feeling. I will document what I'm eating and what steps I'm taking to tackle my emotional eating and I'm going to try to do some self reflection to get closer to the root prolem that makes me overeat.

I will never (other than this intro) mention my weight/measurements or healthy weight/measurement stats. In my experience weight comparing harms my emotional well-being faster than anything else and leads to choosing foods that are 'low calorie' but highly processed, full of chemicals and nutritionally useless. Being able to gauge your health based on energy levels, endurance and emotional well-being, to me, is way better than trying to attain some arbitrary 'weight' that society thinks I should have.

I would love to have some people to share this journey with. If you want to come along please follow my blog/vlog. I welcome all comments, good or bad - just remember, if you wouldn't want someone to say it to your loved ones then don't say it to anyone else.