Day Four – Keep Going, Even If It Looks Like It’s Not Working Pt.1

Don’t panic!
I’m not getting impatient to see mega results after only four days, that would be extreme even for me!
No, I’m talking about a much longer time frame than four days or 10 weeks; I’m talking months, maybe even years.
My daughter will be 15 in November; my beautiful girl, the same height as me, WAS a bit bigger than me.
Until recently she was living the ‘high life’ able to eat pretty much anything, in any quantity, without it seeming to have any impact.
But we know how the pounds can accumulate by stealth; sneak on to our favourite slim areas, EXPLODE overnight and BOOM! thunder thighs and monster hips by morning – at least that’s how it feels.
OK, so it wasn’t that bad and she was by no means heading into overweight territory, but she was beginning to look…rounder.
I really don’t want her to have a set of before pictures like mine but carefully phrased, and timed, comments were going unheeded; large dinners were being consumed; chocolate and crisps were devoured without care and exercise.
I should make it clear that, along with all of the above, she was happily eating her way through lots of fruit and veg and drinking litres of water every day. So trying to change things wasn’t like clearing up after a major disaster.
It was more akin to being stuck in a traffic jam: we’d go a little way, then stop, move forward a bit more, then come to a complete standstill where we might as well abandon hope for a while and switch off the engine.
My mum lives in Italy and the teenagers were due to spend the last half of August there; mum was telling me how tiny and slender the ‘ragazze’ are (the ‘girls’) and how Ellie would tower over them and be a good couple of dress sizes bigger too (to give you some perspective, she wears a UK size 8 – this is not huge!), we both mused on what sort of effect this might have on her, if any.
And so it happened. I waved them both through security at the airport and a few weeks later they returned. During the 150-mile drive back from from the airport, Ellie suddenly announced she wanted to eat like me. It’s a miracel I didn’t crash the car into the central reservation I was that surprised!
I’d been expecting something, but not this! Not a renouncement on junk food and acknowledgement that the lifestyle I’ve been leading solidly for the last 18 months, or so, HAVE actually been noticed and that it might be a good way to eat and live after all.
I was beginning to wonder if my being a positive role model was having any impact at all; it certainly hadn’t been looking that way, if anything it had seemed to be doing the complete opposite.
She started her new healthy eating lifestyle almost five weeks ago – “I’m not on a diet, ACTUALLY! This is a healthy lifestyle choice!” is her response to anyone who dares to criticise or undermine what she’s doing; she’s not one to be messed with…can’t think WHERE she gets that from! – and she’s learned a lot!
She’s learned that she’s only dropped half a kilo but lost a fair few inches – it took her a while to get her head around that one, but she got there. She’s learned the principles of eating five or six times a day, and how she can go to school and STILL fit this in.
She’s learned that she feels much better generally; she’s learned that from about week three the dreaded teenage spots on her nose and chin had vanished, and that her skin had become beautifully clear.
Do I really need to go on…? Sunday will be the end of her fifth week and she’s well and truly living new habits with no regrets or lust for foods gone by.
I’m very proud of her.

Btw, I didn’t collapse in a heap on the floor when I got out of bed this morning; I just can’t raise my arms above my head, feel as if I’ve been kicked in the lower back, and backside, by a horse and that my forearms and legs are badly bruised.
All of that from three exercises that didn’t look like they were going to be enough!
Completing 20 minutes of HIIT today, on top of yesterday, was nothing short of abuse; very satisfying abuse, but abuse all the same.
It’s been a very long day today with some interesting, and very exciting, developments that I’ll be able to tell you about tomorrow; but it’s late now, so until then…