How I Lost 10kg's in Three Months

I've debated whether or not to share this story with you all for a while now. I decided to keep this all to myself at first. And then I thought about how this is such a big part of my life right now and I know how motivating it is for me personally to hear real and raw success stories. I also want to be able to look back at these posts and to be reminded of my journey. So, here goes nothing...

I jumped onto the Banting train and lost 10kg's in three months.

I have come to realise that there are three groups of people in South Africa. Group 1 is full of pro-Banters. Viva Tim Noakes! Viva! Those who don’t agree with Banting as a lifestyle and think it is just one big, unhealthy, money making scheme find themselves in Group 2. Then we have little Group 3, the smallest of all the groups. Members belonging to Group 3 have heard about Banting (let’s be honest, who hasn't?) but are neither here nor there when it comes to having an opinion on it all. Whatever group you belong to, just know that I respect your views/opinions - just as I would love for you to respect mine.

I do indeed belong to Group 1 – the pro-Banters. Simply because I have been following this lifestyle change for the last couple of months and I have lost 10kg’s. I never, ever thought that was possible for me. Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

If you’ve been following this blog of mine for a while you would remember the odd weight loss post or two that I published last year. If you’re interested in going back and reading those, here they are: PS - I'm Still Fat and The Chubby Girl Tries Again. It’s no secret that I haven’t been happy with my body for a long time. In fact, I think my issues with my weight started in about Grade 6 – that was 2006. Now, I just have to say that I have never actually had serious issues with my weight – I’ve never been obese, I’ve never sunk into a depression over it and I’ve never developed anorexia or bulimia. My issue was that I simply didn’t feel pretty. I noticed every lump and bump and as shallow as this sounds, I wanted a body like the girls on the Health and Fitness page on Pinterest – the “Fitspo” girls. But I never wanted it badly enough to actually do something about it. My entire life I’ve eaten like absolute crap. I love food! I love veggies and salads but if you gave me a choice between a green salad and a pizza, I think we both know which one I chose.

Throughout school I wasn’t very sporty at all. I hated organised sport – I was unfit and felt embarrassed. I did very little exercise when I was in school and by the end of Matric (2012) I weighed 70kg’s. I am 1.64 meters tall and this put me in the over-weight BMI category (not that I agree with this ridiculous notion of BMI, I think each individual person is unique and we can’t rely on tests such as this to define our body).

Then I started varsity. Oh my. You’ve heard of First Year Spread, haven’t you? Basically it’s this whole idea that First Year students put on massive amounts of weight during their first year at varsity. This is because of the massive lifestyle change you encounter when you get to varsity. There’s no more organised sport just like there was in school, so many students’ activity levels almost cease to exist. Students are often cooking for themselves for the first time in their lives and being on a student budget with not much cooking experience means cheap, unhealthy meals such as hot dogs, pies, pastas and 2-Minute Noodles. Add these two factors to the copious amounts of alcohol that most students are consuming and really, it’s not difficult to understand how First Year Spread happens. I know one girl who gained a total of 20kg’s in her First Year. It’s a real thing, but some people are just down right assholes about it all. I heard a couple of stories of boys in our dining hall placing bets on which First Year girl they thought would gain the most weight by the end of the year. How ridiculous?

First Year spread did affect me, but I think Second Year spread hit me harder. In Second Year I had been eating the same Res meals every week for the last two years. And I was sick of it. This lead to us getting take aways at least twice a week. I definitely noticed the unhealthy changes that I was making. But before I noticed my body changing, I noticed that I could not fit into a single pair of pants that I owned. I just kept buying more clothes and kept eating more crap. At this point I weighed around 73kg’s.

Around the middle of Second Year (last year) I realised something needed to change. I joined the varsity gym and started ordering the Health option from our Res dining hall. The Health option wasn’t all that healthy but it was a change from the burgers and hot dogs that I was used to getting. The gym thing lasted for a month or so but then slowly fell by the way side. I started doing Pilates in my own time in my Res room and kept this up for a while as well. But nothing was changing and I became despondent. I think throughout the course of last year I lost 2kg’s, only to put them right back on in half the time I lost them.

Then I returned home in December after my Second Year ended. Clauds and a couple of her friends had started a little Pilates group. Three times a week the ladies would come over to our house and they’d do an hour of exercise in our lounge. I decided to join them – I had three months of holiday ahead of me and decided why not? They had all weighed and measured before they started in order to track their progress. So I did the same. I hopped on that scale and got a massive fright – the flashing number in front of me was not what I was hoping to see -75kg’s. This was the heaviest I’ve ever been. For the last two years I’d sort of stayed in the low seventies, but never exceeding 73kg’s. I knew that I needed to make a change – I wasn’t happy with my body at 70kg’s and I hadn’t done anything about it and now look at where I was. I knew that if I carried on the way I was then my weight was only going to increase.

So Clauds and I decided together to make a change. For the month of December we did Pilates three times a week (not always) and every now and again I’d go for a run – I say run but what it really was a 2.5km walk with a 400 meter jog somewhere along the line. I made the sound of a wheezing whale and everything hurt, but I didn’t care. I needed to change. Then Christmas and New Year and my 21^st birthday happened and all forms of exercise stopped. Clauds had been toying with the idea of Banting for a while but nothing had ever come from it. Then in January she came into my bedroom with The Real Meal Revolution and said “Right. We need to get serious about this. Whip out a pen and paper, we’re meal planning.”

We officially started Banting on the 14^th of January and my starting weight was 74.4kg’s. We cut out all breads, pastas and starches and ate purely off of the Green List. It was a massive change but honestly I can’t remember struggling all that much in the beginning. I think this is because I had the support of Clauds who was so determined and is such an inspiration. We would have eggs and bacon with a tomato and onion relish for breakfast and then lunch and dinner would be a piece of protein with either salad or veg. We’d often have a delicious cream sauce and I never once felt deprived of anything. I cut out all sugar – this was quite a change for me as I used to have two sugars in my coffee. If you had to give me a cup of coffee with even a hint of sugar in it now, I wouldn’t be able to handle it. We continued to exercise lightly throughout the week but nothing excessive at all. I hopped onto the scale every day, and every day I was losing weight, and noticeably so!

For the first week I somehow didn’t see any of my family members (our entire family lives 5km’s away from us) but I remember after just a week of Banting they all came over for a braai and they could already see a change in Clauds and I. We have two domestic workers, Happy and Florence and I absolutely adore them. They also noticed changes in the first couple of weeks. I knew for sure that something good was happening when Florence told me that she saw a difference simply because whenever I’d say to her “Florrie, am I thin yet?”, she’d reply with a gusty “No! You are the fattest.” These comments were never malicious or hurtful, they always gave us all a good laugh.

I never, ever could have imagined myself being able to lose 10kg’s. Not in a lifetime, let alone just over 3 months. I haven't stuck to the lifestyle religiously over the last 3 months. I've had days, flip, even weeks where I've fallen off of the wagon. I know my total weight loss would be a lot more if I didn't fall off the wagon every now and again. When I started this journey, I said my goal was simply to get back into the sixties. My real goal was to lose 10kg’s but I never voiced that simply because I never thought that was possible, and yet here I sit, 10kg's lighter than I was 3 months ago.

I know that not everyone agrees with this lifestyle and I know that not everyone is interested in hearing other people’s weightloss stories. But this has been a big change in my life – a change that has seen results and that has left me feeling so much healthier and happier physically and emotionally as well. I do have “before” and “during” (not after, because I’m not quite done yet) photos of my whole body, but I’m not sure if I’m brave enough to share those on this platform just yet. It’s a scary and vulnerable thing to open up on such a public space about something so personal. All I know is that Banting has left me feeling healthier than I have in years. Banting has given me a new confidence. I look at myself in the mirror in the mornings and I'm falling in love with my body every single day.

And so that's just a bit of my story. If you have any questions I’d be happy to try and answer them. I’m no expert, but I have been educating myself over the last couple of months and it has been working for me. You can always email me at arrowstheblog@gmail.com but take a look at this website, it has everything you’ll ever need to know.