Jean Jeanie

This morning I had a pleasant surprise when rushing to get dressed - one which was incredibly unexpected. Anyone who knows me and my particular style will very rarely see me in jeans. I'll wear high waisted skinny jeans if I'm planning on crawling around a studio shooting all day, but other than that I love my tea dresses and 50s shapes. With an hourglass shape, anything other than high waisted jeans just don't fir properly and will either slide down or give me the worst muffin top imaginable.

Despite that, for no reason other than self inflicted torture, I had a pair of skinny jeans which I had given up all hope of ever getting into. My body has steadily increased in weight through no fault of my own despite constantly dieting and fighting with it and the idea of them ever fitting again seemed a bit too out of reach. However this morning having done a bit of a colder weather wardrobe shuffle, I came across them and they actually did up.

Now don't get me wrong, they look AWFUL. They are low cut, too tight and have given me the worst muffin top in the world (it's made me appreciate my high waisted jeans all the more!) but I don't care. They zipped up, and that it something which even six months ago, they wouldn't come close to doing.

Mmmm... muffins...

It may not seem like much to most people - Newsflash: "jeans which don't fit still don't fit" - bit it was a complete revelation to me as I honestly thought I was currently at the heaviest and biggest I've ever been in my life. I've been fighting against it - eating better, increasing my jogging circuits and although I felt healthier, couldn't see any sort of physical change. The fact that stress had been making me run back to the cheese laden arms of my beloved carbs hadn't helped too, but I was persevering with making better food choices and continuing with my running. Frozen grapes, pomegranate seeds and spiced pumpkin soup are pretty much my food BFFs right now.

It made me look a little harder at myself, and see that there are changes. Only a small change, but any change in the right direction is a good one. When you're criticising yourself day in day out, it's difficult to look past any assumptions we've already made. Clothes are a great indicator for telling us that we're wrong!

It's not been easy to make these small changes, but this has given me the boost I needed to continue with them and not feel like I was both wasting my time and fighting a losing battle.

For anyone interested, I absolutely hate jogging but have found an app called Zombies Run! to be very helpful as it makes the process more interactive and, dare I say it, fun. Just to make sure I keep pushing myself, I'm doing every third run with Couch To 5K  as I can get very lazy and complacent with exercise. I keep forgetting you're meant to always be struggling to reach the end and that it's no good just running towards the café for a hot chocolate post workout!

I try not to talk about the health / exercise / weight loss side of things too much as it's not particularly fun or interesting for most people, but this felt like a real milestone for me, both mentally and physically. I'm almost looking forward to my next run across the heath! (Almost...)

Until next time,
Diana xx