Before I had children I was a serious gym bunny.

I owned Lycra. I actually looked kinda good in Lycra. I didn’t need to wear a massively baggy T-shirt over the top of everything to find the courage to work out in the gym among the heavily made up women and the shiny, muscle-bound men.

I thought high energy aerobics classes were sweaty heaven and I would skip into classes with names like Boxercise, Triple Challenge and Super Step.

Yes, I was that hugely annoying girl at the front of the class kicking her legs so high you thought I was deranged or just sad.

That all changed.

Lycra and I fell out big time and I haven’t allowed it anywhere near my house since 2002.
I had my children later in life. I was 34 when I had my first and the second followed 3 years later.

So did the weight gain.

I guess you can add this to my list of excuses for still carrying around my ‘baby weight’.

I have blamed everything from my mum’s defective genes (why couldn’t she give me the genetic code that meant I could snap back into shape?), to my husband killing me with kindness (“go on, have a chocolate HobNob with your cup of tea. Go one, just one. Maybe two . . . “). Even my children have been held responsible for making me love them more than going to the gym.

I mean who wants to go and sweat next to 16 other women when you could be playing tig or making dens on the bed with two munchkins? No contest.

These days it feels like I now have the ability to gain weight by osmosis. I have to run down the cake aisle in the supermarket for fear of having my cells expand just by breathing in too deeply near the chocolate muffins.

Somewhere between the pelvic tilts and the breastfeeding I developed a fatal attraction to sugar.
Of course I ate plenty of sugar before, but I never (whisper it) had my own secret stash around the house.

And let’s face it, when you’ve spent ages slaving over a roast dinner/plate of sandwiches/slice of toast you become some kind of food hoover because you can’t bear to see it go to waste.
Same with treats or biscuits or crisps or puddings or anything sweet for that matter.
I mean it’s rude to hand them out and not have one yourself. One, two, seven who’s counting?

The fabulous cake in the picture was actually baked for me by a very good friend and her two children to mark my 40th birthday this Friday.

It has now become a bit of a symbol for my weight loss.

I don’t want to give up the good stuff and make life dullsville by denying myself (and by default everyone around me). But I don’t want to be strolling out the other side of 40 with a serious hang up about my weight and my health.

So now this has got to stop.

It has got to stop for the sake of my health, my wardrobe and my sanity.

I want to lose 30 lbs as that is what I have gained since having babies.

Ok so it’s not a massive amount, but this is a want echoed among many many mothers out there who found that for every baby they had, 14lbs in weight just magically attached itself to their middle region.

I mean how does that work? I race around this house like a wind-up toy. I’m up and down the stairs at least 25 times in one evening. I should be lithe and athletic looking, not lumpy and wobbly like a comfy old sofa. I’m too darn young for that!

So, the buck stops here as they say.

Like Dave and Dave, I am going to shape up.

Diets are a total no no for me. If you tell me I can’t have chocolate fingers I want 6. Boxes of.

And so – and here is the most important thing for me - my weight loss goals are going to be manageable and not impinge on family life.

I started yesterday. Baby steps. I didn’t tell anyone things were changing. I didn’t make any grand announcements or declare that the fridge was out of bounds. Or make them eat a pound of lettuce and a single raisin.

I just made small changes. And I felt powerful.

I will reveal exactly what changes I am making next time.

And just for the record, yes I did have a slice of the cake and yes it was absolutely delicious and yes I did share it out! I fear it wouldn’t have survived a postal journey, so the two Daves missed out.

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