How I'm Planning to "Get Fit and Feel Epic" ** My entry to The Black Pearl Blog Giveaway

This post is my entry to The Black Pearl Blog and MoneySupermarket.Com "Get Fit Feel Epic" competition.  You can find all the details here. To enter all you have to do is write a post on how you are, or are planning to "Get Fit and Feel Epic". I am going to be writing about the latter, as I am not at my goal weight or fitness yet.

Hopefully 2013 is going to be the year where I get where I want to be, no 2013 is going to be the year where I get where I want to be!

Lets start off with an overview of my weight & fitness history...
I have always been overweight. As a child I was always aware that I was bigger than all of my friends, and it really used to bother me. I used to enjoy going to Ballet and Tap lessons however at the age of 13 I gave it all up because I felt that I was too overweight. My teacher tried to help me and persuade me to stay but I was so unhappy with the way I looked I just didn't want to continue. Even though I was overweight as a child, I would have classed myself as active. Like I said I went to dancing and also swimming and was always out on my bike. That all stopped at age 13 and from there my weight just increased even more.

At the age of 16 I managed to get down to a size 12. I was eating much more healthily and running, I was always late walking to college every day, so the weight basically just dropped off me. I was starting to become more confident in the way I looked and was so happy to be able to fit into size 12 in Topshop! I wasn't completely happy with myself though as most of my friends were size 8, oh how I would love to go back in time and give myself a good talking too. Looking back, I looked great.

By the time I was 18 I was size 16 and doing no activity at all. I had met my first boyfriend just before my 17th birthday and the walking to college became catching a lift with him. We also had endless takeaways, my diet was terrible. I then started Uni and again, no activity, endless takeaways plus lots of alcohol resulted in me becoming a size 20 and finding it difficult to walk up the 8 flights of stairs to my uni halls.

Fast forward to the present, I am nearly 25 and a size 16. The most exercise I get at the moment is walking my little boy from the car to his classroom in school. But all that is going to change. I need to do this, not just for me, but for my little boys. Being active and eating healthily will set a good example for them, one which they will hopefully follow.

I am going to do this, not by setting crazy targets that I could never keep up, like going to the gym 5 times a week and jogging 4 nights a week, no, I am going to do it by making a few changes.

left: Me at my heaviest. Right: Me at about 1.5stone from where I want to be in terms of weight.

I am going to....

1. Join Slimming World and stick to it. Its a great plan and I know it works as I have lost some weight on it in the past, but stopped going and put most of it back on. Eating healthily and exercise go hand in hand, when I eat junk I feel junk too. I need to eat healthily so I can increase my activity levels. 
2. Drink more water and try to drink at least 8 glasses a day.
3. Start walking to school with my little boy. We don't live that far from school at all, the reason I don't do it at the moment is it is far too easy to jump in the car and take him, but I know walking will be so much more beneficial to us both.
4. Go for a long walk with my children at least once a week. I live in an area where there are so many lovely places we could go, the beach, the park, the woods. I really don't have an excuse not to.
5. Start going to Zumba and swimming again. These are about the only two forms of exercise I enjoy, I love Zumba its so fun, you don't even realise you are exercising. 
6. Don't stress about size and weight too much, just aim to be healthy and active.

I went onto the Money Saving Expert website here, and found that if I cut out the takeaways, I could save myself over £1000 a year! If that's not an excuse to cut out the takeaways I don't know what is.

Writing this post has really inspired me, I am feeling so positive and know I will achieve my goals this year. I hope you have enjoyed reading it, and hopefully I have inspired some of you to get more fit and healthy too.

Gem x