Why losing weight has lost its weight

On a fateful morning in early April I stepped on my bathroom scales. I knew what they were going to say before they'd even finished calibrating.

They were going to tell me I'm overweight, obese even, but that was no shock to me. For the past year I'd been steadily swelling, unable to fit into much of my already limited wardrobe of clothes and resigned to either admitting defeat and buying bigger sizes or reducing my pile of available clothes even further.

My scales shamed me. They told me I have twice as much body fat as I'm supposed to have. They told me that I'm more than two stone heavier than I've ever been before and they told me I'm slowly but surely letting myself drift off into ugly middle aged oblivion. The feeling I experienced that morning is indescribable. Just that moment when you sigh out loud and recount how many times you've stepped on the scales and gone through the same mental turmoil before without having done anything about it is draining.

This was the one that changed it though, my lightbulb moment if you will, although it brightened gradually rather than blinding me with its instant brightness. Less than a week later I joined the beginners running group and declared to my peers that I was on a mission to rid myself of the flabby shackles weighing down my life. For the first two weeks I recorded every ounce of food I ate and every millilitre of liquid that passed my lips, counting calories like they were magic fat-melting beans and it worked - within the first two weeks I lost five pounds. But after those first two weeks the motivation to keep recording everything on my phone app dwindled. It was a pain in the rump trying to input every ingredient in every home made meal I made so by about four weeks in the app was empty, nothing recorded.

This is nothing new for me, my motivation frequently fails me as I flit between different things. I'm like a bee constantly buzzing between different flowers always drawn to something else that's caught my eye.

It's now nine weeks since I took up running and something incredible has begun to happen. Far from losing my motivation to lose weight, I'm just starting to lose interest in it. As the weeks roll by I'm noticing itsy bitsy teeny weeny changes in myself which are more exciting than weight loss. I'm noticing that there's a line starting to develop at the bottom of my calf - a sign that the muscle is starting to develop. I'm noticing that my thighs don't chafe as much as they used to - a sign that the fat is beginning to disappear and muscle is replacing it. I'm noticing that when I do my stretches at the end of every run I'm getting a little bit further each time - a sign that my flexibility is improving. But best of all I'm noticing that I'm improving. When I started out nine weeks ago I couldn't do one lap of the little park the beginners class is held in. Now I can run five miles - it hurts but I can do it.

All of these changes - small as they may be - are making me unintentionally re-evaluate my priorities. Losing weight is important for my health, but I now realise that it's a by-product of becoming fit and healthy. I see the bigger picture slowly coming into focus now and in that picture I'm not thin. When I set out nine weeks ago my aim was to get down to ten stone, but now I'm not so sure I want to be ten stone if it means I'm thin. I don't want to be thin, I want to be fit so if being fit means I have to sit steady at something more like eleven stone then I'll be thrilled with that. If I never get below a size twelve then so be it as long as I've got enough strength and endurance to get through a half marathon or blast up some hills on my mountain bike and not be half a mile behind Gordon.

I'll lose weight. As I increase my weekly mileage an inevitable by-product of that will be weight loss so why bother wasting all of my concentration on it if it's going to take care of itself anyway? It's not as important as the exercise and well-being which cause it. I look forward to fitting into my favourite biking shorts again, don't get me wrong, but I now realise that it's pointless beating myself up if I don't lose three pounds every single week. Besides, doesn't muscle weigh more than fat anyway?

Today's motivational phrase: Thin doesn't always mean healthy.