So a little about me and my background.

I'm a 40 year old single mum, divorced for 10 years and my beautiful though stressful children are 14 and 11 years old. I am a mature student studying my first degree after an accident led to me losing my job. This has left me with a lifetime medical condition that I manage sometimes badly everyday, but I manage. I have been through some very tough times in my life, my now ex husband leaving me and my two children homeless and having to restart our lives not once but now twice.

I have had a problem with my weight since I was 23 years old. I have tried every diet under the sun, sometimes to the point where I have ended up in hospital. Please know I have been desperate enough to lose weight that I have damaged my own life in the process. Now I look at life in a different way, well I am trying to. I want to make my life to be about the things I am going to achieve. I don't want my life to be just something that passes me by anymore. I am making small changes to make my life relavent. I don't want to be stick thin anymore. I don't want to be like the women I see on TV.

I do however want to be healthy and happy. I know that I am going to slip up and old habits will rear their ugly heads but I am human, I will make mistakes but the time has come to accept that I am gonna trip up but if I fall I can pick myself up, dust myself off and get back in the game. I know I am one of many who feel like we have been dealt a rough hand but maybe I should start by picking the cards for my hand in the future. Take back some control in my life and make it count for me. I will laugh at some things and I will break down and cry at other things but they will all mark my path and hopefully be a story I tell when I am old and grey (L'Oreal is covering up the grey for now). Hopefully I can share some of these if not all of these things with everyone else.

Wow where has the year gone so far? I can’t believe I only have three weeks left at university until my BA is complete. I have been struggling so hard trying to juggle everything. My eating has completely broken me. I have let old habits slip in without really noticing it where I have been so busy. I am not sure when my focus slipped away from me.

It’s been a nearly two weeks since I went to the gym and I still can’t face going in there when people are in there. I just need to suck it up and get in there properly.

I’m battling with the hospitals at the moment as they keep changing my appointments. I am supposed to see a surgeon 6 months after surgery and I haven’t seen him since the week after my surgery a year ago. I am starting to get abandonment issues, I think. They have cancelled my appointment 15 times and have once again sent me a letter cancelling it again. They had a nerve to send a letter to my G.P. saying I had not shown up to my appointment and I had to go to my G.P. and show all the cancellation letters to prove I hadn’t missed anything.

It took so long to get help and since the surgery I have seen one person and I should have been at hospital speaking with specialists for months now. I know it’s not anyone’s fault and that they are completely full but to keep changing my appointments and not offer any form of help I feel totally abandoned. I don’t know what I am doing and now feel like I am failing at this weight loss thing which is daft as I have lost 10 stone and have another 8 to go but I am struggling.

I have to admit after all the surgeries I went through I thought it would all get a lot easier, but I am still struggling. I feel like I need a support group. Silly I know but at the moment with everything I am trying to do I feel like I am slowly sinking, and I can’t reach a branch to pull myself out of this. I am juggling my studies, my business, my health and trying to keep my kids as fully functioning humans and I am still no closer to getting a house to live in. I swear I need a lottery win or a someone to say here is a house for you and your kids enjoy. I know wishful thinking but I can dream can’t I.

I have decided however to go a bit easier on myself until this semester is over. Perhaps I am juggling to many things and I need to put something down for a short while. So, I am gonna concentrate on finishing my degree. That is something I have total control over and only three weeks left of it. Then next I am gonna focus on getting in the gym in daylight hours and see if I can get myself down a few more dress sizes and my legs stronger so that I can go to my graduation looking and feeling so much healthier. When I walk on stage to get my degree I want my kids to look at me knowing I tried my hardest at everything I did.

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