About Me - Part 2
This is part 2 of a 3 part mini series. If you haven’t read part 1, you can go back and read it here.
Which diet will work for me?
I cared – when I came back to the UK for my final year I realised I had – for the first and pretty much only time in my life – I’d got fat.
Enter the age of the fad diet.
You name it, I did it – the Special K diet, Atkins, boiled egg, less than 4% fat – I tried them all. I was constantly trying to ‘lose weight’ – while at the same time doing absolutely no exercise and still drinking pretty solidly several nights a week.
I had had a rude awakening with my University marks – at the rate I was going I was on track to scrape a 2:2 and I knew that wasn’t good enough – I didn’t want to let my parents down. I knuckled down at University, quit my job (first time since I was 14 where I hadn’t been working) and settled down to study.
I just about managed to scrape a 2:1, and, like every other student graduating in 2009 at the end of the UKs biggest recession - moved back home to my parents.
Graduated – and living back with my parents
I needed a job – any job – and I got one – working as a waitress at a fine dining restaurant. It was there that I began to really learn about food and wine. I was taught to carve a chateaubriand, fillet a Dover Sole, flambé a Baked Alaska.
I learnt I have a pretty good pallet for wine, the correct way to properly lay a table, and more napkin folds that one person ever needs. It was hard work – long, long hours on our feet, split shifts, 12-14 hour days sometimes – but I loved it!
I loved working with food and wine, I loved serving people and learning I was good at it and most of all I loved the team I was working with. Unless you’ve been in it, I don’t think you can really appreciate how it feels to have nailed a service in a restaurant like that.
We worked hard – but we played very hard too. Sunday nights were ‘hospitality’ nights in town so off we’d go as a group all together – because no one else is out on a Sunday, only the people who’ve been working on Friday and Saturday.
I stayed in that company for 3 years – about 2.5 years too many from a career perspective!
Why?
Why else – I’d met a boy. He was a chef in the restaurant and we sparked pretty quickly. We got together on one of those nights out and I loved being part of a couple at work. I don’t think my parents were quite so thrilled – and looking back I stayed with him for all the wrong reasons – but that was that.
Getting a proper job
Fast forward to 2012 and a classic case of being ‘in the right place at the right time’ landed my a job in contract catering, working in London.
The relationship which had kept me small was very much on its last legs, and a friend from University posted online about a job interview she was going to the next day. When I spoke to her about it she said it wasn’t for her – but suggested it might be for me. It was with the company she was already working for so she had an in, so I sent her my CV and got an interview.
I think they may have been a bit desperate or short on time but whatever the reason was – September 2012 and I was starting a shiny new career in contract catering.
Managing imposter syndrome
Talk about fear of being found out – this was a whole new world that I didn’t know anything about.
London! Blackberries! Work email! Commuting! I thought I had made it….
Fake it til you make it and all that and boy did I – navigating those first months in that job whilst simultaneously dealing with the demise of my first really ‘serious’ relationship – a relationship that had turned mentally abusive by the end and left me – once again – a shell of my former self.
Back I went to Mum and Dad, this time with a cat in toe, much to their ‘delight’.
On the outside I was a promising young professional, shining in her first ‘proper’ job.
On the inside I was a crumbing mess, being looked after by my parents who were doing everything for me – cooking for me, washing my clothes, you name it, they did it.
I slowly started to heal though and the following summer I’d found myself again enough to move into a house share in London.
Moving to London
Enter the next phase of my life – London living! I’d been really careful when looking for new housemates and was valuing people over place, so I ended up in Willesden Junction with two people who I just adored – Autumn and Alex*.
Autumn especially was amazing, welcoming me into her life and her social circle immediately. My new housemates friends overlapped so we often all hung out together at the local. We had such a laugh living together, we had a small house and a cute little garden which Autumn made so lovely. I adored it – I was finally on my way!
My partying ways hadn’t quite left me – after 3 years of being in a relationship I found myself once more and found the London social scene, catching up with friends I’d long abandoned who welcomed me back into their fold, going on dates and generally living the live.
I was working in food, and still obsessed with it – but it didn’t rule my mind the way it once did. I was by no means happy with my body but I wasn’t punishing it anymore, I was living. Not the healthiest, not by a long way – but I was a normal 20-something girl living her life and loving it.
Loving life – but by no means healthy
I began to realise that I probably wasn’t the healthiest I could be.
I could nail a bag or two of family-sized chocolates or Haribo no questions asked, I had free food on tap at work and I was drinking several days a week.
By chance, in October of 2013 I got a phone call from my Mum. I was at my friends flat at the time, planning another friends hen-do. ‘There’s a magazine here saying you’re in’. Straight away I knew what it was – I’d been given a ballot place in the London marathon.
Getting a place in the London Marathon
What the actual F?! I’d been entering the ballot every year and had always wanted to do it – but I never thought I’d actually get a place…I didn’t even own any trainers!
That weekend I decided to go swimming – ‘training’ I thought of it – after all I couldn’t run because of the trainers issue.
I remember phoning my sister on the way back and telling her about my marathon place. ‘You’re crazy!’ she said. ‘You won’t be able to do it. A marathon is a serious thing – you can’t just turn up on the day and do it. If you really want to run, why don’t you start off with a 5 or 10k instead’.
I’m nothing if not determined
Wise words – and totally fair, given my lifestyle in the preceding years – but I’m nothing if not determined and hearing her say that was like a red rag to a bull.
I would do this marathon.
I’d show them – I’d prove that I could.
When I decide to go for something, I go all in – so I started researching how to train for a marathon, went and bought some trainers and downloaded the couch to 5k app. I had read that it was possible for a non-runner to train for a marathon in 6 months, which was the time I had, and I spent the first 2.5 of those getting up to 5k!
That app was a godsend – I literally couldn’t run for a minute when I first begun but it was like a trainer in my ear telling me exactly what to do.
I was by no means fast, but I was determined.
As I passed the 5k I slowly upped the miles, week by week. I remember sobbing when I managed 13 miles – I never in a million years thought I’d make it that far.
I did 14 on a treadmill in Antigua – we were on a family holiday for my Mums 60th but I wasn’t going to let that stop me!
I signed up to the Mind charity team and that added a great deal of support, plus I was able to raise money for Mental Health, a cause I will always champion and be passionate about promoting- after all, Eating Disorders are a mental health disorder.
April came around and my whole family and all my friends came to London to watch. It was a beautiful sunny day, the hottest on record. I was so nervous but so excited and hyped up – this was it! I was going to do it!
I had to get up so crazy early to get to the start time but the atmosphere on the train there and in the park was electric! I tried not to use my phone too much because I didn’t want the battery to die, but I wanted to capture the atmosphere and the excitement of everyone there.
Running the London Marathon
There’s a saying in the marathon world that the training is the hard part, and the race is the reward, and that couldn’t be more true.
London on marathon day just comes alive – people are cheering, shouting your name, waving flags, handing out jelly babies -it’s insane! It didn’t feel like a race – and lets face it I was never going to win – it felt like a celebration of all of the hard work I’d put in over the last 6 months.
My family came to watch and I remember seeing them and going to hug them, and then I saw my friends in the crowd a little while later.
Hitting the wall
I hit ‘the wall’ around mile 18 – so far gone, so far to go. I had to give myself a little talking to, and fund myself walking at one point in a tunnel where there was just runners, no supporters, feeling pretty sorry for myself. There was a band set up at the end of the tunnel though, and like they could read my mind they started playing ‘eye of the tiger’ – such an uplifting, empowering song that you can’t fail to lift yourself up! It was exactly what I needed at that time, and got me through to mile 20 – 20!
Only 6 more to go! That’s 10k and I’d run 10k multiple times during training – I knew that I could do it!
I saw my friends once more along embankment and I remember seeing them and bursting in to tears, saying over and over again ‘it just hurts so much!’ As I came round the corner on the Mall and saw Buckingham Palace in front of me I started (in my mind at least) sprinting to the finish….
…Only to have to slow down a few seconds later when I realised it was a bit further ahead than I thought!
Finally though, I’d done it- I’d crossed the finish line – in a time of 4:52 – something I’m still so proud of because although I always maintain that I just wanted to finish, I really wanted to finish in under 5 hours.
Sparking a passion for fitness
Running the London Marathon that day made me realise that my body is capable of some really great things. It sparked a passion for fitness which has never left and still remains, alongside my Wedding day, one of the best days of my life.