How to lose 100lbs

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My Story – the beginning

Like many weight loss stories, mine is a story of many ‘ups’ and several ‘downs’.  I struggled with my weight as a teenager, got it under control when at university…  slipped a little…  sorted myself out again, and then succeeded in getting down to a UK size 10/12 by the time I was married.  Amazingly I returned to that size after the birth of my first child.  However, two children later I measured as a UK size 18 and I haven’t measured less than a 18 since then – and that was 20 years ago.

The last 10 years have been a real struggle.  Once the children got beyond the age where I was literally running around after them, I gradually began to put on weight.  I wasn’t particularly overeating and I was still fit and reasonably active, but I started getting heavier anyway.

Then, about three years ago, I fell really badly down some stone steps and hurt my hip and back. It became very painful to move and since then I have only been able to walk for a short distance at a time.

Now I was moving even less.  Before I knew it, if I wanted to get back to that size 10/12 weight, I would need to lose 100lbs.

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The what, who and why – justFreda

The ‘What’

justFreda.com is, at its core, a personal blog. However, consider this to be just the starting point on a long, and possibly meandering, journey.

The website “just Freda” is named after someone I knew as a child. Hair always in rollers, always wearing a pinny (apron), she would walk between the neighbouring houses in her bedroom slippers.

That was what 50 looked like to me.

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Swimming – Day 1

It’s like this.  I can swim – kind of.  I had lessons when I was at school, but  those lessons were next to useless.  They took place in the local echo-y, Victorian, swimming baths.  I hated the noise, and I also carried with me some unpleasant memories of family visits from somewhere in my distant past.  The teacher was an old man with a walking stick (you know how every adult looks ancient when you’re 9 years old), and we were all terrified of both him and his booming echoing voice, not to mention that bloomin’ stick.

I eventually learned how to swim by watching and copying other people, and as a result I can do an OK breaststroke.  However, my crawl (freestyle) never really moved forward from the point when I stopped having swimming lessons, and overall I considered/consider myself to be a fairly weak swimmer.

Fast-forwarding to 2014.

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Hello & Welcome

Hi, and welcome to the first blog post of justFreda.com.  Tricky things, first blog posts,  and exactly where is the best place to start anyway?  I guess that the important thing is to go ahead and post something – and here it is!  You could say that the whole concept of taking that first step, even if that means just turning up, is the theme of this blog.