'Tis the season... to lose weight

With Christmas out of the way, and weeks of solid advertising preaching for the season of gluttony, it's time to feel the guilt. What sin! How could you? How could you eat two Christmas dinners and a box of chocolate? What you need now is a diet. But, don't even think about fresh fruit – no, what you need is the best in diet foods: low-fat cake, low-fat yogurt, low-fat ready meals. And don't waste time walking around the park – get a gym membership instead. New trainers, new trackies, new you. That's what you want, isn't it? A new you. A you you don't feel guilty for being. Purge away your sin and spend in the Church of Consumerism. Because you are not a person if you don't.

Every year is much of the same. Every year we are bombarded with the same message: 'tis the season. Somewhere along the line, the festive season went from celebrating love and life to celebrating stuff. Television, news, interwebs, people – everything is telling us to consume as much possible, be it food or stuff. Telling us that without such purchases, Christmas will be a disaster. Telling us not to let our loved ones down. And this line is embedded, one only has to look at the mothers among us to see the stress of ensuring everyone has the perfect Christmas.

But as soon as the day of eating too much food is out the way, the ads switch on us. The very same mediums that were telling us to eat as much as we could, now tell us we've all put on a few pounds. That we've let ourselves go and we simply must lose weight. If we don't, we're undesirable. They're making us feel guilty for doing the very thing we were so encouraged to do, but they're pretending to be on our side all the time. They're offering us guidance and a hand to help us through the difficult transition into that Better You.

In my inbox this morning I found a direct hit. LA Fitness encouraging me to 'join the new year's health resolution' (which, admittedly, I read as 'revolution' the first time. I don't know if that's my dyslexia, or if they engineered it themselves). The tagline reads: 'Start achieving your health and fitness goals today'.

I don't know about everyone else, but I was still on the 'let yourself go' part of the festive season; drinking beer and eating seconds. But it seems I'm supposed to stop eating in time for the next set of festivities: new year's. As we enter into 2013 I need to set myself some new rules for being a better person, and advertisers the world-over are promising to help.

LA Fitness isn't the only company encouraging a change of tact. The diet industry thrives off our insecurities, and this is a great time of year to hit out. It stayed quiet for a couple of weeks, giving us all long enough to eat more than we would usually, to ensure we're primed and ready to purge.

Happy holidays.

Follow Pennie Varvarides on Twitter @superpennie 

Weight Loss

This is one of those things that everyone seems to always be 'trying' to do. Everyone wants to lose weight (or at least everyone I'm surrounded by). What I hate is when I look at myself, acknowledge the fat bits and  make the decision to improve then someone comes along and lies to me. I hate being told I'm not fat when I clearly am. I mean ok, I know I'm not morbidly obese or anything, but if I'm strutting around in size 34 jeans I'm definitely not skinny - not when I used to don 28s.

Before university I was about 56kg and training at least 3 times a week, doing Taekwon Do. I was trying to get down to 54kg so I could be in the top end of the weight bracket if I wanted to compete instead of the bottom end. I was teaching and training and always working out. I miss TKD more than you know and think about going back all the time, but I'm a little embarrassed. I'm ashamed of myself for stopping and for getting fat. If I get back down to the size I was before, then I'll feel better about myself and maybe it'll be less embarrassing to go back. Maybe I'll just hang up my black belt for good and take up a new art, how about Jujitsu?

Then I started uni and it was just too much hassle to make it to the class. Then I got a job in a club and it was impossible to make it to the class. So I stopped. And I was a student so obviously drinking more and eating more - whilst not working out at all (apart from dancing like a loon in clubs).

So I put on loads of weight. My size 10 jeans were put away and haven't been looked at since I was 19. My face exploded with my waste and I just carried on pastaring it up with piles of cheese and lots of naps. This was clearing a stupid plan...

This year (academic year, so September 09) I moved back home so I wouldn't have to work in my final year. My parents live in London so I didn't need to live alone and paying rent was too much hassle. My best mate is big on the weight loss so just being around him is pretty encouraging. Since I've been back I have gone from 68kg to 59kg. The amount I'm losing has increased as time's gone on, so I wasn't losing much for the first few months. I think that might be about a stone and a half for people that don't do kg but at TKD that's always what we worked in.

I still don't do much exercise, but I do watch what I eat a bit more. I walk everywhere and whenever I take the underground I always walk up the escalators instead of just standing and wasting time waiting. Apart from the massive one at Holborn station... I can only make it half way before I feel like death... I'm clearly still massive unfit, but smaller.

I've got a picture of Keira Knightley working out as my background on the mac, which reminds me not to sit and pig out all day everyday. It reminds me what hard work and dedication can get you. Unfortunately, I don't have much of either most of the time. So she reminds me what it is I want, in case I forget.

I looked up what my bmi should be for my height and in the summer I was technically over weight. I am currently at the top end of normal, but I would very much prefer to be at the bottom end of that scale.

I would also very much like a nice stomach and nice back so sit ups are becoming a daily activity. It's the plan at least. Let's hope I stick to it. I'll share my progress with you once in a while and if any of you lot fall into the "I'm not happy with my body" box feel free to join my journey. It's all about building communities.

Part of me feels like admitting my self consciousness here may not be that sensible. It un-arms and leaves me defenceless. But heck, we've been together a while now and I'm just starting to open up... who know's how good an idea that is in the long run....

I'll post two pictures so you can compare my face in July and my face now =] Not really great comparative pictures, but I can't be bothered to sit and photoshop pictures together and make it work better.

Hello Budget

Today, I am putting myself on a budget. I've been off a budget since the 13th of December or something and almost feel as though I've bought at least one new item a day since.

Oh Amazon. Oh Ebay.

Considering I am unemployed and need to save £3.5k for my magazine journalism course once I graduate I really need to sort this out. I will be taking a year old first - So I've given myself a £100 a week budget (not inc. my travel which is £118 a month! London is ridiculous). Though it just occured to me I have to pay my phone bill - damn it! So I will need to recalculate that.

Because I did a bit of online shopping today and spend £50 I am only allowed to spend a maximum of £6 a day for the rest of the week - I probably spend more than that on food normally. Though that bloody phone bill is going to mess that up!

I just paid my phone bill - which has gone up thanks to VAT going up - I now have £4 to last until Sunday. I also just bought the Hope For Haiti soundtrack which helped, and yeah I know I'm sat here in the mist of talking about how broke I am and then I go and buy an album, but they need that money more than I do, right?

And before you start saying to yourself 'what the hell, where does all this money come from if she's unemployed??' - I'm a student. Over in England student's get student loans, and if they're parents don't earn much they get some free money too. So that's what I live off, borrowed money.

And with this borrowed money I buy books and dvds, mostly. Sometimes clothes. Sometimes food. No, food all the time - I am a bit of a fatty... I should work on that. I spent £20 on a philosophy book just a few days ago! Books should not cost £20, I'm sorry. To be fair, it is a good book and will probably help me write my essay - which I should be working on rather than this right now...

Any of you lot know anything about the pre-Socratics? I'm doing a Parmenides essay 'cause I think he's pretty cool. Plus he wrote in verse which I quite enjoy. What is is and what isn't isn't - expand.

Ha! All non philosophers just read that and thought, 'well yeah Pennie, what the fuck?' And to you I bid you to delve into this and spend some of your evenings exploring what it all means and understand how frustrating paradoxes are. But as frustrating as it is when I don't understand, those moments that I feel like I do make it all worth it.

So now that I'm back on a budget let's see what cheap ways around a life in London I can come across. Perhaps if I just drink more coffee I wont be hungry during the day and can just eat when I get home. In first year I just had a hot chocolate for lunch everyday and then made dinner when I got home. I was skinnier back then. I need to make sure to be drinking the 50p coffee from uni instead of spending £3 on it in Starbucks! I actually think this is going to be my plan... I'll start from tomorrow. I will think about leaving my card at home to avoid temptation - can't spend what I don't have... only, what happens if I need money and have none?

Please share any ideas you might have - I know as a 3rd year I should be used to this student living stuff by now but I'm clearly not... But when my lush new winter boots come through the post I'm sure they will have been worth it.

This was a pretty lame entry - Guess I should get back to doing real work!