Living On An Island....

Over the past year, since I’ve been blogging about my weight loss, I’ve used the metaphor for my “journey” of rowing a little boat across sometimes stormy seas, to reach the “Paradise Island” of my goal weight.  Well, I’ve arrived, I am on the island.   And it truly is beautiful. It certainly looks like Paradise to me.  For a while, I just stood on the shore, sinking my feet into soft, silvery sands, feeling the sun on my back and surveying the beach in front of me.  There was only one problem. I couldn’t spend the rest of my life stood on a beach, listening to the waves lap on the shore, much as I would love to. I needed to find a home, make a life and survive here. And right then, I did not know what lay beyond the forest of fringed palm trees that begin where the sands end.  Whilst I was rowing, the island was just a “place to get to”. I didn’t really care what was there, I just wanted to reach dry land so I could stop rowing. I didn’t even really consider what I would find once I arrived….. And so, as one adventure comes to a close, another adventure begins. This one is called Weight Maintenance. To drag us back to reality for a second, a couple of weeks ago I reached Target on my weight loss. In total, over slightly more than 12 months, I have lost 170lbs. It is now official, I weigh a little bit less than the sum amount of weigh that I have lost. I still find that thought pretty astounding and every so often catch myself telling myself “Wow! 12 stone!!” I have decided to stop trying to lose any more now, even though I have fallen short of a “Normal” BMI by 5 pounds. Officially I am still “Overweight” but my family, friends, colleagues and the mirror tell me otherwise. It would be so easy to get hung up on attaining that elusive “Normal” accolade, but I have decided to sit where I am now and see how it goes. After all, I have “halved myself” by reducing down from 24 stone to just under 12stone. As long as I can stay under the 12stone mark I think I’ll be happy.

“As long as I can stay”….now there’s a pointed remark if I ever made one. The closer I drew to my Target weight, the more mindful I have become of how much more of a challenge it will be to keep this weight off for life. After all, I’ve only been learning new habits for a year, I still have a portfolio of 30+ years of bad habits that could easily slip back if I allow them. I’ve been here before, a classic yo-yo dieter, on a roller coaster of successes and failures. How am I going to keep on the straight and narrow this time? The short answer is “I don’t know”. I have a feeling that it will be a long series of experiments, much trial and error…

So, back to the island…

As every intrepid explorer knows, there is only one way to discover what lays beyond the palm tree forest. You have to go forward and investigate. And this involves taking risks, venturing into the Great Unknown…There are positives and negatives to this. On the plus side, it can be exciting, ripe with discovery and new experiences. Plus, with all the rowing I have developed a fitness and stamina that I didn’t know that I had, I can handle a lot more surprises that are thrown at me. But on the other hand, the jungle is filled with hidden dangers – pits of sinking sand, ravenous beasties and plants that look delicious but may poison me. And I have no map, no instruction manual, no tools…Even my little rowing boat provided a place to rest and the horizon was always a place to aim for. Now I am Lost In Paradise….
So, I have been on a few fact-finding expeditions. On the first day I only ventured a small distance into a clearing in the forest…so far so good…so the next day I explored a little deeper…..and so on…

One day, on my ventures, I stumbled across a diamond mine…the gems were so sparkly and tempting that I wanted to reach out and take one. I have no need for diamonds here on the island, they bear no true value. What I really need is to find and gather food and water to sustain life…but these gems were just so shiny……So, cautiously, I reached down and plucked one. Holding it in my hand gave me a thrill, and I was relieved to discover that no harm came to me from taking it. But there is a problem with diamonds…you can’t just have the one! One looks lovely in a solitaire ring, but what about the matching necklace and earrings…? So, I took another diamond, and another…and another… 

Unfortunately what I didn’t realise was that, within the diamond mine lay a pit of sleeping, poisonous snakes. The removal of one diamond is not enough to disturb the snakes, but if you take too many, then the movement will awaken them and you run the very serious risk of getting bitten. There is no antidote here to their venom and you risk a very slow and agonising death, surrounded by the beauty you were attracted to but now regret removing… Furthermore, if you fill your pockets with too many diamonds, you have no room to store the things that you genuinely need. So perhaps I need to review just how much I actually need these gems… I have since learned that, in the local dialect, the snake bite translates as “death by chocolate….”

As I have explored, I have come to realise that I am not alone on this island, there are indigenous natives that live here. I have observed them from afar, trying to understand their ways and emulate their methods of survival. Some of these efforts have been successful, I was able to locate the best source of clean water by silently following them to the waterfall and gathering some for myself when they had departed by a safe distance. But many of their other ways confound me. I have tried to mirror their ways of hunting for food but with little success so far. It has been frustrating. Why can I not pick up a bow and arrow like them and effortlessly shoot down a bird for dinner? When I try, I seem to stumble and scare away my prey. My rudimentary weapons do not shoot straight. So, for now, I must content myself with picking up nuts and berries or nibbling on the remains that the natives leave when they have feasted on their quarry. I have pontificated over this frustration for some time and come to the conclusion that the natives, who so effortlessly survive on this island, have done so for generations. They are not strangers to this land as I am and have developed skills which they have passed down over eons. How can I expect to live like they do when I have been here for only a matter of weeks? I must have patience, learn slowly, copy the ways of the locals and maybe one day I can integrate myself with them and survival will become second nature to me. After all, we come from very different worlds, me from the land of plenty and indulgence, they from the island where they don’t do pizza delivery!!

Sometimes I miss the home comforts that I enjoyed before I was shipwrecked by my own health risks and began my journey across the empty, seemingly endless sea. As I rowed, I fantasised about the charmed life I would lead when I hit dry land. I would cavort through lush, tropical forests, with exotic flowers in my hair, like the actress in a Bounty Bar advert….I would befriend the animals who would willingly gather together in Disney-esque fashion to build me a beautiful treetop lodge where I would live out the end of my days feasting on exotic fruits. Now there are days when I would murder just to get a Wi-Fi signal!!! I miss my old life, the accessibility and speed of it, the lack of effort required to get any food I desired, the lack of effort needed to do anything, really. When, at the end of the day I am exhausted and aching from a hunting trip, feeling a little grubby and yearning for a comfy sofa, a takeaway and the box set of “Friends” I have to remind myself what I have left behind. I now breathe perfectly clean air, drink fresh water that has been untampered with. I am fitter and healthier than I have ever been from the exercise, not only from the rowing to get here, but from the hunting and gathering of food. The sun shines almost constantly, the sea is clear and warm, the surroundings are far more beautiful than the industrial wasteland I left behind.

My little rowing boat is still sitting on the shore. I could get into it again any time, and let the currents drift me back to the other, darker horizon where all is familiar and easy. But do I really want to do that?
Not really. It’s going to take a while but I’m going to make this island my home. I’ve been saved from the seas and granted a new life. It will require hard work and there will be days when I wish I had never set foot here, but I’m determined to do this. Wish me luck….