Around October/November 2019 I was introduced to Rosemary Gordon through a mutual colleague Claudine Reid. I’ve always been on some kind of health kick but have been quite mediocre and content to keep it simple, I got results but never really pushed through to get phenomenal change, once I dropped a dress size I was OK. Then I met Rosemary, saw her before and after photos and heard her story.
Deservedness
There’s a quote that says ‘mothers should feed their children and nourish themselves’, up until 2017 I was the queen of self-sacrifice, as long as the kids had needs, I could wait. With two school-aged boys who it seemed, would outdo one another to see who could destroy their shoes the fastest, there wasn’t a month that went by where I didn’t have to buy a pair of school shoes.
Sure I needed a coat a decent pair of shoes, a properly fitting bra but I am a mother and good mothers go without to ensure their kids have everything they wanted, or so I was led to believe.
I wanted my children to have the best possible start in life, regardless of what it cost. A large savings account I could proudly write them a cheque on their 21st Birthday, Saturday school lessons, ballet, karate, dance, acting, football, track, violin, drum and guitar lessons.
As long as they were ok I was good, sure my thighs rubbed together when I walked and the largest tights I could find still wouldn’t make past my hips. My back hurt when I sat down for too long and I could no longer blame my youngest for the weight gained that occurred 8 years ago during pregnancy. I’ve had my time it’s time to secure their future by providing them with as many opportunities as possible.
Then I received a phone call from my son’s guitar tutor informing me that he had failed to bring in his guitar into school on multiple occasions and wasn’t practising at home. I was annoyed, I had had this conversation with my youngest on multiple occasions, we discussed the 10,000 hour rule and he was not keeping his side of the deal. I couldn’t understand why he was throwing away this opportunity. I sat him down and asked him what instrument would he like to learn instead, maybe the guitar just isn’t for you. Ok, so what do you want to play instead, I sat impatiently staring at him waiting for an answer. Piano? Drums? Trumpet? Still no answer, he looks away and says I don’t want to play anything. ‘What do you mean’, I retort do you have any idea how hard I am working so that you can play the guitar. He seems unbothered by my words. I was angry and in my frustration, I said ‘fine. You don’t want to play the guitar or any instrument that’s just fine, you know what am going to do, am going to take that £90 I have been spending on your lessons every month and spend it on myself’
In that moment of complete frustration, I had given myself permission to do something I had never done before, to spend my money on myself. I expected my frustration to be short-lived and thought I would just end up adding the extra funds to his bank account, but true to my word I invested in myself.
It was the end of the year and I was writing my goals for the New Year and as I looked for inspiration and ideas from the old diaries I was dumbfounded when I discovered that ‘lose weight’ had topped my list of goals in every diary I could find, I felt embarrassed and ashamed, but as I looked closer I realised that I had been able to achieve all other goals, why then had this eluded me. Right then and there I decided I would get help with my new found £90 per month I would invest in small group personal training and I crossed out to lose weight and wrote ‘get healthy’.
Look out for Part 2 coming soon and follow Rosemary’s journey on Instagram @msfitness4u
