A mother-of-two who ate her emotions has revealed how she turned her life around, losing 123 lbs in just 11 months.
Ashley Zablocki, 28, said an interaction with her son over a block of chocolate left her questioning her relationship with food.
Zablocki said she’d always had a “terrible relationship” with food, her body and her mental health. She said when she turned 18 and had more freedom to buy her own food – and coupled with having her first child – things got progressively worse from there.
“I’d eat at least one block of chocolate. I would snack all day, whatever the kids wouldn’t eat I would, and then because I wouldn’t eat lunch or breakfast I’d have a huge portion at dinner,” Zablocki told news.com.au.
She said sometimes if her family got a takeout meal from McDonald’s, she and her husband would share a family meal.
“I’d use food to cope with my emotions,” she said, adding she’d be lucky to take 1000 steps in a day and did no exercise.
“Having kids was almost like an excuse to myself: ‘I’m a busy mum, I don’t have time to do that’.”
The Victorian woman said the heaviest she had gotten to was 121kg [about 267 lbs] but looking back at photos she assumed she was “a lot heavier” than that.
However, her breaking point was when Cadbury released a new caramel slice block.
“I loved it. I was picking it up at the shops and my son grabbed it from me and broke it in half,” she said.
“I got so mad because the block was no longer perfect for me to eat. I realized then the relationship I had with food wasn’t OK. I went home and I looked in the mirror and just thought about the way I felt. I was like: ‘I can’t do this anymore’.”
Zablocki’s father had died of cancer at 57. Her mother has had heart problems her whole life, and with both pregnancies the young mother had gestational diabetes and preclampsia with her first that almost ended her and her daughter’s lives. It all came flooding to her and she knew something had to change.
She pondered on it for a week and then told her husband she wanted to start walking but was worried about walking outside due to her level of fitness. Instead, she purchased a treadmill for cheap off of Facebook Marketplace.
“I just started walking. I could only do 10 minutes at a time and I did that everyday,” she said.
“Then I realized I had to change my diet, that no amount of exercise was going to fix my weight unless I ate better.”
She started to slowly cut down her portion sizes, started eating three meals a day rather than snacking and one huge meal, swapped to sugar free soft drink and started drinking more water.
Zablocki also started intermittent fasting. But, she couldn’t cut out her favourite thing — dessert.
“I’d been doing it for about three weeks and I weighed myself and I’d lost three kilograms [6.6 pounds]. I was like, ‘I can do this’,” she said.
“I started noticing when I could walk an extra five minutes.”
A friend suggested she try 28 by Sam Wood’s dance classes on the fitness app, so she tried that out. At first, she could only do five minutes before getting puffed out. She said she now does it every day, coupled with running a few times a week, because she enjoys it so much.
In just 11 months, Zablocki dropped about 123 pounds and now weighs 143 pounds.
“I am feeling so good. I feel mentally and physically so much better. I can get out of bed and my body doesn’t ache,” she said, adding that before she began her weight loss journey she started seeing a psychologist to address her emotional triggers and find ways of dealing with them that weren’t food related. She also found ways to address her body confidence issues.
“I went to a play centre with my kids, and we went to a different one we usually go to,” she said.
“I said to my husband, ‘that slide looks so fun. It was huge’. And I climbed up on the playground and went down the slide with my daughter.
”It was the best freaking feeling.”
Now, in addition to her running and dancing, Zablocki is in the process of taking up weight training as she wants to become stronger. She said she hasn’t given up her love for food but is enjoying her favorite things with a healthier twist.
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