When the time is right

You can go through life avoiding things, not climbing flights of stairs, not going out, avoiding photographs and hiding the sweet wrappers so you can pretend the binge never happened. Trust me I’ve done it my entire life. I’ve eaten a packet of Liquorice allsorts or a pack of 4 donuts in my car between Morrisons and my home which is just over half a mile and I’ve treated it like it’s normal. 

I also know it’s a really rubbish way to live – and you can only spend so long running away from it. 

Most people who are overweight have an ‘oh sh*t’ moment. It’s a time when the penny drops, you take a long, hard look at yourself in the mirror, step on the scales, and see a number you associated with morbidly obese people.

Then you realise you’re the morbidly obese person. And you’re f*cking up your health.

For me, the realisation began a few days ago when I started to feel dizzy when I got to the top of the stairs. 

The last few months have been hard as the much better half has been diagnosed and recovering from sepsis and my emotions have been all over the place which has sadly just made me eat. But it’s also made me think ah well I’m depressed so I’ll just eat this. 

I’ve not even felt guilty about it. Then I started to think it’s my Birthday soon and the daily covid figures are going up so that’s depressing me so I’ll eat.  I miss my friends and that’s depressing me so I’ll eat. The day ends in a Y etc. You get where I’m going with this, anything and everything became a reason to feel depressed and eat. 

But a few days ago it came to a kind of pre-head warning.  I went for a shower! My back isn’t brilliant and I need help to wash my hair as I can’t really get my arms above my head but I got to the top of the stairs and felt really dizzy and breathless added with my back feeling like a knife was being run up and down it I felt awful. I then sat on the bed and got undressed and went to get in to the shower using my husband to lean on.  My back hurt so much I had to sit down in the bath, (the shower is over the bath) I had tried to kneel down but the weight of my body made my legs hurt too much. 

I finally got showered and back to the bedroom and caught sight of myself in a shiny surface on a wardrobe door. 

“You look really fat” I thought. Then I pushed the feeling away. I’m not going to call myself fat. I’ve got some extra weight, but I’ll just cut down the amount I eat. It’ll be fine.

Then it happened! The thing that changed everything. 

On 24th January my 51st birthday I got up and went downstairs to open cards and presents. After an enjoyable time I went to get off the sofa and stand up and I couldn’t. My knees wouldn’t take the weight. I mean I literally couldn’t get up out of my seat. 

I heard a crack in my knee and my husband had to use all his strength to pull me up. 

 

Holy sh*t, I had really got fat! 

The knee is swollen and sore but it’s fine. 

I’d been lying to myself for years. Sitting alone at night when hubby was at work, eating sweets, telling myself that if I hid the wrappers, nobody would find out so it was like it never happened. 

No longer wearing my jeans because its lockdown and I struggle with buttons being great excuses to swap to  trousers with elasticated waistbands and I also didn’t have to worry about my clothes getting too tight.

Let’s be honest elasticated trousers never feel tight. 

In that moment when I couldn’t stand up I realised that nobody was going to force me to lose weight. My GP might make recommendations, but they weren’t going to stand over me during every meal, snatching the cake or bag of sweets out of my hands.

My friends weren’t going to tell me to shed a few pounds. 

There are weight issues in my family and I realised that I couldn’t keep saying ‘big is beautiful’. Being curvy is sexy. 

Having a body type where you’ve got boobs and a bum should be celebrated, just as you should be happy with any size you naturally are.

But there comes a point when you can tip yourself over the edge, and your health starts to suffer – that’s when it’s time to do something about it.

I thought about all the times I’d ignored how out of breath I got going up a flight of stairs or just walking round a shop. The heart palpitations I got every now and then. The waking the dead with my snoring. The heavy breathing when I’m sat doing nothing. The relying on a trolley to lean on when I just want a loaf of bread as I can’t walk without it. How every time we do something we “celebrate” with food and it’s become our reward

There’s a history of thyroid problems, heart disease and cancer in my family. Nobody would comment on it, nobody would say it to your face but I could eat my way to an early grave.

If I’m not careful, I’ll keep eating, continue to pile the weight on, then keel over in ten years if I’m lucky to last ten years. 

I’m not afraid of death, but I’d be a f*cking idiot if I brought it on myself.

I’ve decided to start changing the way I think about food, and reclaiming my life.

I don’t know what the journey will be like, and I certainly won’t be focussing on the full weight loss picture as it’s just too big so I’ll break it down into half stones and stones and celebrate each one with something that won’t sabotage my weight loss.  

I think it’s safe to say I’m here for the long haul x