Exercising Demons

Fat Girls Don't Run

Some people take to exercise like Wayne Rooney does to women of the night. Alas and alack, I am not one of them.  Bizarre really, as when I was younger I was an exercise fiend.  You are reading the written word of the fastest female air cadet in the South-East region 1993 I’ll have you know.  I also used to play football until my feet bled.  I trained my feet to be ambidextrous as I am a naturally right-footed player but I was madly in love with Ryan Giggs at the time and wanted to play in his position too. (We had an affair. We didn’t. I was 14 and he was too busy with his other affairs.)   I was pretty good too until two incidents prevented me from playing again – one was doing my leg in so seriously I had to stop playing and the second was gaining fear of a football following me showing off doing 236 keepy uppys in front of a crowd of boys and doing it with such gusto I kneed myself in the face and broke my nose.  Anyway, when I realise what I was going to talk about before I went off on this tangent I have something fascinating to say.

Ah, yes; At 16 or so exercise became something you ‘had’ to do rather than what I ‘wanted’ to do.  It got in the way of kissing boys, hanging around in parks and Sega Megadrive.  At university, which was Loughborough, sportiest university in the world, I used to enviously watch people walk round in their ‘African Violets’, the purple tracksuits sports science students used to wear.  The trouble with exercise is that you reach a tipping point when you are bigger (figuratively speaking of course – I was so big no one had a gnats chance in hell of tipping me,) that means that if you do exercise you just look bloody stupid.  You become the one everyone is waiting for to fall over, or give up, or collapse in a heap.  I can remember going to the university gym once having decided to get rid of the chub and only being able to last 15 minutes walking at 6 on the treadmill whilst these lean, mean fighting machines ambled their way through a 10k in 40 minutes.  It was excruciatingly embarrassing and so I never went back. 

I tried a couple of those couch to 5k plans and even a minute or two of running would almost kill me.  I looked a fool shuffling along roads in an ill-fitting t-shirt and massive tracksuit bottoms, having to run with my arms under my jubblies because there were no sports bras big enough in the shops for me.  Another tangent:  Zest! Women’s Running! All other health magazines!  How about advertising clothes and gadgets for people who are big enough that they NEED to exercise rather than crop tops for Size 8’s all the time eh? Anyway... I bought a wii fit and did tiny step ups and waved my hands in the air like I just didn’t care and got patronised by a bloody money bank on the screen and didn’t see results so gave up.  I tried walking but the self-confidence issues I had when I was bigger meant that I would get horrific panic attacks before leaving the house because I knew I would get a nasty comment or two if I went out in exercise gear so I gave up.  Seeing a trend here?  i was a quitter.

Anyway, that was a rather long-winded way of getting to the point, which is now I weigh less, I love exercise again.  I have been away from home for a week and forgot to pack my trainers and whilst I had a couple of walks I got home yesterday aching to get into the gym, to feel my body work off the milkybar buttons I had scoffed and to continue trying to firm up the bod.  Ah yes, the body.  This is one of the most frequent questions I am asked when I talk about my weight loss:  What has it done to your body?  Well, I ain't gunna lie, it ain’t pretty.  Of course you end up with stretch marks and crepey bits and lo and behold all these years I looked at girls in size 12 clothes thinking goodness what amazing bodies they have when actually I realise that even when you are skinny you can still be fat underneath a lightly skimming jersey top from Jigsaw.  I have loose skin now. Not Channel 4 documentary WHAT THE SCREAMING HELL IS THAT??!! level, but I certainly ain’t no hard body.  Having spoken to ex Lighterlifers it is apparent that it all firms up after about a year, once your body has got out of the equivalent shock level of being hypnotised then waking up naked next to a goat with lederhosen on.  I can already see a bit of a difference in the batwings and I actually have muscles on my biceps.  Someone felt them the other day and was singularly unimpressed compared to their guns but I’m proud of them.  The chub at the tops of my thighs I don’t mind because it makes me feel feminine still.  The Fabulous Baker Boys muffin top I would gladly be rid of forever but at the same time it is a reminder of what I have been through and for the first time EVER in my life I am slowly getting to the ‘who cares’ stage.

Changes

Now, I run, I swim, I walk, I pretend to do the gym plan the trainer gave me at the gym, I do planks on medicine balls because I am so good at normal planks (3 minutes 56 seconds is my record) that the trainer says life is too short and makes me balance my hands on a medicine ball and laughs hysterically as I swear myself through a wobbly 30 seconds or so.  When I go swimming, no longer do I do the scurry from changing room to water.  I used to agitate over the best way to get in to the pool.  I lived in fear of pulling stairs of the wall and there was no way I was diving in, it would have been like a tank crash landing. I’d sit on the side of the pool feeling very self-conscious and try to slowly slide my way in but invariably my weight would be too much for my arms and I would plummet, lead like, to the bottom like a walrus (hence the blog title).  Once in, I could swim like a demon.  A few years ago I swam the equivalent of the English channel over 2 weeks but it was all very lazy breaststroke (that sounds like far too many ex-boyfriends) which effectively did nothing health wise.  Now I thunder down the lanes doing front crawl and I can do those tumbly flippy turny things at the ends too!

Being less heavy makes me want to exercise.  It’s just a shame I didn’t notice that 15 years ago.

Sponsor me if you would please very kindly thankyou!

I am running a 10k for UNICEF in September.  When I say running, I mean gasping my way slowly through East Grinstead yelling weakly ‘water, water’ and blowing a whistle feebly like Kate Winslet at the end of Titanic.  If you have any spare 50 pees in your pocket and would like to sponsor me, please feel free to do so at http://www.justgiving.com/LilacNun  or text code LNUN 48 and the amount you wish to sponsor to 70070.

Muchos Gracias. Or is it Muchus? Meh.

Reactions

If you ever want to know who your real friends are, don't eat for 7 months. Or turn up on their doorstep at 3am with a body wrapped in some carpet frantically mouthing the words 'Help.......it went wrong' with a length of hosepipe and some feathers sticking out of your pocket. Weight loss has generally brought about two responses at complete opposite ends of the spectrum. Nobody has said 'meh'. It seems to be something people are genuinely interested in, either because they want to do something themselves, or that they are astounded when it actually works.

When I first started, I was really surprised by some of the responses I got, from people who I thought would be glad to support me. I realise a lot of it was through concern rather than malice but some of the gems were: 'you'll put it all back on again and more', 'it's unsustainable', 'gosh that sounds unhealthy', 'these diets never work, the weight always goes back on' Well, to that I say:

Yeah, I will, if I go back to the way I was eating and being non active.
Course it bloody isn't, but then neither is eating crap every day.
Less unhealthy than being 20 stone but you bloody kept quiet as my weight went up.
Diets always work. You go on a diet, you lose weight. That's what diets are meant to do. It's me that doesn't work if I fail to make choices afterwards to maintain the weightloss.

I had what I thought was an extremely close friend. A few weeks into the eating plan we went out for a drink. She gave me a guilt trip because I wasn't going to be drinking alcohol and was fairly moody when we arrived at the bar and I said I defo was sticking to the plan and not 'lapsing' that night. By this point I had perhaps lost 3 stone, so just getting to the stage of 'noticeably different'. She told me not to lose much more weight as it would change my face shape and I'd lose my prettiness. Instead of smashing the San Pellegrino bottle on the side of the table and thrusting the shards in her eyes, I excused myself to the ladies to arrrgghhh a bit. When I returned, ten minutes later a burgers and chips appeared in front of me. 'That's not mine' I said to the waitress. My friend piped up, 'Oh, I forgot about your diet thing....ah well I've paid for it now you may as well eat it'.

I didn't. We ended the evening awkwardly and I haven't seen her since. She was genuinely a close friend prior to that. On weightless forums, which I used to lurk on you'd see a lot of this sort of behaviour and the were lots of assumptions about people being jealous of weight loss success, and feeling threatened and aren't all skinny women bitches they just want fat friends to make them look good. I think there is some elements of that in some people, but in general I reckon it's just a whole fear of change thing - and they are right. Because here is the thing: I have changed a lot.


I am much more assertive. I quit my job a few weeks back because I was bloody fed up of being unhappy and just taking whatever life threw at me and putting up with it. Since I quit, I've been the happiest I have ever been. I have done things I have never done before and opened myself up to a lot of new experiences and meeting new people. I went out boozing in Hoxton on Friday night and felt like I belonged there and had a fab time instead of hiding in a corner feeling awkward. When I say belonged, I meant in terms of physically not feeling out of place, not that I'm a pretentious twonk who describes their job as being a 'creative'. I am more confident in saying 'screw it' and stopping doing things I don't want to do because it is expected of me by others. I have finally learnt to like myself and not care hugely whether other people like me and it has pretty much blown my mind, this shift in attitude. The attitude change wasn't gained through the plan but through the network of friends, family and random people off the Internet who are at the other end of the scale, the ones who helped me.

Some of you who read this are off of that there Twitter bollix. #wave. Facebook friends who read this that was # a hash tag and you won't get it and all my Twitter friends are cooler than you. Some of you are off of Facebook *like*. Twitter friends won't get that because they are all snarky and hate everything. Especially Justin Bieber. And Tesco. And Facebook. Some of you, and I am assuming that someone reads this other than my Mum, are strangers or have been friends for years. I want to say thank you to all of you. The congratulations and warm wishes you sent when I was banging on about losing a lb, the ones who when you saw me told me how great I was looking. (Oh, as an aside..... When you see an overweight person and say 'you're looking well' we aren't dumb, we know you mean we have put on more weight). The twitter one who reckons I look like Kirstie Allsopp and made me happier than a bunny in the grass. The work one that took my photo each week to help me track progress, every time saying how proud she was of me. The facebook one who when I posted pictures always put a *like* on it. The real life one, now on her own LighterLife journey who was the most supportive motivational mental friend ever. The woman from the LighterLife website who said I was her inspiration. So many more of you have been fabulous, so thank you again.

I'll buy you all a burger to say thank you one day.


Also, all you people that like Apple stuff, you are wrong. This has been the biggest pain in the non formatted arse ever writing this entry on an iPad.

Love in the fat degree

Toilet Humour

I missed out on many things when I was bigger.  I couldn’t go horse riding, abseil, go on rollercoasters, bungee jump or any of the multitudes of other things that women in tampon adverts get up to.  When it came to men, I was hopeless and even if one was interested in me and tried to chat me up I would turn on the snark as I would assume it was for a bet, or he was winding me up and I shotgunned so many retorts, self-deprecating remarks and jokes at them they gave up as they didn’t fancy a relationship with a female version of Stan Boardman.  Unrequited lust was a familiar feeling in my early twenties – I would never dream of telling anyone I fancied them for fear of giving them a heart attack.

I used to work for a funky IT start-up company that in their infinite wisdom, installed unisex toilets (i.e. there was a boys and girls but they were in the same bit, if you get my drift?) This, I think was meant to show how 'on trend' and 'cool' they were. (Watched too much Ally McBeal I expect), however it just made them look too cheap to buy a decent workspace.  There was a real life Adonis who worked for the company, who I won’t identify as some former colleagues read this blog. I had been infatuated with him from afar for many months, batting eyelashes, giggly shyly whenever he was near and regularly shaving my legs in the hope that one day he would notice me.

One day, I needed a pee, as you do, and I went into the loo and by the basins was this hunk of a man, having a gossip with a friend.  I was mortified, thinking, 'He can't hear me pee!!!!  He must think of me as a demure princess with no need for icky bodily functions!'  I couldn't just walk out; otherwise I'd look like an indecisive toilet lurker, so I went into a cubicle and prepared thoroughly to ensure he wouldn't be able to hear me tinkle.

I put loo paper down the front of the loo to deaden the sound, pulled my trews down, tensed the pelvic floor muscles to ensure a delicate trickle escaped rather than Niagara falls, and did the classic 'nightclub hover over the loo' so I could aim the pee at the loo paper sound buffer. (Ladies, you know what I mean. It is the twin sister to the ‘I need a pee in the woods so will scrunch my knickers and trousers together with one hand to avoid splashes and lean precariously on a tree with the other hand whilst dodging nettles and buzzy things.’ It is also second cousin to the ‘This toilet cubicle is so small I have to actually step up on to the toilet seat in order to close the door behind me and I have to hold my bag under one arm whilst trying to undo my fly’)

So, following much preparation and quiet fumbling with the Andrex I prepared to pee, doing the hovering aiming towards the loo paper buffer.   Unfortunately, I overshot my angles and ended up peeing into the back of my own trousers.  Thus, I was trapped in the cubicle, reeking of my own urine whilst he stood outside thinking I had fallen in.  I sat there for nearly 40 minutes drying off.

Chubby Chasing/Avoiding

Bizarrely, this is actually a true story.  Rather than tell a fella I fancied him, I would find convoluted ways of soiling myself.  As a bigger/larger/fatter person, whatever you want to call it, dating is something to fear in my experience.  You either get chaps who won’t come near you because you are fat or you get chaps that won’t leave you alone because you ARE fat.  These so called chubby chasers made it worse because the blokes I liked didn’t like me (to an extent) because if they had admitted they found me attractive, their friends would accuse them of being a said chaser.  Gosh that was a long sentence. Apologies.

I appreciate that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and just as I tend to go for blue eyes, slightly taller than me and a bit hairy then there are people who will want brown eyes, shorter and smooth as Lionel Richie in a nightclub.  But….but…… I felt that all of my other attributes (and faults) were completely written off as soon as people saw the blubber.  I would stand in nightclubs and pubs and literally feel about as sexy as a lamppost as eyes would literally drift across me as if I wasn’t there.  A chair would have had more chance of getting a snog than I at times.  Of course, once again, I am picking out the  worst bits in teh interests of interesting but it happened often enough for me to remember.  

All of the relationships I did have whilst overweight started with friendship first, as if people needed to get to know my personality to be able to see behind the fat.  I don’t have anything to compare it with I guess, maybe slender women do this too, but my perception is that the first initial ‘Raaaooowwrrr’ factor seems to be easier to garner when slim.

Girl Power

Thankfully, I pulled a goodun.  I did this through subterfuge and sparkling wit and a reliance on the slight loopiness of men, but I got him.  My now husband had just moved up from the sticks to the bright lights of London and was working at the same firm.  I liked his muscly arms and kept missing my last bus home so I could stay at his flat.  Little did he know that unlike most of the West Country, buses run past 8pm here in London, the fool.  Anyway, after much demure staying over (him on the bed, me on the floor, me on the bed, him on the floor, topping and tailing) and him being too much of a gentleman for my liking, I took matters into my own hands and purposely spilt a pint of water down my front so my top went see through.  The poor love didn’t stand a chance.  The lesson here is even when you are fat you have BOOBS and lots of men like BOOBS.  

My husband loved me when I was big and he loves me now I am slim.  I asked him a few weeks back if he fancied me more now I was slimmer.  This, as you can probably guess is one of those questions that will result in a huff from me no matter how he answers.  Because he is a sneaky genius, he responded like this: ‘I have always fancied you but fancy you more now because you are happier.  When you are happier you smile more, and there is nothing so beautiful as when you smile.’ 

I’m really quite glad I didn’t pull one of those fellas in the pub……..

Day 1

Morning!

Everyone has done a 'Day 1' of a diet, haven't they?  That day where you wake up at 8am and think in Take That style 'Today this could beeeeeeee the greatest daaaaaay of my life'.  You waddle downstairs, pour out your Bran Flakes into a bowl (They aren’t Coco Pops - how good am I being!?)  Only half full mind because a quarter of the box isn’t really the tablespoon sized 30g portion Kelloggs recommend.  Agh, no skimmed milk in the fridge! That’s ok; I’ll use a little less whole milk and won’t have sugar.  I'll chop a banana up and have that on top because diets seem to add a banana to everything.  You sit and eat it and think ‘I can do this, this isn’t so bad!’ 

Next, you decide to plan.  You go online and sign up to a myriad of forums and weight loss guides and follow every blog under the sun talking about diets and sit there for 2 hours ‘reading up’ rather than ‘getting up’ and doing some exercise.  After some strenuous reading, you think ‘Aha! Lunchtime’ because food now has a ‘time’.  Screw eating when you are hungry on a diet, you have 3 meals a day and snack on fruit.  Thems the rules.  You haven’t had a chance to get to Tesco yet for healthy grub so you make do with what is in the cupboards, hence, lunch is a soft old Ryvita left over in the cupboard from last year’s diet, some Philadelphia ‘cos that’s healthy, innit? The girls eating it on the advert are always skinny, right?   A couple of cherry tomatoes thrown on the plate and it doesn’t look much so you fill the dinner plate up with another 3 Ryvita and Philadelphia and because this is ALLLLL you are having for lunch, you are ‘allowed’ about a quarter of a tub of soft cheese on each slab of rye based cardboard.

You scoff down your lunch because you are famished having waited longer for ‘Lunchtime’ than your body wanted you to and think at the end, I’m still hungry’ and torture yourself by telling yourself you are never going to be able to diet if you are this hungry only half way through the day.  To take your mind off it, you go back online and scour the forums and find something called ‘My Fitness Pal’ Oooh, it counts your calories and tracks your food and OMG this is going to really help me on my diet so I will track my breakfast and lunch and it comes to 1000 calories with all that cheese and milk and I only have another 200 for the rest of the day.  Sod it; I’ll never be able to make it to bedtime on that.  I’ll start again tomorrow.

For crying out loud

Sound familiar?  I realise I exaggerate here, but essentially it is the same old story.  Other ‘diet breakers’ include 1. Someone offering you birthday cake and you can’t say no, because it is their BIRTHDAY. 2. Mindlessly popping a sweetie or the kids’ leftover fish finger in your mouth. 3. Not completing Davina’s workout DVD in its entirety at full pelt on the first go so you will NEVER look like Davina so what is the point in trying? 

The difference with this diet was that it was the first time on any diet I didn’t say to myself ‘I can’t do this’.  This time, I thought, I can do this for a day, then I’ll see how I feel, if it works for me or not and see if I can do a week.  If I had thought ‘I need to stay on these powdery packs for 7 months at least in order to lose nearly 10 stone’ I would have run straight to the biscuit tin.

So, Day 1 started with me making a banana milkshake up.  When I say milk, I mean watershake as you have no dairy on the programme until further in.  So, I shook the powder into my shaker, added ice cold water, shook it up, poured it into a glass and then drank a smooth, cold gorgeous milkshake that was just like a Maccy D’s special   forced down a watery, insipid mess that was like drinking bathwater with lumps of snot in.  Graphic, but true.

Bloody hell. Really?  I can’t do this for 7 months, I can’t do this for 7 months, yes you can, don’t give up, you can do it.

 

Packs of doom

The other packs, namely Chocolate Milkshake, Shepherd’s Pie and a Vegetable Soup weren’t much cop either.  It was like the Lighterlife science bods had gone into their laboratory, taken a pot Noodle, taken the noodles out, taken the flavour out, taken the little fun sauce sachet out and left you with the ‘pot’, namely smushy soya pieces with random herby flavourings.  They were grim.  Over the months of the plan, I grew to love the packs and actually enjoyed them, but there was always the feeling of ‘Not quite as good’.  You know you have Coca Cola and then Asda Smartprice Cola and you drink it but you know it isn’t ‘proper’ Coke? That right there is what the packs are.  You have a Minestrone Soup and think, ‘this is nice Minestrone Soup, but it isn’t Heinz’.

Water, water, everywhere

I drank 5 litres of water that first day and must have piddled about 7.  I felt like a pregnant 93 year old with bladder control issues. I daren’t sneeze.  Because you aren’t getting the water through food, you need to up your water intake considerably, by treating your body as a water wheel so slow and steady, not downing two bottles of Buxton in an hour because that is how you DIE which a lot of people pointed out to me when I started on Lighterlife YOU WILL DIE BECAUSE OF THE WATER!!!!  What water? THE LADY DIED! One lady died? Out of thousands? She died because she didn’t do what she was told to do and drank 4 litres of water in an hour? I’ll take my chances. (I don’t mean to be flippant here, that was an extremely sad story that did make me think carefully about joining, but the Daily mail sensationalism of people ‘advice’ really got my goat).

So, what with the astronaut food, copious amounts of water requiring the loo every 5 seconds and people chucking their tuppenceworth at me, it wasn’t the greatest day of my life. However, it was the first step towards what would be.  I bloody did it.  I carried on tomorrow, instead of starting again.

In the beginning.....

 The Amazing Shrinking Walrus

This is a bit of an odd blog, it starts in the middle of the beginning and the start of the end, hopefully.  You may guess by the title that this blog is about weight loss.  The funny/odd/USP part of it is that I have already done it, well, most of it at least.  This blog is primarily to give me somewhere to download the trials and tribulations of trying to keep the bastard weight off and also somewhere to pontificate on other random issues that somehow, even if they do not appear to be even remotely linked to weight loss, seem to affect my tiny little mind somehow which then affects the weight doodab.  Anyway, I am already waffling (MMMmmm, waffles) so I will post the post that started this post, if you get my drift.

When I reached my goal weight in may 2012, I wrote the following.  It is a raw, honest account of why I started the 'journey' towards skinnydom and it was very cathartic to get it written down.  So, here it is, a place where I can see it time and time again and remind myself of how bloody awful being fat was.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin:

A story of willpower and grub

Day 1

Obviously I wasn't always fat. I didn't come shooting out of mother's whatnot the size of a small rhino, her screaming for an epidural. I weighed a healthy 7lb 6oz the day I plopped into the world, then the next few years I did what kids do.  Got chubby, ran around in circles a lot and got skinnier. Added puppy fat, ran around in circles a lot and got skinnier, discovered the joys of 10p mix up penny sweets, pocket money and Chomp bars, got a bit of puddin round the thighs, played football lots and got skinny.

This childhood weight management continued fairly easily through to my teens. I was actually so well put together, like a feminine Morph, in fact that I undertook modelling aged 14 or so for teen magazines and some such until the photographer asked me to remove my 32AA bra and pose provocatively at which point my mum went crazy at him and pulled me out of the studio sharpish.  I was a size ten through my teen years, chunky thighed maybe as my aunt and cousin took great pleasure in pointing out a couple of times but otherwise, to paraphrase the inimitable Mr Eric Morecombe, pretty much everything else was right and quite nearly all in the right order.

Week 12

The weight started piling on like a Rugby scrum when I hit 18 or so, following an extremely violent and destructive relationship with what I can only describe as pond life. Without going into too much "My Name is Dave" detail, physical and emotional abuse, as well as essential captivity within the home meant that I discomfort ate.  See what I did there? Bollocks to comfort eating, as it brought no comfort at all. Just hid the issues I had emotionally and made me a chubster into the bargain. What's comforting about that? Going to university (golly! Fat people can be smart? Why yes!) well, smart in every area apart from the junk I fuelled my body on. Binge eating was the order of the day. I did politics and English at Loughborough, the sportiest university in the bloody world. Every other bugger was dressed in African Violet shellsuits hop, skipping and jumping around like they were starring in a Tampon advert.  The first week, walking to the Freshers Ball in my Size 18 shapeless dress, 5 chaps yelled at me 'you're fat!' at the top of their lungs. About 50 people turned round to look and point.  I went back to my room and ate two cheeseburgers, fries and a slab of Dairy Milk. That was the start of something dangerous.  

Week 13

I was in catered halls, but because I was so paranoid that people were looking at my food choices thinking 'disgusting fatso' I didn't eat breakfast, got a sandwich at lunch and a 'salad' at dinner - you know the type, dribbling like a 2 year old with mayo and sauces and bacon bits and anything that wasn't green.  I would then go to a variety of different shops on different days, load up on sugary, refined carbs for me and my 'friends' and sit in my room eating it.  By the end of uni I was 17 stone.

Since then, the weight has crept on stealthily, like woodland fog, it's tendrils caressing my thighs, then tummy, arms, chin, chin, chins until 2008, weighing 19 stone 5lb I went on a diet with WeightWatchers to lose weight for my wedding in December 2008. I'd always wanted a traditional vintage wedding, with 200 people, an empire line lace dress and dozens of bridesmaids.  What I had was effectively an elopement to Las Vegas. I couldn't bear the thought of 200 people looking at my bulk and the repeated 'Oh, you've such a pretty face'. I also didn't have any real friends to be bridesmaids because I never socialised.  On the WeightWatchers diet (the one where you point everything including your fingernails, get congratulated on losing a quarter of a lb (I can blinking pooh a quarter of a lb love, big freaking deal) and survive on 2 Mars Bars a day and some cobwebs because 'anything is allowed' I actually managed to get down to 15 st 7. I was wearing a Size 22 wedding dress though.

This particularly pained me. When I went to try on wedding dresses at the, erm, wedding dress shop, I suppose it is called, I said to the woman how paranoid I was about my weight. Here is what she said to me, and while I am wont to exaggerate in the interests of the comic, this is verbatim: ' Oh don't worry, if your husband got together with you when you were huge he won't care that you look chubby on the day' and 'when you walk down that aisle, nobody will be looking at your body, they'll be thinking how pretty you look for an overweight person'. I smiled and nodded meekly, whilst imagining bricking her windows and thwacking her moustachioed, patronising face with a spiked frying pan.

Week 15

After I got married, bizarrely I put the weight on again because I didn't have another goal. The wedding had happened, so I could do what I wanted. I had learnt how to be slim, right? Wrong, my eating habits and thinking hadn't changed because with WeightWatchers you pay £6 to get weighed then flogged WeightWatchers food. It always made me laugh that the food they sell at meetings are WW interpretations of chocolate bars, crisps, biscuits and cookies. Talk about send mixed messages!  So my weight went up and up and in October 2011 I weighed myself for the first time in 5 months and I was 20stone 11lb.  I climbed off the scales, sat on the bathroom floor, and wept.

Things That Have Been Yelled At Me By People I Don't Know

1. Oi, Lardarse - 9 year old kid on a bike
2. Fat F*cker - by a bouncer at a nightclub
3. Out of my way you fat c*nt - countless commuters, mainly middle class men in suits
4. Oi, Dawn French you look a f*cking state
5. Fatso, fatty, chubs, FAT - mainly guys outside pubs and clubs, which I would cross over to avoid
6. F*cking walrus
7. Jesus, look at the state of that - a couple of pensioners on the bus
8. You disgust me - drunk bloke at pub trying to 'motivate me'
9. You've Been Framed!  Group of kids that lived near me at uni when Lisa Riley presented said programme.
10. You look f*cking awful - a family member.

Week 17

What Changed?

The triggers for me finally getting my head around the fact that I could have taken down the Titanic far closer to shore than the mid Atlantic just by stepping on the gangplank were varied.  In May 2011, I went to a friends wedding and wore a lovely new top and did my hair and I felt lovely for the first time in years. 2 things happened.  Firstly, the photos came back and I stood out, well, like a large flowery boulder, chins swaying in the wind and frankly just looking a bit desperate and silly amongst these waifs of girls, happy and healthy in floating chiffon and me in Evans finest.  Secondly, they had dancing. That song that goes 'Shawty got down, down, down' was playing, so I jibed my way down, and then I literally couldn't get back up. I was on the dance floor and my leg just gave way. The next day I saw a very kindly consultant at East Surrey Hospital because I couldn't walk, who stated. 'you are too fat, walk a dog' then left. Now, I have seen various levels of contempt and disgust through my fat years. The commuters who would rather stand for an hour instead of sit next to you for fear of being squished or GOD FORBID other people think that I was your girlfriend or something. I spent my life with one but cheek on a seat so as to give others room.  Contempt of bar staff at trendy pubs as if to say YOU DO NOT BELONG. And TopShop staff who would begin directing me to the shoes and bag section before I had got two feet in the door, but this Doctor looked at me with such unbidden vitriol, he despised me and everything my flubber said. He only saw the fat and treated the fat, not the person inside. I came out and cried in the car and said 'this is affecting my health now, I need to do something about it' I didn't, then though. 

The rebellious child in me deep down said 'Condescending bastard, why should I lose weight for him?'. I bought a dog.

Week 20

The second was going on an all inclusive holiday to Tunisia and refraining from eating virtually anything as I could barely do the belt up over me on the way out.  It was a short flight, but when I got off the plane in Hammamet, the belt had cut through the skin and my tummy was bleeding. Also, there is nothing quite like shuffling sideways down the aisle, sweating and huffing and people turning their faces away or looking down, their innate prayers of 'Please don't let her be next to me, please don't let her be next to me' and having that awful pity for the person you do end up next to when half way through the flight you need a wee and have to get your heft past two people and squeeze into the airline loo, all elbows and knees and feel the walls against your thighs and have to do a funky twisty turny, one leg on the cistern so the door will open fully escape manoeuvre.

The third trigger was that I have had bouts of depression and anxiety for years, mainly related to the relationship and my weight and at the Drs to pick up some tablets she asked to do my blood pressure and cholesterol and the results were that of a 53 year old heart attack victim. She said she should be putting me on tablets, but that would mean being n them forever. She told me I was too young for surgery and I had a month to show her I was willing to make changes. She said that some of her patients had had great weight loss on LighterLife and I should check it out.

I went home and Googled. I had heard of Slimfast and other powder based diets but had never gone down that route, thinking that if I couldn't manage to stick to the WW diet of two Mars Bars and a cucumber a day, I sure as hell wouldn't be able to stick to astronaut food. However, something started to sink in. I called my local counsellor and arranged to go to a drop in meeting, which I bottled, then I rearranged and missed that one too.  The thought of the task ahead was almost too much.  I needed to lose at least 9 and a half stone to get to what is considered in medical circles as a 'healthy weight'. I had to lose a person.  Lots of thoughts were whirring through my head, mainly around my own lack of confidence at my ability to stick at it.  I hate to admit it, but I am a desperate giver upper. If I can start something with enthusiasm and vigour and spend lots of money on all the right equipment and never touch it again after a month then I love it. My life is littered with debating societies, oboes, pianos, footballs, art implements, half knitted scarves, forgotten pen pals and a dubious collection of half finished cross stitches.  I really believed that I wouldn't be able to do it. Having had 16 years of people effectively saying I didn't count because I was fat, it was hard to think I should bother having a go.  Let me try to sum up what being fat feels like. Not just fat, but morbidly obese 'Wow look at the size of that the suspension on this bus is creaking' level of fat.

Week 22

It feels like you are the biggest thing in any room, but also the most invisible.

Your opinions don't count. You're lazy. You're stupid. You can't take care of yourself so can't be trusted to look after anything else.

Now, I generalise of course, I have a few close friends, colleagues and family that could see past it and gave me some great opportunities, but just like the black, the ginger haired, the bald, the crooked of nose, the short, the tall the every kind of diversity you can think of beyond the medias representation of what is desirable and normal, I just felt I always had to work that bit harder to impress people.

The thing that made me go to LighterLife happened about a week after my third missed appointment. I had had a bad day emotionally with my Mum and had binged on alcohol, chocolate, crisps until I felt sick. I then cried and cried and cried and went and had a bath and I couldn't fill the bath up enough to cover my bulk and I cried some more, and had to clamber out of the bath backwards and the massive bath sheet wouldn't do up around me and I lay on my bed and was crying myself to sleep when my husband came in, tears in his eyes and said 'I want you to be happier. What one thing would help to do that at this time?' and I responded without skipping a beat, 'To be slim'.

Week 23

Ten Things I Couldn't Do When I Weighed 20 stone 11lb

1. Pull my own socks up
2. Wear shoes that had a strap at the ankle because I couldn't reach to do them up
3. Sit on the middle seat on a train
4. Go horse riding/go karting/on roller coasters
5. Eat in public without seeing someone sneer at me
6. Go up any hill without feeling tight across my chest at the top
7. Sit on plastic chairs without worrying they would give out on me or leave me with dents in my legs
8. Wear sleeveless tops or anything shorter than knee length
9. Sleep on an air bed
10. Do any exercise in public without comments or laughter - fat people running, looking like a hyperventilating Ribenaberry are amusing, I grant thee, but the juice inside has feelings.

So what is LighterLife all about? Well, funny enough, it isn't as unhealthy as being nearly 21 stone.  You eat 4 food packs a day, they are like astronaut food in that they have been carefully balanced to give you all the nutrition you need to function. In fact, I was eating better in terms of recommended daily amounts of vitamins and minerals than I was before.  The packs are split into Shakes (Chocolate, Banana, Vanilla and Strawberry)' soups (Vegetable, Mushroom, minestrone,  Asparagus, Chicken) meals (Chilli, Shepherds Pie, Pasta Carbonara and Porridge) and cereal bars (toffee, cranberry, peanut and nut fudge) you mix the packs with water and eat them. Simple. The only other things allowed are leaf tea, black coffee, salt, pepper and Tabasco sauce. Lighterlife also provide mousses mix, fibre mix, savoury broth and fruit flavourings for water. You are encouraged to drink around 3 to 4 litres of water a day to keep you hydrated. And that's it.

Finally, I had boundaries around food. This is what you are allowed. Anything else isn't on the plan. No extra spoons of this or a lick of the fingers of that. Total abstinence from food.  In addition, and this is the bit I liked, you get counselling each week in a group to talk through the whys and wherefores of why you overeat, and are taught techniques based on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Transactional Analysis to make sure that you have more chance of maintaining post weight loss.

Week 24

LighterLife use the rudimentary measure of healthy BMI to help set goals. Yes, yes, I know Brad Pitt is obese, but seeing as I wore a size 16 top, Size 12 skirt and Size 10 cardi all in the same outfit the other day, measuring by dress size can go to hell.  Measuring weight is obviously a good way of doing it but us ladies and our hormones and water intake and whether the moons gravitational pull is slightly off kilter sends scales loopy and we become slaves to them. So healthy BMI it is.

You go to your class, maximum of 12 members, then immediately pee on a stick. Not in front of done, obviously, but this is to measure if you are in ketosis. This is LighterLife's USP. Because your calorie intake is so low, you use up the carbs, you use up the glycogen then your body says 'I'll have some of your fat' and starts burning that for energy. Ketosis suppresses your appetite. That's how it works. I thought this was quite clever.  You get weighed with your counsellor, order your food packs for collection the following week then have a 45 minute interactive counselling session, focused on 4 week modules such as assertiveness, challenges, change and transitions, with exercises to do in your own time.  Then you toddle off home and eat dust.

10 Key Things/Quotes from Counselling

1.  Will this help me to reach my goal?

2.  Is it my body that is hungry, or my head.

3.  What I put into my body is MY choice, not other people's. People will not stop liking me if I say no to a donut.

4.  Stop, Pause, Engage

5.  If I eat this now, how will I feel in a minute, hour, day?

6.  I can't predict the future, or read minds. I am not a failure if I make a mistake. I haven't ruined   everything if I make a mistake.

7.  Change is good, but you may feel wobbly along the way

8.  It is ok to ask for help

9.  For people saying I'll put it all back on- don't try to blow out my flame to make yours  burn more brightly

10. For people saying 'don't lose too much more, you look fine' it's my body, I'll decide when I am healthy. It's a shame you weren't so supportive when I looked like an oak tree.

So, Did It Work?

I started LighterLife on 11 October 2011. My weight was 20 stone 11 lb, BMI 46.6 and I was wearing Size 26 clothes.  The first day was difficult, I had convinced myself I was going to hate the packs, so it became a self fulfilling prophecy and I had to hold my nose as I ate some of them.  The first three days I felt headaches, hungry, nauseous and dizzy and very tired. Day 4 I had lost 8lbs and felt fantastic.

Fast forward seven months through the following events: holiday with 15 family members for a week in a castle in Wiltshire, Christmas work do, Christmas and New Year, My dad dying, getting a new job, opening my own bakery business, finishing my professional qualification, valentines day, 10 year anniversary of being with Steve, 3rd wedding anniversary, holiday to Lyme Regis to a beer festival, a weeks holiday in Yorkshire and a wide variety of theatre and cinema trips and days when I just wanted a sticky toffee pudding cuddle in a cup when I had had a crappy day.....well, during all of that, I had nothing but those packs. NOTHING. And by god, for all of you who may have a few extra pounds, or want to drop a dress size, let me say this. If I can do it, anyone can. Just believe you can, lose the self hatred and fear and worry that either you or others have created for yourself, choose a goal and DO IT. 

Goal BMI

I feel like a human again. 

On May 14th, my work had a health fair, measured me up and I had hit BMI 25, I wear Size 12 clothes and weigh 11stone 6lb.  So, that is the story so far. I am in the process of writing up my blog from my time on the programme so will be posting that soon too.  I have written this so it is out there in the ether, so I can remind myself what I have done. And so never go back.

10 Things I Do Now I Didn't Used To

1.   Wear high heels

2.   Say no to people

3.   Stop eating when I am full

4.   Put my knife and fork down between mouthfuls

5.   Go shopping in any shop I like

6.   Run 5k in under 30 minutes

7.   Take ballet lessons without looking like a fairy elephant

8.   Go to the DR without fearing being told I have diabetes/high blood pressure

9.   Feel my husband properly when I cuddle him, not just with my tummy and arms

10. Walk down the street and not think people are looking at me thinking I am scum.

11. Believe I can do anything, including turning a list of 10 into 11 if I bloody well feel like it.

Cheers.

My first 'proper' food and drink in 7 months.....