My name is Alison, and this is my story about my struggles with weight. I am one of four girls in my family, the second oldest; three of us live with obesity, while the other one is skinny as a rake. My mom was also skinny as a rake despite a diet of about 95% refined sugar! She lost her teeth when she was pregnant with her first child at the age of 22 and wore full dentures her whole life. She didn’t like her children to cry, so if they did, she immediately gave them a biscuit from her huge blue Tupperware container she kept in the cupboard. On shopping day, she would fill it up with biscuit chocolate bars, clubs, Penguins, Time Out, Blue Riband wafers, and my favourite, United bars. Does anyone else remember them? 1 was a very active child, a tomboy who always played with the boys, football, climbing trees, building go-karts—we did it all. When we were old enough in the summer holidays, we would be sent off with some sandwiches, white bread with sandwich spread or paste, or if it was close to payday, white sugar sandwiches! We would also receive a bottle of orange or lemon squash. Only rich people had blackcurrant. No one ever served us plain water. We drank squash or tea with two sugars in it. The tea started early in a baby’s bottle in place of milk.
My mom was born at the end of the war, so she remembered rationing. I think this may have led to her fondness for sweets, but she and her 7 siblings were very lucky because their dad was a baker and would always bring leftovers home, so they didn’t go without bread or cakes. I wouldn’t say I was a particularly heavy kid, but I was broad, and I truly was bigboned! I was 5’2″ and had size 8 feet, massive hands too! My mother harboured a strong aversion to individuals perceived as “fat,” and her unkind nature was well-known. When I was 14, she decided I was fat and needed to go to Weight Watchers (WW). I was still very active, going to karate 3 times a week and riding a bike everywhere. On weekends I would often take part in long 25-mile bike rides in a club with people who had antique bicycles. It was very cool!! So off I went to WW with my mom’s friends. Mum came as well but didn’t join in. She was horrified when I got on the scales, and I was 9 ½ stone. This would equate to a BMI of 24.4 today. My ideal weight was 8 stone 2 lb. I started the diet and was starving the whole time. I was eating so little and still exercising. I quickly lost the weight and stopped exercising. As you can imagine, I regained the weight plus more as soon as I stopped. My mom loved the new foods coming on the market. We soon ate a diet of solely convenience foods. Bejam provided us with a 10-pack of pizzas, which we followed with a frozen mousse. Vesta instant curries with weird, dried noodles on top. I had to cook for the family from an early age, but instead of being put off, I learnt to love cooking and baking and became good at it.
I left home and stayed a size 14. I raised two children and experienced an accident at work when I was 29 years old. I was by now a nurse. An elderly man with dementia tried to jump out of a window; a colleague and I found him hanging out of a window from the 3rd floor. We managed to pull him back in, but I suffered a serious back injury. My daughter was only 9 months old, and the aftereffects of pregnancy continued to exacerbate this. The severe incapacitating condition led to a significant increase in weight. I reached a size 22, and I have stayed that size for 25 years. I have tried every diet: the cabbage soup, WW, Slimming World, Slim Fast, Atkins, Keto, Slim Fast, intermittent fasting, the Grapefruit F Plan, hypnosis in person, and Paul McKenna. None have worked; I always lose weight and then put it straight back on. I have tried Orlistat; that was a disaster; many of you will know why! During this time, I developed high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and type two diabetes. My Trulicity injections were terrible at first, but they worked, and I lost 15 kg with little effort. I still had a terrible diet; I just didn’t eat as much. They have now been stopped, as the private sector has bought all the stock to give to people who can afford to pay privately. So I’ll now have to find something else.