My diet was quite tightly regulated at home, and when I left home when I was 18, I started my nurse training. I was working shifts, and I hadn’t been allowed to go out, and I hadn’t been allowed to do a lot of things. So, I started drinking quite a lot, eating quite a lot, and eating the wrong things at the wrong time of day.
And yeah, so my weight just gradually increased over some time—really, at my heaviest? I was about 21 and a half stone. I have a recollection of when I was nearly about to qualify. I remember one of the doctors on the ward asking me if I was pregnant, and I wasn’t. I was just fat, but I wasn’t massively fat; I did have a bit of a belly. I did all the things that everybody tried. I did Slimming World, and I lost some weight. I did lighter life, and I lost a lot of weight. I had problems with depression.
I had problems with fertility and IVF.
And all those things weren’t particularly helpful in terms of me maintaining any kind of significant change. But I did lose lots of weight on Lighter Life, and I maintained that for a while, and then I got pregnant and was very nauseous all the time. The only way I could manage that was to graze, and then my daughter ate her to pieces. Never slept. She didn’t sleep through the night till she was about 9, and I’m not very good when I’m tired.
So yeah, that was a bit of a disaster. I enrolled in the weight management program, where a dietitian leads various groups. And in the assessment group, there was a woman who brought her partner along. I felt it was inappropriate to allow her to attend. I felt strongly that her presence was an invasion of my privacy, among other concerns. So, I just didn’t go back, and then, of course, I tried to go again, and they said, Well, you can’t have a place again because you failed to attend last time, and I said, Well, maybe it would have been intriguing if somebody had asked me why I stopped coming because I could have very clearly told you why I’d stop coming. And so it was, and then I did. I got referred to a dietitian and went on to the pathway for surgery, and that was an extremely lengthy process, but after about 5 years of that, I was offered.
I was off surgery, and I elected to have a sleeve, which I had 2 years ago; I lost a stone. I’m maintaining my weight between sort of 91 and 97 kilos, which I know is still way above my normal BMI, but I was told that it was very unlikely to be a normal BMI after having said to go for surgery, and my goal wasn’t really about fitting into a mould or anything. It was about being healthy and being able to be active. So, I go through phases where I’m much more active. I’m more mobile than I was, and everything is much less of an effort than it was when I’m not tired. I try and walk every day, and I try and use my bike, but I don’t have time to do any sort of formal exercise in terms of going to classes and stuff like that.
I did sign up for swimming classes, but then I couldn’t go over the school holidays, so they threw me out. If I eat too much or binge things, then I’m sick, but that’s kind of useful for me because it reminds me that I should be a bit more sensible about my choices. It’s refreshing to be able to go into a high street shop and just buy clothes that fit. It’s refreshing to be able to buy things that I like rather than things that I buy because they fit.
And I’m not so horrified about people taking my photo. I look back at my daughter, now 12, and I look back at her childhood, and there are no photos of us together because I just hate having my photo taken. I’m slightly better with that. So, I guess from a sort of body image perspective, I must feel a bit better.
Well, there’s a lot of fat shaming, isn’t there? Yeah, you’re huge, and there is also, I think, an assumption that if you’re fat, you’re stupid, and you’re lazy; you’re somehow a less valuable individual.