So what better way to start my blog than to begin at the beginning of my weight loss journey?
In 1999, I was 18, just started university and was an athletic size 14. At 10st 4lbs and 5’4” I did not consider myself overweight although as most women would, though I would looked better a few pounds lighter. Knowing what I know now I was within my healthy weight range, and pretty darn fit.
Well imagine my surprise then, when attending my new patient physical to be told tat I was overweight and needed to lose weight. You would of though this is when I started to diet? But no, this was the impetus for a cycle of drinking too much and binge eating. The nurse who weighed me made me feel so awful about myself, I started my first year of uni with so little confidence that I ate and drank my way through 3 years of university, resulting in me putting on a whopping 5 stone in weight.
On graduating and not knowing hat to do with myself I moved back home, weighing a little over 15st. Over the next couple of years my weight stabilised and I became resigned to the fact that I was big and actually at size 18 nothing wobbled too much and I looked OK in clothes.
Things changed when I got a new job. I had been on secondment to the training department for a year, and soon after they offered me a permanent position. All was well at first, I liked who I worked with and they (seemed) to like me. However after 9 months the bullying started, and this trigged a deeper bout of depression that lasted 2 years, which in turn caused old habits to return, binge eating and drinking, indulging in large portions enough for two, eating takeaways 4 or 5 times a week.
Then a wonderful thing happened… I was offered voluntary redundancy, and I leapt at the chance. I hated my Job so much that even the thought of unemployment didn’t scare me. And this was when I began to turn my life around.
On my first day of my new life I weighed myself; the scales said a horrifying 17st 10lbs. I knew life needed to change. Over the next six months life was hard but stress free, with no job I couldn’t afford to binge eat or drink too much in the pub, or get takeaways, and under my own steam I got down to 16st 12lbs.
Another life changer then occurred, I got offered a new job that would take me away from the industry I was working in, to a new town where I knew no one. To many people this would be scary, but to me it was like a fresh start where I could reinvent myself.
After a month in the job, my team and I were off to an awards ceremony in London, to be presented by Eamon Holmes, and after the team walking away with 2 of the awards, we enjoyed photos with the man himself.
It was after seeing those pictures I decided to join weight watchers. I saw myself standing at the end, and I was aghast, it was like looking at another person, I knew I was big, but I didn’t know that’s how other people saw me. Six days later on a rather cold and wet Tuesday evening, I walked in to my first weight watchers meeting with 6st 12lbs to lose.
Eamon Holmes I thank you
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