It's been a while but I'm continuing with my humanising quest. I’d like to share something else about my past that’s a little more well-known by some, but still not everyone.
And that’s my chequered historic relationship with food, my weight and body image.
It may come as a surprise to some of you that I, as a PT and advocate of fitness and diet, ever had any issues with my weight or my own health.
Well trust me, I have.
I’m not sure I can pinpoint when it started but at some point in my teens my body started to change and having been a skinny-minny until then, I didn’t like it.
My diet adventures started with Weight Watchers frozen ready meals and creating my own seriously low-calorie plans – 7-800 calories a day as I remember.
And just like they always do, they worked briefly but were totally unsustainable and the yo-yo-dieting began.
Starve...bing...starve...bing...starve...binge...
I then started on ‘Lose a stone in a week' diets and a whole host of other clever ideas.
By the time I reached my 20’s I was nearing 11 stone…the heaviest I’d ever been.
I went to Uni in my 20’s, spent the first couple of years over-weight and then in my third year, met some great girls and managed to lose the weight naturally and easily, largely through just being active.
My weight fluctuated but never crept up particularly high again throughout my 20’s and then, following a divorce when I was 29 it all went very wrong.
I met my current partner and in the process, lost weight again. You know that giddy, new romance, ‘can’t-think-of-food’ type feeling you get when you’re in a new relationship?
Well that was the cause and I became very slim again.
But once we’d been together for a while, the weight started to creep back on….nothing major but I couldn’t handle it.
I’m not sure to this day what caused the confidence dip but I was convinced that if I gained weight, my new partner would leave me and I’d be alone. It scared the hell out of me.
It was at that point that I turned to a different type of control than just dieting…I turned to bulimia.
I started to make myself sick after meals to prevent the weight gain and told myself for a long time that it was fine because I could control it.
And in fairness, I did at first.
At first.
But not for long.
The weight loss continued and the bulimic episodes increased in frequency and severity.
At my worse, my entire day would be centred around eating and purging episodes.
I’d plan the visits to get food. I’d plan what I’d buy specifically to make it easy to bring back up.
I’d buy certain drinks to make purging easier.
I had a full-time job at this point remember!
As part of my job, some time was spent working from home which made it easier for the bulimia.
At my lowest I was marginally above 7 stone and I’d weigh myself what felt like a million times a day.
But, I still felt fat.
5 foot 3 inches, 7 stone and feeling fat.
The purging was getting out-of-hand, clearly. I’d attempt to purge everything, keep nothing down. Flushing drinks in my stomach to try to get every last crumb of food out of me.
Only to binge again minutes afterwards.
I was exhausted.
The effort that goes into that disease is huge.
I was shattered, I was dehydrated, I was seriously ill.
I eventually told my partner what was going on and I went to see therapists who were useless and ended up bulimic through both of my pregnancies…something I have to live with to this day.
I consider myself one of the luckiest women alive that no harm ever came to my two boys who I love dearly…and did then, although that may be hard for some of you to appreciate.
I was sick but when you’re mentally sick, not physically, that can be a hard thing for others to understand.
The start of the end for me came one day in my 30’s when I simply collapsed in tears at our dining table after another purge.
I don’t know what specifically caused it but something made me realise that I couldn’t carry on like this anymore and I booked an appointment at our Doctors surgery.
I saw Dr Acquilla – many of you may know him.
I love that man because he effectively helped save my life.
He referred me to the eating disorder unit in Macclesfield where I was assigned to a dietician, a doctor (for anti-depressant treatment) and a cognitive behavioural therapist.
It was a 3-point programme and while extremely reluctant to engage in the anti-depressant element, I took all the help that was offered.
It wasn’t an easy journey to wellness.
It took years!!
Progress and set-backs, ups and downs, starts and stops.
But I did get there in the end.
I was on the anti-depressants for a long, LONG time after the bulimia episodes stopped and was told by one doctor that I’d be on them for life.
But I didn’t want that.
I’ve never agreed with long-term medication and I know the damage it can do.
So I worked on me, I worked on my diet and I worked on my exercise (a huge therapy for depression) until I was able to totally wean myself off them.
So where am I now?
I’m 44.
I’m a healthy weight for my size…roughly 8 ½ stone but I weigh myself rarely so I couldn’t tell you precisely.
Whilst I don’t think I’ll ever have an unblemished relationship with food, I think we now get along pretty well.
I’m not perfect and perfectionism doesn’t interest me as I know that’s what caused my problems in the first place.
My body isn’t perfect by many societal standards but I’m comfortable with it.
I eat as healthily as I can most of the time but eat food that I fancy too…I’ll never diet again.
And these days I try to make it my mission to help others do the same.
So many women I know started dieting, just like me, at a time when in reality, they had no weight to lose to begin with.
Dieting has made them overweight or obese and in a horrid place both with food and their bodies.
Diets have a hell of a lot to answer for.
So that’s me….Mrs ‘I’m a PT so being slim is easy for me’
It’s relatively easy for me now, but trust me, it certainly hasn’t always been.
So if I coach you or you ask me for help, please don’t think that I don’t understand what you’re going through because I do.
I’ve never been in your shoes but I’ve been in some pretty darn uncomfortable ones myself,
so I get where you’re coming from and I want to help you get to where I am now.
A much happier place.
It is possible, believe me.
I’ve done it, so you can too.
