I was a skinny child, but started to expand when I hit puberty, and by the time I went to university I weighed around 15 stone (210lb, or a bit over 95kg) - I don't know exactly, as I avoided scales assiduously. Uniquely among students of my acquaintance I actually lost weight in the first year, mainly because I was a vegetarian and the college's vegetarian options were mostly inedible.
My real "WTF?" moment came in my second year, however, with the discovery that one of my friends, a six-foot plus backrow forward for the college rugby team, whom we affectionately called Fat Boy (Kids can be so cruel. (We can? Thanks mom!)), actually weighed half a stone less than I did. I'm five foot three. Somehow that was the final straw and the kick up the arse I needed to actually do something about my weight. I joined WeightWatchers, and by the time I left university I'd lost about 3 and a half stone (around 50lb) and weighed about 10 and a half stone.
But then I moved back home while I looked for work. None was forthcoming, and because I hadn't really addressed the issues that had made me fat in the first place the weight crept back on. By the time I finally did find a proper job, 18 months later, I weighed nearly 13 stone. I had kept going to WeightWatchers, but like so many I had slipped back into my old ways. My weight fluctuated for the next couple of years, but the classic young-professional-in-London lifestyle (too much takeaway, drinking five or six nights a week) meant that it never dropped below 11 stone, even after I joined a gym.
I left London for a provincial city in the autumn of 2007, and a more settled, stable lifestyle initially helped me to lose weight again. But my new (and still current) job is highly seasonal, and when it's stressful, it's very, very stressful and very time consuming. It also involves a lot of time away from home, staying in hotels and eating in restaurants, and at first I just didn't have the mental skills to deal with that without putting on a pile of weight. Which is what happened. I rejoined a gym in September 2008, determined to take things in hand, and that is what I was doing until very recently. I'd managed, through exercise and reasonably healthy eating, to get my weight to start with a 10 not an 11, something I hadn't seen since a bout of non-eating induced by the most stressful four weeks of my entire life. But between the beginning of October 2009 and the end of the year, three things happened:
- I revised for and sat my accountancy finals, requiring long bouts of sitting still, enormous amounts of stress, and 'question practice and custard creams' actually having to take priority over 'going to the gym'.
- I moved in with my boyfriend - while this is one of the best things I've ever done, it nevertheless involved substantial upheaval.
- Christmas. Well, we all know about Christmas. And my family, bless them, love you with food.
So I determined to actually do something about this, once and for all. The next post will tell you what I'm doing, and how I'm getting on so far.
