D.I.Y. IS FOR ME (WITH A LITTLE SUPPORT)

31^st July 2020

When I first started my weight loss journey I was sixteen years old, and my first real experience was when I was seventeen at one of the two most famous UK slimming clubs. As I have said before, I didn't have much idea about weight loss, but off I went on a Thursday evening to the club. Looking back at it now, I went with a friend of my mums who drove and I think it was a plan hatched by them for me to lose weight. My mum's friend never really did well, but I did lose weight. I was thirteen stone seven pounds that first night and I remember I lost ten pounds in my first week, bringing me down to twelve stone eleven pounds. I was over the moon, but still felt terribly fat and in need of as much help as I could get. Thinking back, at five foot five inches tall, that weight was not really that bad, but I was fat. I must have been the youngest there, as everyone else seemed old! :-)

At this stage I had met my first husband, and was just about to start the college summer holiday in June. By the time I went back in September I had lost quite a bit of weight and felt good. Lots of people noticed and I got a lot of attention which I wasn't used to.

I don't remember a lot more about that time thinking about it. My family moved to Gibraltar as my step-dad was in the army, but I managed to stay in this country. It was difficult time, my relationship with my husband-to-be was very up and down, but at least my weight stayed fairly low.

I have happy memories too within that five year period. I got married and travelled to India for the first time, which was beautiful. I love India, and met some wonderful people. For various reasons, some of my family did not want to know me once I was married. My Grandad died in 1978, and my Grandma, who suffered with Alzheimers, came to live with us from 1988 until she died in 1999, but the rest of family cut themselves off from me. So I had no family support from my side. My daughter was born in 1982, and my son in 1985 and I carried on with my own little family who I loved. It was not easy and my weight slowly came back on.

Over the next few years the battle with my weight was not easy. I have said before that I have tried every diet and every club, and I have. They did not work for me and from 1985 to 2003 my weight went up and down like a yo-yo. I varied in size from a size 12 to a size 24 in UK sizes and my self-esteem also went up and down. All the time it was dependent on my size. Size was everything. If I was small I could live a good life, but if I was large I was a failure and didn't want to do anything.

From 2003 it did get a little better with my self-esteem when I met and, in 2004, married my second husband, but my weight issues were still there and soon my self-esteem once again changed with my weight.

This time I knew I had to do it myself. Slimming clubs were not for me. Personally to put yourself under pressure to go to a new club, get weighed, get your new diet to come back the next week to see if you had lost weight is just too much.

In the beginning when you lose weight, it's good, but the feeling on being on your own until you get weighed the next week gets worse and worse. It's the constant though of what you can eat, what you can't, have I been good and not wanted to eat the day of the weigh-in just in case I spoil any weight loss I may have had. Then there is the thought of your weight being read out to the group and the feeling that you are being judged.

I know a lot of groups have changed now. The last time I went to a slimming club was 2011/12, I think, but they are not for me. When I went to the N.H.S. Change For Life group in 2013/14 it was slightly different. It was a six week plan. When you got weighed it wasn't read out, it was just between you and the plan leader. Every week there was an informative talk with recipes given out to try at home. After the six weeks were up you could continue to go back each week to get weighed, but that was it. At no point really were you treated like an individual and that really is where my point lies.

Losing weight and then maintaining weight loss is an individual thing. Yes, there are diets, clubs, and many other tried and tested ways of losing weight. There have been for many years, but really they are not working. Short term, yes, but long term, no.

We are all different, and until we are looked at as individuals, rather than en-masse, then many of us will slip through the net.

For many of the “obese”, not advertising junk food until after nine o'clock, putting calories on packets and menus and treating us as the problem will not work.

Many of us know about, and can get, junk food if we want to and know all about calories.

What is needed is encouragement and also helping us to recognise ourselves and why we are the way we are. Some of us need more help than others but such recognition would help many of us.

At least I have discovered that the D.I.Y. Route is the best for me. It hasn't been easy, nor will it carry on being easy, but at least this way I am learning so much about myself.

There is still that scary moment when I have my weigh-in, but it is far more personal.

It is going to be an interesting time moving forward in the UK as to how obesity is going to be dealt with, and I am sure I am going to have some strong feelings to add to those that I already have about how “fat” people are thought about and treated.

We will see, but I know I have helped myself, and hopefully in the future I can help others too.

Jackie

xx