Okay, have I always been overweight?
Well, for as long as I can remember, really. But I wasn't a particularly big baby - just over 6lbs despite being a fortnight late. My mother swore she got her dates right. And I was a skinny fussy little thing as a small child. Which I think is where the rot set in, cos my Mum was happy if I ate anything at all, never mind about whether it was a particularly healthy option. The annual family holiday snaps tell the story though. Up until I was 7 there was nothing to me. But there are photos of me aged 8 in a bikini with a little bit of a belly.
And by the time I was 10 and puberty was kicking in, I was a chubby little thing.
But my Mum was always on a diet. Always always.
She did a version of the Cambridge Diet way back in the early 1980s (that I remember that tells you something, LOL) but didn't last very long on it. Anyway, I think she was really scared that she would have a fat daughter (my sister was always petite and dainty) so by the time I was 10 she was restricting my food intake. That didn't work out so well because I'd just go and buy sweets in secret from the local sweetshop and scoff the lot (I learned from an early age that my Dad had a habit of dropping change over the bedroom floor when he changed his trousers so I could always find a few coins
) or creep into the kitchen and cram slices of bread in my gob as quietly as I could. I've often wondered whether if she'd just let me carry on having the same desserts and packets of crisps as everyone else (and not make me have a bl**dy diet yogurt
) whether I wouldn't have a weight problem now. Because undoubtedly it was puberty-related - my periods started when I was 11.
Anyway, from that age onwards I settled into a pattern of up a stone down a stone, then up two stones down a stone, and so on. At various times I did get back down to under 9st (just after I started college but that was because I skipped loads of meals - not an ideal thing to do) and I was 10st 8lbs on my wedding day (10st 4lbs the following day - but that's another story and has nothing to do with any strenuous exercise on my wedding night
).
But the weight really started piling on when I started my nursing diploma. My son was a year old at the time, not a good sleeper. It seemed that in no time at all I was bursting out of my size 16 uniforms. And to be honest, I didn't really manage to make much of an impact dieting wise until I discovered Atkins around 10 years ago. That worked well to a point and I discovered the miracle of ketosis (you don't feel hungry - who knew?!?) but, as Rachel's sister jokes in an episode of Friends, carbs found me again and I troughed my way up to nearly 18st. Admittedly there was some interesting stuff going on in my personal life at the same time - my mother dying from cancer, my family disowning me, my OH having major surgery (those last two are actually linked - for further details work your way up to making 1500 posts and check out the first page of my Gold diary here on Minimins
).
And then in 2007 I thought I'd try a VLCD...
Ah, happy days.
This is cathartic stuff.
