Stats and plans

History of my weight issues!

As a baby to the age of 6yrs old I was underweight, I had no interest in food. 

When I was around 6yrs old my mum was embarrassed by how uninterested I was with food and she gained weight herself, for the first time in her life.  She then started to take advice from her sister about force feeding me, but she did it too much that by aged 8yrs I had to go to Weight Watchers. Mum always liked taking me to her diet fads, because it gave her more confidence, than going alone.   The staff at Weight Watchers was not happy with taking on a child as they are not specialised for that sort of thing, but mum told them they had to do something about my weight as I was very big!

From the time of Weight Watchers my dieting life would not be normal for a child.  I was absolutely forbidden any cakes, candies, chocolate, crisps outside of a Thursday evening and every Thursday evening she’d fill a whole shopping bag with whatever I wanted and demanded that I eat the lot or throw it away because I can’t have them until next Thursday if I don’t eat. 

What kid controls themselves when you present them with four doughnuts, two multipacks of crisps, 2 large cups of pick n mix candy, and five bars of chocolate after being sugar starved all week?  I couldn’t and every Thursday would be the same, vomiting, stomach ache, diarreah, it was awful! 

I’d say sugar starved but mum allowed me to have cans of diet coke whenever I liked as it was more convenient than giving me water or juice and I was allowed a packet of crisps per day too, but all she thought was hey, it’s not candy! 

On the rare occasions she allowed me to go to school, I’d always have a pack lunch – because of diet reasons. Yet I remember being given jam sandwiches, chocolate and crisps more often than not!

When I was 11yrs old she started to treat me like a teenager, she started to bully me when I was home educated by her as a new form of education, life skills – what I am missing out on by not being in school, the being moulded by your bullying peers for your looks.  She kept on destroying my confidence all the time, giving me what she felt was constructive criticism about what to wear and what not to wear in order to try not to stand out as a fat girl.

Wear black all over, make sure it’s baggy to hide your real shape, leave your hair down to hide your fat cheeks and chin and for God’s sake only use those horrendous pink glasses of yours to read!  I didn’t realise back then, but dressing like that attracts bullies to people like flies as wearing what I did virtually screams VICTIM! 

Because she was determined to make me wear black all the time, I took advantage of it and wore my depression like a goth.

Most UK schools students wear uniform. But in some of the schools I went to, they didn’t wear uniforms because they were special schools. I went to the schools because of my deafness, anxiety, lack of appropriate educational standard for my age due to bad home schooling and PTSD, I have never been taught to sign despite my consultant insisting it should be a life skill.

Teachers wanted me in mainstream school because I was smart, very smart, but it was outside of my age range. What I mean is, I was A+ student around 18 months in advance in all subjects except science and math, where I was actually 2yrs behind.

When I was 12yrs old I wanted to get into fashion big time and mum wanted to stop me; especially as I was offered a place in the junior games for swimming, I was being dragged back into a school specifically for girls and they were vicious.  My gran knew and told me, mum deliberately chose me to go to that school because of the vicious competitiveness the girls were known for there.  I only lasted a month there before I suffered the first of my nervous breakdowns that lead me to having live in mental health care at a children’s hospital/asylum. 

I became anorexic/bulimic; and 98llbs at 5ft 3 just before I turned 14.  I refused to eat more than half a sandwich and a piece of fruit a day.  I self-harmed, I became severely introverted and wouldn’t speak to men, and I became terrified of men because of something that happened to me around that time, which bought back a lot of fear for men since my sexual abuse aged 5.  If it wasn’t for a lovely keyworker I had in the hospital I nearly became a mute for life as before she became my new and second keyworker, I very nearly stopped talking altogether with anyone!

What is weird is, I was kind of happy too.  Because of the amount of people turning up in my life to remove me from my mother sounds weird I know, but she was abusive.  I used to self-harm when I had contact with my mum or something bad happened at the children’s mental hospital, like a bad day with another patient becoming violent triggering my PTSD. 

When I was 14yrs old another incident happened that nearly started my mental problems coming back again, another attempt at me from the same person who did things to me when I was 5.

Instead I took comfort in food for a small while again, this made mum happy as the welfare backed off now I was eating again and I went too far in eating and became obese where eventually welfare wanted me to diet or go back to the hospital again.

I felt like I couldn’t win.

By the time I was 16yrs old I became very much a jock and I was enjoying a semi-normal life; the judo I had started when I was 10yrs old I became skilled in and was offered a place to audition at the commonwealth games, but I got a serious mastoid infection that nearly killed me and needed surgery just six weeks before I was due to do it. 

The mastoid infection destroyed my right ear completely and I have no hearing in there anymore because I lost my ossicle bones.  But an ossicleplasty can fix that; unfortunately the NHS won’t do it, even though they know I have lost the perfect hearing in my left ear too, which happened more recently.

My labyrinth is apparantly completely exposed which means to this day, I still get some dizzy spells.

I didn’t gain back any weight until I met my boyfriend Gene in 2003 when I was 21, both he and my mum acted like obsessive feeders.  I got up to just over 200llb.  When I met someone online after Gene broke off with me who built my confidence I became sporty again and lost weight again.  I got down to 180llb with wonderful toned muscle, but I couldn’t lose any more weight because of the weight lifting etc. I had got myself into. 

I had a severe breakdown when Gene dumped me because of how cruelly he did it and after three major life events that made me distraught too, all these events happened within two weeks before he did this.  But he didn’t just wipe his hands clean of me, he kept coming back with promises all the time and it was mental torture. 

He didn’t leave me alone for nearly two years after the break up and the only reason he did was because he married someone new.

One of those major things was he hurt me badly where I lost a child at 5 months pregnant and wouldn’t take me to a hospital and took our only telephone with him when he left me in the house that night to handle the situation myself in the bathroom alone. 

This made me become ill for a long time and I went through the whole thing on my own and couldn’t talk to anyone about it. No one would have cared anyway, mum was relieved he dumped me as it gave me back to her.

We lived in a detached rural house with no neighbours and he took our only phone, whilst he went out on a drinking splurge with his friends because he couldn’t cope with the argument we just had.  He knew I started to bleed badly because of the punch but all he said as he walked out of the house was “sort yourself out”. 

My mum was never told what happened because she told me if I had a baby who was mixed race she’d disown me and at the time I had nowhere else to go.  He was from Peru.    

Well anyway, I got depressed with the nastier tricks and aggression that my mum started on me when I moved back with her in 2004.  I held it together until 2007, when I was 25yrs old but then started to lose heart to do anything anymore because of the obstacles she kept putting in my way.  So I started to eat compulsively again.

Especially since mum demanded I completely surrender to her if I want any life at all and I did.  She was going to pull the plug on the internet in September 2009; I met Paul in April 2009 and moved in with him in July of that year, because things were getting out of control and she was becoming more violent to me.

Initially I got involved with Paul purely because he wanted to get me out of that situation as a friend and we kind of got stuck together, if you get me? 

By the time I found Paul, I was 242llbs, I know because when we met, I got pregnant in September with Henry and I had to have my weight observed.  I had severe morning sickness with Henry than when I gave birth to him I was a 197llbs!  What woman can say that they lost weight when pregnant? 

But if you knew how bad the morning sickness was right up until I was seven months pregnant, you’d understand how that is possible!

I was so happy being that slim again after a few years, I went on a spending spree and got myself some lovely clothes of my choice – totally against my mother’s advice.  Bright garish and bohemian, she hated it and she was determined to destroy my new found confidence and happiness anyway she could!  I managed to get back to 180llbs and I was told by doctors the reason why I hadn’t lost any more weight from my diet plan for six weeks was because I have no fat left to lose, it is all lean muscle and I can’t lose that easily!  

So no matter how hard I try, I don’t think I can get less than 180llb ever, even if I tried this time around.  I am 5ft 8 so I am thankful that 180llb doesn’t look bad on me! 

By 2013 she became so obnoxious I had to remove her from my life.  She was causing a third breakdown in me and doctors nearly hospitalised me for “chronic mental fragility”. 

Lots of other things too, disparaging comments about my looks and my home, doing things to my son and my home behind my back and lying they were accidents, you get the picture, right?

When I told mum how I felt and how I don’t want to talk to her anymore or get visits I received a lot of threats from both my mum and my oldest brother; then I found out even the sweetest members of the family and even family friends turned against me because of overblown lies mum told them about why she no longer hears from me; including lying that Paul is domestically violent to me! 

So I thought I would have some family left if I left mum, but she did so much damage to the whole family network only the three aunts who never liked my mum from dad’s side of the family, still talk to me.  Even a cousin who practically raised me turned against me and that one hurt a lot!

I heard this cousin was so upset with the situation and my mum visiting her all the time to rant about me, that she moved to the other side of the country and stopped talking to the both of us, she is lovely like that, always neutral.

So it went like this – big extended family, where I knew fourth generation cousins, and an average wedding party had 450 on one side, to literally just three aunts and their kids overnight. 

Anyway – I had to get her out of my life one day because I had enough.  I told her don’t phone me and visit anymore and for a while I was bullied by my oldest brother about it and I mean bullied.  He has always threatened to do me for defamation for revealing things about my mum. Told me when I get a book published he will seek to destroy me before I got the foot in the door of a famous career as an author!

But I have to keep telling my truth, it’s how I heal.

I started to eat again.  Like I always do when depressed!

By 2015 I got to 305llbs, that’s how much I was eating.  180llbs to 305 in 2yrs!

So, after she got out of my life I was very mentally fragile for a long time and I got mono about eight months later which turned into pneumonia, I caught this at Christmas time and I was so ill I lost my voice till May, I had to use a white board to communicate with people.  It was scary as Paul and I thought I’d never talk again. (Weird enough, this happened around the time I began to be afraid to talk about my abuse in my blog, not so strange if you know anything about chakras, really.)

I also lost about 60% of my hearing in my left ear too, meaning a choice about wearing hearing aid in that ear is gone now, it’s essential.

This illness made my chest permanently weak and I have had pneumonia a total of four times since then.  This made me very ill and housebound for around eight years maybe nine.  So in 2017 I knew that I weighed myself in 2015 and it was 305llbs, I knew that I had gained two more sizes in that time as hardly anything fitted me anymore, but to this day I have no idea what my weight was in 2017 – I only know my body stats.  I was too afraid of breaking my scales, because my scales could only take 294llb and 305 was lucky not to have broken them earlier! 

My stats were like this in 2017.

Height 5ft 8

Weight unknown 305+

Waist 50 inches

Hips 58 inches

Thighs 30 inches

Knees 24 inches

Calves 23 inches

Chest 50 inches

Arms 20 inches

I became so fat I lost my signature hourglass shape and became a spoon, this made me raise more than my eyebrows I can tell you!  I was not happy about becoming a spoon! 

So I was determined to do something about it, I also felt confident to talk to the doctor about medical issues I was having with my digestive system.  I found I had IBS and IBD, no wonder really when you look at this history!

Anyway, I went on an elimination diet.  Went gluten free, lactose free, egg free, soy free, you name it, I went free on it for around two years.

Turned out recently that with IBD most of my bad reactions would happen occasionally no matter what I ate because of the disease.  So I started eating like a normal person again.

But what I did discover is that soy and mustard can make my spleen swell, depending on quantities and regularity of consumption.

So save for salad cream once a week, we try to avoid soy and mustard in my diet now, but it’s getting to a point I can’t even do that anymore.

Since around 2019 my body has started to reject most foods whenever it likes, it’s virtually impossible to get more than 2 meals a day now, without my body overreacting.

In 2021 I wanted to measure myself again as some clothing was becoming very loose and I had to buy new clothes.

Height 5ft 8

Weight 282llbs

Waist 45 inches

Hips 52 inches

Thighs 28 inches

Knees 19 and a half inches

Calves 20 inches

Chest 48 inches

Arms 17 inches

I suffered from nourishment issues and muscle loss which the doctor believed was due to the IBD and put me on bowel cancer watch; thankfully nothing came of it!

By Easter 2022 my doctor noticed more muscle loss.

I had such noticeable muscle loss, that they started to consider a muscle wasting disease, I told them I was diagnosed with rheumatic arthritis when I was 21yrs old, but for some reason or another, the doctor who saw me that day said he couldn’t find it on my record!

I came home concerned about my muscle loss and I found a friend online who helps women over 40 through the menopause and into toning up and becoming late in fitness and body building.  I knew I wasn’t 40 at the time, but I knew in October that I would be – so I was making my plans!

She taught me that protein is everything for a woman over 40.  I said to her “hey, that’s funny you should say that, because when I was more athletic when I was younger I found out I am a protein metabolism and an anaerobic person, whatever that meant”.  She explained things in full and she believed that someone like me, going back into a high protein diet from being a mostly plant based high carb diet, would benefit a lot, including my disabling health issues.

So I started to make sure I get 75g of protein a day minimum and do little bits of exercise, from squatting for only a few seconds without pain and all sorts of small things. 

I am now able to use an exercise bike for HIIT exercises for 2 to 7 minutes now – depends on the day, burning an average of 25 to 70 calories a time according to the counter, which seems a lot to me, I wonder if it’s broken?  But I do go at the thing like a mentally impaired hamster! 

My squats can now be held for three minutes sometimes more, now and I am no longer getting shaky in my legs if I stand for more than fifteen minutes.

I have started a shake a weight and other arm specific exercises because my triceps seem to have turned to water, lol.  Ok that’s my way in saying I am not proud of my bat wings!

But the arms are starting to noticeably tone up now.  In fact I’ve lost half an inch to my arms since starting it a month ago!

In fact, let’s put my stats up now, because Paul measured me on the 5^th October and I know this is being posted a week later, but better late than never hey?  I am called TardyCreative after all!

5^th October 2022

5ft 8

253llbs, I know I am still very heavy, but I am getting slimmer!  I plan to be 180llbs by the end of summer 2023, according to NOOM I can be that by this date if I don’t slip up.  I am kind of cheating though, because I presumed I might get sick, so put my lifestyle down as sedentary, it’s possible I could lose it faster as I am gaining more health to do more exercises.

Waist 45 inches

Hips 48 inches

Thighs 28 inches

Knees 20 inches (somehow gained half an inch, is it the squatting exercises at fault?)

Calves 20 inches

Chest 46 and a half inches

Arms 16 and a half inches!

So, I am getting there!  I don’t want to be fat anymore, I feel free of my mum after all this time and I can’t keep thinking about her all the while, she never approves of anything I do – so I’ve got to make myself happy don’t I?

I am not happy being this fat, its bad enough I am ugly as sin, but not fat too, I can do something about that!

I have been doing facial exercises to reshape my face, it seems to be working.  But I have an inverted triangle face, which there is nothing I can do about that, but I can make it look less fat!

I bought a jump rope too, so I will be trying to do those exercises too next week!  Bear in mind I have hip issues since the NHS neglected to repair damage from a former ectopic pregnancy I had, so jumping should be painfully fun.

So my goal is to be 180llb and to define my shape back to hourglass and be toned and strong again.

Unfortunately my confidence is a little shot, as Long Covid has caused alopecia, but I suppose there’s hair extensions when I get my book published and can afford them?

My braces should be fitted by Valentine’s Day too, though I haven’t got an letter confirming yet.

So I said my life begins at 40 and its jolly well going to!

So there!

Hate me, love me, I don’t care, it’s your problem!

Happy reading!