I've written about hard subjects before, just take a look at my previous posts about anxiety, panic attacks and the EU referendum! But this is one of the hardest, maybe the hardest, at least for me. It may not seem that way when you read it, but this is a blog post I never thought I would have to write, about a subject I never thought would affect me. But affect me it has and it has hit me hard. I'm annoyed at myself because it feels like it's mostly my fault.
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| How thin do I look? I can't have been healthy! |
I am close to being overweight, almost 11 stone, when for most of my adult life, I've been around 9 stone. Now I don't want to go back to that weight as I think it was unhealthy. However I reckon I have put on a stone and a half over the past year or so, I feel unhealthy with it and I should lose that. Luckily I can fit into most of my clothes still because I wear leggings, but I can't wear my jeans anymore. If I carry on like this, I'll have to go up a dress size. I have no excuse, but I have reasons. To try and make sense of why this has happened, to come to terms with it and hopefully do something about it, I'm writing this blog post.
I will have to go back to my childhood to explain. I was never interested in bad food: fast food, burgers, takeaways. I prefer simple food, simple ingredients, unadulterated meals. I'd choose a salad over a McDonalds. I don't like sauces, not even ketchup on my chips. I'm more interested in fruit and veg than sweets and cake. In fact, the first time I was off school sick, it was because I ate too much fruit! Even now, I can't walk past a fruit bowl without being tempted. When I was a teenager, people used to joke I was anorexic and I took it as a compliment. They'd pick me up, exclaiming how light I was. I was proud of it! But I never courted it. I just wasn't interested in food, never was. I'm still not really interested. I eat to live.
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| I love fruit, all fruit, even exotic fruit like snakefruit (right) |
Things changed when I turned sixteen when my anxiety hit and I started having panic attacks. My life spiralled out of control. I went from having little appetite to having none at all. I still don't really have an appetite as such. I developed an eating disorder where I found it difficult to eat. It was both a symptom and a way of coping with my mental health problems, trying to control something when I couldn't control anything else. I stopped eating altogether at one point because it was easier than fighting through what I called the upchuck reflex. My friends had to forcefeed me when I started shaking uncontrollably. Since then, I haven't had a normal relationship with food, not liking eating in public for instance. My appetite, what there is of it, is the first thing to go when I'm ill, mentally or physically. When I can't eat fruit, I know it's serious. It's become a canary in a coal mine for me.
Now I have a handle on my anxiety, which used to sap my appetite, I have to deal with one. I must have had one before my anxiety hit, but that was more than 20 years ago and I don't remember. So when people learn to manage their appetite from childhood to adulthood naturally, I've had to deal with it all at once, which has been a bit much.
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| This is me under there! |
However, apart from sugar cravings during that time of the month, I've been managing pretty well. That's why putting on so much weight is a surprise to me. It started before lockdown, before I knew I had endometriosis, which makes me bloat. My weight shot up on medication for my balance problem, but it went back down when I stopped taking it. That was the first time I went over 10 stone. I'm now on medication for the endometriosis and putting on weight is a side effect, but not to this extent and I'd prefer to take the tablets as the benefits outweight the weight gain. They've stopped the sugar cravings for one!
Due to my balance problem, I don't sleep well; I often wake up in the night and I sleep very shallowly, so anything can wake me. Sleep problems can make you put on weight, or more prone to putting on weight.
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| Me asleep(ish) |
I'm not a great one for exercise and with lockdown, I'm currently only going in to work once a week; my cycle commute is my only real exercise, which was enough before, but it seems no longer. I will have to start exercising properly, which will be hard and I'll have to be careful what sort of exercise I do because of my balance problem. I definitely need to improve my cardiovascular health. The other thing is when I exercise. It takes me an hour to even get moving every morning; to say I'm not a morning person is an understatement. Vertigo upon waking due to my balance problem makes me groggy, so exercising before work is out. I'm knackered after a day working and exercise will knacker me further, for the usual reasons, but also my balance problem makes most physical things tiring. So I'm going to start at weekends and see how I go.
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| When I could fit in a dress like this |
I don't eat unhealthily, but I do rely on ready meals and frozen meals at least once a week. The weird thing is, I eat the same thing as my brother; he has larger portions and eats more chocolate bars than me, but exercises less than me; even on our lunchtimes walks, he dawdles, whereas I try to keep the pace up; and his weight has barely changed.
Stress can do weird things to the body, to the hormones and goodness knows we've had enough stress lately. But I thought I was coping with 2020 okay, surprisingly well given my history of anxiety, including all the mental whiplash when things kept changing and first I was going to go in to work 2-3 days a week, then 4 days, and now one day a week. I had a few wobbles in the beginning, but maybe underneath I'm not coping so well.
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| One of my favourite photos of me, with my nephew Thomas |
So between my endometriosis, balance problem and anxiety, which all cause the insomnia, that may be the reason behind my weight gain. This means it's not as much my fault as I thought. But the biggest cause is probably my age. I noticed a difference in my metabolism when I entered my 30s. I guess I can't eat what I'm used to eating without consequences anymore. So even though I haven't changed my diet any over the last few years, maybe even being a little healthier, I'm going to have to now. However with my history of an eating disorder, caused by the need for control, I'm going to have to be careful. I'm cutting sweet things out of my diet, which is no hardship, it's been easy over the last few days. I mostly eat them when I'm bored or watching TV. But I'm going to miss my Mum's flapjacks and scones. Then I'm going to build up to fewer carbs like bread (which I adore), pasta and rice. But I know it's bad to cut out food groups altogether, so everything in moderation. I will try to eat more vegetarian meals as well, I tend to choose them off the menu anyway. So all signs point to the fact that changing my diet should be relatively painless.
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| Turning 30 |
The first step has been getting over myself, stopping feeling sorry for myself and thinking this is temporary. I'm going to have to do all this as the trend in my weight has been steadily increasing; it's only going to go one way and will continue that way unless I do something. I have to lose the identity of my younger self who could eat anything and stay thin. I should also eat more slowly: due to my eating disorder, I ate fast to beat the upchuck reflex, otherwise I would have ended up eating nothing. That habit has stuck and I don't need it anymore.
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| The most body confident I've been, taken by Dave Amann |
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