Acknowledging When You Need Help, or At Least When You Need to Change

I’m going to share some stuff today that I’m a bit uncomfortable about sharing, but attempting to deal with it in private hasn’t been going so well, so I’m hoping that making things a bit more “public” might help me somehow.

I’m not sure how yet — perhaps simply making people aware of what I’m dealing with might make me feel a bit better about it, or perhaps I need some sort of support. Exactly what form that support might take, I have no idea, but… anyway, enough preamble, let me just get into it before I talk myself out of sharing this.

As those who have known me for a while will know, I have struggled for a long time with my weight. It has been on a steadily upward spiral for pretty much my entire adult life and, barring an extremely successful stint with Slimming World a few years back, I have had great difficulty shedding weight and keeping it off. This has been a particular problem during the COVID years, since just general activity was pretty much a no-go for quite some time.

This is a fairly significant problem, not just for the obvious reasons, but also because I have been suffering with an extremely painful hernia for the past few years — and the doctors refuse to do anything about it unless I lose some weight, because apparently if I get it fixed in the state I’m in right now, it’s very likely to just come back. It doesn’t help, of course, that I am terrified of hospitals in general and surgery especially, but I’m kind of sort of coming to terms with the fact that at some point it will be necessary to confront that. But not yet.

This is extremely difficult and embarrassing to admit, but I hope that sharing it might help some people to understand why I find some things a bit of a struggle — things that “normal” folks would likely take in their stride on a daily basis. Things like, say, walking down to the shops in a group at lunchtime to get a sandwich; I just can’t keep up with people.

I entirely accept that the situation I’m in is my own fault, but that doesn’t make it any less embarrassing. If anything, it makes it more embarrassing.

I currently weigh over 28 stone. I do not like admitting this because it’s utterly shameful, but I’m putting it out there just so you understand where I’m coming from.

This is obviously extremely unhealthy and I am perfectly aware of that. It disgusts me to see myself in the mirror. None of my clothes fit properly. And any time someone in the street insults me for my weight (which has happened rather more often than I’d like) I have a hard time accepting that they’re being unreasonable and unpleasant; part of me feels like I “deserve” the abuse.

I am taking measures to attempt to reduce that — specifically, my wife Andie and I are following the WeightWatchers (or “WW” as they prefer to call it now) plan. This means that we track our food intake daily according to various items’ “points” values and, in doing so, both learn to think about what we’re putting in our mouth and control what we’re eating.

Trouble is, of late we (and particularly I) have been struggling with motivation to such a degree that it’s tough to make it through a whole week staying “on plan”. WW has a certain amount of flexibility built into it in that you can earn points “back” by eating vegetables and doing exercise, but that doesn’t exactly cancel out a day when you eat way too much of the things you shouldn’t be eating.

My trouble is, I have what I’d probably describe as an addiction, having been in a position to care for and be with people who have had other types of addiction. My addiction is not to alcohol or drugs, though; it’s to food.

Food is my coping mechanism. If I’m sad, I want to eat. If I’m anxious, I want to eat. And when I want to eat, I don’t want to “grab a handful of salad” or “enjoy this healthy treat packed with veggies” — I want chocolate, cake, bread, crisps, sugary drinks, that sort of thing. And I often find the urge to eat those things completely irresistible — even if we have none of them in the house. Living near a Tesco Express will do that to you.

Unfortunately, this leads to something of a vicious cycle. I am sad and anxious and angry because of my weight. Because I’m sad and anxious and angry, I eat, which makes my weight problem worse. I feel guilty about screwing my own body up, which makes me feel sad and anxious and angry, which… you get the idea. It is unhealthy coping mechanisms and an unhealthy relationship with food that has got me into this position, but I am having a real tough time breaking out of it.

The reason why I’m feeling particularly anxious about it right now is because in combination with the symptoms of “long COVID”, I feel a complete wreck on a daily basis. All my joints ache. It hurts to sit down for too long. It hurts to stand up for too long. If I lie on my side for too long in the night, the knee on the bottom ends up in excruciating pain for a few minutes. I’m perpetually tired, and no amount of sleep seems to fix that.

I know very well that fixing all this is going to be a long and slow process — but that it is possible. The one light at the far-off end of an extremely long tunnel is that I know I’ve had success with this before. I’ve never felt so good in my adult life as when I was successful at Slimming World — but unfortunately a variety of both personal and professional stresses caused me to well and truly fall off the wagon, putting me in a worse situation than I’ve ever been in my life.

I don’t want to hurt any more. I don’t want to be sad any more. And I don’t want to die before my time. I don’t really know if or how anyone reading this is able to help, but I just want to put it out there that I could do with some help — even if it’s simply a bit of consideration and understanding for the situation I’m in, and the knowledge that there are people out there not judging me negatively and harshly for ending up in such a horrible (albeit self-inflicted) situation, but who will be there to support and encourage me as I attempt to rescue myself from it.

Thanks for your time.