2080: Five Stones

I’ve finally crossed a significant milestone in my weight loss journey: I’ve now lost over five stone in total, a loss that also coincides with me dropping into a new stone bracket that represents the lowest weight I can remember being for a long time. I still want to — need to? — lose at least a couple more stone from here, but I’ve come a long way and I’m genuinely happy with what I’ve accomplished so far.

For those who have come to my blog more recently, I started Slimming World back in February of this year having decided that enough was enough, and that I really needed to lose some weight. This wasn’t just a vanity thing; my weight had gotten to the point where I was physically uncomfortable. I was having trouble fitting into “normal”-sized chairs; I was encountering situations and pieces of equipment that I was too heavy to use — I had to skip out on part of a friend’s stag night because they were doing some activities that I was significantly overweight for; and many of my clothes didn’t fit any more.

More than anything, I was miserable. I suffer with depression anyway, but my weight problem was making things worse by having a physical effect on me. I was perpetually out of breath; I couldn’t get comfortable in a chair or in bed; it was difficult and embarrassing to wear clothes that I knew once fit me. I felt physically repulsed when I saw my body in the mirror, I felt ashamed when I saw my stomach hanging down out of the bottom of a T-shirt I was wearing, and, to be perfectly frank, I was horrified that I couldn’t see my knob when I looked down.

I had been aware of my weight problem gradually getting worse over the course of the last few years — probably at least the last ten years or so, if I’m perfectly honest — but every time I had tried to do anything about it previously, I had failed to have a significant impact. I’d tried dieting of various kinds — Atkins left me with a perpetual headache, and Slim-Fast was like eating wood chippings — as well as intensive exercise routines, and nothing had seemed to shift the weight at all. It was demoralising and upsetting; I didn’t know what to do. I considered trying to be one of those people who is happy about being fat — or at least, someone who accepts that they’re fat — but I couldn’t do it. I was too ashamed of myself.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that Slimming World has changed my life for the better. I first came to it because my wife’s sister had had a considerable amount of success with it. Skeptical, I went along to a meeting, found out about their “food optimising” methods — a surprisingly flexible, enjoyable plan that doesn’t really restrict you so much as make you think about making sensible choices — and stuck carefully to it. I lost a big chunk of weight in the first week, and have been losing weight pretty consistently ever since; with only two or three exceptions since February, I’ve lost at least a pound pretty much every week, and I certainly don’t feel like I’m starving myself or anything, just being careful about what I put in my mouth.

Changing the way I think about food isn’t the only way it’s changed my life for the better, though. I’m more positive about myself and feel like I have more self-esteem as a result. I would still describe my sense of self as “somewhat fragile” if pressed, of course, but I no longer repulse myself when I see my reflection, which is progress. Now, when I see my body, I can think “yes, that’s going well, but there’s still a way to go” rather than “ugh, that’s disgusting, who would ever want to look at that?”

Since that February, I’ve had a difficult time. I was ousted from the job I had back when I started under circumstances that, on reflection, actually feel somewhat “traumatic”, for want of a better word — I keep remembering my last day, and how horrible those bastards made me feel; it stops me from sleeping quite often — but my progress with my weight loss has helped keep me sane even as I struggle to scrape together some meaningful work and income to survive into the future. And I don’t think the importance of that should be underestimated; feeling like one thing is going right in your life helps you to believe that other things can eventually go right, too — you just might have to work at it a bit.

Five stone, then. That’s a hell of a lot. Our previous Slimming World consultant used to bring in these little sandbags that weighed a pound, half a stone, a stone and so on; a stone is actually pretty heavy, and I was carrying five more of those around with me all day every day back in February. No wonder I was knackered and uncomfortable all the time. I hope I never get back into that situation — and I don’t think I will, either.