As of this morning, I have a BMI of 25. That’s a goal I’ve dreamed of all my life, in much the same way that one might dream of meeting a unicorn. It was never something I thought could actually happen.
Almost two years ago, this was me:
I was 27 1/2 stone (385 lb, 175 kg), BMI 60, with one permanently broken ankle and a damaged achilles that meant I couldn’t walk more than a couple of hundred metres without pain.
I had been fat and unfit for my entire life. I was obese by the time I was a teenager. I dieted on and off for decades, adult and child. I gave up on dieting and determined to just be happy with my body and enjoy life despite it. It helped my mental health issues, but the world wasn’t going to let me forget; at times I avoided going out because of the abuse I would get just for existing.
One day, at 39 years old, I couldn’t take the world’s hatred anymore. I thought everyone would be happier if I just ceased to exist. I decided to kill two birds with one stone and do it by starving myself. Either I’d end up dead, or I’d end up thin, and either of those alternatives seemed OK to me.
Unsurprisingly, the next few weeks involved highly disordered eating pattens! But I learned from them. I learned that my desperate emotional state could kill my appetite; and I started to wonder what other, more healthy, thoughts might have the same effect. I did lose weight, which told me it could be done if I was willing to try hard enough. I learned to get a kick from successful self-discipline that was better than the kick from doughnuts. I learned about the calorie content of different foods, and in comparing that to the eating patterns I’d been given by dieting organisations in the past I began to understand how I’d always stayed fat before - and how I might not stay fat now.
I started to take very short walks, within the limits of my damaged ankles, multiple times a day. Gradually they grew longer. Gradually my motivation changed from hatred of what I was to love of what I was becoming.
And this is what I have become:
I am 41 years old and 11 st 5 (160 lb, 73 kg), BMI 25. My ankle is still broken and my achilles is still dodgy, but they’re only rarely a problem now; they’re lifting so much less, and better supported by the surrounding muscles. I walk three miles every day, plus dance (badly) and enjoy half-killing myself at BodyPump and other gym classes. One of the above photos is immediately after ‘STRONG’ by Zumba.
Every time I look in the mirror (which is several times a minute!) I get a weird shock at not seeing the fat woman I expect - and also at finally, unexpectedly, seeing the slim woman a part of me has always expected.
I’m an entirely new person, and I’m having fun meeting her at last.
