My Weight-Gain Journey

I have struggled with my weight ever since about my 4th year at secondary school (when I was about 13). I went to boarding school, and so had all my meals there. I ate a LOT. I guess it was when puberty hit me that I started to gain weight - maybe I was craving more food? Or maybe it was just readily available. (We also had a tuck shop, where I worked and they paid me in food! GREAT!)

Anyway, I got steadily heavier and heavier because I ate more and one day I remember being in a toilet stall and looking down to see some pretty horrific stretch marks on my stomach. They were very dark red and looked like something very horrible had happened. I went to another slimming club at this point, weighed in at around 13st 11, lost about 40lbs pretty quickly to get to my target weight, but I wasn't happy with their maintenance plan and I quite quickly put it a lot of it back on again, this all coinciding with meeting/moving in with/breaking up with a man and eating more again - simply put I lost control.

I didn't really think about my weight too much after that. I wasn't particularly happy with my weight, but I wasn't depressed about it either. I met my husband (to be!) in January 2001, and we married in 2003... I didn't look particularly overweight on my wedding day - I don't know what size my dress was as it was custom made.

However, on the weight crept again. We all had another go at the "other" slimming club, but by this point I had tried it so many times, that I was convinced (as so many of us are) that I could do it alone.

I couldn't. I lost a few pounds, but nothing to write home about, and the meetings were less than inspiring - the "image therapy" part going on for ever, and each meeting lasting at LEAST an hour (not including the weigh in) Sometimes we weren't getting home until around 9pm.

In August 2006 I became pregnant with our first daughter Penny. The NHS don't routinely weigh pregnant women now except at the first booking-in appointment. At MY booking-in, I weighed in at 15st 7lbs. I couldn't quite believe it. I am 5'8.5" so reasonably tall, and all my weight is carried in my trunk really, but I had never imagined I would be that heavy. Throughout my pregnancy, I didn't worry about what I was eating, although I wasn't too unhealthy, and after I had given birth by Caesarian section, I weighed in again and found I had only gained about 6lbs throughout the entire thing (as overweight women tend to do)

STILL I did nothing. At Penny's baptism four months later, my dad and my brother took a lot of pictures. My before picture (which is now my official "leader" before picture!) was my last straw picture. (You can see it on the side of this blog. I was so shocked at what I saw, I knew I had to do something, but I just couldn't face going back to the previous slimming club again.

My sister-in-law's sister was a WeightWatchers leader and said "why don't you come to one of my meetings?" I always used to swear that I'd never weigh and point everything, but a change is always as good as a rest, so I decided to give it a try.

The next Tuesday I went, signed up and found out my weight was 16st9.5lbs. How I didn't break down there and then I don't know......