I would like to say I had a blinding moment of clarity about the state of my body and fitness. About how it came to me that I was eating crap and not exercising and that I was going to die sooner than later, and not live to see my baby girl’s children’s children and that I promised myself then and there that I was going to change like Scarlett on the lawn of Tara. But I would be lying, it would make for a good story but for me that wasn’t the truth or what happened. The truth is my weight loss happened as a side effect of another choice I made.
I had moved to the UK from New Zealand as my husband had got a job at a major university and had settled in a small satellite town. My beloved husband would leave for work before 7am and return by 5 every day leaving me to amuse myself for the better part of the day. I knew no one in the town or even near us so that I could visit people and the number of times you can visit the local shops before they lose their sparkle is countable on one hand. I was applying for jobs left, right and centre and feeling like I was getting nowhere fast. I had chosen to try and get a job in a rural area in the middle of the worst economic depression since the 1980’s – it was also just after a number of scientific employers in the area had pulled out and closed their doors leaving a number of well qualified people looking for work. Needless to say the longer it went on the more I got depressed, the more I got depressed the more I ate comfort food and the more weight I put on. It was a bit of a vicious cycle. By the time this picture was taken I was the heaviest I had ever been, weighing in at around 84.5kgs on my 5 foot 1 inch frame.
My BH tried his best to perk me up and get me to exercise – but as it was hard enough to get out of bed in the morning it was a very big ask to get me to go for a walk. He would ask, cajole and eventually I would give in and tie up my shoes and we would go for a very slow walk where I would walk as fast as I could and generally not enjoy the countryside I was walking through. I hurt during day to day incidental exercise – it hurt to go up stairs, it hurt to go down stairs, getting up out of bed and standing up killed my feet – let alone going for walks that were several kms long. Walking would make my face red and I got blisters easily. I sweated a lot (there was no glowing like a lady going on here), my inner thighs rubbed together to the point were I couldn’t wear skirts anymore I only ever wore shorts or jeans. I had heat rashes under my 18DD breasts and under my flabby tummy. Nope exercise wasn’t my friend and I avoided it like the plague.
I didn’t realise it but at the time my BH was really worried about my health and my ever increasing size (I had put on around 14.5kgs since I met him). He never once said don’t eat this or nag me about my weight or the fact that it was blatantly obvious that I wasn’t getting out of bed until just before he got home. He just keep trying to get me moving and out of the house. He was to tell me later (much later) that he had been about a month away from forcing me to do something about my depression. So what changed? I got a job is what changed. I got a job in the ruralist of rural areas in which there was an almost non-existent public transport system going anywhere near where I would work. It was four miles from our front door to work and we had no car (environmental greenies), my BH biked or worked to work. I didn’t have a choice if I wanted to work (and I was desperate to) so I said yes please and thank you very much and tied up my shoes, put on my shorts and walked out the door.
I still have the picture that they took on the first day – it’s a head shot and my face is showing my extra weight and my cheeks match my purple/fuschia shirt. In retrospect I looked terrible but at the time I didn’t care. I had a job and that was awesome.
The ButterCup Project 