Rock bottom

Food, not booze

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So after yesterday’s revelation about my wattle I felt I should tell you about last night and today. And actually, whilst we’re here, about the last 40 odd years.

I had full plans yesterday to start back on the Human Being Diet (hereafter HBD) that I quite enjoyed last year. It allows for treats, let’s me eat with the rest of the family and gets results. What’s not to like? But then my boyfriend came back from a trip abroad and he’d bought treats and well, it felt rude not to try the Spanish cheese and the toasted and chocolate covered almonds. I am incredibly easily led it seems.

So today is the day. I had already made the soup for the two day veg-fest that kicks off the HBD so really last night was a bit silly. But then weight and my relationship with keeping it in check has never been simple. I thought I’d tell you a bit about my weight history, if that’s what you call it. (It goes without saying that some people may wish to skip this as it has mentions of eating disorders, disordered eating, depression and the like. All the fun stuff!)

So I was kind of a chubby kid. Not huge. Not the kind of child people stared at when they asked for more ice cream. But I was the ‘oh it’s only puppy fat and she’ll definitely grow out of it’ girl. I didn’t really care much. My childhood was fairly uneventful and though I was aware I had a tummy that consisted of a couple of rolls of fat, I just accepted it.

Then I went to secondary school.

I was only 10 when I started at a fee paying secondary school. Most of the others kids had been to ‘prep’ school which I had never heard of before and didn’t dare ask what it was. At this new place, we were briefcase-w@nkers who also carried string PE bags, hockey sticks, fountain pens and a distinct air of superiority. I was in a foreign land having come from a state primary school in the middle of a council estate. The kids I went to school with wore elastic bands in their hair and spoke with short vowels. I did what any reasonably bright kid would do and copied my new peer group. Conform or be ridiculed.

PE and Games (never sure of the distinction) were a world of hell I had no idea existed. My primary school encouraged games with elastic around your ankles, running in the school hall pretending to be animals and yoga because Glynn Parker’s mum had trained as an instructor and was kind enough to run classes for free. Suddenly I was being asked what position I played in hockey and whether I was attack or defence in netball. I was crap at sport, still am. Picked last, on the shelf.

But still, all was not lost because I was pretty good in the classroom. Not with French or Latin because they were new to me. But everything else was going swimmingly. And friendship wise too, I was popular with the girls and some of the boys had said they thought I was ‘pretty’. I’d had zero interest in boys until then, but this new found attention was quite a pleasant feeling. I embraced it.

Cut to a few years later. I still had the spare tyre or two and the attention from the boys was waning a little. A friend suggested I join her on Saturdays at a modelling school. (Can you even imagine such a thing now? The horror! But this was 1993 when it was acceptable to grade children’s physical attributes). I asked my mother, who quite rightly wasn’t madly keen, but after nagging and promises of walking the dog more regularly, she agreed.

Well, what a revelation those Saturday mornings were. Mainly girls. All made up with a tonne of make up, sitting backs very straight, around the outside of a large room. A 'catwalk’ in the middle which may have just been some theatre boxes nailed together. We took it in turns to practise our turns, our walk, our non-smiling dead behind the eyes look. We whispered bitchy comments about the girls on the catwalk, assessing their bodies. It was grim. I loved it.

I soon worked out that in order to be the girl others looked up to I’d have to lose some timber. I embarked on my Holly Starvation Diet© (HSD) which consisted of black coffee and apples, plus one tiny meal at dinner time to placate my parents. I became very skinny very quickly because, well, I was starving. As any fledgling anorexic will know, it’s fairly easy to skip meals and pretend you’ve eaten because regular people, those without an eating disorder, don’t assume people lie about food. So saying I was full from dinner and didn’t want breakfast went past unnoticed, then skipping lunch at school was simple enough; nobody was keeping an eye on who joined the lunch queue and who didn’t. Then at dinner a tiny plate of whatever was served up along with a ‘gosh I ate so much at lunch I can’t finish this’ wasn’t challenged. Aerobics in my room at night, taken from Look magazine helped speed up the process. I went from around 10 stone 7 to 8 stone 12 in a few months. My periods stopped, I was always cold, my hip bones stuck out visibly beneath my jeans and worst of all, the boys were like bees to honey. Now I say worst of all, but at the time I loved my new found popularity. I was being asked out by sixth formers! I mean… imagine! But this association between weight and desirability has plagued me ever since. More on it later.

The school ski trip of Easter 1994 saw me gain the attention of an ex pupil Jamie, who at 21 really should not have been allowed to go on a school French trip full of teenage girls. He kissed me and then wrote to me for a year after, asking me sexual questions. Yes he was a paedophile, but it wasn’t called that then. I looked him up the other day on Facebook. He married the girl he was dating back in 1994. They have two daughters, younger than my own sons.

Back at school one day, about to turn the corner to buy a Diet Coke at the cafeteria hatch, I overheard a group of older boys talking. I stopped still. Listened. They were talking about me! About how much they fancied me now I was thin! But my eyebrows were too big they said. That was the only thing wrong with me. Out came the tweezers.

And so, without wanting to brag, I was really popular with the boys at school, but then I outgrew them and got an older boyfriend from college. All was good in the world. I mean, I felt faint a lot of the time and often shook from the caffeine, but hey what price a 24 inch waist? I compared my vital statistics, as they were called, to supermodels. I had the same stats as Cindy Crawford, who was considered curvy. I longed for Kate Moss’ stats but I couldn’t get there. I was taller than her. That was my excuse, which I silently berated myself for.

Now there’s a lot more to this story. There’s the college years where I put on some weight and then at a party overheard a boyfriend talking about my ‘huge hips’. There’s the university years of ballooning and dieting back to a size 14. There’s the first year in London where I cried every night into my pillow, sometimes screaming at my loneliness before sticking my fingers down my throat and vomiting up my Weight Watchers ready meal. The years of excess in advertising where I enjoyed rich, creamy, buttery lunches followed by wine and wine and more wine. The year I was dumped by a man I loved very much indeed and then proceeded to drink myself into a skinny-ness which was noted and congratulated by my male bosses. The longest relationship of my life followed, with someone who openly and publicly called large women ‘fat bitches/cows’. That ended and I lost a lot of weight. I was a size 12, small for me. People told they were worried about me. I basked in these comments.

I have seemingly only ever had relationships with men who prefer thin women. We meet, fall in love and then once I have them, I gain weight. Is it a challenge to them; do they love me for me? The essence of who I am? Or just the shell? I’m not completely stupid, I know it’s bonkers and frankly as I approach the age of 44 later this month I am exhausted by it. I reckon I’ve gained and lost 50 stone over the years. Gain and lose, gain and lose, repeat ad infinitum.

Except it really does need to stop. I have accepted that I need to lose weight. Why? It’s fashionable to mention all the tangible and practical reasons; my knees hurt so much I wake at night, my cholesterol is high, my blood pressure a little high too, I snore since I’ve been bigger and so I’m always a bit tired. Yes, yes, all this is true. But do you know what? I hate how I look and feel. I hate it. And I know that’s not what I’m supposed to say. I shouldn’t mention that I want to be smaller. I’m a feminist. To want to be smaller is really not The Thing. But I do. I want to be smaller. I want to feel light. I want my wardrobe of beautiful clothes to fit. I want to stop deleting photos. I’m tired of being obese.

So this morning was my rock bottom. I knew I’d let things slide but after weighing myself on my boyfriend’s fancy scales I was utterly shocked to see my body fat percentage is 39. It should be 23 - 33%. And my weight, well I make no apology for putting this behind a paywall because my lord I don’t want to announce this to thousands, but I do want to be accountable, hence the oversharing here… anyway, my weight?