Body confidence, mental strain and disability

**********TRIGGER WARNING**********

This post will talk about weight, health, miscarriage and baby loss and how it affects our mental health. Please only read on if you feel strong enough. Alternatively, for help and support please visit the mental health and suicide prevention support lines page on this website.

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Hmmm. It feels like I talk openly about everything on here, but the truth is, there are a few subjects that I still keep close to my chest for a variety of reasons. In my opinion, some of those reasons might be limp.

My family, my private life, my innermost thoughts and sometimes even my sanity have stayed purely internal so far, especially as I know there are people looking to find out more about my family online. Their privacy is their own, and I want to keep it that way.

But my weight is the limp factor here. I’ve mentioned a couple of times that, in the course of the last 12 years, I’ve been every size from a 0 to a 30, but I haven’t disclosed much more.

This is the basic story and the way it impacts my life today…

In my late 20s, as I navigated my way through a difficult separation and divorce, I was a size 24. I lost 12.5 stone on my own, and got down to a size zero. In my early thirties I started to put weight back in and got up to a size 30. Then during the pandemic I lost more again, getting back down to a size 16. At that point, for once, I felt ok with my figure. I was curvy, I was a little bit confident, and I was managing.

Fast forward to today and I’m back up to a size 20, which depresses the shit out of me, and is the reason I don’t talk about it openly. I feel ashamed.

Why?

The bits that I don’t talk about are the reasons why I’ve fluctuated so extremely, and what it’s meant for my health as the years passed.

When I first lost the 12 stone, I was a woman on a mission. Leaving behind the financial security and social interactions I’d had through my marriage, I was sure I’d be lonely and miserable when I left the house and entered a one bed flat with no one but the cat for company. I was right. The silence in my home was deafening, and an obsession with weight loss filled the void. If I was home alone and feeling low I’d either go for a run or do some high intensity interval training (HIIT). Obviously it worked, but the net result wasn’t just weight loss, it was a worrying level of obsessive behaviour over food, calories and activity levels. Eventually I found myself counting the calories as I walked home from work. Every 30 steps, another kcal lost. It was constant and overwhelming, limiting my life and enjoyment, and leaving me feeling weak.

It all ended after my first miscarriage. I was a keep-fit fanatic, and I’d been told to continue exercising as long as I did so safely. I reduced the intensity of my training dramatically, and started filling the calorific void to try and promote a healthy pregnancy. Despite all this, we lost our first baby at about 16 weeks, on my birthday, and I lost so much blood I needed a transfusion. I was weaker than a sparrow, my bones felt brittle enough to snap, and my body felt so exhausted I only wept and slept during my 5 days in hospital.

I blamed myself entirely for not quitting exercise. There was no evidence this was the reason, in fact everyone told me it had nothing to do with it, but in the absence of any concrete answers, I had to pick on something. I’ve known ever since that it was my fault.

Two further miscarriages later and I was convinced my body was failing because of something I wasn’t doing right. We tried everything from taking the best supplements, to staying off my feet all day, but things still went wrong over and over again. After years of trying we finally got a pregnancy through the second trimester. Things felt less anxious, and I shifted my obsession over calories to an obsession over parenthood. I ate more than ever, and as the pounds piled on, the gestation kept going. Success! Or so I thought.

When an infection caused my waters to break early, our first daughter was born sleeping. This is a story I’ve explained, so I won’t rerun the sadness, suffice to say I blamed myself once more.

In came the biscuits, on piled the kilos. I got bigger and bigger as depression took hold and left me feeling bereft, derelict, useless as a female, and utterly ashamed.

Thankfully, nearly 18 months later, we had our daughter, though the pregnancy wasn’t without complications. I required an emergency c-section, and I was sick with worry over my weight. Thankfully she came out a healthy 6lbs 9ozs, but I wasn’t healthy at all.

I started to lose weight again during the pandemic, and despite only reaching a size 16, and despite being less ‘able’ than ever, I felt far more confidence than I did as a size 6. I felt normal, whatever that is.

Now I’m back at a 20 and, honestly, I hate myself again. I have the ability to control what I eat, but my mobility and pain prevent me from doing the cardio I need to be truly healthy. Thankfully my partner is better at all this, and he shows our daughter the importance of a physically healthy lifestyle that includes activities and time spent outdoors, but that doesn’t stop me feeling like a failure.

When I look back at the journey my weight has been on, I can see a huge amount of trauma led to me either overeating or restricting calories to a dangerous degree. I’m an obsessive person, and I need something to focus on when I’m stressed. Sadly it’s my health and physical appearance that’s taken the brunt of these years of punishment.

If I could change something today it would undoubtedly be the ability to be more physically able, but in the absence of a miracle, I’d love to just be happy with who I am, as I am. The person in the mirror shouldn’t be someone you have to dislike, but I find it hard to even look up, let alone appreciate what I see. I know I could be healthier, but talking about it openly rather than pretending I’m happy might be better for everyone, including my daughter.

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, so I have decided well in advance of the 31st December that 2024 will be a year that I, once again, take back ownership of the body I’m housed in. Whether it continues to change for the better, the worse, or just stays as this lumpy bumpy, life giving, artistically driven bag of bones, I will find a way to start accepting both who and what I am, and expecting the world outside to do the same.

I hope more than anything that 2024 will be the year I venture outside again. It will be the first time since 2021. One of my biggest fears is judgement from others over my appearance. My size, my make up, my mobility aids, my stammer, my shaking, all of it is highly judgeable, and I want to be confident enough in myself to ignore and discard any criticism rather than allow it to create more fear and send me straight back home.

So yes, I’m overweight, and no, I’m not proud of it. Yes, I vow to try harder to change, no, I won’t do it dangerously. Most importantly yes, I blame myself for the problems we had getting a kid, yes, I will try and understand why and find some internal forgiveness along the way.

Thanks for reading 💜