How I lost and gained 20 stone in 20 years
As I celebrate my 44th birthday, let's see how, over my adult life, I've lost and gained 280lbs in American or 127kg in modern...
20 stone in 20 years. When I put it like that, it sounds absolutely ridiculous right? But, after doing some not particularly exhaustive sums in my phone, I’ve worked out that 20 stone is roughly how much I’ve lost since I first actively dieted back in 2004 or thereabouts, in my early twenties. And I’ve gained a good chunk of it back too. And then lost it again. And gained it again. And lost it again. You get the idea.
Despite all this, my blood boils when people who’ve never been overweight say that “diets don’t work”, while they celebrate their own thinness, bemoan the “obesity crisis”, hate on fat people and urge them to just eat less and move more, like it’s that simple. If you’re thinking “wait, it IS that simple!” then I’m afraid you’re part of the problem.
Ultimately, I’ve learned to maintain a lower (still technically overweight but socially acceptable) body size by eating less and moving more. But, while I now enjoy eating healthy food 75% of the time and exercising all the fucking time, it’s also really, really hard — and if you’re actually overweight, eating less and moving more IS A DIET, at least to start with — and I don’t think half an hour even passes without me actively thinking about it.
I’d love to be able to say that all the reading and learning I’ve done has purged all traces of diet culture from my body, but my most recent brief but active weight loss attempt was only just over a year ago. And no, it wasn’t Ozempic — but more on that later.
There has been one big change, though, in that my reasons for wanting to be lighter have evolved over the years: in my early twenties, I was pushing a size 20 — mostly due to being in a long-term relationship with a man who basically only ate pie, chips and chocolate — and I wanted to lose a shit-ton of weight so that I could shop on the high street like all my friends and not stick out like a sore thumb at work. Shedding 13 stone of boyfriend was a good start to eating more healthily (I don’t even like pie that much but if you’re attached to a fussy eater, it’s you that has to adapt) but he is not included in the “20 stone” calculation.
Now? I’d mostly like to be a bit smaller because I’m painfully aware that, when I ran my fastest 5K a couple of years ago, I was a few kilos lighter than I am right now. I am doing all the other things you’re supposed to do to improve my pace, like intervals and strength training, but ultimately I know I just can’t drag this exact ass around any faster and it’s very frustrating, as well as unfashionable to admit that losing weight might be the key. Similarly, there are dresses in my wardrobe that are a little snug on the hips but that fit me perfectly a year or so ago, and I’d like to wear them. IS THAT SO WRONG? Is it “better” to sell them and buy them in a bigger size?
Probably. There’s a pre-problematic Naomi Wolf quote about this that’s been shared a lot recently:
“A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.”
In the past 20 years, I’ve been deeply obedient to multiple diets and often quietly, and indeed loudly, mad about all this stuff, and, while I’m significantly lighter now than I was when I first dragged myself to WeightWatchers all those years ago, there have been a lot of ups and downs, which I’ll chronicle below, with any illustrative photos I can find that haven’t been burned and/or untagged.
I’m keeping this post un-paywalled, because I think it’s important that as many people as possible understand what leads people to “yo-yo diet” (ESPECIALLY if you’ve never been overweight yourself), but if you value good writing and would like to chuck a few quid in my tip jar as a one-off without needing to subscribe, I’ve also started a Ko-Fi account which works with Apple Pay, PayPal and other handy things. The suggested amount is a fiver but you can donate whatever you can afford. Btw, did I mention it was my birthday this week?
WeightWatchers - 2004
I was 23 and worked at Heat magazine when I first went to WeightWatchers in some sort of musty community centre in Greenwich, close to where I lived with my fussy-eating boyfriend in Deptford. I vaguely remember that I was initially motivated to go because I was horrified by some Greek holiday photos. I would include the holiday photos here, but I threw them all away which is, well, probably a shame really? Lefkas was nice though, I think?
What happened? I kept going to the weigh-ins for a few months (but did not engage in the social aspect, mainly because everyone there was at least double my age) and lost 2.5 stone by meticulously writing down and analysing everything I ate (mostly Muller Lights) to calculate the points, which took me down to a more mainstream size 16-ish, when I promptly dumped my long-term boyfriend and bought some nicer clothes.
Did I exercise? I think I went half-heartedly swimming a couple of times?
Did I keep it off? Yes, pretty much.
LighterLife - 2008
Wait, you thought I said I kept the weight off? Why did I have to go on another diet, then? Well, I was still technically OBESE and I was still sick of feeling like I didn’t fit in with other girls my age (I was 27 by now). I decided to do something extreme and this was as extreme as it got, pre-jabs.
What happened? The LighterLife diet involved totally abandoning all real food (and alcohol — a huge thing for me at the time) and living on approx 500 calories a day of powdered shakes and soups, but you didn’t feel hungry because you were in “ketosis” which is a medical state and not a provincial nightclub. You had to get medical sign off to join and go to a weekly “group therapy” type meeting and weigh-in to get the goods. In the first week, there were about 12 of us, but by the end, only three of us were left, like a really uneventful reality show where people have left in disgrace because they succumbed to a Ryvita.
I weirdly found the whole “not eating at all” thing very easy — partly because I lived on my own and so I just made my flat completely absent of food (apart from cat food) which is, well, quite fucked up in hindsight. I was “allowed” black tea, though… but no milk. I don’t think a dash of skimmed milk would have kicked me out of ketosis but the idea was that abstaining completely (FROM FOOD? WHAT?! WHY DID THIS SOUND OK TO ME?) helped reset us.
I stuck rigidly to the rules, guzzled oceans of water, lost 5 and a half stone in 6 months, got a real buzz from losing huge of weight really quickly (and all the ensuing compliments), made friends with the other women, started a book club, started a blog, wrote about it all for Elle magazine, still went to nightclubs and gigs and festivals, even kissed a couple of boys and mostly bought enormous mounds of pencil skirts and high heels and little tops and flouncy dresses, racking up huge credit card debts.
My BMI was still an “overweight” 27 or 28 when I decided to stop, and I remember feeling pressured by the consultants to carry on for a bit longer even though I was a size 10-12 with a 28” waist. It felt like I would only be considered a LighterLife success story if I got to a BMI of under 25 which I know would look tiny on me and I didn’t particularly aspire to be tiny.
When I think back, it felt like being on drugs and is clearly not a sustainable way to live. I mean, seriously, what? How is this even allowed?
Did I exercise? A bit, but it wasn’t really encouraged, given that there were ABSOLUTELY NO CARBS IN MY BODY.
Did I keep it off? Quite a bit of it, for a while. In news that will shock nobody, when you start gradually reintroducing real food, you gain some weight quite quickly. I vividly remember that the week I gained the most was when I was allowed fruit because I went wild for watermelon. The supposed reset actually meant I found it hard not to demonise food once it was allowed again. That said, I don’t regret doing the diet, and it definitely made me eat in a healthier, more balanced way, but perhaps that would have come with age anyway.
For the next few years, if I “overdid it” on the food and booze and gained a bit of weight, I would do a few weeks back on the shakes and soups to lose it again because, by this point, there were multiple alternatives you could buy online without needing medical sign-off.
By the time I had my son in 2015, aged 34, I hadn’t put on ALL the weight, but quite a bit of it. My pregnancy was considered high-risk due to my BMI, which made me feel extra-smug when I had an “easy birth”. When you are told your weight means you’re not allowed a water birth (because apparently nobody will be strong enough to get you out of the water if you start flailing around in your own poo) and you’re not allowed to use the midlife-led birth centre because you’re more likely to need interventions, that feels quite vindicating, sorry. I didn’t enjoy pregnancy (long, boring, annoying, vommy) but when I was giving birth, I felt truly body-confident in quite a primal way, and it’s stayed with me.
Slimming World (2017 and 2019)
I’m also one of those dicks who actually enjoyed the newborn period. I went to baby cinema every week (that’s where you watch grown-up films with a tiny baby on your chest) and mainlined Maltesers. I had a tight-knit NCT group and ate lots of cake while wittering endlessly about sleep. I hunkered down and binge-watched Pretty Little Liars while wolfing down Hob Nobs as my tiny 6lb baby guzzled milk from my boobs that were twice the size of his head.
So, perhaps it’s unsurprising that I actually put on more weight in the postnatal period than I had while I was pregnant (9 months of heartburn put me right off my food). So, around the time I was returning to office-based work and keen to stop wearing maternity leggings all the damned time, I joined Slimming World in Catford.
What happened? At Slimming World foods have a “syn” value (THEY ARE VERY KEEN FOR YOU TO KNOW THAT THIS CATEGORICALLY DOES NOT MEAN SIN EXCEPT IT CATEGORICALLY DOES). Problematic language aside, I would say that, of all the organised, money-grabbing diets I’ve indulged in, Slimming World felt the most responsible in that it was basically just about eating more healthily, and you were encouraged to exercise too, except they called it “body magic” to make it sound more fun. And, the people were nice. It’s just a shame about the whole “syn” thing.
If you have never been on one of these sorts of diets and think they are naff and unfashionable, you would be correct but you also have to understand that being told all your life that your body is, at best, unattractive and, at worst, medically problematic, is not a fun way to live, and so going to a group where other people, in this case of all ages, might relate, is helpful. Do these diets fail? Do people gain the weight back? Yes, often! But they also provide a lifeline and a sense of community. Many people in the group sessions told stories about being body-shamed at work and by family members and suffering social anxiety and a major lack of confidence due to their weight. This is why when you tell people “diets don’t work”, you have to understand it’s not just about the food. “Eating less and moving more” is even harder in isolation, without support. You could see how much people got out of going to group and chatting about it all; the weight loss sometimes felt secondary.
I can’t imagine I’ll do a diet like Slimming World again, but I wouldn’t begrudge other people doing it at all.
Did I exercise? Like, twice? I have a dim recollection of a boxercise class I quite liked but never went to again.
Did I keep it off? So, I lost about two and a half stone I think (I was “slimmer of the week” a few times and everything), felt good, but then got knocked-up again, had another “easy birth” despite my DEATH-DEFYING OBESITY, put the weight back on (again, mostly postnatally), went back again for a bit after mat leave, but somewhat half-heartedly, and lost a bit more, although I also remember dabbling with the shakes and soups again around this time. I know. I’m sorry.
Eating less and moving more (2020 and beyond)
Oh god, those fuckers were right. Eating less and moving more has resulted in my most sustained weight loss, but so many hard-to-pinpoint things had to be in place for this to be something I could maintain.
What happened? Regular readers will know I got into running in 2020, mostly out of desperation to get out of the house for my government-sanctioned exercise. I didn’t change my diet at all initially, especially as it was lockdown and I was getting through a lot of sad gin, but a few months in, when gyms opened again, I wanted to incorporate some strength-training too and ended up signing up with a PT (Javen, now a very successful online coach-of-coach-of-coaches, or something) which was, actually, pretty life-changing.
As well as getting me bang into lifting heavy shit, he turned me into one of those protein people. I logged everything on MyFitnessPal, took progress photos — yep, all the bad shit that the diet culture police hate; that I, in theory, hate — and lost around 20KG (just over 3 stone) over the course of a year: a much more sensible rate of shrinkage. Crucially, I wasn’t obsessive about it — there were holidays and nights out and takeaways, I LIVED (well, as much as one was permitted to do so during lockdown). And I stuck to my exercise routine religiously, even when Javen had me doing tricep dips on actual ice when the gyms were closed again at the start of 2021. A great thing about Javen was that he really liked food too and didn’t demonise it. In fact, we had team nights out with his other clients that revolved around chips and cocktails, not kale and Huel. You know, like normal people who mix things up with a bit of moderation here and a bit of fun there. How did it take me more than 40 years to get here?
It was all a bit weird really. I’m not sure how I would recreate these conditions again, or how someone else that isn’t me at that exact time and place and state of mind could.
Did I exercise? That’s kind of the whole point but we’re too far in for me to lose this self-imposed editorial structure.
Did I keep it off? Pretty much. When I got to a weight I felt I could maintain, even though it was still a fair bit out from actually being “normal” BMI-wise, I eased off on the food tracking and stopped paying Javen to tell me what to do, but kept up the exercise, by this point running long-distance, getting into parkrun and going to the gym a few times a week. There have been small fluctuations, though — which is what led me to Google a couple of years later…
A brief dabble with weight-loss drugs (2023)
At the end of 2023, not long before I started properly training for London Marathon 2024, I was getting frustrated with my running pace, which I put down to my weight. For the second half of 2022, I’d had an injury (plantar fasciitis) that meant I’d had to run less. I was still exercising at least 5 days a week but about 8KG (17lb) had crept back on and after doing a few sub-30 5Ks towards the end of 2021, I was back in the 35 minute range and it pissed me off. I wanted to be lighter for marathon training, but Ozempic sounded a bit drastic — it was just starting to get talked about a lot, but wasn’t as mainstream as it is now — so I researched other options and read about some weight loss pills called Mysimba. Nothing to do with the Lion King. Or maybe it is. IDK. How do they name drugs?
What happened? Mysimba works in a similar way to Ozempic, Mounjaro, Wegovy et al, in that it makes you less hungry, just not as drastically as the jabs. To buy it, through various online clinics, you have to upload a photo of your weight on the scales to prove that your BMI is over 30. In theory, you’re supposed to include some ID in the photo, but I missed this detail and was allowed it anyway. My BMI was (just) over 30 but if it wasn’t, I also could have held a kettlebell, child or animal to make me heavy enough to qualify, and nobody would have questioned it. And this is what frightens me the most about all these drugs — I’ve also heard of people just taking screenshots of other people’s weight to get them, and nobody is checking. For someone with an eating disorder, it’s a dream come true.
So, I bought some (I think it was about £100 for a month’s supply), and started taking them. They worked pretty quickly. I had a few moments of feeling a bit dizzy and a bit, um, constipated (oh my god, how embarrassing to admit in writing that I have BOWEL MOVEMENTS) but nothing drastic. One knock-on effect is that they made me more productive workwise — since having kids I’ve become a midday lunch kind of gal, but while I was taking these I’d get to 2.30pm and suddenly remember I should probably eat some salmon or something.
After a few weeks, you’re supposed to increase the dose, but I felt a bit funny about it, didn’t want to spend the money on getting more and so instead just decided to stop taking them. I had lost about 5kg in under a month, getting me back to my “happy-ish weight”. And I just didn’t like how they made me feel: not physically, but mentally: it all felt a bit sneaky and weird.
Did I exercise? YES I DO LOADS OF EXERCISE, THIS IS WELL-ESTABLISHED BY NOW.
Did I keep it off? Yes. But this was the point that I started upping the distance, marathon-training wise, and after another month — even with Christmas in the middle — I’d lost about the same again without chemical help.
And since then I haven’t been on any diets.
What I understood from my heady three week dalliance with weight loss drugs is the thing that everyone talks about: the lack of food noise. I didn’t even realise I was experiencing the food noise until it wasn’t there anymore and was replaced by more productive things.
I’m the sort of person who can’t keep chocolate in the house because I have no will power to stop me from eating it. I have been known to shamelessly steal my children’s Easter eggs. Total restriction feels easier than moderation. This is why I found LighterLife a breeze all those years before and it’s the same reason I always nail Dry January but then fail to be as moderate as I would like for the rest of the year.
I can eat in quite a balanced way until I go somewhere with chocolate or biscuits, and then I can’t control myself. If I’m in a social or work situation and there’s a plate of biscuits or something knocking around, I can be having a stimulating conversation but my heart is racing and my brain is going “CHOCOLATE CHOCOLATE CHOCOLATE” and questioning “when can I reach for it without looking rude/weird/greedy?”. If anyone gifts me anything chocolatey, I am grateful and delighted for a few minutes until the dread descends due to the chokehold I know it will have over me until I’ve eaten it.
I have friends who will say they get like this with certain foods too - sometimes chocolate, sometimes cheese, or crisps. If they are friends who have always been slim, I am never sure I believe them. If they can feel like this while maintaining a slim body (and often not even exercising), what is it that I am doing wrong?
But this is the whole rhythm of dieting — the restricting of the thing creates an excessive urge to eat the thing, this time with a side order of self-loathing. I eat savoury foods in a normal way; choosing which savoury foods to eat feels more like “what do I fancy today?” and less like a desperate craving, and I know when I’ve eaten enough (I have even been known to share my chips). I can take or leave sugary sweets too, but when it comes to anything chocolatey or biscuity, I can’t control the urge. Why am I like this? I don’t know, but I have vivid childhood memories of compulsively eating bowl after bowl of Marks and Spencer Triple Chocolate Crunch cereal (chocolate and oats are the ultimate dream combo for me) and binging biscuits after miserable days at school (I wasn’t bullied or anything, but I didn’t really enjoy school and hated where I lived). I would feel sick and there was often secrecy involved in this, too. And I still occasionally eat chocolate secretly now, at the ripe old age of 44 years and 3 days, sometimes until I feel sick.
I’d love to get to a place where I can keep a packet of biscuits in the house and just occasionally take one to dip into my tea but I have a feeling that weight loss drugs would be more of a Band Aid and less of a permanent fix. And yet, the main thing holding me back from trying out weight loss jabs right now? The cost, and the shame (especially after writing this) and not the potential side effects or the fact that I would probably regain some of the weight.
People who criticise those of us who struggle with our weight say that we are weak and lazy, even though most of us have poured huge amounts of energy and effort into dieting, over many years, to be more acceptable and palatable to people who can’t relate. Fatness is seen as a character flaw. I have never been bigger than a size 20, and have been considerably smaller than that for most of the past 20 years, and yet still have felt mocked, disrespected, judged and even dehumanised for my weight (“keep it up, fatty!”), so I can only imagine how it must feel to be bigger than this.
I also know that if you’re actually overweight, to whatever degree, it’s very hard seeing other people lose weight rapidly now thanks to the jabs, if it’s not something you want to do yourself and especially if they’re not even visibly overweight in the first place. Alex Light did a great Instagram post about this the other day, summing up the question many of us are now asking ourselves: “Will I be the only bigger person left?”
Like so many other women, I consume media that fights against diet culture and I accept my midsize body as it is now but I would still always rather be a bit smaller. It’s just easier. I am strong, confident, reasonably successful and, with many things in my life, disciplined. But I have never had a BMI below 27, and even that was only for about a week.
One good thing that’s come out of all this GLP-1 discourse is that people are starting, increasingly, to understand that being overweight is often a long-term situation: I recently wrote a piece for The Independent about the evidence of “fat cell memory” and my favourite media-friendly GP Dr Zoe Watson said some brilliant stuff about this: “The crux of the issue is that obesity and being overweight are chronic diseases. And much like every other chronic disease we manage in general practice – asthma, diabetes, hypertension, for example – the treatment for that is lifelong.”
Acknowledging it like this is far more helpful than bemoaning people who “yo-yo diet” and telling them that diets don’t work. If you think my 20 years of dieting were a big fat waste of time, I’d have to disagree: I got positive things out of all of them, from friendship and community to some healthier habits that have stuck with me, even if some of the weight came back on each time too.
You’re shamed if you’re fat but don’t “do anything about it” and you’re shamed if you’re fat but “do something about it” when people don’t like how you look exercising or can’t understand why you would try extreme diets or scary weight loss drugs. And ultimately you’re shamed because habits you likely formed as a child, on top of whatever sort of body type you’re genetically prone to, are hard to change. Perhaps you comfort ate because you struggled with your mental health or didn’t like school, perhaps you grew up in challenging socio-economic circumstances, perhaps your PE teacher made you cry every week, perhaps nobody ever taught you how to cook.
In childhood, your weight isn’t seen as your fault. Then, you come of age, and suddenly it is, but you also have to learn how to live independently and get a job and manage your money and hold down relationships and adhere to eyebrow trends and everything else — but it’s OK because the diet industry is ready to nestle you to its bosom. Of course, even if your weight isn’t negatively impacting your health, you’re going to give it a go. That inner child just desperately wants to fit in — and perhaps that’s sad, but it’s not a syn.
Excellent piece: says it all. I’m going back to parkrun tomorrow after 5 months off (twisted ankle followed by bruised knee) and really Hope if I can build up running it will help. Don’t want to try Ozempic — I hate being constipated.
Thank you for this ❣️