My 'Food Story' - Part 3

To pick up where I left off, what went wrong was my ankle. Out on a long run, with about 8 miles under me belt and another 4 to go, without warning, I got a sudden very intense pain in my right ankle and had to stop. In fact, I was unable to put any weight on the ankle at all and literally had to hop on one leg to a phone box to call hubby and ask him to come and collect me (in the days before mobiles!). To cut a long story short, I'd damaged the ligament in my ankle quite badly – through general over-use - and had to rest it from running for at least six months.

During that six months I continued to swim several times a week but gave up the cycling – I was never that keen on it anyway. I also continued to consume the same amount of food I had when I was running 45 miles per week....... Very quickly the pounds piled on and by the time I was in a position to try out my rested ankle again I was a full stone-and-a-half heavier. Now, excessive weight and running and bad ankles do not mix.... There began a vicious circle in which I tried to keep up the running but had to keep stopping for periods of weeks at a time to rest my ankle; when I rested I put weight on; when I ran again I was heavier - which put more pressure on my ankle..... In the end I stopped running all together and the inevitable ballooning began. So, 10 stone 4 lbs at age 24 gradually became 16 stone at age 31. Almost a stone a year – it shocked me a little when I calculated this just now as I hadn't realised before that a huge chunk of my weight gain was just as concentrated in time as this.

What else happened during this period to have led to so much weight gain? I suppose I got into bad habits. I'd boast how I could go from being asleep one minute to being fully washed and dressed in my car ready to leave for work just 20 minutes later! The problem was, I was skipping breakfast. During a two year spell in local government, we were treated to a 'morning trolley' – a lady would bring a trolley round about 10.30am each day (just as I getting peckish from my lack of breakfast), laden with all sorts of chocolatey goodies. None of the thin people seemed to resist – so why should I? I also took up a distance learning course during this period which meant studying in the evenings when I got home from work. Hence, no time for activities, less time for healthy cooking and eating, and more excuse for snacking-while-you-work.

From the age of 30-33 my weight steadied at around 16 stone. I think this was around the time that I first started to get depressed about my weight. I remember being incredibly upset about an off-the-cuff remark from a colleague referring to my weight. My bosses also picked me up during an annual appraisal for my poor dress code – it wasn't that I didn't want, or didn't know how to dress better, just that my weight was severely limiting my choice. I recall the embarrassment of first having to use Evans as my clothes shop. Even now, as I walk through the doors of Evans, a voice in my head seems to cry “Everyone's looking at you and saying look how fat she is – she has to buy her clothes there...”.

I gained another two stones over the next six years while I studied part-time for a PhD at Leeds. Living in Liverpool, this meant a daily commute of 140 miles, every day for six years. Yes I know, mad. I look back over those years and I really don't know how I did it. I do know that many of my meals were takeaways, grabbed during the course of a journey to or from work. I know that cooking at home was always a hasty affair, relying on ready meals, pizzas and other such junk. I also know that during the day I often survived on bars of chocolate, pies, anything that could be grabbed and eaten quickly to fit in with my hectic lifestyle. I also know that in terms of exercise, I did very little, I spent nearly four hours a day in my car and the rest either sleeping or working.

Perhaps the end of my PhD studies in 2000 would signal a new start, a new me?