This is the first in a series of posts that will describe how I lost a lot of weight. These posts are indexed on the About Marchie page. First though, I need to set the scene; how did I get that weight in the first place?
Year 2 or 3 at Primary School
Up until around the age of seven, it appears that my weight was rather average. However, after this I started to balloon, so that by the time I was leaving primary school at the age of eleven, I was fat. It wasn’t really a problem for me at the time; I was the heaviest in my class and also one of the tallest, and in a childish way I saw that as a positive thing – yet another thing that I was the best at. My weight didn’t really stop me from doing anything that I wanted to do – I played football and cricket for the school teams and I wasn’t bullied about my weight or anything like that. Nobody saw my weight as a problem.
Wowzers! Me at 11 or 12
With the move to high school, circumstances changed somewhat. I was no longer the big fish in a little pond – I was now outside my comfort zone. Sports went out of the window very quickly – I didn’t have the confidence to try out for the sports teams, which in any case I probably wouldn’t have been good enough for. More dangerously for me, my particular high school presented grazing opportunities at every turn; multiple vending machines selling sugary carbonated drinks and a host of chocolates and crisps; a ‘butty bar’ selling anything from donuts to pizzas at breakfast, lunch and break times; a ‘tuck shop’ selling crisps and sweets at morning break; toast and other baked goods, moist with butter, for sale in the refectory. This doesn’t even include the sandwiches, coated in butter, accompanied by sugar-filled fruit juice and yoghurts/mousses that I would bring in from home for lunch each day. Combine this with both a lack of facilities and no compulsion to go outside during break times… well, before long, I wasn’t just very fat, I was obese.
The range of junk food on offer at school was mirrored by the selection available at home. A cupboard full of Coke and other carbonated drinks; another cupboard full of sweets and crisps; two- or three-course dinners every night of the week (normally involving some form of fried potato).
Of course, there is one common denominator in all of this – me. Ultimately, it was me who was putting the food in my mouth. Looking back now, I had a big problem with that. For example, I can remember on more than one occasion going past Millie’s Cookies on the way home from school and getting a box of twenty and eating the lot on the bus home… and then eating dinner about an hour later. I also flat out refused to eat vegetables – it was chips or nothing for me. So I got chips.
Having said this, by the time I was due to leave school, I had gotten better. I’d started playing football every lunchtime and I’d cut out a lot of the bad food while I was at school, so I lost a bit of weight. By the end of sixth form, I was probably tipping the scales at 75kg (11st 11lb), down from a peak of probably 85kg (13st 5lb). My phrase of choice at the time was “I weigh the same now as when I was fourteen!”.