Weight change & associated health problems

But as soon as I was diagnosed with the diabetes it became planned. It became, ‘you need to do something’ because I want to be around. I don’t want to be one of these people, I hope when I go they’ll be nailing down the coffin because they won’t want to let me out. It’s that sort of thing, it’s wanting to be and have a full life and I don’t, and I think that was one of the things that, that struck me as well. ‘Was I going to have a full life? Was I going to be passing away?’ My mother had a heart condition, passed away at 61.

Now it’s not inherited, thank heavens. But I’m thinking to myself at that time, ‘Do I want to be like her, passing away early? No.’ So that was another, another thing.

Wake up call is what they call it, I think really.

Okay. So, you were somehow forced to do it?

Yes, yes, I mean with the, it was as, I say a wake-up call. It was this business of you can’t mess about with it. You can’t say, “I’m going onto diet and I’ll lose a few pounds and then just leave it.” You have got to take this seriously and you’ve got to, you know, it’s your health. It’s, it’s not just getting into the next dress size down, looking better and feeling, you know, good about yourself. It’s about feeling good about yourself but feeling good inside with your health as well, not just that. So, it was, it, it was the trigger that made me, like, ‘you can’t mess around with this now.’

You need to do something if you want to be around.

When I had the surgery for the hernias, the doctor then, I think because it was a very expensive operation and they really had to make sure you were totally committed to it, they, he said to me, “You need to lose four stone.” And that was about three years ago, and I joined Slimming World and did it, did, lost four stone and I’ve lost, I’ve made, and I think when you’ve got an impetus and a real goal of, you’ve got to do it otherwise, you know, this surgery wasn’t going to happen, I found I really could do it, you know. Really stuck to the diet.

So, and what are your reasons now for wanting to lose weight, and maintaining weight?

Well, I think as much as anything, I'm going to have to have a new wardrobe if I continue at this rate [laughs]; it's going to be very expensive. But in other terms, I'm assuming that I will feel better again if I go... if I lose weight, but I don’t know. As I say, I go back and say I haven’t seen any evidence which says if I lose ten kilos, that'll be the effect; none of that evidence has ever been shown to me, if it exists.

What would help you to become sort of fully committed to losing and maintaining weight now?

I suspect if I had to have new medication to guard against vastly increased problems with diabetes and heart, then it would convince me I'd have to do something. But as it is it's been stable for so long that there's no incentive to do something from a medical point of view. From a social point of view, I don’t have any problem being the weight I am, it's just in family pressures to some extent. You know, they say, 'Well, oh you're looking a bit fatter than you should be,' you know.

I had a heart attack at fifty-five whilst I was working. Both my parents had heart conditions, and both died from heart-related issues. We have a family history of heart issues and I’ve yet to reach past seventy. No-one in our family actually gets past seventy, okay. So, at sixty-six, I am more than conscious that I need to do everything that I can which includes weight issues to keep myself as healthy as possible. In fact, my doctor and I have got a pact that he will get, try and get me to eighty at least, so we’re on a mission.

So I’ve accepted that this is my shape, that I need to lose the fat, so that it doesn’t accumulate around my heart and clog up the cholesterol in my, in my, in my blood and cause another blockage. I don’t want to have to go in for another stent. That, one’s enough [laughs]. I don’t like hospitals at the best of times.

Okay, so for you is your long term life project is to have a healthy weight…

Yes.

….. and to be healthy.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Okay.

Yes to give my heart and my cardiovascular system the best possible chance of getting old healthily. So that’s, my diet centres around my heart and, and the fat and things. Not so much the diabetes, although what I’m doing is good for reducing the chances of getting diabetes. But that’s an aside. It’s, my regime is aimed at keeping my heart and cardiovascular system healthy and also, I have osteoporosis in my thighs, so calcium take on and exercise and it’s centred around that and to some extent, the brain, you know, I am my brain. I’ve always been a brain type person and disciplined brain person so, I have to eat and try and keep that healthy. So, I’ll eat my salmon and my oily fish. I have two lots of fish a week and build that into my calories.

I can see myself, if I put on the weight that I’ve lost, ending up in a wheelchair not being able to walk and that scares me more than wanting to eat does [laughs].

Okay, that’s a big motivation.

That’s a huge motivation for me. My health isn’t brilliant, but it could be a lot worse and I know if I put on weight then I guess my biggest fear would be, ‘Would I be able to lose it again?’ and it’s taken a year and a half for me for lost what I’ve done. I think that would be insurmountable if I put on all the weight that I’d lost, you know specifically for me and the health problems that I have.

You cannot afford to put weight on.

Can’t afford it, no. I mean, yeah, I can put on a couple of pounds and that’s manageable, if you’re really good you can lose that. I would even say up to half a stone but over that you’re on the, you’re on the right slippery slope.
 

If you if you have to give me one reason why you want to lose weight, what would that be?
 
Energy. I want to be able to do things again. I know I can’t do very, as much because of the MS but at least if I had some more energy to be able to, not to get, it’s not so, it’s not out of breath.
It’s the fact that I oh such, such absolutely overwhelming fatigue, absolutely shatterness and so, if I didn’t have so much to carry around, that would still be there with the MS, the fatigue, but at least I wouldn’t have this to carry around as well. It’s it would help with that I think.
 
Okay. So that’s your main reason.
 
That’s my main reason. I mean there’s loads of reasons like feeling better about myself and my health, obviously, but that the, to have a bit more energy would be fantastic for me. It’s yeah.

But just remember you’ve, you know, you’re on a path and it might not be a path you choose but you’re on one anyway and for the sake of your family, your friends, you know, you want to be here to see lots of things. I want to see my kids give me a grandchild, as an example. That’s an example or see them get married. You know, I’d like to be around for those things and if they’re saying for me to be able to attain a life so that I can see those things, why would I not want to do it?

Okay, that’s your main reason for…?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I’ve got to be here. I’ve got to.
 

Why do you want to lose weight? What are your main reasons?

Ah, main reasons, I announced a couple of years ago and it’s, and it’s no less true right now than it was then. I just don’t want to be fat anymore. I just don’t want to be. It’s hard work in hopefully ways in which I’ve managed to illustrate, to talk about. It’s that, it’s incredibly hard work. It’s hard work going to buy a pair of shoes. It’s world shopping in terms of getting anything to fit you. Certainly, the way I was last year and the way that I’ve been at different times of my life. It’s very demoralising having to look at yourself and take into yourself what the situation is and constantly live with it. It is, it’s like good old Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the hill and never getting shot of it to the other side. Always having to push, that’s what it feels like. Always having to push the same huge boulder up the same hill. That’s what it’s, that’s what it’s felt like. Here we go again and just a feeling that I have that I just couldn’t bear to do it all again.
 

But when I look back and think, I was doing a lot of the dieting and this, that and the other, trying to better myself for you. Not for me, you know, but then I started liking somebody else but I, I felt I was doing the same for him as well. Trying to be thin for him so he would like me and he’d already told me that actually I’ll only just be friends with you. But I thought, ‘Maybe I can win him over. Maybe I can win him over.’ It was just silly little things and I’ve had that throughout my life, of this winning over. ‘If I’m thin, I can win them over,’ you know and it’s mainly down, it’s not if I’m the best writer in the world or if I’m, you know, the happiest person in the world, I’ll win them over. It’s if I’m thin, I’ll win them over.
 
And what are the reasons for wanting to lose now?
 
To fit into my, at this stage in my life, I’d say to fit into my clothes that I’ve got. I’ve got, you know, I love buying nice clothes and I’ve got some 12, size 12 and 14s that are absolutely lovely and I want to wear those that I’ve never worn. They are my main reason. It’s not to sashay past people to say, ‘Look at me,’ or to attract anybody, I would say it’s mainly to fit into nice clothes.

And it's so depressing; it really is depressing. I mean, you know, for me it's more about my health. I struggle with my joints. I've got arthritis in my ankles and my feet. I've got fibromyalgia as well, which I don’t let it affect me; I don’t let it stop me doing anything, but it does make life a little bit difficult. And I know very well if I could lose four or five stone I could help my joints, fibromyalgia would be helped, you know the stress incontinence would be helped; everything would be so much better. My mental health would be better as well because, you know.
 
At the beginning you mentioned that your main reason for wanting to lose weight is for health reasons?
 
It is, yeh.
 
Would you like to add something else?
 
Oh, it's vanity as well. It's vanity, I'm sorry. But it's so vanity as well [laughs]. Yeah, I'd love to say...you know I'd love to say, "Oh yeh, you know, it's for my health." It's because I'm vain as well. I don’t want to be the fat one; I don’t want to...I don’t want to not go to things and do things and not be able to wear things. You know, the question, does my bum look big in this is completely irrelevant – of course it looks big in this. One day I would like it not to look big; I would like to just wear what everybody else wears. I'd like to shop where everyone else shops. Yeh, health wise it would improve my life a lot, but I'm vain as well; I'm vain.
 
We all are.
 
We all are. Anybody who says they're not is lying.

A number of reasons. I love clothes. You can’t get any nice clothes when you’re big and that’s, that’s a big part of it for me. The other part is to stop the diabetes if I can halt it, not let it progress. I’ll never lose it but if I could halt it. If I could come off the medication, that would be wonderful, and I think if I lost the weight, my blood pressure would come down as well, so it’s a sort of package thing. If you lose the weight at least other things, I might even sleep better, I don’t know, and that would be good. And it’s, it’s the sense of, I don’t know, when you’ve lost weight, it’s the most wonderful feeling in the world. If somebody says to me, “Oh you look good, you’ve lost weight.” It makes you feel so good about yourself and I don’t have issues with self-loathing or anything, I’m not, it’s just, I always think I’m fairly normal but I’m fat [laughs]. And I think if I can get away from the word, ‘fat,’ that would be nice.

I was determined. I was sort of sixty-seven, sixty-eight at that time and I thought, ‘If I don’t do anything about this, I won’t see seventy, and I’d got it into my head I wouldn’t see seventy, and we just found out, long story, he was, my son and his wife split up, she disappeared with the baby. We found him when he was seventeen or he found us and I just thought, ‘I want to see him grow older and get married and stuff,’ and it made me really take a good long look at myself.