Weight change & associated health problems

Tell me about sort of support around you. I mean you live on your own?
 
I live on my own. My son it at university and he comes back every now and then but not, yeah, I’m on my own now so.
 
And what about friends and family around or…?
 
My, no family, my twin sister died suddenly and my mum and dad have both died and my other sister is in New Zealand, so no family nearby, well, no family here. I’ve got some good friends. A couple of my friends who have, probably my best friends, my closest friends have fallen out with me because they found, not fallen out, I think they find my health issues too difficult to cope with so they’ve completely backed off and that’s very weird.
 
So but I’ve got some, I have got some other good friends, yeah. But I’m quite a private person with, I’ll talk about my health but not about my weight. I find it too embarrassing. It’s yeah.
 
And with your good friends, you don’t like to touch the issue of weight gain?
 
No.
 
Okay
Which is strange. I can talk to them about the MS. I can talk to them about the epilepsy, anything that’s like that, that’s medical but I can’t talk to them about the weight. It’s too embarrassing somehow.

I’m interested to find out what your family has, kind of how have they reacted? Have they been supportive or are they amazed or?
 
Well that’s interesting My sister says, “You’re looking too thin. You’re looking peaky.” She’s very obese and so. I once said to her, “What can we do to help you lose weight?” She didn’t speak to me for two years. So it’s a very sensitive subject in our family. And my father is always, my mother is always trying to make my father lose weight and it’s a sort of a family joke. And he won’t do it. And my mother she again says, “Oh you are too thin, you’re too thin. You’re looking ill.” They don’t, they don’t like it. They don’t like it.

Have you, have you sort of kind of experience of losing weight sort of maybe influencing your sisters or asking, or are they asking you for kind of advice?
 
Yeah, my, my middle sister who’s, who’s really pretty overweight, she’s doing Slimming World now. So, she’s just lost two stone now. She’s probably still got about another four or five to go. But, so last week she didn’t lose and she was quite disheartened. But so, I text her all the time to find out how she’s getting on and I keep motivating her and we send each other pictures of the meals that we’re cooking to kind of support each other, and if I come across a good recipe that I’ve tried, I’ll send it to her and she does the same back.

Jim: Well this is Linda, my wonderful wife, and I must say that I’m incredibly lucky with the way this is all panned out for me. A lot of the things I’ve, I have I’m sort of only just in frame for anyway and I don’t think my weight is, is a great big issue. Literally it’s not and as I say I’m 83k today, so Linda’s been a great help and a very supportive wife. We’ve been married for 47 years and she instigated us taking a really positive interest in Slimming World, so you’re probably the best one to explain.

See, I just take this medical knowledge that I get from my wife who’s got such a good background in, wide experience in all this stuff. It’s wonderful for me to have a partner and I’m very conscious that I’m probably statistically one of the few that have got such a wonderful set up and I’m very, very, I mean I would do my best for her as well, but I don’t have the background and she does it all the time.

Linda: Mm.

Jim: So I’m very, very fortunate and I do realise that and I’m also very sensitive that a lot of people don’t have anybody to help with this which is, which is…

Linda: It’s natural instinct for me…

Jim: ...life.

Linda:…..and I used to do cholesterol testing and everything and I used to have to advise the patients, so I’ve got all that as well which is quite interesting and I say to him, “Your dark chocolate, it was, it was a couple of pieces a day, not the whole bar.”

Jim: Oh, I don’t have that. Not the whole bar [laughs]. That is extreme.

Linda: It does vanish from the cupboard [laughs].
 

I'm such a lucky girl – I've got a lovely life, I've got a fantastic husband, and I feel like I've let myself and him down you know. He loves me despite... I mean I was... what am I, fourteen and a half... sixteen and a half.. .I was two and a half stone lighter when we met. He still loves me. I keep telling him there's more of me to love now, but hey.
 
But he's six foot five and at some points in our life together in the last five years, there has been less than half a stone between us. I mean that’s just, you know, he's a big strapping bloke, and that is so depressing. And we had occasion to meet up with some of his family, and his ex-wife was there, a few weeks ago, and I cannot tell you how awful I felt. I felt like I'd let him down because I was fat. And I try so hard.
 
You said that you have a wonderful husband?
 
Yeh
 
Is this something that you can talk about?
 
Oh yeah, he knows, he knows.
 
He knows how you feel?
 
Oh god yeh, he's seen me come back from my slimming class and he'll go, "How did you get on?" and I'll just burst into tears, and the poor bloke he doesn’t know what to do with me [laughs]. What's he supposed to do? You know, he's not great with women that cry; no men are. If you want anything from a man, just cry. He's ... you know he's... he would do anything to help me, but he doesn’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do really. Because whatever I'm doing isn't working, so perhaps I don’t know what to do either you know. He would do anything.

Now I’ve finished work a bit late and it’s my partner who is actually cooking because he gets in before me, so I always tell him, you know, “Just be careful what you put in the food,” things like that and I say, sometimes I get like angry because I said, “You know I can’t eat that, why did you cook it?” you know what I mean…

Okay.

….but that’s a bit selfish, yeah.

Okay, okay so you have to tell him?

Yeah what I need to eat and if he says, sometimes he choose like, okay, “Yeah I’ll prepare something else for, for you,” or like, I would say, “the pasta,” then I would say, you know, “just cook the brown pasta.” “Oh, I’ve cooked it.” “Well then maybe freeze it and then next time I can have it or something like that.”

But he will cook for you, the brown one?

Yeah, yes, I will say to him, you know, “Could you please just cook that for me,”

Okay.

To make, yeah, to make changes or….

Hm-mm and so in which other ways he support you? I mean with your, because he knows that you want to eat differently to look after your health.

Yeah, I don’t, I don’t know, I’m the one who buy the food each week [laughs].

Okay.

And I probably will have, like, say, for example, today I said to him, I always tell him what to, what to cook, like some, yeah, he might choose unhealthy stuff. Yeah and I will say, “Okay that’s fine, you know, if you want.” Like, for example, yesterday he asked me to buy a baguette, but I know he wouldn’t even have a multigrain baguette and he would like white baguette, so I just got him that and I will eat mine. But yeah, I don’t know, I mean I’m not sure if he, I have to remind him all the time like, you know, “Don’t put too much oil,” and things like that. I think I have to tell him otherwise I don’t think he will just bothered or to know what I’m eating or not, yeah.

So, you have to kind of educate him?

Yeah, I educate him and say, “Look, I can’t have that, then, you know, don’t, don’t do it.” Or sometimes I just say, “You know what, just eat it yourself,” because I feel angry, you know what I mean. I feel like, ‘Okay, you know I can’t eat it then, then just leave it. I’ll eat something else.

Yeah.

Like, today I said to him I put some salmon into the, to defrost. So I said to him, “If you don’t mind cook some new potatoes and there’s broccoli,” and then I say, “whatever,” because I know whatever he wants to be cooking I can go home and make a bit of vegetable on my side because he probably, I don’t know, he loves potato but he probably wouldn’t even have the salmon or I don’t know what he wants to cook with it, yeah.

Okay so that’s the thing. I suppose a little bit more help would be useful?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think from him if he’s, if he’s cooking and saying, “Okay you know what I can have, what can I have?” Or any simple dinner. I said to him, “It’s important for us to eat healthier.” I keep reminding him that as well because I said to him, you know, “You eat butter, you would drink coke and things like that which is not good.”
 

And both my children were overweight when they were growing up as teenagers. My daughter was quite overweight. Never knew why because she was always, she always ate healthily, but as they’ve grown up they’ve both become quite keen on being slim and being healthy and eating healthy. They’ve sort of taught themselves.

My son especially is very much into all different ways of eating. Not so much a diet but understanding the effect of food in your body, so he’s, he becomes like my dietician. You don’t want to mix that with that sort of thing or have this. So that’s been quite, I think we’ve learnt a lot from here because, you know, there were times when they both got, can get quite chunky and now they sort of keep it all controlled, so that in a way is a good thing.

Probably having that support as a family round you is, is it makes it so much easier than perhaps trying to do it on your own or if you’re living with someone who says, “This is what I’m going to have, my pie and chips.” I don’t have that at all. I just have nothing but support. I think that makes it a lot easier.
 

Can you talk to friends and family about issues to do with weight?

Friends. Not, not so much family. I do to my sister a bit, but I think she thinks, ‘Oh Myra just eats too much.’ Because her attitude to food is so different to mine, but friends, yes, yes. My friend who’s lost three stone is ever so helpful and ever so supportive and she said to me recently, she said, “Look, Myra, don’t beat yourself up if you’ve put a few pounds on after having a hip done because, you know, it, a) the hip is probably heavier than the one they took out [laughs]…

Yeah.

…..but also you’ve been inactive and recovering.”

What about sort of support group? Do you have not a support group…
 
Yeah
 
…but sources of support?
 
Oh close girlfriends. Close girlfriends in fact another girl, a very dear girlfriend of mine has also lost a lot of weight recently but she’s been through a trauma, a marital trauma if you put it like that. So she and I are texting each other to say, “Look let’s go and buy some new pants and bras because we are too small now.” And so that’s been very supportive, very supportive. You know telling each other how good we look. And how we are having to buy new clothes and things.
 
Ok
 
Or dig out old ones, haven’t worn these for months for years. Yeah.

Do you have any messages for health professionals who want to help people with weight control?

I seriously think they should be, especially the health teams, I think they should be more supportive. There’s support out there if you’re drug abusers. There’s support out there if you’re alcoholics. There’s support out there if you’re smokers. The support for people that are fat is not there. I don’t care what anybody says, it’s kind of “You’re eating too much, go home and diet.” It’s, that’s no always the cause. We’re not all alike. Everybody’s different and I think they should take that on board, health care workers.

Okay. So, do you think there was a kind of judgement there?

I, oh, definitely. Definitely and something I’ve never thought, I’ve always been a confident lady and when I were big, I’ve always had loads of friends and, you know, I’ve always been the life and soul. Never bothered me. But somebody once said to me, “If you’re slimmer, people treat you differently,” and I said, “Rubbish.” It’s very true that.

You have found that out?

It’s absolutely. Especially on the health teams, yeah. Doctors like to sit and look me in the face now. I cannot tell you, people will look at you rather than look at you. They’ll look at me, they’ll look at me face and talk to me direct. When I were bigger, and I never thought that could ever possibly be true. So that came as a huge shock to me…..

That’s very interesting.

….and it’s true. You were just like a blob on the face of the earth, weren’t you? People now talk to me, talk to me, to me face.

So, do you think they were embarrassed or…?

I don’t know but I, I, but if you’d have asked me when I was as big as I were, would I think I were treated any different, I would say, “Truthfully, no because the group of friends I had, nobody ever looked at me like I were big.” I mean, these friends that have come in now, we’ve been friends since we were babies, they’ve never looked at me any different. Fat or thin, I’ve always just been Janet haven’t I? So, I never thought that strangers would ever treat me in a different way and yes, they do. Absolutely, one hundred per cent.

Can you talk to your friends and family about issues to do with weight management or diet or things like that?

Yeah, I’ve got, I’ve got, family are fine. At work, I’ve got three or four girls, we’re all on the Slimming World, which is quite handy because you have got that awful staff room that ends up with biscuits in it and whatever, and you do get people like, because one or two of us are doing it, you know somebody could walk in. So yeah, I’ve got work colleagues that you can, I’ve got, actually one friend that I do work with that is a teacher, she’s never dieted in her life and she said she’d never ever get on that bandwagon because she said, “I know, but I think I balance my week out,” she said, “because I would never get..” and I look at her and I think, ‘No, you don’t need to.’ She’s not ultra-skinny but she’s not overweight either. So she’s got the right balance in her week where she enjoys her food, but she doesn’t have to, and I sort of look at her thinking, ‘Wish I could be like that.’

When you started losing weight, was it gradual?

Yes, I had lost about three stones before anybody noticed. I: Okay. Because some of the guys in work went, “Have you lost weight?” and I was like that “Ay, I’ve lost a wee bit.’ And one of my other colleagues, “What do you mean, you’ve lost a wee bit. How much have you lost?” And I was like, “Nearly three stone.” And they’re like that, “Oh my God.” But what we used to do in work when I started losing weight was that we would, everybody would weigh themselves once a week and we all paid two pounds a week but rather than and, at Christ-, the week before Christmas you all got your money back [laughs]. So that went quite well, and it was just one girl who done it and it was only you that knew your weight and at the end of the time the used to ask, “So who’s lost the most weight this week?” “Oh, that’s a secret.” You know, so it was quite confidential, so that was quite good, that helped as well.