A personal lockdown success story - in three parts (and 2,400 words).
Part 1 - The Clang
Clang! The noise when the penny finally dropped was so loud, that this time I heard it.
I heard it, but didn’t immediately listen to what it was telling me for a few days. My mind had often told me to lose weight for health reasons. I’ve known that for years and yet every day was another one in denial that anything would happen to me.
Then Sandra happened and I heard the ‘clang’.
Sandra is friend, seven years younger, who was slightly overweight and loves her holidays. She and her husband, James, were going to the Holy Land before Christmas. Therefore I was a little surprised to receive a text message from her on Dec 18th , “Hello, how are you? I had a great shock last week as I had a heart attack and ended up in hospital. I’m home now. ”
A few texts went backwards and forwards and on Sunday, December 29th I visited Sandra and heard the full story. A leg injury had kept Sandra from sleeping one night and she had sat in the lounge in pain. James was concerned, but she said although she had felt a little hot and cold, she was okay, just in pain with her leg. A little while later James rung 111, as he wasn’t happy with the situation. The paramedics came out and were wonderful. Taking an ECG, their words were, “I’m sorry to tell you, but you’re having a heart attack.”
Sandra was ‘blue lighted’ at 1.30 am, 50 miles to the major cardiac unit at Hull Royal Infirmary, where she had three stents inserted. If it hadn’t been for the leg pain keeping her awake, Sandra’s heart could have been further damaged or the heart attack could have been fatal. Why had it happened? Blood tests revealed a high blood sugar count and Diabetes 2. For how long Sandra had had both these life-threatening conditions no-one knows. Both conditions could be termed ‘silent killers’.
I came away from Sandra’s house asking myself questions. I was fit and healthy, but older, overweight and with a parental family history of heart disease in their seventies. The answers were to carry on as before, with the usual post Christmas and New Year eating and drinking.
On Saturday, January 4th I met a friend, Samantha, from Hampshire, visiting her daughter in Yorkshire, for a walk at my favourite ruined abbey, Rievaulx Abbey. A great cafe there too. We enjoyed an excellent winter walk with her dog, followed the coffee and before lunch. Samantha asked someone to take a photo to remember this rare occasion. I was shocked at how overweight I looked. At home, I stood on the scales. 13stone 8lbs. Oh no, not again. Going up and up and…this had to stop now.
Clang!
Part 2 - The History
Height: 5 ft 81/2 inches
Weight: Pre age 49. A steady average of 10st 8lbs.
Post age 49. No change in diet or lifestyle, up to 11stone 8lbs. I accepted it as the natural hormonal changes a woman experiences, when an extra 10lbs occurs to replace the lost oestrogen.
Gradually through my 50s, the weight crept up to 12stone, 13 stone and through a chaotic 2010 and irregular eating, up to 14 stone at Christmas. I was 61.
2011 and the start of the pre London12 Olympic build-up for the volunteer Games Makers. I wanted to wear a ‘large’ sized uniform, not ‘extra large’. With that one aim in mind, over the next year, reached 12st 2lbs using the tried and tested method of less food, more exercise. I wanted to get under 12st, but only made it to 12st 2lbs. I did only need a ‘large’ sized uniform and I’m not embarrassed by the photos.
Being a London12 Games Maker was the most incredible experience of my life, but after four weeks of irregular eating and drinking, the weight started up again and tomorrow was always going to be the day when I would start to be more disciplined again.
I am a comfort eater. Happy, sad, worried, angry and all things in between. I procrastinate too and snacking was a great way of filling time. I don’t settle to anything for any length of time, which is why Adrian was dumbfounded that I could write books. All of us have different eating patterns. My weird one was that while I can go without breakfast if I have to and have no desire to eat in the evenings, the hours
between 16.00 -18.00pm are a challenge. The cravings are powerful and it’s when I come closest to understand addictive behaviours and caving in to temptation. A friend and I have put this down to years of cooking children’s meals and finishing what they left on the plate. Being a therapist and analysing my own emotional connection to food, one incident always springs to mind. I used to have painful bouts of tonsillitis as a young child (removed when I was seven, as they were in the 1950s), and one day the family were in the garden, while I had to stay indoors. I went to the food cupboard and took a biscuit, a glorious lemon puff, from the tin. The fact that my mind returns to that incident overall for an emotional connection to comfort eating, is significant. It was secret eating too.
Losing weight has always been frustrating, despite the helpful tips:
Tip: Don’t add sugar to tea or coffee. I don’t drink tea and have drunk black coffee without sugar for 54 years.
Tip: Don’t drink fizzy drinks. I don’t, except for an occasional mini tonic water.
Tip: Fast for 10 -12 hours between meals. A 13 -14 hour gap is normal.
Tip: Give up cheese. I gave up dairy twenty years ago and eat very little cheese.
Tip: Drink less alcohol. I average 4 - 6 units a week due to a hiatus hernia and acid reflux. This is probably a useful deterrent.
I was given a FitBit watch in 2014 and enjoyed the discipline of doing the exercise and the daily food diary. Then I became a little obsessive about 10,000 steps, didn’t feel comfortable and eventually after two years, the strap broke yet again and this time I didn’t bother to replace it. I’ve always had targets like London12. More recently it has been my son’s wedding in 2017, my 70th birthday last year and the Bournemouth Soroptimist Conference last year, but never quite managed to stay disciplined enough to make it back under 13 stone.
Through 2015 - 2019 I gradually stayed around 13st 2lbs and then January 2020 saw 14st looming at me again over the horizon. Except this time, I was ten years older, the risk factors of ill health had increased too and I’d heard the clang.
With Sandra’s story at the forefront of my mind, I knew what to do. I visited John Lewis, assessed all the updated Fit Bit watches and bought one and a new pair of bathroom scales with the extra body measurements available too. I downloaded the Fit Bit App on my smartphone for the daily dairy. The other important tool for weight loss was the kitchen scales that could be put on zero when adding food.
I count calories, which is easy to do with the Fit Bit App. Around 1500 a day. I knew my limitations and know that it’s no good forbidding myself types of food, as I’ve never been good at being told what to do. I had a small square of 85% chocolate every day and would continue to do so. For my personal psychology it was important that I could eat anything I wanted to, but chose not to. I was in control.
…………………………………………………………………..
Part 3 - 233 days.
Week commencing January 13th 2020
13st 8lbs - Target 11st 8lbs.
BMI 28 - Target 24
Body Fat 32% - Target 28%
I was ready and telling no-one. I knew this was going to be difficult.
Adrian and I cook on alternate weeks. I could manage my weeks easily enough, but had to be careful with portion size in Adrian’s weeks. I wasn’t going to tell him what I was doing ( I have a history of springing surprises on him with things he doesn’t think I can do.) I was going out for Soroptimist meetings and events, but not too many. Though the bulk of visiting clubs, staying away, meetings, conferences etc was commencing in the middle of March and that might prove more challenging. At least driving everywhere prevents drinking too much.
Much against the usual advice I have weighed myself every morning. This can be both motivational and latterly frustrating. The new regime was fairly tedious, but sometime at the beginning of March I started to notice a difference. Using different hooks on my bra strap was the first indication that something was working.
Then lockdown happened. Disaster. Or rather, I thought it would be a disaster. What a great excuse to give up and settle down to eating and drinking and I nearly gave in. But by then I’d started to notice a physical difference and had also noticed that Covid-19 deaths seem to happen to more people who were overweight.
The real psychological battle started. Good cop, bad cop style. Every time bad cop tried to get me to give in, good cop was there waving Covid-19 in my face. I knew that if I was unfortunate enough to catch the virus, then I did not want to be another overweight statistic. Good cop also played Sandra’s hidden heart disease and Diabetes 2 to me. This time, for once, good cop shouted louder.
Over time I realised that the lockdown worked in my favour. The same routine every day with no tempting visits to cafes and restaurants. No Soroptimist dinners. No overnight B&B stays. No visitors. More control about what food was available to me every day. Plus the hour of daily walking and almost constant good weather. I had emergency ‘craving breakers’ for the two hours 16.00 - 18.00pm. A mini tonic water at 15 calories and no artificial sweetener or mini Jaffa cakes at 22 calories each or a small packet of sweet/salty popcorn at 63 calories. I would prefer to rely on a caramel coffee biscuit at 16 calories each, which satisfy the craving, but can’t always find them in the supermarket.
My sister, not knowing about my new regime, sent a beautiful chocolate lockdown present from a chocolatiers in her town. Even the box was made of chocolate. But I kept to my one or two pieces of chocolate a day. Then Easter followed. Again I kept to small amounts every day.
By then my clothes were fitting better or in the case of trousers, falling down. No way would I give in. I can climb stairs easily, whereas in January I was grabbing the banister rails to pull me up. And wow, the BMI had come into the healthy range. I could not go back. The news was now full of Covid -19 patients having diabetes 1 and 2, which frightened me.
But I started to plateau and when Adrian was about to have another cooking week, I had eventually made it to 12 stone and told him what I was doing. Surely he had noticed? Yes, but he has always had a rule to never mention a woman’s weight, as the response often wouldn’t be helpful.
Now I could slip into May and lose the last 7 lbs. It’s not been easy. I have lost weight by averaging 2000 calories output to 1500 calories input. No 500/800 fast days, which I would find too challenging. But losing the final few pounds has been frustratingly difficult and I’ve had to resort to minimal carbs and high protein.
For several weeks I’ve been thinking of 2lbs weight losses as a bag of sugar and imagining how heavy lifting shopping bags full of them would be. It can be a helpful image. Two weeks ago, I lifted a 12.75kg bag of bird food from the car. I realised that it was 28lbs, Nearly the weight I had lost. No wonder my heart, lungs and bones were feeling better for not lugging that weight around all the time. It shocked me. Hardly surprising that climbing stairs had been an effort.
Friday, May 22nd dawned and I got on the scales. 11st 8lbs. Felt totally euphoric. It’s over 15 years since I last saw that on the scales. I needed to express the euphoria and posted an ambiguous message on Facebook. Surely I can do it by next week? My birthday is Wednesday, May 27th,
perhaps I can make it the best ever birthday present to myself? That’s decided. I will post this blog on Thursday, May 28th.
I have had three previous occasions of the feeling of total euphoria on beating my personal odds. In 1985 I received a letter informing me I’d passed an OU Business Module. In1995 when I took my mother to California to make a last visit to her sister and had to drive in a foreign country and in an automatic car. The third was only a few years ago when I chose to go on a local Go Ape course in Daley Forest, so that my young teenage grandsons could go on it. Two occasions were about doing something I really didn’t want to, but was about other people. This time it was 100% for me only.
May 27th, 2020
Starting weight - 13st 8lbs Today’s weight - 11st 7lbs
Starting BMI - 28 Today’s BMI - 23
Starting resting heart rate - 68
Today’s resting heart rate - 62
Of course Adrian is as pleased as I am, but thinks I may go backwards. After all, isn’t that what has always happened? We’ll see. There’s certainly an addictive element to my relationship with food and you cannot give up food. But I have always been able to change what food I eat for health reasons. The damage that diabetes and heart disease do to the body frightens me and it’s that fear and the increasing risk due to age, that this time will make a difference.
I am publishing this blog the day after my 71st birthday. I can hear the clock ticking.
Life or overeating?
No contest.
CHOSE LIFE!
NB: Sandra has lost weight and her blood sugar is almost in the normal range.
@AlisonRRussell2020
