Having decided that I really did need to do something about my weight I finally bit the bullet and went and joined my local Slimming World class on 6th December 2001 - weighing in at 15 stone 2 lbs. I reached my target weight of 10 stone 10 in March 2003, but gained 8lbs in the following fortnight on holiday. I tried to lose the weight and get back to my target, but after several months without success I gave up and left the group.
Over the next few years I gradually gained the weight back, and more. I managed to lose a stone for my sister's wedding in 2007 but had regained it by the end of the year and by March 2009 I was over 2 stone heavier than my original starting weight. In this time I'd come to accept that weight loss was difficult, and that if it was not affecting my health it wasn't particularly worrying to be overweight.
In March 2009 I joined a new GP practice, and was given a complete health check. They discovered my blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol levels were all a little raised, and that there were signs that my liver was too fatty. Taken together with my BMI of nearly 39 and waist measurement I had all the signs of what is known as Metabolic Syndrome - and my GP put me on Metformin and a statin and advised me to lose weight. My official weight at this point was 110kg, although I recorded a peak of 112kg or around 17 stone 9 lbs.
So despite the fact I wasn't sure it was possible to lose the weight again, or to keep it off if I did, or that it was even the right thing to do for my health, I resolved to at least give it another try. I joined SW's online service, and lost 4 stone over the next year, at which point my blood tests showed I no longer needed any medication. I decided I would continue until I reached the "healthy" BMI range though, and joined Iona Harkness's class in Trumpington for extra support. 16 months later in July 2011 I was delighted to reach my target on her final session as our consultant - with a total official weight loss of 6 stone, or around 38 kg - and an unofficial loss of almost exactly 40kg. My BMI has gone from 38.8 to 24.8
Having maintained my target weight for a year with our new consultant Lindsey Eldridge I became pregnant in late June 2012. With the consent of my midwife I continued to following Slimming World's Food Optimising plan, with appropriate adjustments for pregnancy, and got my diamond target award during early pregnancy, and gained a healthy amount over the next 9 months. The week after Matthew was born in March 2013 my father-in-law kindly gave me a lift to my group where I had lost 1 stone 2.5lbs, and needed to lose just 1 stone to get back to my target range.
Over the next 6 months as I found it hard work adjusting to looking after a baby, with lots of breastfeeding and not enough sleep, I ate a lot of cake as a coping mechanism, and probably put on another few pounds, but made a concerted effort in the early autumn, and when I rejoined my Slimming World group in October 2013 I was exactly the same weight I had been in March. I found it relatively easy to shed most of the extra weight, and on Christmas Eve I was officially back in my target range.
Since January 2014 I have been struggling to stay within that target however, and have generally been gaining and losing the same 3 pounds and going in and out of target range. Currently in June 2014 I'm just a pound outside my target again. I'm hoping to turn that round and get back in control properly in the next few weeks, but we'll wait and see. I'm definitely a different shape than I was before pregnancy, though some of that may be due to breast feeding hormones helping my body to hang on to some extra fat.
I plan to update the graph below shortly
