I never thought of myself as being fat, I lived life fast, happy and mostly to excess, but it was catching up with me.
Click here to follow the res of My Weight Loss Journey
The reality is that getting fatter is not a natural consequence of getting older, it is a consequence of your lifestyle and choices you make.
I’ve always been active and pretty competitive and the weight crept on over my lifetime. In my mid 20s I was about 13st 4lb, playing lots of football at a good standard and training twice a week. I kept playing until I was 40 and my weight had gradually crept up to about mid 14st, mostly attributable to post match beer.
When I finished I still did other sports but the big change was starting my own business at 42, I lost control of my own time. Two babies arrived in my mid 40s and by the time I got to 50 I was heading towards 16st.
In my 50’s, the business took off, parenting two little kids and keeping an eye on two older kids mean’t I had plenty to think about other than myself, so as my late 50’s approached so did 17st.
I also believed that the weight gain was the natural cycle of life kicking in, as all my pals seemed to be spreading in the same way so I didn’t think there was much wrong. As I did less my performance declined and it was easier to focus on work than running, it hurt less for starters.
Basically, I didn’t really have much of a problem with my appearance but in my 40s I started to suffer from a lot of joint injuries, which I put down to the legacy of football. Whenever I did any sport I would suffer afterwards.
I had various blasts at getting my weight down through exercises but they would often end in pain and frustration so generally my levels of activity were dropping.
I had a hip replacement at 50 and that gave me a new lease of life and I was able to get more active again, but ultimately the other joints were hurting and the pressure of work made it easier to do work that exercise. I put all the pain down to football injuries when I was younger.
The government uses a thing called the Body Mass Index (BMI) as a way of assessing your weight, they say a BMI of 25 is healthy. Even though my BMI of 35 or something looked bad, I generally didn’t see myself as being excessively overweight, and my family thought I was fine. I always felt there was a stone to lose, but I was always quite well built so could carry it off and being hyper active, I never lacked energy so all looked well.
Even now, I don’t think I’ve been under BMI 25 since my teens, so it doesn’t hold much cred in my view. That BMI number is rubbish, it takes no account of build or gender.
If you want to check yours, this is the link – Calculate your body mass index (BMI) – NHS – NHS
I’ll pick the story up about the change in the next blog, I don’t want you guys getting bored.
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