Obesity remedies – When diet isn’t enough

I have always suffered with my weight. Ever since I was a teenager I have always been a big girl. I first started to notice it when I approached puberty and as I moved into adulthood the weight seemed to increase. A few months ago I took it upon myself to seek medical advice and to my surprise I was diagnosed as being obese.

When I heard this, my whole world broke down around me. There is sadly a lot of stigma surrounding obesity and a lot of misinformation around the condition.  The biggest misconception surrounding the disorder is that obesity can be cured by simply reducing your calorie intake and going on a strict diet.

Well it isn’t always this easy. For me especially, this just wasn’t the case. Just because I was diagnosed as being obese it didn’t mean that my weight loss program could be built exclusively around exercise and diet. There are just so many more important factors involved with weight gain and by simply labelling everyone who is obese as needing to just diet or exercise, can be extremely ignorant and hurtful.

 In my case, I never went to the heart of the issue as to why I overate. I was just told that I needed to eat a stricter diet, but it was never that easy. During the years where I was at my heaviest, I was incredibly unhappy. I had just come out of a long term relationship and I lost my job. I was incredibly stressed and as an emotional crutch, I turned to food to fill the hole in my life.

I have since been told by many medical professionals that this was a common problem among obese patients and that the emotional side of overeating can play a huge part in weight gain. It was only until I realised why I was overeating that I got to the centreof the problem. So, with the help and support of my close friends and family, I became emotionally stronger and learned to not associate certain foods with emotional hunger.

Whereas before I would keep to strict diets filled with nutritious ingredients and then gorge on takeaways and calorific foods the moment I became depressed, now I had learned to address these issues without reaching for an easy snack or dialling a takeaway.

Although I slowly began to lose the weight, I got to a stage where my body wouldn’t lose any more and it felt like I couldn’t do anything to shift the pounds. This really began to depress me and before long, I had turned back to my old eating habits.

I was raiding the fridge for late night snacks and eating chocolate between meals when I would suddenly feel depressed about my lack of progress. It was at around this time that I, with the support of my family went to my local GP and after they ran some blood tests diagnosed me as havingHypothyroidism. 

Basically, this means thatmy thyroid gland is unable to make enough thyroid hormone and the results of this are excessive weight gain. The early symptoms of this can also be depression and anxiety which I had always suffered with.

With this in mind I made the biggest decision of my life so far and had gastric band surgery. This meant that a small pouch would be fitted above my stomach and the brain would be tricked in to thinking that it was full quicker than normal.

In a nutshell, this meant that I could only have very small meal portions as my stomach just couldn’t take normal sized ones. I opted for cosmetic surgery as a last resort and one which I took time to think about and research before making a decision. At nearly twenty three stone and five feet tall, I was at serious risk of not reaching middle age.

Overall, I am extremely happy with my decision, but I am also angry at the way my weight gain was viewed by society and people around me. Obesity isn’t as simple as black and white and every case has its own individual story. It took me over a decade to realise that my weight gain was due to a thyroid problem I had and not due to a lack of exercise etc.

For many obese sufferersout there, the hardest battle isn’t overcoming the weight, but overcoming the prejudice associated with their condition. Did you like this? Have you experienced stigma around your weight gain? What’s your weight loss story?