An Introduction.

I suppose I should explain why I'm writing this.

I've been overweight pretty much my whole life.  Seriously, I checked with my mum at the weekend.  She reckoned I was definitely overweight by the time we went on holiday to France the summer before my little brother was born.  He'll be 30 in August.

I am a statistic.  I'm one of the people we're told to be concerned about.  One of the people that are going to cost the NHS a fortune and it's all self inflicted.  A GP once told me he had to tell me to lose weight, there was a government directive.  Bless New Labour.  I can't say that was the first time I was told to lose weight.  I remember first being taken to a dietician when I was 8.  To be honest, I remember my mum crashing her car on the way home, but that's the same as remembering going to the dietician, right?

I next went to see one at 15.  This was because the asthma specialist decided that it was because I was fat that I couldn't breathe.  It wasn't; they did a test where they made me run up and down stairs until I couldn't breathe and decided that no, I really did have asthma.  In fact, as well as some common allergies that a lot of asthmatics have they said I had exercise induced asthma.  That basically means I'm allergic to exercise.  If that's not a brilliant excuse for being fat I don't know what is.

I've lost significant amounts of weight over the last 15 years or so, only to eventually put it all back on again, plus more for good measure.  I'd like to claim there was some underlying medical condition responsible for making me fat, but it would be a lie.  Even though I'm asthmatic and have ME I know that these conditions didn't make me fat. 

What made me overweight was food.  I love food.  All food, not just food that's "bad" for you.  I like food so much that it made me overweight.  At my heaviest that was a whopping 11 stone overweight.  Even though I did have ME when I reached my heaviest I will never blame my weight on my illness, it's all about eating too much.  A bit of not moving about enough, but mainly eating too much.

So I've been overweight for 30 years.  Until I weighed myself at the weekend.  For the first time in as long as I can remember, I'm not overweight.  I'm healthy.  I'm "normal" - OK, I live in Britain, that's probably not normal is it?

Anyway, from weighing 11 stone too much less than 3 years ago, I'm now healthy.  It's been a long journey, but I've learned a lot of things along the way.  I figure they might be useful to others, so I'm going to write them down.  That's what I'm doing here. 

I've not learned anything earth-shattering, I've not found a magic bullet, but if what I've learned can help anyone else then it's worth it for more than just me being healthy.

I hope what I've learned has changed my life, it's probably too early to tell.