I’ve referred to myself about these here parts as comfortably upholstered*. Doesn’t it just make the notion of overweight-ness sound ever so much more pleasant? Like an overstuffed armchair that you just love to curl up in with a book and a nice cup of tea.

However, as any clinically obese person (BMI>30) will tell you (maybe – it’s not something we really like to talk about honestly) being overweight IS an issue, and as fabulous as I know I am despite the extra kilos, my weight does have an effect on my world. It affects how other people see me. My weight affects my fitness and ability to climb stairs, my weight affects my knees, at least I figure that they’re a bit dodgy because of the load they have to carry. My weight, as has already been accounted here, affects my stomach and makes me sick.

My weight isn’t an accident. It’s the result of conscious choices. The choice to eat KFC instead of salad, the choice to stay in bed in the morning instead of getting out for a walk. It’s the result of the choice not to care about the consequences and it’s the result of the choice to tell lies to myself about the nutritional value of the foods I’d rather eat instead of reading the package and learning the truth.

When the accommodations one makes to deal with being fat (plus size shopping, talc for chafing etc. – hey, I never said it was pretty) got to be too depressing, frustrating, or unbearable I’d get out for a walk or pull out the weight watchers books and think about making an effort again, about joining up to WW or Jenny Craig, about signing up to the gym, but the fact is, food is good, food makes life feel better and frankly, chocolate does it better than most.

So, while it doesn’t take a monumental idea to make monumental change, something needed to happen to undo years of behaviour and a lifelong affair with food; something needed to flip that switch in my head.

It happened to me early this year and it was my littler sister who was responsible. She was talking about our Mum who has the same issues with food, who is shorter than me and probably weighs as much – our Mum who has the same denial issues, but whose brain injury makes it harder to get the same kinds of revelations, our Mum who causes us concern because her food issues may well lead her to diabetes and more trouble later on, whose weight and general health could kill her where the car accident 13 years ago did not.

I listened to my sister talking and I thought “If I don’t sort myself out, I’ll end up the same”.

So I joined a gym.

I heard this idea a while back that if you want to make lasting changes you do it incrementally, and that 5% change a day will have exponential results. So rather than jump on an exercise AND diet bandwagon I figured I’d do one thing at a time.

So I joined a gym.

I joined a gym and lost 4.5 kilos.

*In the interests of full disclosure I’ll confess here that I started this weight loss kick at 104.5kg and at 165cm tall that made my BMI 38.4 – today, I’m 99.6kg, still the same height *grin* and my BMI has come down to 36.5.)