I had quite a few emails this morning, following the post I put up yesterday talking about someone struggling with sobriety in the public eye. One or two of them have really got to me, because I could one hundred percent identify with everything they said…the theme in pretty much all of them was about people in the posse being so ashamed of their fat life, that they are living it as much as possible behind closed doors and the horror of having their vulnerabilities exposed in public is unthinkable.

So many of you have been on the same journey that I have…up the scale and back down again, many many times. I have some amazing memories of my ‘big reveal’ moments over the years, you know the kind where the months of hard work are totally worth it because folk who haven’t seen you in a while almost keel over at your transformation, and you feel like a million dollars in that moment?

Equally, I’ve carried around the horror when I’ve been on my way back up the scale of bumping into one of those folk who’d been full of compliments on my weight loss last time we met. I totally get it, the temptation to shut yourself away from the world at large because you’re ashamed and embarrassed of the way you look.

I remember last year having a meeting with a lady that I’d worked with years ago. I’d joined that business as a skinny girl, and although I’d started to put weight on before I left, I wasn’t fat. In the intervening years I’d gained maybe 140lbs, so when she came to talk to us about a job in the business where I work now. I died a little bit inside from shame when she walked in…she knew she was meeting me, but if she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have recognised me.

We’d kept loosely in touch over the years, but my life on social media changed radically once I started piling all the weight back on. When I joined Facebook I was a fully paid up string bean, and I would regularly post pictures of whatever I’d been up to, with me front and centre of it all. Outside of our BOTSG page, I don’t think I’ve posted a photo of myself on there for at least the last six years, and my friends will tell you I verge on hysteria if anyone tags me in a picture. So she had no idea that since we last met I’d eaten all the pies, and I was mortified.

That said, despite weighing in at well over three hundred pounds at my heaviest, I never got to the point where I withdrew from proper life. Sure, I was miserable, self conscious and living in fear of being outed as a here-we-are-again fatty, but I didn’t stop going about my life. My social life slowed right down, and I came to enjoy nights out less and less. Fancy a night out at the weekend Dee? Tell you what, why don’t you come here instead and I’ll cook something..? I can’t begin to tell you how many invitations I’ve turned down over the last few years.

It makes me feel really sad to think that there are people reading this who have stared at the same four walls all day because they feel too fat to go out. Who do their shopping on-line, or time their outings so they don’t see anyone who might know them. One of the ladies who emailed me said she drives to a town around ten miles away to do her grocery shopping because she’s put all her weight back on and more after a really amazing weight loss, and now she’s too embarrassed to let anyone see that she’s checked out of Skinny Town.

To those lovely people in the posse who prefer a quiet chat on the sidelines rather than through the thought threads, and who shared their stories with me yesterday, I’d say this. At the end of the day, what other people think is their business. It’s hard for me to say that without feeling like a proper hypocrite, because I know how aware you are of the space you’re taking up in this world, and how that affects the way you think. I’ve been there. My asshole voice has taken a sledgehammer to my self-confidence over the years too by saying all the same things that yours is telling you right now.

He’s wrong though.  It’s just taken me a while to figure that out 🙂

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