52

Food is something I have to think about a lot. As mum to a teenager with Prader-Willi Syndrome, I need to be aware of what she’s eating, what portion sizes she’s having, and how to limit the amount of frustration she feels about her restricted diet.

My daughter has no choice. We have no choice. There are valid, consequential, medical reasons for limiting her food intake and keeping her weight under control. More so than the usual arguments against and dangers of obesity. She needs to eat less than anyone else just to maintain a normal weight, and this is despite a broken little part of her genetic make-up meaning she never feels physically full up. We help her with that - we always have, and we always will.

Because of this, it’s a cause of mortal shame to me that I’ve been a porker. As I’ve got older, and lazier I’ve piled on the pounds. I slid, with considerable aid from the universal lubricant called alcohol, into Extremely Bad Habits. After cooking a Weight Watchers meal for us all and buying fruit, veg, and low sugar snacks, I’d load up on unneccessary carbs late at night, absent-mindedly grazing my way through cheese on toast, and knocking back the best part of a bottle of red just because, well, because it was Wednesday, and it hadn’t been a very good Wednesday, all right?

I had an epiphany this time last year. No, it’s not a new liqueur. It was a blinding moment of realisation. I was the fattest I’ve ever been. I weighed as much as a prop forward with a pie problem. I was desperately unhappy with my levels of bulk. I hid from photos. I hated going to buy clothes. I didn’t want to book a check-up with my GP because I thought there was a pretty high likelihood that he’d warn me I was a prime candidate for diabetes. When I laid down in bed at night, I felt tired, unhealthy, and unattractive. 

I’ve been all kinds of shapes and sizes over the years and my husband has never once criticised my size or suggested I change anything about myself. (I have a sneaking suspicion this could be because when I put weight on, a lot of it goes on my tits, but anyway, it’s one of his more endearing qualities). He still told me I was beautiful, but I didn’t feel it, and I had serious concerns about his failing eyesight. I thought long and hard about what to do. Not letting him make an appointment at Specsavers wasn’t a proper option.

I needed to lose weight, but I needed to find a good way to do it. Not the same bloody crash diets I’d yo-yoed on before, starting off keen, finishing lacklustre-ly, and ending up bigger than before.

So I hatched a plan. A slow plan. A simple plan. Eat smaller portions, drink less often, and move about more. I know, I know, I should patent this, quick. It’s genius, isn’t it?

I saved my boozing for ‘dos’. Birthdays, parties, ‘event’ gatherings. Netflix nights at home did not count.

I had hearty porridge breakfasts to set me up for the day. I cut right down on bread, loading up ryvitas with tasty toppings at lunchtime. I stopped ‘picking’ at rubbish stuff, reaching for fruit instead of chocolate as snacks. But I didn’t cut it all out and I didn’t count calories. I just paid more attention and no longer ate for the wrong reasons (boredom, stress, you know the score).

The moving bit was gradual. I began by walking. I stopped using the car to go down the shops. I started doing regular five mile yomps with my mate (this is not a sapphic euphemism, a ‘yomp’ is a fast walk, and she has way longer legs than me, so it was fast). 

I swam. I bought a waterproof MP3 player and loaded up on podcasts and audiobooks, and I swam and swam and swam. (I do five miles a week. In November, I did a swimathon for PWSA UK, and did 400 lengths in an afternoon, going all pruney-skinned in the process).

I started playing badminton with the old folk down at the leisure centre. Some of said old folk are former county players and make me run around. A lot.

I took up squash. At an early training session, the coach had us doing little sprints up and down the court. I finished last out of the four of us. It nearly killed me. Now it doesn’t. I won a handicap tournament cup. In squash terms, I’m still pretty rubbish, but I’m competitive as f**k, and I will not give up on a point.

I was lighter. I felt better. I decided to try running. The last time I did this to any extent, I was about 30, and I remembered it being hard. But I had the bit between my teeth, so I started slowly, with the Couch To 5k app on my phone. It beeps at you and tells you to walk for five minutes, then run for one. 60 seconds seemed like an effing age. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. Then, after doing only five of the nine weeks, where you gradually increase the running times week by week, I skipped ahead, switched it off, and ran the whole 5k. It was still hard, but I felt like a God. A red-faced, out of breath, wobbly-tummied God.

In September, I joined a ladies’ rugby team. Where I wasn’t the fastest, or the fittest, but by  ‘eck, I always gave it my best. And I coincidentally discovered that leaping about and scrabbling in the mud is really funny.

So as the year comes to an end, I can now run 5k in under 30 minutes, and I’m close to breaking the hour mark for a 10k. I’ve run a couple of ten milers and I’m signed up for a half marathon. I set myself a target of running 100 miles a month, which I’ve just done for the second month in a row.

But my body is not a temple. Or if it is, it’s one which sometimes hosts hedonistic pagan festivals. I’ve been to plenty of parties, and over the festive period in particular have scoffed and chugged my way lots of scram and booze, but I’ve also pulled on my trainers and gone for a morning constitutionals to keep my hand in, or feet in, or whatever.

And I’ve lost 52lbs. Three stone 10lb. Approximately 23% of my bodyweight. That is, in every unit of measurement, a lot. (Oh, and I suppose, if you have basic competence at maths, you can work out what I weighed. I’ll give you a minute to push your jaw back up from the floor). 

The man I’ve shared my life with for 27 years has done what he always has done - been there for me. When I say there, it’s not right there, running alongside me, but rather over there, being a sports widower, looking after the kids while I’ve been out jogging round by the wind turbines, or chucking an odd-shaped ball around a floodlit pitch. So although I didn’t do it with him, I couldn’t have done it without him. He’s been rewarded, of course, in my increased levels of er...fruitiness. Although he has lost out in the tits department. (They get smaller first, you know. I swear I lost half a stone off them before any other part of my body changed. Am I oversharing again? I am, aren’t I?). 

So, I was scrolling down through my Bookface timeline today - something a lot easier now that my boobs don’t get in the way anymore -  and something struck me. Well, something after my first thought, which was: ‘God, you’ve become of those annoying twats who post all their run times’, which I ignored. No, the thing that I realised for the first time was that now, sometimes I post photos of myself. Which I really didn’t do much of before. Because I used to cringe at my image. And now I don’t. I don’t want to curl up into an embarrassed ball when people tag me in a photo (well, not always, although the recent one of me having a lap dance from a half-naked man in an elf-costume did have me dusting off the cringeometer, but that’s another story). 

For so long, I hated seeing myself in a photo and being confronted by the massive, muntering size of this person I didn’t recognise. 

Now I see me again. 

Photo at the top of the page: The left-hand side image was taken in December last year. The image on the right was taken this month, after rugby training turned into a bit of a mudbath. By the way, I haven't got a broken nose, that's just the mud and the light!

Song is Lucy Dacus - I Don't Wanna Be Funny Anymore. Chosen because it's bloody great, and I couldn't find a song called ' I Don't Wanna Be Fat Anymore'

Subterfuge

This week is PWSA (UK) Awareness Week. The Prader-Willi Syndrome Association (UK) want to spread the word about the rare chromosome disorder. They want more people to know about the syndrome, in an effort to allow children and adults with PWS to be understood and accepted, and to make more people across the country aware of what the condition means for PWS people and their families. “Talk about PWS” is the strapline. 

Today the PWSA (UK) is talking about healthy living. Do parents have any tips about helping a PWS person eat healthily?

Well, in our case, it’s all to do with subterfuge.

Don't get me wrong, you have to be honest with a person with Prader-Willi. They have to know that they need to try their best to abide by some pretty strict rules when it comes to food, despite their constant hunger, or actually because of their constant hunger. My daughter knows she will become ill if she was allowed to eat whatever she wanted, because when it comes down to it, people with PWS want everything.

So whilst I am brutally honest with her about the whys and wherefores, I use a shitload of subterfuge when it comes to the hows. I employ deceit, tricks, manipulation, and all kinds of underhand shenanigans to help my daughter eat healthily. (Plus my magic handbag, containing emergency rations for those thankfully rare, but potentially explosive, times when circumstances mug you and suddenly find yourself not where you are supposed to be at an allotted mealtime). 

In summary, it pays to be sneaky mother.

Here are my Top Five Sneaky Tips for keeping a PWS person on the straight and narrow:

1) Don’t be like Alan Partridge at the Linton Travel Tavern’s All You Can Eat Buffet - downsize their plate

My daughter’s main meals are served up on a side plate. The portion is a good size and fills the small plate right to the edges. I’m convinced this makes her feel as if she is getting a bigger portion.* (*Note to self regarding bigger portions: perhaps I should get my husband to wear smaller underpants).

2) Strength in depth - have a substitute warming up

There have been occasions when my daughter has dropped a spoonful of rice onto the floor. There have also been occasions when my son has done a fusilli smash and grab raid from his sister's plate and nicked a single piece of pasta. My daughter calmly and methodically devours every last crumb of every meal. If she feels diddled out of just one flipping fusilli, then meltdown can ensue. Hold a spoonful back and have it ready on the bench, for when a replacement is needed quickly. 

3) Packaging is there to be tampered with

You know those little boxes of raisins? You can split the contents in half and stick one lot in an empty box. That way two ‘boxes’ of raisins have the same amount as one. Also, Easter egg packaging can be sliced open and the chocolate replaced with a plastic egg filled with no-sugar, low fat treats. (Bonus: the slicer gets to dispose of the chocolate egg in whatever way they see fit).

4) Embrace the word ‘instead’

If they can’t have a Magnum ice cream, they can have a mini-milk lolly instead. If they can’t have a Mars Bar, they can have a Jaffa cake instead. Yes, the important stuff is the healthy, low fat meals, but PWS people can still have treats - they just need to be planned and accounted for in your daily food routine, and you just need to learn what’s low calorie and low fat and can be given to your child instead. 

5) Maybe it’s not that bad if they don’t understand fractions very well

Especially if you’ve spent several years explaining that when you cut something in half, yes, there’s TWICE as much. 

I probably shouldn't have told you that last one. 

Video is Imelda May - Sneaky Freak

Marker

I’m a big girl.

When I say big, I mean chunky, and when I say chunky, I mean fat, and when I say fat, I mean international rugby prop forward levels of heft, which is not particularly acceptable for a woman who isn’t in the front row of anything, let alone the England First XV.

I have a daughter who has a genetic condition that means she never physically feels full up. We have to keep her on a carefully controlled low-fat diet in order for her to maintain a healthy weight.

The irony of me being fat is not lost on me.

I’ve never been skinny. My weight has gone up steadily over the years as my levels of exercise and intake of booze and late night cheese on toast has increased. I lost three stone a few years back when I took up running (or rather lolloping) and trained for a half-marathon. And last year I had a month or two of getting back into good habits, and shed a few blobs of blubber, but ran out of enthusiasm, got lazy again, and piled the weight back on.

There’s no excuse. I cook and eat healthy meals for the family (because my daughter’s Prader-Willi Syndrome has meant I’ve always had to). But working from home has increased my tendency to graze, I eat too many snacks late in the evening, my adoration for beer has become ever more unseemly, and I really have become a stranger to my trainers.

Now I’ve reached tipping point. The point where I’m in danger of tipping over in a faint when I read the dial on the scales and wonder: “Is that why they’re called bathroom scales? Because I seem to weigh the same as a bathroom?”

So I’m doing what I need to do. Eating less. Not drinking alcohol. Moving more. You’d probably recognise me if you bumped into me in the street: I’m the fat bird who has wet hair, goggle indents around her eyes, and an aroma of chlorine. Easy, boys, I'm taken.

It’s working. I’ve shifted a stone in five weeks. The weight loss will get slow and steady now, and after I’ve shed a bit more I’ll supplement my swimming with dry land-based activity - once I've established a rapprochement with my running shoes. 

I’m feeling fitter, happier. And don’t worry, I realise that someone else's fitness regime has very limited scope for entertaining blog entries. So I won't mention it again unless it produces an amusing anecdote, such as me being unable to find my sports bra and consequently giving myself two black eyes whilst out jogging. 

I just wanted to put down a marker. 

Video is Easy Star All-Stars - Fitter, Happier

Video is The Chemical Brothers - Galvanize

Cold

Sometimes I fail. Sometimes I don’t go the extra mile for my daughter. Sometimes I take the easy option. Like today.

Tonight, my daughter should be at her last Girl Guides meeting before Christmas. But she won’t be.

It's an outside meeting, involving a long walk in the cold to look at the Christmas Lights, and ending up with a pit stop for chip shop chips on the Market Square.

I started my usual stream of consciousness plan of action in my head: “Right, she’ll need her thermal gloves and socks on, but her hands and feet will still be cold, because of her poor circulation, which means she’ll feel more hungry and more tired, because the cold does that to her, also she obviously can’t have chips, so I should send her with a bag of Skips as an alternative because they’re reasonably low calorie, but what about the smell of the chips, that'll be torture, and then they said they’re also having a hot chocolate, well, where from, and will they be able to give her ‘light’ hot choc if I provide it, and where exactly will they be at 8pm, because she's so obsessive about her bedtime lately I've been picking her up from Guides half an hour early , but if they're out and about how easy will this be?”

And then I stopped.

I was tired. I should have organised this before. It would just be easier if she didn’t go.

This is why I looked at my daughter and I said: “Do you really want to go? And watch all the other girls eat chips? And get cold and exhausted?”  

Of course, when I put it like that, she said “No”.

I’m not very proud of those questions. They were too harsh, too leading, and too cold. They go against the grain. Against our usual ethos of sorting stuff out, working out wonky, roundabout solutions, and finding alternative ways for her to join in. 

It wasn't my finest hour.

Song is The Ruts - It Was Cold