If I take the weight off and I can maintain it for a while, but if I stop… no, if I relax my regime it’ll go straight back on; that’s the difficulty.

It’s the maintenance that’s the problem. So, I can commit to taking, you know, to eating less or eating differently, or whatever for a short period of time, and the weight will come down, but then what do I do? I don’t actually enjoy that what I’ve… the change of regime isn’t enjoyable, so what do you do for the rest of your life do you want to stay with, you know, an eating regime you don’t like? You can’t go out and have a meal just in case it puts, you know, half a kilo on or something like that, because that’s the sort of effect. If I go out and have a decent meal, it will go back on very quickly and I shall have to, you know, cut right down for two or three days to get it back down again. So, I don’t enjoy that, so it means that, after a while, like I say, I get bored with that and the weight will just go back up again.

OK

But I think I can probably keep it off for three or four months or so, but as I say, I’m very bored at the end of that.

OK. So, it’s… there’s no variety in sort of kind of the programme or…?

Well, you can try and put variety in, but if you’re having to do without the things you enjoy then there’s a tendency to say, ‘Well, I don’t want to carry on with this.

And you haven’t found things that… new things that you would enjoy?

No, no. I would say the result of the diabetes and the heart condition is that you’ve had to give up salt, fat, a lot of alcohol, smoking; all things that I enjoyed, at which points you say well… I’ve got to find other things and there aren’t that many things. I’m not a great fan of salads.

So, perhaps you’re a bit reticent to continue when it comes to food.

Well, it’s… the next set of changes have to be ones that are maintainable in a way which gives you, you know, a reason for continuing to live, because after a while you say, ‘Well, if I’ve given up so much, what’s the point?’ you know. So, you need something in your life which says, ‘ Oh I enjoy that, I’ll enjoy that,’ but I enjoy one of the… my real enjoyments in life is eating and drinking.

And when the doctors told you, you are overweight or your body mass index is too high did they suggest anything? Did they suggest you do something to lose weight or?

Yes I’ve been prescribed things in the past. I’ve been prescribed diet replacement, food replacement thing that you bought every week. And they’d come back and see if you’d gone into ketosis. That didn’t work, just made me very ill. So and then I had a drug that I think it was called Xenical that shifted the fat or something but that just made me smell so bad I couldn’t stand myself. It just, I could smell it in my skin and everything and it was horrible. What else did I have? Oh I had diet pills when I lived in the States. I was prescribed amphetamines to lose weight. Very effective in the short term but, you know, you just put it straight back on again as soon as you stop taking them. it’s like whoosh there it goes and more. I’ve been to Weight Watchers. I’ve been to Slimming World. Just about every diet going. The Cambridge Diet, The Atkins Diet, the Grapefruit Diet, The Cabbage Diet.

Why do you think? I suppose these diets in the short term made you lose some weight or no? Some of them have worked?

Yes some of them work. What all of them work actually in the short term.

Why do you think they didn’t work in the long term? What was missing or what was happening in your life?

I think because I approached it as a diet. And, you know, I’m going on a diet until I lose this much weight. Then I’m going to stop being on a diet and eat normally.

Have you used any diet pills?

I tried Xenical one time. I bought it off the Internet because a friend of mine, my doctor wouldn’t prescribe it for me, so I bought it. They said, she said, It was absolutely useless and it won’t help you at all. What you need to do is follow a proper diet, and she’d given me like an NHS one and I just remember breaking down in tears thinking, Nothing’s going to work. Nothing’s going to work. It’s so unfair, whatever. So that’s the only time I’ve tried diet pills.

So for you things like Weight Watchers programme didn’t work because you didn’t like this kind of public exposure, to be weighed in public and things like that?

Absolutely, absolutely [ha ha]. Yeah no the getting weighed in public. What’s that all about? I just

How long were you doing this programme?

Oh I’ve done Weight Watchers many times. I learnt, I actually learnt how to cheat at Weight Watchers as well. I, [laugh] I learnt pretty early on that if you, if you reach a target weight you don’t have to pay anymore. So on the first weigh in because I’ve joined Weight Watchers many times and, and left again. But on the first weigh in you just put a load of rocks in your pocket. And then the next week [chuckle] and then you soon learn, you soon reach your target weight and you don’t have to pay anymore. Because it’s expensive, you know, just to be weighed and to be humiliated or clapped even if you’ve lost 2 pounds, even that’s humiliating. it’s degrading. So yeah that didn’t work for me, Weight Watchers didn’t work. And also Slimming World that didn’t work for me either. couldn’t get my head around it how you just eat red one day or green the next day or something. So yeah just smaller portions and leave out the bad stuff like alcohol and

So, you maintain, sort of you lost weight and maintained weight for how long roughly?

After, when I did that slimming diet, not for very long. Not for very long at all. I think it gradually started going back up. I think, the key thing there was I’d got down to 8 stone 10 but my target was 8 stone 6 and I could not lose that four pounds, so they would not give me that, that certificate to say, Yes well done, you’ve lost the weight. So just from them I went back up, up, up, up.

Was the certificate very important to you?

Yes, at that time it was my target, yeah because that’s the first time I’d ever been to a, you know, a club like that and I, I needed to have that. It was like doing your degree and if you don’t come out with your [laughs] certificate what was the whole point.

Okay.

So, it was almost like, you know, I dropped out.

Were they kind of places where you have to go once a week and be measured?

Yes, you had to go to the group. You had to be named and shamed or, you know, praised for your, you know, and it was always, [claps hands] Oh yes, Angela’s lost three and a half pounds. Oo and there was always, Oh, you’ve gained some Frown, frowny, frowny face at you. But it was, it was almost like your confessional there.

In hindsight what do you think about it?

I went to a few more after, after that because I joined Slimming World after that and Weight Watchers didn’t do that confession thing, I’ve noticed that. I mean my most recent club that I’ve been to is Weight Watchers and they don’t do that. They don’t name and shame you which I thought was really good but the last time I did Slimming World was three (years), when I did the Horizon documentary, I went to Slimming World there. You do go round the class and name and shame and it’s just horrible but you kind of almost apologetic to everyone in the group, Sorr and the teacher, Sorry, sorry for no but you’re not kind of, Well actually I was hungry that day that’s why I overate or I went to a party that day This sort of thing happens in life.

Okay, do you think that kind of way of doing things – in hindsight, how do you see that now?

I think it’s, I think it’s a difficult one because, you know, you’re not beholden to yourself, you’re beholden to the group. You’re not actually doing it for yourself. You’re proving to others, look at me, I’ve lost this weight,’ and you, you start off going there for yourself and to lose weight for yourself, but I think it is, it gets competitive. It gets silly, you know, and you look at other people that are similar size to you and you think, How come they’ve done that? How come they’ve lost weight?’ and then people will talk about what they eat and I think, how can you possibly eat that, that’s so boring. How can you have a small piece of toast in the morning, you know, when a normal, you know, that’s not going to satisfy anybody. It just, like, you must be doing something else, there must be a secret.

Okay. So how did it make you feel when you were

Just like a failure. I’m never going to get this right. I’m never going to be able to do this thing, you know.

I mean, that slimming magazine one was actually quite brutal. What I did in 2003, I joined Slimming World, oh no I did Rosemary Conley, sorry I did Rosemary Conley, Rosemary Conley in between, oh my goodness. I remember what an awful experience that was. I’d gone up to 14 stone 10 and I thought, Right I’m going to join this Rosemary Conley because it includes exercise. So what I did on that first class where it was my first weigh-in, I stuffed myself beforehand, got weighed and then a week later I registered as losing ten pounds but of course I would lose ten pounds because I stuffed myself before.

But again, I remember on that first, that first weigh-in people coming up to me and saying, Well done, well done. I was like a hero. It was like I knew the secret to weight loss but, you know, it was just a trick of the scales. You can trick the scales that way, it’s easy to do and then I lost, I remember losing a stone in total and I remember one week, I didn’t go to the class because I had something on and a week later I carried on the diet as it was meant to be, I lost four pounds and the lady said, Well, I’m not going to make you slimmer of the week because you weren’t here last week and you didn’t do that with me. I thought, Well, actually it’s my weight loss, not yours. And she was a cow and I dropped out of her class because I thought, You’re such a cow. You’re not encouraging at all. And then I joined Slimming World, which again was a lot like the diet I’d done back in the 80s with the high protein because you could chose red days or green days. You could have all carbohydrates or all proteins and I notice when I eat all carbohydrates I don’t lose weight, in fact I gain it. So, I was doing this protein thing. Again, that worked, and I made some really good friends who to this day are still really good friends from there. But after losing two stone nothing seemed to happen, nothing moved and the novelty wore off.

The diet didn’t work. No, the diet didn’t work. I did stick to the diets. I stuck to them, but you do it for three months and you think, Oh for God’s sake, I’ll give you for an example. I went to Slimming World and the lady said to me, You have red days and green days, back in the days when I were doing that. Right, okay. Stick to it, she said, if you have the red day you’ve got to have everything you can have on the red day. She said, You can swap and change.

So, I went, and I got weighed and I went back the week after and I’d done the diet for the full week and I’d put four and a half pound on when I got on the scales and she said, You’re doing the diet wrong. You’re obviously doing something wrong. It’s impossible to put weight on. Right okay. Go home, she said, and right everything down.

So, I went home, stuck to the diet again. Wrote everything down. Took it back. Got back on the scales and I’d lost half a pound. So, she said to me, Let me look at the chart. So, I showed her the chart and she said, Well, I don’t know what that’s about, she said, because you’re doing everything right. Okay but I seem to be eating a lot on this diet, healthy diet but, you know. On your carbs day, your reds day, it’s just unbelievable and I thought, these are huge portions. You can eat what you want kind of thing from what I ate normally. All right, I’m eating healthy. So, at the end of three months sticking to this diet, I’d lost five pounds bearing in mind I’d put four and a half pound on when I first went. She said, It’s not working for you is it? I said, No, I said, I think it’s the medication. So, I came home and decided I’m not doing this, carried on for a week and you start eating normal because you’re not dieting and no self-control and three week after, I put two stone on.

Okay, so the weight was going up and up?

All the time, all the time.

Okay.

And that, I generally think that were just down to the insulin bearing in mind how much I were taking at the time.

Have you tried to find information about how to lose weight?

I know how to lose weight. Go and, eat healthily and exercise. There you go, that’s it. That’s how you lose weight. it’s as simple as that. This is not rocket science, it’s as simple as that. But my argument then is, Okay, yeah, I’ll go for a walk. Ten-minute walk we’re told by the NHS. Do that. It hurts. I’ve got me ankles and me toes and then I’ve got to carry this around [touches tummy ]and I’ve got this thing [touches heart area] banging away. it’s hard bloody work and then I’ve got to take all this bloody lot and then I’m going, I think I’m going bloody daft. Now all these things, you know, the straw that breaks the camel’s back, there’s a lot of straw on this old camel’s back.

So it is difficult?

It is, yeah, exactly, it is so difficult. It sounds so easy and you’re right. Go for a ten- minute walk. Just go for it, go for one now it’s not as simple as that with me or I perceive it as not as simple with me. Maybe I’ve got myself stuck in such a rut I can’t climb out.

And the other thing which, which is, is interesting and it’s and I found it, and I agree with it totally this, this pattern of, of extreme behaviour and extreme expectations with people who are, who are facing sort of routinely facing extreme weight loss, is this completely unrealistic expectation of what you’re going to achieve and the time in which you’re going to achieve it. And that certainly is a pattern with me in my own life. Far, far too high an expectation of the amount of weight I’m going to lose, and the amount of time I’m going to lose it in and a consistent and constant expectation of the rate at which it’s going to go.

And that isn’t how, how you work or how the body works really, and that really you could see with it class when that was being talked about all kinds of bells ringing.

In this weight management course?

Mm. Yes

Okay.

Yes.

So, it’s something that you have been become aware or kind of worried about.

Yes, this particular, yes this particular profile, yes much more recently actually particular profile of unrealistic expectations and far too much perfectionism and therefore the extreme frustration when things don’t go as you wish on, really on a day and daily basis. it’s, it’s this feeling of, you know, All right, I was good yesterday and I haven’t had this result that I was looking for. You know, who’s against me? Is the universe against me?’ [Laughs] it’s just, and that’s a completely obviously unrealistic expectation.

Okay. So it is more a long term kind of lifestyle?

Yes, yes. Oh very, very much so. Very much a marathon not a sprint, so and actually in a way that’s quite comforting to think about it in those terms because everything, we are sold everything on the basis of speed. Everything is Lose this in so and so a time and , you know, this will get you amazing results instantly and whatever the beauty product or the sort of weight loss product it’s, it’s going to deliver amazing results incredibly quickly. That simply is, is not the pattern of how things happen really. Not with extre-, not with a level of obesity. Not with a level of overweight. The point is that you can, you can lose your stone in a month and probably absolutely will if you’re very overweight, but nobody’s going to notice that’s the trouble [laughs].