How to shrink yourself…

This is my journey back from the point of no return

I weighed myself this morning. It’s something I seem to have done a lot less lately.

Every weigh-in is like a trip to Guinness World Records. It’s always a new high for me and, at the same time, a new low. This morning I was 19 stones 7¾ lbs. I have, at this weight, suffered ever-increasing amounts of health problems, as well as a general feeling of discomfort. When I awoke today I did so with an unrelenting feeling of pressure around my diaphragm and rib cage. I have been putting up with a great deal of pain for a long time – so much so that it has become ‘normal’. You know, it feels weird actually writing that. This discomfort was as well as my usual constant pain.

It was making it difficult to move, difficult to breathe. It didn’t let up as the day went on. I initially wondered if it was down to trapped wind or perhaps brought on by the day-to-day constipation caused by my pain medication (sorry for being so graphic, but this ain’t a pretty story). As the morning went on, the usual things that would alleviate both of these things happened in their natural course, but did nothing for the pressure.

I know in my (almost certainly) enlarged heart that it was down to one thing – fat.

It would be easy to look at this situation and say: “Just get off of your fat, lazy ass and do some exercise!” And normally you’d be right. Here’s why it’s not as easy as all that…

What landed me in this mess in the first place

After university I found getting the kind of work I’d trained for extremely hard to do. Sure, there is journalism work out there, but with every man and woman and their dogs offering their written work for free, getting a job in the industry either pays peanuts or the work is expected to be handed over for free for the chance to get your work in print.

Anyway, cutting a long and boring story short, I ended up doing what a lot of people in my position do – I took up a temporary admin job. The issue was that I was working Monday to Friday from 7 am to 5 pm and 7 am to 12 noon on every other Saturday. The hours themselves are totally doable – many people work far worse shift patterns and don’t end up the size I have. What caused the start of my expansion was this: I was far too knackered after getting up at 5 am every day to have the energy to go to the gym or play sports after work. On the weekends I just wanted to do nothing; to relax utterly so that I was ready for the following week. The office was very small and more like a corridor than an office with all of the desks down the one wall that had windows. On the other wall were a series of doors, which had various things in them like files and the toilet, but the one door that was my downfall was the kitchen.

It was too small to have the large fridge/freezer in it – that stood just outside the door, in the office. At lunchtime, we rarely left our desks and I often worked straight through. So, basically, I was seated for a minimum of 10 hours a day at work and then, exhausted, recumbent in front of the t.v. of an evening.

Let’s take February 2013 as the point of origin for all of this. I wasn’t exactly what you’d call skinny to start with! I have, since about aged 15, had a rugby player’s build. Once I was old enough to drink, my body only fleetingly came close to have any muscular definition. I know that I did wear 30″ jeans years ago, but I couldn’t tell you when I moved up to 32″ and then through the sizes to the gargantuan ones I wear now.

In case your wondering, being 6′ 1″ tall (I used to be 6′ 2″ – I assume the weight is making me shorter) and weighing 19 st 7¾ lbs means that you’re fairly likely to have a 42″ waist. It may be bigger. Those are the sizes I squeeze into. I recently bought some new ones and they already feel like they don’t fit very well.

That particular desk job was followed by two more and it was in May 2014 that I decided that I really ought to do something about my ever growing waistline. I’d been a soldier before (twice!) so it really shouldn’t be all that hard to whip myself back into some sort of shape, right? Wrong. Dead wrong. It turns out that all that extra weight doesn’t go well with running (well… jogging, really) three 10km routes in the space of one week.

I had to push myself through the pain I was feeling in my lower back. At the time I put it  down to nothing more than my muscles screaming their displeasure at being used. Two massive prolapsed discs later and I was using a walking stick to go to work. I’d only just started there and had been offered a permanent position off of the back of being agency staff. The job came with a standard three month probationary period. I couldn’t afford any time off, so I got used to dragging myself into work anyway. They seemed genuinely concerned and got me a special chair and even went as far as having the Health & Safety consultant that they kept on retainer come in and assess my work-space. He told me that my screen was too low, but concluded that my bosses had done everything they could to help my plight.

To cut yet another long story short, I was referred by my doctor for an M.R.I. scan, which revealed the two prolapsed discs that my sciatica had all but proved I had.

Scans, tests, physio and painkillers

September 2014 saw the first of two M.R.I. scans and confirmed the diagnosis of my doctors and physiotherapists. I have now had three lots of facet-joint injections in my spine and the epidurals that went along with them. The first lot of injections sorted the sciatica out, but did nothing for the latent lower back pain. I strongly suspect that this may be due to me having put on so much extra weight in the interim. The painkillers I have been prescribed have changed, but only increased in their potency. I am now on a dosage somewhere the coherent side of unadulterated, unfettered opiates. My body has now formed a tolerance for these too, which means that I don’t much feel or look stoned when I’m taking them, but my physical dependence on them for ‘normality’ comes to the fore after only 24 hours free of them. It resembles the onset of a terrible cold or flu. I discovered this at Christmas, when I tried to wean myself off of them in order to have a wee drink. It most certainly wasn’t worth the ill feeling.

My local hospital, which is mercifully close by, does have a hydrotherapy pool… which I am not allowed in, because I am over their 100 kg Health & Safety weight limit!

I am waiting to see a specialist at the local Persistent Pain clinic (if my Mother were still alive I have no doubt she would have seen this as very amusing.)

The straw that (almost) broke the camel’s back

I have not worked now for almost 18 months. This has been a great strain on my body and mind as well as my relationships. I don’t go out much; I’ve hardly seen my friends for all this time. I don’t go on holiday. Being stuck in the flat day after day sounds great, but not when you’re in loads of pain and discomfort. My mental state has suffered immensely and my doctor has now got me on antidepressants too. I haven’t been taking them long enough to know if they’re doing any good yet. They do give me the most vivid dreams – not always nice.

In short, I have come to the end of my rope and the strands are fraying. Not a good place to be when one weighs 19 st 7¾ lbs/124 kgs! I have to do something before my genetics take over and kill me off in a stunningly dull, stereotypical Scottish manner.

Exercise has been painful for quite some time now, but it is being joined by activity of any sort and that I find wholly unacceptable. I have been walking this morning, but it is a very small start. The walk around Victoria Park was slow-going and extremely painful, but it is that one step that all great journeys start with.

This blog, too, is my way of documenting my progress back to being a healthy weight and a far happier person. Not worrying about dying at any moment is surely a goal worth striving towards. The 22-year-old me that left Edinburgh and moved to London never thought that one day I would wish to be able to fit into size 36″ waist jeans.

This is gonna hurt, but let’s see if I can find the same determination that got me into the Army twice. It would be nice if you checked in with me now and again just to see how I’m getting on.