At 48 years old I feel better now than I did when I was a teenager. I’m stronger, fitter, I understand nutrition and I know how to use food to fuel my body. But this hasn’t always been the case. For years I battled feelings of being out of control and disconnected from my body due to Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS).
I was 11 years old when I went to my first Weight Watchers meeting and, by my teens, I was definitely the ‘fat one’ at school. I was comfort eating to distract from the misery of my PCOS symptons, which were insomnia, lethargy, acne, hair loss, excess facial and body hair, heavy saggy boobs and vivid red stretch marks.
People talk about how you ‘grow into your body’ when you hit puberty, but mine just seemed to expand, swell and make me feel wretched. I was embarrassed by my bulging tummy, huge boobs, thighs that rubbed together and double-chin, and the message that conveyed to the outside world. It was doubly humiliating not being able to wear the latest trends just like my friends did, simply because I didn’t even fit in the largest sizes.
Looking back, it’s as though I’d been fast-forwarded into a post-baby, perimenopausal body but as a child. It’s easy to say ‘just eat less and move more’ but I swerved PE at school, faking period pains and headaches, because it was humiliating to be so obviously unfit and uncoordinated compared to everyone else. As for food, it’s one of life’s few joys and dieting can feel miserable and like punishment for something you didn’t know you did wrong.
With that said, over 30 years, I tried so many diets, firmly believing carbs were ‘bad’ and to be avoided at all costs. Before work, I’d force myself into the gym at 6am and return in the evening. Predictably, this all led to a binge/restrict cycle with diet and exercise. I was either in the gym every day, sometimes twice a day, and surviving on black coffee, a lunchtime meal deal and chicken salad for dinner (strictly no dressing) or sleeping in late and fueling myself with milky lattes, muffins, snacks and ready meals.
Throughout my 20s and 30s my weight yo-yo’d between ten stone and just over 14 stone but the constant battle to get my body to ‘behave’ took up so much mental and emotional time that I was forever worrying about how I looked. When I was losing weight, I was worrying about gaining it all back and when I was gaining weight, I was obsessing about how to ‘get in the zone’ to lose it all again. There was no respite.
In 2019, aged 41, I’d finally had enough. This cycle of dieting and exercising to extremes and constantly feeling dissatisfied with how I looked and felt became too much. The highs I’d get from losing weight were great but the lows I’d feel when I piled it all back on were horrendous. I was exhausted.
Emma says she stopped doing daily 5k runs and visiting the gym four to six times a week for even more cardio
I dabbled with the idea of body acceptance and body positivity but it would have been a wilful denial of something I knew wasn’t right. I knew my relationship with my body, food and exercise was volatile and, at times, all consuming and I was desperate to get to a place of stability. I had never known what ‘stable’ felt like.
So, how did I finally do it? The first step was to ditch diets. I went back to basics and focused on calories.
I decided to implement a small deficit so aimed for around 1,500 a day, with roughly 400 for breakfast, 500 for lunch and 600 For dinner. However, if I went over my allowance, I wouldn’t restrict myself the next day.
I stopped doing daily 5k runs and visiting the gym four to six times a week for even more cardio, instead I trusted that three to four weekly weight sessions, would be enough.
My new regime worked and between August 2019 and April 2020, I lost 40lbs. And since then, I’ve maintained that 40lb weight loss. Now at 5ft 4, I weigh ten stone and I’ve slimmed down to a size 10 on the top and 12 on the bottom.
It felt very different from a diet. There were no rules or restrictions, nothing was off-limits and I was careful to pay attention to how food made me feel. In the past, I knew that food either wasn’t filling or made me feel sluggish and bloated, but I never realised that a high protein meal with plenty of vegetables and some carbs could make me feel energised.
I flipped the switch from focusing on how food felt as I was eating it. Like the times I’d go all-in on a box of Coco Pops or Crunchy Nut cornflakes with a couple of pints of ice cold full-fat milk for a dopamine high – to paying attention to how my food choices impacted my energy levels and affected my sleep. For example, I find eating a little bit earlier in the evening and having something like chicken, pulses, roasted butternut squash and spinach will lead to a better quality of sleep than tucking into a ready meal.
Emma’s weight yo-yo’d between ten stone and just over 14 stone, but the constant battle to get her body to ‘behave’ took up so much mental and emotional time
Ultimately, I learned to translate my food noise. I still might get the urge to have four slices of white toast with salted butter as thick as the bread itself but over the last six years I’ve learned what these urges are really trying to tell me, which is usually that I need to hydrate and sit down to enjoy a well-rounded meal rather than eat on-the-go.
While my initial focus was on calories, I also appreciate that not all calories are equal and I focus on protein and fibre, for satiety, and whole foods.
It was the same story with exercise; I hammered cardio for years and loved to sweat and exhaust my body into getting smaller but now I strength train and, trust me, the way being able to lift weights makes you physically competent beats any runners’ high I ever had.
At 16, I couldn’t jog more than 100 metres without having to stop, I certainly couldn’t do a press up, but more than 30 years later, I can do both of those things without breaking a sweat.
The fact remains, these are all lessons I learned over decades and, for those people for whom these kinds of hormonal and physical shifts are happening in their 40s, I can only imagine how disconcerting it must feel. If you’ve always been slim or never had to worry too much about your weight or exercised just for enjoyment to suddenly feel that disconnection from your body, the same one I felt back in my teens, must come as a real shock.
I can understand why it might be tempting to do something extreme in response, such as a crash diet or weight loss interventions such as jabs and surgeries. I completely understand why so many are using GLP-1s to lose weight or to get back to that feeling of stability. I would have done the same if I hadn’t reached that breaking point two years before they became widely available. I know I’ve untangled a lot of extremely complicated thoughts, feelings and habits around my body, how I eat and how I exercise but it still takes effort. The idea of being able to switch off the food noise is appealing but, right now, I’m happy doing what I’m doing.
My aim now is to keep getting stronger. I believe my focus on building lean muscle might be the reason why, at 48, I’m yet to feel the transition into perimenopause. Building lean muscle at a time when the drop in oestrogen means your lean muscle mass naturally declines, is an evidence-based intervention to mitigate the symptoms of perimenopause. Having gone through such dramatic hormonal shifts as a young teen, it’s incentive enough to keep building muscle if it means I don’t have to experience them again.
None of the changes I’ve made, the ones that have really stuck and have got me the results I always wanted, feel joyless or limiting. Instead, I’ve found a freedom I never thought I’d have.
Emma says she has untangled a lot of extremely complicated thoughts, feelings and habits around her body, how she eats and how she exercises
My top five tips for losing weight and keeping it off
1. Stop under-eating
For me, around 1,500-1,600 calories was sustainable, not restrictive.
2. Have three meals a day
This worked better for me than meal skipping and grazing. I prioritised protein (around 100-120g a day) to stay full and satisfied, plus I included fibre to reduce snacking and for gut health.
3. No punishments – be kind to yourself
If I ever went over my calorie allowance then I didn’t fret about it or limit calories to compensate. I just went back to normal the next day.
4. Carbs are NOT bad
Stop obsessing over carbs and how they must be avoided. It’s not true. Good quality carbs (like wholegrains) are essential body fuel, especially when strength training.
5. Don’t over-exercise
I stopped trying to cram as many punishing workouts as possible into my schedule and went down to three times a week – a more realistic, achievable plan.