The Ready Meal Diet - A Journey into Obesity

25 years ago I was smiling as I looked into a mirror of me fitting into a long purple dress that was a size 14.  Weight loss had been a battle for me as since 11 years old I had ballooned in weight.  I wasn't the only one, my father had developed a pot belly too.  One would've assumed that whatever we were both eating was responsible, however my mother was doing all the late night and weekend cooking which often involved healthy stews and salads and she too was on the large size so it baffled her that we were all putting on so much weight.  She attributed his weight gain to him drinking beers and as for me she couldn't figure it out at all.

So what had changed in the course of a year that I suddenly shot from a healthy 5.6 stone girl to an 8 stone marshmallow?  From the early years my mother provided me with my own school lunches which were often sandwiches, a small yogurt and a bag of crisps or a piece of fruit with a bottle of vimto or orange juice.  After a couple of years my mother couldn't keep up with it on top of having to go to work early in the morning so she moved me onto school dinners.  These however were quite expensive and a year or two later the cost went up and she had to withdraw me from school dinners.  My father tried making the sandwiches, but after a while he came up with a more convenient plan.  Since I lived across the road from school it made sense to him that I would come home for lunch and he'd cook for both of us.  This is where the weight gain began.

His ideas for lunch was whatever was quick and convenient for him.  This usually involved something with chips so mini pizzas and chips, fish fingers and chips, burger and chips, sausage chips and beans, you get the idea.  As result we both got very big, but why then was my mother also getting big?  Her diets were usually a cup-a-soup and a crispbread for lunch which was low in everything.  However she was also drinking excessive amounts of coffee with sugar and a biscuit at work and this contributed to her weight gain, so whilst ours was in highly saturated foods hers was high in sugar.

A couple of years later my parents divorced and my mother no longer had the energy to continue cooking for just the 2 of us so she too began to take the easy route.  She tried her best but we were falling into processed garbage territory with convenience foods like crispy pancakes, fish fingers, and with the stresses piling on top of her she was also moving towards comfort foods.  I was also encouraging it having stresses of my own being a teenager and being bullied in school due to my weight that I was turning to emotional eating.

I hid away in my bedroom playing video games all the time to avoid being bullied in the streets so I rarely got any exercise, and my increasing weight resulted in me no longer fitting into school clothes including my PE gear so I'd avoid going to school on days that had PE classes so I wouldn't get embarassed for having no PE gear.  This also led into skipping school on many other days too as I was now reduced to only 2 fitting shirts and 1 skirt which I recycled so many times between washes that they began to stink.  I also developed a gaming addiction so even my homework was being ignored and this gave way for more mockery which led to more comfort eating which led to more weight gain and wrecked havoc on my health that some days I was too ill to attend school.  By the time I finished high school I was weighing over 14 stone, nearly double my recommended weight.

The weight continued piling on as I was now trapped in a cycle of comfort eating until I eventually left home at 18 years old.  Now I was no longer relying on my mother to feed me and pay for all the bills I was finding survival a struggle.  I went into a bizarre diet of eating a lot of exotic fruit salads that cost a fortune so I'd have food for a few days and then nothing for the rest of the week.  I also joined a religious cult which had a club-like atmosphere so I was doing a lot of high energy dancing during events.  I walked as often as I could due to not being able to afford bus fares and would walk up long climbs carrying several heavy bags of shopping of mostly fruit.

My weight went down rapidly within 18 months until I hit 12 stone and was fitting into size 14 clothes for the first time in years.  I was happy to have finally lost the weight that ruined my childhood and could now flaunt my looks in public, however it also had some serious impacts on my health especially my undiagnosed IBS.  I was in excruciating pain from not eating or from eating too much fruit at the start of the week.  I was doped on painkillers and taking a combination of pills to treat all the IBS symptoms and was in and out of hospital every other day.  I had no idea it was IBS and that my poor diet was causing it.

By the time I was 20 I had left the cult and found myself a partner.  He's not a good chef so I was making him lunches of pasta salads to take to work with him.  He revealed he regularly bought ready meals from a local corner shop and said these were the kind of meals he liked best as he wasn't into eating salads and vegetables, so I started to buy him the same kind of meals so he'd not have to pick at his food.  I too started to eat the same meals and because of how cheap they were these became a staple for the next 24 years.

Unfortunately the ready meals I chose for us which were mostly pasta bakes and pies were very high in carbs, saturates, salt and sugar and by the time we got married a few months later I had already put weight on.  I attributed my weight gain to eating again and over the next few years the weight kept adding on that I had to put away all my clothes as they no longer fit.  I started to believe that the only way I would ever lose weight was if I stopped eating, however if I did that then I'd suffer terrible IBS and I was not willing to go through that pain again.  Every time I had an IBS attack I'd eat something even if I had to overeat just to stop the pain.

My weight continued to escallate and was spiralling out of control.  I was topping 20 stone, the largest I had ever been, and suffering terribly for it.  I was constantly out of energy and any kind of exercise would wind me and leave me aching for days.  I needed solid beds to support my weight and back which meant going out camping was no longer an option for me and even some hotel beds would cause havoc on my back leaving me unable to sleep and in lots of agonizing pain, so my husband just went on holidays by himself and would leave me at home.  Our love life came to a halt as I felt I was too hideous and from his reactions it seemed he felt the same way about me too.  I began to suffer depression from feeling unwanted and angry with myself.

In desperation I visited various websites to try to get an idea of what I should be eating in an attempts to get the weight down, but after weeks of research I was overwhelmed with the excessive number of websites giving conflicting information, using different formulas for calculating what I should and shouldn't be eating, and I was getting more stressed and confused by it all.

I next turned to healthy varieties of ready meals and snacks thinking that these would be better for me, but these were often small portions of sloppy bland gunk laced in chillies that were only fit for the garbage.  I tried to keep up with it but the weight wasn't shifting at all and I'd have regular IBS attacks that would scare me back into overeating again.  What's more the packaging on the healthier ready meals seemed more brittle and every week I'd have at least 1 food item in my shopping order that was bashed in or wasn't sealed properly - the few times I didn't notice I'd suffer food poisoning for several days.

After 5 years I gave up trying to lose weight and decided my body was too broken.  I began indulging in foods I liked again, I was even eating more than my own share but I no longer cared.  I was being gluttonous and just grabbing whatever was nearby that was convenient which was mostly junk food like crisps and ice cream.

I often caught sight of myself in the mirror and would feel repulsed with what I had become.  My whole mid area was completely round like a globe that I referred to myself as a female Homer Simpson.  People mocked me in the streets over how I looked so I avoided going anywhere alone.  I was now having to buy size 24-26 clothes online and I started to worry what would happen once I was too big to even fit in a size 26.  On top of that I was aware diabetes was in my family and that if I continued to binge eat and gain weight it would only be a matter of time before I too would be diagnosed with it.  I've been lucky so far but luck will only last for so long.

Earlier this year I finally broke and reached out for help.  I was now no longer able to fit into my size 26 clothes and the lack of energy and the depression was too much and I was fearing for my own life.  I begged my doctor for help who put me on a weight loss management plan called More Life.  I was overjoyed to tears when I finally got the phonecall to confirm that a date was arranged for me to start the plan online.  To be honest a lot of what they taught me early on I already knew about as I had created an extensive spreadsheet to manage my calories a few years' prior but I had gotten lazy by going down the ready meal route and assumed I knew what I was doing and didn't really pay attention to what I was eating or how much I was eating.  When I listened to what More Life were saying and properly examined what I'd been eating all this time I realised to my horror that when I was dieting I was still eating excessively and following bad advice that led to cravings and hunger pangs, it was no wonder the weight wasn't going down!

The ready meals and "zero" labelled drinks were the worst contributor to my weight gain despite being labelled "healthy" - they were so imbalanced and would be in such small portions that I was feeling unsatisfied and still hungry and within an hour I'd be snacking.  What's more the "healthy" labelled snacks and drinks also contained ingredients that can increase the appetite and cause severe cravings since I was denying my body of certain nutrients thinking that's what I had to do to lose weight, so I would be eating 4-5 times more than I should.  It was an eye opener, as was learning about things such as mindfulness, portion control, and the importance of spacing out meals to give the body the best times to digest food.  When I weighed myself at the start I almost cried in disappointment when the scales read 23 stone.

3 months after having joined More Life plan my life's done a U-turn.  I ditched the ready meals and have been doing home cooked meals every night.  My husband isn't too fond of the vegetables still but he tries to make some effort and the way I prepare them is a bit experimental too.  I don't feel I'm denying myself in anything, in fact some of the substitutions I've either ditched or swapped for something else so I'm still having coffee with sugar and the occassional sweet treat and I don't have any cravings to overeat anymore.  I swapped bread for wraps to reduce the carbs and am slowly replacing dried snacks for more fresher snacks.  I feel satisfied every mealtime that I'm often needing to force myself to eat a snack so I don't undereat!

I'm now just below 21 stone and the weight is still dropping steadily.  I know I've a long ways to go and that it won't happen fast, but I can already feel the benefits of shedding that weight and any weight loss for me is an achievement compared to almost 30 years of constant weight gain.  I feel I have more energy and I'm ready to begin exercises to shift the weight even further.  What's more I'm not suffering IBS with the change in my diet and that's lifted a very heavy weight off my shoulder that I now know I can lose the weight without suffering, and I've experienced very few gastric issues since I'm now cooking my own food and not risking some prepackaged meal that wasn't sealed properly and has become contaminated.

The way I look at diets has also changed too, thanks to the reinforcement of positive thinking.  I no longer see myself as a failure if I don't lose any weight or if I overeat something one day or end up eating out instead of cooking for myself.

I can't believe that 24 years of eating ready meals was mostly responsible for my weight issues and suffering.  I've vowed to never return to using them again for the sake of convenience.