LOSING IT

weight loss and learning to like my body

This photo was taken a month ago. Probably at the most I have ever weighed. I don't like it: I don't like my face, my body, anything about that photo, except the gorgeous black lab that's cropped out of it. I especially hate my top half

I am 5 foot nothing. And a month ago I weighed 14 stone 4. My skeleton isn't large enough to hold that much flesh and my joints and my organs were beginning to complain.

Menopause hasn't helped. I'm not sure quite why, but I've definitely found it harder to lose weight since the menopause. I think mentally I've struggled with exercise and as a result, it became harder to get out and walk, or even swim. I feel like I've been living in winter and it's been permanent bad weather out there.

I wasn't always like this. As a child I was a gymnast, and I guess I took my ability to eat anything for granted. When I got married in 1988 I weight 7 stone 12. With each baby I put weight on but when I had my last daughter I weighed the same after her birth as just before I got pregnant and she weighed 9lb 3. Since then I've lost weight, put it back on and more and lost it again and put it back on. And more and more.

I've always had big boobs (it seems to me they came overnight when I was 11) and what I’d really like is a breast reduction but I can't have one at the weight I am. Something that's lost on those who decide these things is that having huge breasts isn't particularly synonymous with exercise and so I felt a bit like I was stuck in a cycle of not being able to feel like exercising because of back ache from boobs that got bigger because I wasn't exercising. When I spoke to a female doctor on the phone about being able to have a BR on the NHS she sounded a bit floored, as if the idea had never entered her head, much less her waiting room. I ended up putting the phone down on (in my head) the young slim, pert-breasted girl who (in my head ) had got up that morning and decided to be a doctor. I waited a bit and filled another online form in which led me to speak to a much more sympathetic male doctor who said it would be raised at the next finance meeting.

The answer was no. My BMI was too high. I checked out private clinics in a dream of being able to go private but even they say a BMI of 28 or below is desirable.

I tried to put it out of my head believing that I can cope with the terrible back ache, the excruciating soreness and the feeling that I look stones heavier because I stick out so much at the front. Believing that my tits are a part of me, part of a personality like Bet Lynch's beehive or Pat Butcher's earrings. Except Pat can take them off. Bet could change her hairstyle.

Sleeping with huge boobs is hard. If I lie on my back they suffocate me, on my side I squash one under me and the other drools over me like a lecherous bedfellow. There's a joke that goes something like ‘ I wore a vest top to bed and when I woke up my right tit was downstairs making a brew’. Well mine has been to Asda and back and done a big shop. My best friend and I once filled my bra with the entire contents of a mini-bar. My breasts won an award all by themselves at school for ‘Best Passionate Couple, and they had a lot of competition.

So, something needs to be done. I'm trying to lose 4 stone, more if I can. This body is meant to be at least 4 stone lighter and if that happens I'll either go back to the doctor and say ‘look! I've lost 4 stone, give me a breast reduction!’ or I won't need one. But I had huge tits when I was 9 stone, so I doubt I won't need one.

And to help my weight loss I am injecting myself each week with Mounjaro, the so-called ‘skinny jab’. I'm telling you this so that there is full disclosure about my weight loss. Some of you might think I'm cheating, some of you might be concerned for my health, some of you might be cheering me on, or whispering ‘me too’.

It's not cheating. The drug assists weight loss but it's not a magic fat melting cure. It stops you thinking about food, makes you feel fuller, longer and takes away the urge to snack. I'm tracking my calories, attempting to hit protein, fibre , water and step targets and I'm eating for fuel, rather than for pleasure or for therapy. I've lost a stone over five weeks, which is a good steady amount. I'm sleeping better, I don't ache as much and I'm beginning to see a bit of a difference. I truly think it's the best thing I've ever done for ME. I've tried other diets and they don't work for me, I hoping this will change the way I look at food.

The concerns over Mounjaro and other similar drugs are that it hasn't been around long enough to know what the side effects are. The truth is it's been around to treat type 2 diabetes for over 20 years and the serious side effects like pancreatitis are relatively low. I've researched it, I'm with a support system that I account to each week and who regulate my use and doses. It's stopped the clamour of booze, too, that longing for a drink to wind down, and I'm feeling calmer; the anxiety of menopause has subsided.

I'm excited to be doing this for me. I've joined the gym and from tomorrow I'll be going four times a week to weight train and swim longer distances than I can in the river, though the river will still be where I go to chill.

I'm doing this for my children, for my grandchildren, so I can hopefully be able to live longer to see them grow. For my husband who loves me the way I am, whatever I look like, who would never make fun of my weight but for whom I want to be healthy, to walk the distances he does, and maybe even climb a few of Fucking Wainwright’s Fucking fells. But mostly I'm doing it for me. So I can stop avoiding myself in the mirror and so I can enter the next phase of my life feeling, and being strong.

I'm going to write about my weight loss here, to be accountable, to share it with you. I don't want to keep the fact that I'm on Mounjaro a secret, because perhaps sharing this might stop people viewing it with suspicion and stop judging those who are using it.

And if when I do get to my target and my BMI is low enough to be considered for a BR, I'll see where I am. Cross that bridge then. Maybe it'll be the first thing I do for myself as Doctor Connors.