Why I Lost Gained Then Lost Weight - and how you could do the same. Grandmother's story

Introduction

My weight has yo-yoed throughout the years and I have tried several major diet systems with success, the four day wonder diet, the Paleo diet, the anti-cancer diet, the eat less diet combined with the watch your weight diet. 

My recent dramatic weight loss was in the Covid-19 year of 2020 to 2021. You can see the change in me in photos. This took place when I was in my seventies, which shows that you can lose weight at any age, including in later life.  

Why I Lost Weight Because Of Covid-19

Like everyone else at that time, we were horrified by the sight of people dropping dead in the streets of China, the lines of coffins in churches in Italy, the trenches of the dead in cemeteries in India, and reports of parents of our friends dying within three days of diagnoses in Indonesia.

Before the jabs were available, it was reported that two factors made victims more vulnerable. One was age. The other was being overweight. I could not change my age. I could change my weight.

I had good reason for wanting to stay alive. Not only because I wanted to stay alive, and because my husband wanted me to stay alive. Our son was engaged to be married. The wedding was scheduled. I wanted to be alive to see the wedding. I wanted to be healthy enough to travel. 

I have three ways of identifying my size and weight. Firstly, I remember my weight as a teenager. An easy number - seven stone seven lbs, 7-7, seven-seven.

My second way of recognizing my change in weight is by the size of clothes. Many people can identify with this. You often read, can't get into your jeans. You also read about middle age spread and menopause. 

It becomes a downward spiral. You weigh more so it is harder to get up and move about, so you sit still, eat more, exercise less. It goes on and on.

I have large friends who claim to diet. But they yo-yo. They do not continue and lose weight consistently.

I also have a friend, KKF, who claims he has been told to put on weight. He cannot. 

But I have observed him eating and moving about. He turns down offers of food and drink. 

You might observe a friend or stranger do this consistently. Is that because he is poor and does not want to receive gifts of food and drink and feel under an obligation.

I remember at school., a girls' school in the Sixties, Nineteen Sixties, London, England. My mother always gave me three or four sandwiches. I had four. More than enough. At least I could offer one. 

My friend, I think it was Janet, had come to school accidentally without her lunch. I offered her one of my sandwiches.

She declined. I asked again. She declined.

I ate three sandwiches. I was no longer hungry. No risk of my doing without. No risk of her eating one and wanting a second.

I offered again. She declined.

I was puzzled. Some days later, I asked her, why?

She replied, "Because I would have been under an obligation to repay you, and I would not have enough food from my mother to do that."

I should have lost weight years ago. In the 1990s, in the years from 2000. I was middle aged and had middle aged spread.

I postponed dieting. But I still kept my small size clothes. I thought I would lose weight when my mother died in 2000. I did not. 

I recall that when I first went to live in Singapore in the 1990s I was already overweight. But I was also a Causcasian Westerner.

The locals were mostly under 30 years of age. They were mostly Chinese. The clothes were for the majority of shoppers.

I would look at absurdly small clothes and wonder, who would wear that! Then I would look around the shop and see small, ethnically Chinese or oriental girls. 

They were so tiny. In the UK, you could have sent them to hospital for treatment for anorexia, or to investigate if they were suffering from some wasting disease!

 I could not find size 36 bras, roomy swimming costumes, blouses which has large enough sleeves, nor dresses which fitted. I had to wear caftans.

The Indian ladies wore sarees. A saree has a fitted balero with short sleeves. But the saree is like a sarong. It fits any size. 

The underskirt or petticoat is wide with a drawerstring. 

Buying Big Clothes

I bought large size swimsuit in Australia. I bought lage ski jackets in New Zealand. I bought underwear in Marks and Spencer in London. I bought big tee-shirts in the USA. For inexpensive clothes I looked at Mustafa's in Singapore near Little India for wrap skirts, drawstring half slips, and Indian owned shops in the UK. I bought fabric in Spotlight in Singapore to make my own caftans.

School Size

At school the other girls grew taller. But I grew wider. I had no idea that all my favourite foods were making me large. 

B for big. Bagels. Baked beans. Biscuits. 

Roast potatoes. Chips. Mashed potatoes. 

Chicken Kiev - and chicken in mushroom sauce. Italian dishes. Pizza. Indian food. Rice and stuffed paratha, sutffed with almonds and coconut.

Suet pudding. Christmas pudding. 

Christmas cakes. Mince pies.

Chocolates. Marzipan - which is 50 or 75% sugar.

When I ate a chocolate from a box I wanted to finish the box. Years later I discovered why. Sugar gives you a temporary spike of energy. Fifteen minutes later you get a low and need another lift.

On Saturday, my mother would take me shopping in Edgware High Street. We ended at an Italian restaurant in the station precinct. I would order meat canneloni, with a cream sauce, and baked potatoes.

School Size

I was not always this large. When I was a teenager I weighed 7 stone 7 lbs. 

We had a German au pair girl who had been a model before she came to England to learn English. She told us, "When I was a model, I never ate supper after six o'clock.'

Student Size

At university, students were always thin. We spent money on books instead of food. We walked everywhere. From home to the college. Around the college from one lecture room to another. 

I went to University College London. Every day I ran up the road to the station. I caught the train to central London. At the campus I walked to the cafeteiria for lunch, and back. In the evening I walked downhill from the station to my home. At the weekend I want to parties. Taxis were an extravagance. I was always walking around the streets, looking for parties held in run-down, distant terraced houses.

I remember my misery when a boy told me that I had small breasts. Unlike my mother. I wished I had had bigger breasts. 

A popular saying is, be careful what you wish for. In my late fifties I had large breasts. They were a damned nuisance. You had to buy ridiculously large bras. If you left them out, for starage, or washing, and drying, they were an embarrassment.But if you tried to put them away they took up room in your drawers. The wires were painful to wear The curved wires turned the simple act of putting two or three bras into a drawer into a game of giant juggling in the air then a jigsaw puzzle. You always had one bra more than the drawer could accommodate.Breasts expanded and contracted throughout the month. First, your bras were too big. Swap them over. Then they were too small.

You could not lie on your front at night.

Later

Student Slimming

I tried to lose weight on holiday for a boyfriend. He was a lawyer. He was good-looking. He was a catch. He was the one I wanted. I was in love. 

I had bought a new dress. A pretty dress. I wanted to get into it.

I was on holiday with three others, on a driving holiday to Wales. We had dinner one night at a hotel restaurant. A temptation.

I remember the others had desserts. I ordered fruit salad. I knew fresh fruit salad was less fattening than tinned fruit salad in syrup. 

The waiter was amusing.I shall always remember the conversation.

 I asked, "Is it fresh fruit salad?"

He replied, "Yes. Fresh last week."

He offered me cream. 

I turned down the cream. I shook my head.

He offered it again. He asked, 'Are you sure?"

I thought of the dress. I thought of the zip of the dress. I nodded.

I remember the saying by a famous model. Was it Kate Moss? She said, 'Nothing tastes better than being thin.'

I must have had some rudimentary idea of what made you fat. I was aware of only one simple fact - that when you ate less you put on less weight. Why is it that years later, putting on weight and losing weight had become so complicated?

Now we have diets consisting of foods which we must or must not eat. We blame medical conditions. We have people so large that they cannot get our of bed or leave their house. 

I was born just after World War II. My mother recalled how she made a friend in Kingsbury, north west London, whilst both young mothers stood in a queue (Americans call it a line) for bananas.

Rationing went on until 1952. Being overweight was less common. 

Yet, when I look back at the photos of my paternal grandmother, she looks a large lady. A jolly lady. She was always laughing.