Back when I was 20, I worked in a call centre that participated in taking calls for the BBC Children In Need telethon. I took calls on the night and also decided to raise money myself by coming into work in pyjamas and slippers and also to dye my hair purple. It was the first time I’d ever dyed my hair, and I didn’t do a great job, the colour was running and leaking down my face but I liked it.
Not long after that I started experimenting, trying all sorts of different vibrant colours and even just plain blonde.
I’m no extrovert and I’d normally avoid doing something that would draw attention to me but being a big guy, I would get attention whether I liked it or not. It’s much better to get people commenting on your hair colour than having people in white vans honking their horns and calling you a fat bastard. Street harassment was a regular occurrence.
The hair became my deflection strategy, and it worked well. People would still be thinking the same thing but that’s not what they’d comment on. I don’t blame them for what they’re thinking, I think the same thing whenever I see my shadow or look in the mirror and it’s a negative feedback loop that actually made me binge more in the first place.
People assume when you’re obese that you’re stupid and don’t know about food nutrition and that you’re lazy. I’m neither of those things. Depression and obesity can sap you of all your energy and make you not want to go out, why go out when you’re going to get abused in public? It’s humiliating. Especially when it comes from the mouths of kids. Kids have no filter at all.
I get fed up of trying to explain to clinicians that I know what a healthy diet looks like. I know what portion sizes should be and what proportion of my intake should be protein, complex carbohydrate, and vegetables. Why is binge eating disorder treated as if people are just stupid whereas Anorexia and Bulimia are acknowledged to be psychological conditions that need therapy to deal with the root causes, rather than just information about how many calories you need per day.
It takes a lot more effort for me to do simple tasks. Imagine walking whilst carrying two slim adult women on your back, that’s what I’m doing every single day and I have balance problems, back problems and dodgy knees and ankles. I know it’s all my own fault but that still doesn’t make it any easier.
I’m a bit of a rebel too though. When people tell me I can’t do something, it makes me want to prove them wrong. One year my old workplace decided to do a pedometer challenge where they wanted the whole company to walk the equivalent distance from Manchester to Johannesburg. They made it competitive with teams racing against each other. I built a website with leader boards for each team and gamified it with different virtual trophies and facts as we progressed. I also started walking the 6 miles home from work 3 times a week and I was consistently near the top of the leader board beating people a lot fitter than me.
So, this week I’ve dyed my hair blonde again for the first time in years to remind myself that I have done this before, I can do it, and I will do it. I need that anger to keep me going when it gets tough, because it is tough, especially when I realise that the weight I need to lose is as much as my starting weight from the first time I lost it all.
I’m very grateful for the people supporting me and offering encouragement. I really need all of the support I can get. I might not always get back to you but you make a difference when I’m down in the gutter, you keep my eyes looking to the stars (to badly paraphrase Oscar Wilde).
Rant Over 