The whys of my former obesity are something I ponder regularly. Why the fuck did I let myself get like that? It’s the thought I will often have if I’m awake at 4am and in need of some solid self-abasing/destructive thoughts.

I went through a long and arduous road of fertility treatments which mentally and physically broke me on a number of occasions. Dead Dad. Life, which has the occasional habit of beating you round the head with a shitty stick. A bar of chocolate becomes your friend. A comforting friend who doesn’t judge you. Just soothes you with it’s creamy goodness.

I remember the first time I consciously acknowledged that I had an issue with comfort and binge eating. I was 14 and had just started Year 10 of school. It was autumn and I was getting the bus to school one morning, and as usual stopped at the shop to get some chewing gum (Wrigley’s Extra – Fruit flavour, if you’re interested) – and I also had this complete urge to buy two chomps (they were still 10p back then) and two boosts. I sat on the bus and ate all of them in about two minutes. I felt sick, but full. The sick feeling made me hate myself in that exact moment. I remember my face flushing red hot and tears pricked at my eyes. A few stops later a friend got on the bus and I had to pretend that everything was ok and that I hadn’t just done something so awful to myself. And that’s the rub. The pretence.

There’s a multitude of theories behind why people have an urge to eat. Obviously you start off with some form of emotional discontent, which leaves a need to be sated in some way. But then you move on to the heady combination of emotional and physical science. Stomach chemicals and the vagus nerve, the production of which will also stimulate the feel good hormones in your body. Ironic really, because most people who comfort eat will often feel bad about having done so.

And thus the cycle continues. You feel bad, eat, feel bad. Good bad though. And then all of a sudden you’re really fat. And then you have to make a choice between living to eat and eating to live. And I eventually pulled up my big girl knickers and made a better choice. Because one day you look in the mirror and you don’t recognise who you’ve become – I did that and barely recognised the mass of flesh in front of me.

There’s a giant self-destructive element to it as well. I’ve reflected a lot about how self-abusive it is, the overeating. I got diagnosed by a shrink with Binge Eating Disorder. He spent a long time explaining that it was a treatable condition, but that my choice of having a gastric bypass was ultimately the best path to health. It was almost a relief that what I was doing to myself had been given a label.

They can’t treat me for being a twat though. x