Our new columnist, Alice Dogruyol, shares her personal health story and how, for most of her life, she’s been trying to lose weight. This month, as part of our sleep special section, she looks at the connection between sleep and weight gain.
WELCOME TOMY NEW column where I invite you to jump with me down the rabbit hole of weight loss and where, in the coming months, I’ll be exploring the complex and diverse causes of weight gain, and sharing the highs and lows of my own journey. My fluctuating weight has been a never-ending nightmare, but at age 45 I am not giving up!
I have always been a curvy girl who has embraced my voluptuous shape. However, since my late teens I have had a problematic relationship with food. I tend to overeat, comfort eat, and stress eat, which has meant I have perpetually been on some sort of mission to achieve weight loss.
I have been through periods of being fit and strong and in control ofmy eating but,more often than not, I’ve teetered between being what I call acceptably overweight, where I look and feel good despite carrying 10-15kg extra, and uncomfortably overweight where nothing fits and everything feels wrong – which is where I amcurrently.
STRESS-BASED EATING
I know how my recent weight gain happened: it was during the second lockdown, my long-term relationship ended, I put IVF on hold, I was feeling dreadful in every way and I fell into a period of mindless comfort eating coupled with almost no exercise.
Then, in January 2021, I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. Add to that, and as irony would have it, in May 2022 my young, slim, fit and healthy sister, who is only 43 years old, never been overweight, and is a mum to three gorgeous children – was diagnosed with bowel cancer.
As the shock and fear took over my every waking and sleeping moment, I turned to my pain killer of choice: food. And I have been self-medicating with it since.
Thankfully as I write, things are looking up. My sister has responded well to treatment and whilst life will never be quite the same, our family is in a much better place. So much so, a few weeks ago I mustered the courage to dust off my bathroom scales and step on them for the first time in a year and a half. I had an idea of what the number might be, but as it flashed up, it was much higher than expected: 120kg. It was the wake-up call I needed and I snapped into gear; I booked an appointment with my endocrinologist, a session with a new therapist who suggested I attend Overeaters Anonymous – I did and it was brilliant – a session with PT and behaviour analyst Vanessa Haydock aka The Diabetic Health Coach, started Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), filled my bookshelf with health and fitness books... and looked at my sleeping h
