Kat!

Geez! You have no idea how hard it was to get this story in print, and when you read it you'll be wondering why it wasn't screamed from the top of the mountain.

Kat is Linc's partner, and Linc was kind enough to share his story a little while ago on this blog, about how he rose up from the dark days and fought his way to good health. I count Linc as one of my best friends. He may not always be around, but you know he's around, and judging from Kat's story, you can see that he was always around for her whilst she battled her own demons!

I'm honoured that Kat would share her story with us, as she doesn't really know me (yet), and I ask so much of people to give their story. Thank you Kat!

It was the first day of Prep. The class was sitting cross legged on the carpet, fidgeting, waiting for the teacher. I noticed a little girl sitting off to my left and thought she looked nice so I smiled at her lots when the teacher wasn’t looking. Smiling was a good way to make friends. The little girl already had a friend she was sitting with and both of them whispered behind their hands and pointed at me, all the while I’m grinning like a Cheshire. When the teacher had finished we got up off the floor and I gave a little wave to the girl and her friend approached. “Stop smiling at her, she doesn’t want to be your friend.” “Why?” I replied. “Because you’re fat.”

Kapow. The first, and certainly not the only time in my life when I was made blatantly aware of my physical shortcomings. Sure , we were 5 and the girl probably didn’t even really mean what she said, but it’s one of those profound moments that come back to haunt you during those moments of wallowing and grant you the permission to finish off the last two tim tams in the packet. After you’ve already eaten the other seven.

So, years go by, and the kg’s followed. By the time I was in my early twenties I’d entered the realm of three digits on the scales and subsequently gave up on any hope of ever wearing a pair of bathers that didn’t make me look like a Greco-Roman wrestler.

I dabbled in various fad diets in my time but my first real attempt at making a change about my weight came when I was asked to be part of the bridal party for my brother’s wedding. The change was driven by vanity, but hey, any motivation is good motivation. I gave my bingo wings one last jiggle in the mirror and hired myself a personal trainer. Ben was a dedicated and passionate sort and each week after flogging me in the gym he’d look so hopeful when I jumped on the scales, only to be bewildered that they’d barely moved a notch. For all the hard work I was putting in, I wasn’t getting very far. It would seem that the “rewards” I was treating myself to on the weekends were not conducive to any sort of weight loss progress. The wedding came and went (I just managed to pour myself into the bridesmaids dress) and I could no longer justify the expense of the personal training so that ended and with that came back the wads of fat (and some!) depositing themselves on every square inch of my frame.

It was around this time I met my partner and future father of my children. Together we wallowed in our fatness. I can probably count on one hand the amount of home cooked dinners we had in the first year together. I recall one trip to KFC when Linc handed $70 over for payment of our dinner then he turns to me and says, “Do you think that will be enough?” He was serious. As a heart attack. 

A new relationship should be a time for smiles and giddiness, which in most aspects it was, but I was carrying around some serious spare tyres. And it was making me deeply and wholly depressed and ashamed.  It was hard to smile when you spent the best part of your day pulling at your shirt to release it from between your fat rolls and expending energy thinking about how you can covertly sneak the one chair in the beer garden that your bum fits in.  I would even sometimes miss classes at Uni because I couldn’t find a park close enough to the room and it was too taxing to walk the long way and arrive late where I would almost pass out trying not to audibly huff and puff for the first ten minutes of the lecture.  It was so difficult to smile through the fat, but I did the best I could.

Then not too long after, a funny thing happened. My pants started getting looser.  Linc had begun riding his bike for exercise and was no longer as eager to eat out for every meal inadvertently causing a calorie deficit in my daily intake.  It was slow going, but I’d gone from a whopping, sweaty, 130kg to hovering around 110kgs all from small changes to my diet that I only really noticed in hindsight. 
It was November 2008 when I found out I was pregnant with my first daughter.  To say it was unexpected was an understatement.  I had been diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome in my early twenties and my GP at the time had informed me that I would find it very difficult to fall pregnant without medical intervention.  And here I was, up the duff!  I was ecstatic.  That same GP had put it down to the weight loss that probably enabled me to conceive.  The pregnancy was text book, and just like the all the movie clichés, I ate for two.  Well, closer to five, but you get the picture.  The day I gave birth I weighed in back around 130kg. 


Having a baby was like being hit by a Mack truck, repeatedly.  Then giving birth to it.  The first few months of motherhood were much the same.  But apparently being run over is good exercise, because by the time the Monster was 5 months old I saw the needle of the scales fall just shy of 100kgs.  Then something just clicked.  I hadn’t been double digits since the previous millennium.  I got religious real fast. 
Dear God, 


Please don’t let me crack a tonne again in my lifetime.

Cheers, Kat.

But, you know, just in case God was too busy with plagues of locusts; I toyed with the idea of giving the exercise thing a whirl.


I had limited experience in the world of working out, so Linc, the brave man he is, offered to give me a hand.  I still had a young baby at this stage and could only find time for a work out after she was in bed at night.  So, when I’d rather be on the couch with the remote and a block of choccy, I was slogging it out in our shed doing a range of crazy exercises that Linc had poached from his own gym.   There were many, many colourful words that circled in my brain whilst Linc barked at me to give him another ten, and on more than one occasion I had to stop myself from punching him in the face during a boxing session.  After another month, I had developed a sense of how to push myself and it was probably safer for Linc (and his nuts) if I carried on myself.  As much as I did not want to suit up and hit the shed for deadlifts and sumo squats, the feeling when I finished and the scales steadily declining made me swell inside.  Everything was becoming....  Lighter.

By April 2010 I was 85kgs and a size 14-16.  The shed work was beginning to get tedious.  I was beginning to have more rest days than not.  I needed to shake things up a bit.  I used to have dreams about running, and sometimes just out of the blue during my day, I would have this inexplicable urge to pound the pavement.  I’d never seriously tried it before so I don’t know where this pull was coming from.  I gave it a crack.  It was hard.  Everything wobbled.  In fact I’m pretty sure my bum was still wobbling 45 minutes after I stopped.  But, I persevered.  The first ten times I was sure I could taste blood.  My knees hurt.  I swallowed a bajillion flies.  Still I kept going.  Then, by the eleventh (or so) time it just got, well, good.  My brain didn’t have to tell my feet not to trip over themselves, my breathing was calm and even, and by the 2km mark a strange tingle ran through me like a mild electric current and I felt awesome.  So awesome I spontaneously tried to high five a runner going the other way.  I scared the shit out of him, but I didn’t care.  Wow.  Better than the 2 for $5 Cadbury family block special, for sure.  I signed up for my first fun run, a 6km.  Linc and the Monster came to cheer me on with my Dad.  I ran like a total unco, all arms and legs over that finish line, but you couldn’t wipe the smile off my face.    

I trained hard after that run trying to build up my base to work towards a half marathon and dropped a few more kg’s.  I was starting to look like the way I felt – a runner.  Then, blow me down, two little pink lines told me I was pregnant with our second daughter. 

I had all these grand plans of being diligent with my diet, running throughout and coming out the other side a freakin’ Olympian.  Yeah, didn’t quite turn out that way.  I did run for the first trimester, but before long the morning sickness coupled with a firm recommendation from my obgyn to ease up on the high impact activities had me sidelined.  So, naturally, I reached for the things that had always comforted me, food.  And lots of it.  I was able to silence that angel on my shoulder telling me to ease up on the cheesecake and justify the devil on the other shoulder that kept reminding me, “You’re pregnant.  It’s not forever.  Go on, enjoy it!  Have another slice!”  The day I gave birth to the Grublet I was somewhere north of 110kgs.  So much for never going back over 100kgs!

As shattering as a wilful toddler and vampiric newborn were I was not comfortable in the fat suit that this pregnancy had left behind.  I was gagging to get out and run again.  At 8 weeks post partum I laced up the runners and headed out.  I shuffled about 500 metres before I realised just how much I had let myself go and was suddenly and violently aware of the road I was going to have to re-tread. 

New Years day 2012 and I weighed in at 100kgs and couldn’t run for more than 5 minutes at a time.  Today, after daily backyard circuit sessions whilst the kidlets sleep, I weigh in at 86 kgs (almost pre preggo weight!) and can run for 10 km with a smile on my face.  I still have a ways to go to reach my healthy weight range, but at this stage I am just enjoying being able to challenge my body in a way that I had never, in my whole fat life, thought possible.   

Would I change anything if I could go back 6 years and do it all again?  Probably not.  This whole, urgh, excuse me, “Journey” (thanks Biggest Loser for ruining that term for me!) has allowed me to make many mistakes and appreciate that anything worth doing is gonna take time, effort and language that would make my Grandmother blush.


Do I have advice for those of you who are looking to shake off the “obesity” statistic?  Plenty.  But nothing I say is going to lace up your kicks for you.  Somewhere under the XXL labels there’s a spark inside that will ignite your whole being if you’re brave enough to let it. 


Right now I’m training for a 15km event at the end of August.  That will be the longest distance I have attempted to date.  15km is a long way.  A long way from being sad and ashamed.  A long way from hiding in men’s clothes.  A long way from the big hair to weigh out the rest of my silhouette.  A long way from the anxiety of having to enter a room of strangers. 


A long way towards the future.

I don’t know what the future holds for me, but I do know that losing the 44 kilo monkey off my back makes it a helluva lot easier to take the steps toward it.  And that makes me smile.