My big problem
At eight-years-old, Tess Fitzgerald, 21, was attending Weight Watchers meetings with her mum…
As I rummaged through the clothes racks, I let out a sigh. I was really struggling to find an outfit that would cover all my lumps and bumps.
‘How about this? It would look great!’ my friend, Bryanna, 22, asked, holding up a small black strappy dress.
‘It’s gorgeous! But definitely not for me,’ I said, blushing at the thought of trying to slip into something so revealing.
We were shopping for a party we had coming up, but the thought of being squeezed into a size 30 dress while my friends pranced around in their size 8 dresses made me shudder.
‘Or this?’ she asked, showing me a bodycon dress. ‘Are you joking?’ I laughed. I flicked through the rails and pulled out a long, black floaty dress that would cover up all my lumps and bumps and draw as little attention to me as possible.
I had always been big and was good at picking out clothes that would hide my frame. When I was younger, my mum, Mary, 66, did everything she could to help me lose the extra weight, and I went to my first Weight Watchers meeting when I was just eight-years-old.
‘Why don’t you come and see where I go every week?’ Mum had smiled before we headed to my first meeting near our home in the US.
I was 4 ft 9 ins and eight-yearsold, but even then, I tipped the scales at 8st 7lb.
Mum had to get a doctor’s note to let me take part in the group because I was so young, and soon we were both emptying the cupboards of junk and filling up the fruit bowl.
The weight fell off of Mum, but I had hardly budged a pound.
‘Is there something wrong with me?’ I asked, feeling disheartened.
‘Of course not, the main thing is that you’re healthy,’ she assured me. When Mum hit her goal weight, we stopped going to the meetings and the packets of biscuits and sweets started to make their way back into our cupboards.
After dinner, I would sneak into the biscuit tin and easily put away half a packet without my parents knowing. By the time I was 11, I was 12st 4lb and 5ft 3in, and already fitting into adult sized clothes.
‘What should we be doing?’ Mum asked a nutritionist she had dragged me to.
‘Watch what she eats and make sure she’s active, and she should be fine,’ the nutritionist replied. It was no use. I ate healthy meals during the day, but my night time snacking meant that every time I stepped on the scales, I had gained pounds instead of losing them.
‘You’re perfect just as you are,’ Dad said to me when I hit my teens, but I was taken to the doctor’s for the third time about my weight when I was 14.
‘You have polycystic ovary syndrome. One of the side effects is weight gain,’ the doctor told me.
‘Finally!’ I sighed. A reason why
I couldn’t lose weight! My condition meant my body had more male hormones in it than the average woman and that I might always be a bit overweight.
‘So there is nothing I can do to lose weight?’ I asked, disheartened.
‘If you follow a healthy diet, you should be able to,’ the doctor said.
I had been trying to be healthy over the years, but I felt like nothing was working for me.
Throughout my teenage years, my condition gave me an excuse to order all the burgers and chips I wanted whenever I went out with my friends.
‘The weight’s not going anywhere anyway,’ I told them while they nibbled on salads.
At night, I would still shovel bags of cheese puffs and ginger snap biscuits into my mouth and I ballooned up to a size 30 and tipped the scales at 24st 11lb. At school,
Even on a diet I put weight on
people would play on my surname ‘Fitzgerald’ and I got the nickname ‘Fat-zgerald’, but I learned to take the comments with a pinch of salt.
As my waistline grew, I struggled to fit under the desks at school, and one time a classmate put pins on my seat, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to leap up.
‘The only way you will really be able to lose weight is if you have surgery,’ the doctor told me at a checkup when I was 16. ‘Surgery? Definitely not,’ I said. There had to be another way, and when went off to university in 2015, I thought everything would change.
The freedom of living alone meant I would gorge on familysized portions of pasta covered in cheese and I started wearing loose clothing and wouldn’t let anyone take a picture of me.
I had been in a two-hour lecture when I noticed just how big I had really become.
‘Are you coming for a drink?’ my friend, Bryanna, asked me.
‘I’ll catch you up,’ I smiled, feeling my cheeks burn up. I was jammed into the seat! My thighs were pressed up against the desks in the lecture hall and I started to get out of breath, shuffling under the desk.
After ten minutes of wriggling, I managed to free myself.
I was mortified that I was so exhausted and had even broken into a sweat.
I burst into tears and waddled back to my flat.
‘I can’t do it anymore,’ I sobbed down the phone to Mum.
‘I’m going to look more into that surgery the doctor spoke about.’
‘Are you sure you want to do
that?’ Mum gasped.
But I’d made up my mind and soon I had signed up for a gastric sleeve surgery.
I started going to meetings to prepare myself and had to lose 4st myself before I would be eligible for the surgery.
A few months later, the big day rolled up.
‘This is it!’ Mum said, squeezing my hand nervously in the ward. ‘It’ll be fine,’ I said. I felt great, and I knew this was the next step. The surgery was quick
and over in a few hours.
‘How do you feel?’ Mum asked me.
I looked down, and although all my lumps and bumps were still there, I had a new boost of confidence.
‘I feel amazing,’ I replied.
‘You will now have to try to avoid
carbs, and stop eating when you’re full,’ a doctor warned. ‘Definitely!’ I squealed. I had been through so much, I wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of my weight loss. When I came out of the hospital, I ran back to my flat to clear out the cupboards of all my beloved crisps, chocolate bars and bags of pasta. I felt different straight away. I would chat to my classmates which I had never done before, and started to go out more often. The weight fell off me quicker than expected, and I was soon walking everywhere without getting out of breath. I lost 7st in the first 6 months and my clothes were hanging off me. ‘You look incredible!’ Mum said to me. The more weight I lost, the more motivated I was to keep at it and I proudly slipped under the desks at uni with ease. I’ve now dropped 15st 3lb in 14 months and weigh a healthy 9st 8lb. I can fit into a size 8 with ease. My life has completely changed thanks to the surgery and my hard work, and even though I still have to watch what I eat all the time, the confidence this has given me motivates me not to go back. This is the new me, and I’m sticking with it!