My Life in Weight

This wouldn't be a weight loss blog if it didn't have a post devoted to the history of my battle with the bulge. My laptop hard-drive sucked the kumara a wee while ago and took my pics with it, and I've shied away from cameras for the past five years but I'll do my best!


1987 - I was born, naaaawww wasn't I cute!! 


Ahem... Get to the point Hailey.


Right. Sorry.


Seriously though, I was a chubby baby, a chubby kid and then a puppy fat tween, my only guess as to why this came to be is that growing up I was fed large portion sizes, there was always access to second helpings, my parents were both overweight and I loved food. I always wanted yummy food and I always felt like my parents were enjoying it without me. I wanted to eat yummy food all the time and I wanted to be in control of what I ate. I snuck food from the cupboard all the time, I knew it was wrong but I didn't care, how dare they not share yummy food with me!?


2002 - I was 15 and the realisation one day hit me that if I stopped eating my clothes got too big. I quickly developed an obsession with the scales and my ultimate goal was to get through every day having only eaten as little food as possible. I would get to the third day of practically no food and then crumble and eat everything in sight. I started buying food and eating it in secret. The first time it happened I had bought a block of chocolate for a friend, we laughed about the fact that I ate the whole thing and had to buy him another, but looking back it was the start of something crazy. My weight dropped during this year from around 82kg to 73kg, I felt good, but was desperate to lose more.


2003 - When I was 16 I went to Spain for 10 months. It was difficult to eat very little in a traditional sit-at-the-dinner-table-together family situation. I still binge ate and while in Spain my weight fluctuated wildly between 82 and 76kg I tried to vomit a few times but luckily I was never successful. I had big dreams to starve myself into amazing size 10 dark blue jeans with a bright red tiny jacket to wow my friends and family when I got home. I obsessed about my weight and deprived myself of teenage fun while I was there and came back with holes in my clothes because I was too fat to fit european clothes and a solid 76kg. 

The only photo I have of me in Spain on my lappy, around 78kg. 

2004 - A month after I got home from Spain I met boyfriend. My weight hovered around 76kg and I was pretty happy, he loved me just how I was and I was a comfortable size 12 up top and 14 down bottom. That summer I finished school and my mum near disowned me when I abandoned my plans to become a Geologist at Auckland University to stay in New Plymouth and start a business degree at the local polytech (she thought I was throwing my life away for a boy, a valid concern but I had my head screwed on right). I had an awful summer job in a gift shop and started to slowly put on weight.


2005 - My first year studying business went smoothly. My weight ballooned to 84kg after enjoying far too many lunches with the girls from tech and binge eating out of boredom. I joined weight watchers in August of that year and dropped quickly to 72kg by December. I was the smallest weight of my adult life and I don't even have a photo of me to prove it! None were taken, it was like a blink and you miss it moment of my life. Boyfriend and I had some problems when someone tried to break us up and I stealthily put on5kg. I had a summer job which bored me to tears, then I said goodbye to BF and moved to Palmerston North to finish my business degree.


2006-2008 BF missed me and shifted down to Palmy, we flatted with amazing friends and had a great time, but I always felt like the fat girl who didn't fit in. I ate in secret and joined weight watchers about a million times. Nothing worked. I refused to look at photos of my 21st birthday because I was so fat (78kg) and ashamed of myself. How dare I get drunk and have fun looking like that? I became really fit and dedicated to the gym despite my weight, until a wrist injury in my last month of Uni stopped all exercise for months (even walking jarred it). It turned out exercise was all that was keeping me at 82kg (which I was already unhappy with) and my weight started to creep up.

I was around 81kg here and went to bed early thinking I was hideous.

2009 - 2011 My weight blew out at 96kg and I went back to weight watchers. I got back down to 83kg but didn't stay there for long. My first job out of Uni was not dissimilar to watching paint dry, I was extremely grateful to have it but I was so desperate for something to keep me on my toes. I would buy food on the way home from work and scoff it in the car before I got home. We went to Thailand in 2010 and I didn't go out at night with our tour group at all because I was so socially phobic about my weight and how awful and tragic I looked (BF went without me, I was determined not to ruin his holiday). His birthday was one of those nights and I still think of it as the worst night of my life, realising how much my self loathing affected him. I went on anti-depressants not long after we got back.

I cried when I saw this photo. I was around 90kg in Thailand.

2012 - Landed my dream job, moved to Wellington, suddenly food isn't such a big deal now that everything else in my life is working how I wanted it to? Either that or I'm learning to think positive and it's rubbing off.