Carole Anne Knott

I often work with ladies who are challenged physically. They may be ill, they may be carrying excess weight. However, there is usually some physical manifestation of other things that perhaps are out of balance in their life or other issues or wounds that have just not been healed.

It probably began at the age of 15 for me, when my PT teacher actually said to me, “let’s put thunder thighs in goal”. And that was when I realised I was bigger than the other girls. I’d been secretly eating going to the sweet shop and having secret snacks because it made me feel better.

I had no awareness at the time why I was doing it, but it began a nearly 30-year cycle of feeling uncomfortable with who I was. Either thinking that my discomfort was physical as in my weight or how I looked and I thought the answer to go on a diet or to start a new exercise routine.

I got into a pattern and had so many false starts. Some would end by midday on Monday when I would start bingeing. At other times, I’d make it to Tuesday.

If I did succeed in losing weight, the self-sabotage would kick in, the bingeing would kick in. All the things I’d been depriving myself of came back into my life tenfold. And so that was my 30-year cycle. I put on weight, lost weight, not quite as much as I’d put on and I gradually got fatter and fatter and fatter.