Four days ago, on June 11th 2019, my boyfriend of a year and four months broke up with me. With it, he broke my heart and my confidence.

My immediate thoughts went to what I did wrong and what was wrong with me. I asked him, and although he was quite vague in stating it was simply that he had his own problems and didn’t feel like he loved me as much anymore, he mentioned something else: My weight.

My weight has always been a problem; I was always a chubby child, and as a teen I was up to a size 18/20 at my worst. Before going to university I made changes and managed to get that down to a size 10/12, and it felt amazing. I remember not even believing how I managed to be so big before, and thinking about how unhealthy it was and how I was never going to let that happen again.

For a while I stuck to that, I managed to maintain it for a couple of years but in the late months of 2017 my mental health deteriorated and my caring towards my health depleted. It was the February of 2018 that I got together with my boyfriend, and he made me feel beautiful and so I continued to not care so much.

But during that time, my mental health still wasn’t great. I dropped out of university and got a job at McDonalds, where I got free food on each of my breaks. It put me in the cycle of eating unhealthily and working awkward shifts where I never felt like I had the energy to cook my own food, and it wasn’t long before the weight crept up and I didn’t really do much to counter it.

Every so often I would say ‘I need to lose some weight!’ but I rarely followed through. I even had a personal trainer at one point, but health issues for my mother and myself meant my schedule was disrupted and then I felt too embarrassed to go back as I hadn’t made much progress whilst I had done it (probably due to the McDonalds)

I’d often tell my boyfriend I felt bad about how I looked, and he’d tell me I looked fine, so when he suddenly broke up with me in a moment that felt out the blue, I felt utterly betrayed. He’d always told me not to worry, but now he was telling me he wasn’t very attracted to me because of my weight. It felt like it was such a shallow reasoning, but now looking back it’s hard to blame him.

Although I had started gaining the weight before I got with him, I was a lot thinner when we first met and first got together. I gained a lot of it during our first few months together, and although looks aren’t everything, it’s definitely not his fault that he doesn’t enjoy it comparatively, even if he tried to make me feel better at the time.

When I told him, “But you know I’ve been trying,” he responded that I’d been saying that for ages, which was true, but we both knew my actual motivation hadn’t been high.

So now I am single, fat, and the owner of a rock-bottom self-esteem.

But although the last few days have consisted of a lot of crying and feeling sorry for myself, I’ve also decided that this is the kick up the bum that I need.

I’ve lost weight before, but the situation was drastically different. But either way, the fact that I’ve done it before is somewhat comforting. I remember that portion control and drinking a lot of water, as well as a simple exercise routine was the basis of my previous loss. My main concern is that my current mental health has me in a period of depression, and it had been before the break-up, so gaining the motivation to begin these healthy habits has been hard since anything that doesn’t help instantly feels useless.

I’ve been to the gym once, employed the use of some resistance band exercises when I have been watching YouTube videos, and just ordered a bunch of healthy food to stock my fridge. I haven’t built up the energy to cook any yet, but I hope to start some meal prepping soon. It’s not much, but it’s more than I had done in the month running up to it, so it’s something.

It’s all basic plan, but one I hope to stick to and one that will hopefully help in the long run.