The Photo That Changed Me: why I had to stop documenting my weight loss

When I was growing up, I wasn’t someone who took a particular interest in fitness. I didn’t play sports, I hated PE and the concept of exercising to become strong was an alien one to me. Like many girls who came of age in the early 2000s, the idea that my weight and body shape was intrinsic to my value was ingrained in me from the culture of the time. This was the era of Britney Spears’s abs, the red circle of shame and the cabbage soup diet, after all. During sixth form at my all girls school, disordered eating was rampant (I lived on a can of Doctor Pepper and a few menthol cigarettes for one term), but there was little to no focus on excessive exercise, or any exercise, at all. 

It took the Covid-19 pandemic and the first lockdown of March 2020 for me to realise that I wanted to do something about my weight. After university, I’d moved to London to pursue a career in magazine journalism, and with that came seemingly endless free food and drink. Coupled with a twenty-something’s schedule of binge-drinking weekends followed by a hangover-busting Dominos order, and it’s perhaps entirely unsurprising that I woke up one day a decade later and was two stone and two dress sizes bigger than I’d been before.

The privacy of lockdown inspired me to take control of the situation. I was au fait with fitness influencers and how they documented their own weight loss through a series of photographs, ostensibly to track their progress but inevitably to buy what they were selling. I followed a few, bought some light weights and a sports bra, and got to work. I asked my boyfriend of the time to take what is now a truly cringeworthy photo of me standing in our hallway, one from the front, one from the side with my arms raised. Seeing how my body looked in an unposed picture in a sports bra and leggings was mortifying. But I’m not sure that I really believed that much would change.

Over the next few months, I exercised every single day, clocking in at over 100 days in a row. For me, working out was a way of structuring my days in this crazy new normal – I woke up, did a workout, showered and then started my working day. After a month of this, I asked my boyfriend to take my pictures again. I couldn’t really see much of a difference, but the scales said I had lost a few pounds. 

The monotony of lockdown meant that I carried on, and within a few months, I started to see tangible progress on both the scales and in the pictures. Soon I was making collages of them side by side, so I could see exactly how my body had changed. Having a goal to work towards made the workouts more fun, and spurred me on to continue. 

In July, I reached my goal weight, a stone lighter and a dress size smaller. But a little monster had awoken in me. Suddenly, I wanted to lose more weight, and I became fixated on my body-fat percentage and the possibility of having visible abs. I took photos of myself almost daily, moving my mirror into different positions in the house to get a better shot, taking advantage of the so-called golden hour to get the lighting just right. I bought new gym clothes, ones I’d seen influencers wearing, to try to look even more like them. I shared pictures on my Instagram stories, fuelled by the messages: “How did you do it?” “You look amazing, well done”.

But by the end of 2020, I knew that something was wrong. I had become completely obsessed with calories – in versus out. I tried to find new ways of losing more weight when I thought it was plateauing. I was becoming a nightmare to live with, and not only that, but incredibly boring and self-obsessed even. As the clock struck midnight on January 1st 2021, I decided to delete My Fitness Pal, ditch the Fitbit and focus on eating healthily and exercising for pleasure – not least because my periods had gone AWOL and I so desperately wanted to get pregnant that year. 

In January 2022, I fell pregnant, a full year after reevaluating my relationship with my body, weight, food and exercise. The process of growing a baby inside me, and watching my tummy expand and round, was a magical one, and thankfully my disordered eating did not rear its ugly head again.

During the first year of my daughter’s life, I breast-fed her, which as many women will know is a fast-track to rapid weight loss. Suddenly, I was smaller than I’d ever been before – and I wasn’t even doing anything particularly strenuous to make this happen. I was quietly delighted. 

Of course, when I stopped breast-feeding at 14 months postpartum, the magic bullet effect ended, and I started to put on a bit of weight. Inspired to “get back into shape”, I started to look at old pictures of my weight loss journey. There was one in particular that really struck me. I am at my lowest pre-baby weight, posing in the mirror in pink leggings. At the time, I thought I looked amazing. But far from motivating me, it made me depressed. No matter how many steps I got, how many gym classes I did, or how little I ate, I couldn’t seem to shift these extra pounds as easily. 

Now, I can look at that picture, and feel a little sad for the girl in the image. Because she didn’t appreciate that there are far more important things in life than fitting into a size 8 dress. Instead, I’m inspired by the photo of me after doing my first half marathon – looking sweaty and disgusted, but happy and triumphant. It doesn't matter what size my leggings were when I did it.

I will never get my pre-baby body back in the same way that it was before. My hips are wider, my boobs smaller, and my metabolism has also slowed with age. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t love my body for what it’s achieved, and what it’s created – a wonderful little girl and a best friend for life. The knowledge that it is within my power to influence how she sees her own body ensures that I would never go down that same slippery slope to obsessive weight loss documentation again.