I am currently living with obesity, according to BMI calculations I am classed a Severely Obese with a BMI over 40. These calculations are not perfect and they do not work perfectly for me, even when I was fell-running back in 2014 I was classified as overweight. However, there is no disputing that I am definitely at a dangerous weight for my own health and also a weight that has made it difficult for me to head into the mountains.
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| Me in Patagonia, 2015 having just completed the W-route in the Torres del Paine |
Prior to 2020 my weight was never a serious concern, there were several times when I wanted to lose some weight but it was never more than a few kilograms. My weight flu has always fluctuated, usually in line with my mental health. While attempting to complete and MSc I suffered a long episode of depression and put on quite a lot of weight reaching 115kg for the first time in my life. Over the next 5 years my weight was largely fluctuating between 100 and 115kg. Then in 2019 I decided to start a PGCE, as this progressed I noticed my weight already creeping up due to the combination of workload, stress and a long commute to University or placement. Then lockdown hit, I decided that, while I may have preferred to move back to my parents in Cumbria, I would stay living with my sister in Sheffield. She is a doctor and at the time had the misfortune of being on a respiratory ward in Doncaster. There was no way I was going to consider leaving her on her own at this time.
Initially I planned to try and make the most of being so close to the Peak District and take my border collie Suilven for walks in the moors and edges around Sheffield. However quickly two incidents made me far more reticent about this; first was a news story about a police drone following walkers on Burgage Edge and then a pair of friends were accosted by the police and accused of meeting for a picnic when they legally met for a walk in a car park (the police claimed their takeaway coffee's counted as a picnic!). Lockdown was an entirely necessary measure, if the r-value was not reduced the NHS could easily have collapsed in that initial wave. However, the outdoor restrictions were, in my view, excessive. Transmission risk was always known to be significantly lower when outdoors, then there is the negative impacts to physical and mental health that came from not having access to nature. I think more leeway could have been given for travelling short distances for walks without making much of an impact on the r-value.
This was not the world we were living in and I was denied access to the hills, these have been my place of solitude, recreation, and rejuvination. The inability to visit them had great impacts on both my mental and physical health. My mental health was not as bad as it may have been during lockdown but is was still not exactly very good. My Physical health, however was a disaster. I do not know what the top weight I hit was, I avoided the scales during this time and in any case was over the 150kg maximum weight that my scales have. I suspect I was comfortably over 160kg at my heaviest.
Since lockdown ended I have been struggling to get my weight back to my old level. This was far more difficult than people who have never dealt with obesity tend to think. Weight loss seems so very simple, if we simply think about physics it is about ensuring the calories burned are greater than those extracted from our food. Usually we only think about calories consumed but consuming 100cal of sugar vs sweetcorn will have a very different digestive efficiency (as can be seen if you look in the toilet bowl after eating sweetcorn). The basic equation is entirely accurate but massively oversimplifies the situation. There are psychological factors that will make losing weight more difficult, mental health will also play a big part in the ability to maintain weight loss. Physiology also works against anyone trying to lose weight, the body does not like losing weight and works to prevent this, lowering the Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) meaning the body uses fewer calories during a normal day. This causes many people to reach a plateau after an initial positive start then lose motivation as they stop seeing the scales move. I want to write more detailed posts on some of these issues in the future here I will just briefly describe how my weight has fluctuated between 2020 and 2025.
Following lockdown I began my teaching career in west Cumbria with plans to lose weight and get back into the hills. This was impossible in my first term of teaching, I was working 70+ hours a week and often felt like I was barely surviving. Then we entered a second lockdown, this helped in some ways as I was able to recharge a little but the stress had impacted my mental health so my weight didn't especially change. When we went back to in-person teaching I set myself a hard limit of 50hrs pw for work and largely sticked to this. Unfortunately, this method had one clear drawback that I could not properly relax away from work. Work was looming over my 'free time' like a dark spectre. This would become even more acute when I started my second year. Summer had several positives, I walked a chunk of the Pennine Way, only stopping as I had to attend the wedding of several friends from my time in the Bangor University Mountain Walking Club. I also had the draw of climbing my last few Wainwrights, I had never really been especially concened with 'bagging' them. I have like to climb new hills and knew that eventually I would finish them but now they provided a useful motivation to get out and my final summit of Base Brown was done just after starting the second year of teaching.
This year did not go well, I tried to maintain my 50hr working week but this was not sustainable and I spent much of the rest of my employment as a teacher off work with stress and a long period of depression. Any gains I had made were lost in feelings of failure and the uncertainty around my future. I then went to work with the Youth Hostels, I had done this previously at Pen-y-Pass and Glen Nevis and I finished both of these seasonal jobs far fitter than I began them. I hoped the same would happen on Arran.
The Lochranza hostel is beautifully situated with a stunning view, especially as you walk around towards Hutton's Unconformity and the Fairy Glen, this became my standard dog walk. Having had an abortive attempt walking the Cumbria Way due to soreness in my hip and knee I was very reticent about trying any of the hills. This meant my weight loss through the summer was less than I may have liked. Then near the end of the season while my dad visited we climbed Mullach Buidhe while not a large Graham this did involve an ascent from near sea-level. I was amazed, I was slow- of course- but I was able to walk continuously without needing rest stops as I had always done previously. I hoped this would mark a turning point, it didn't. I decided to stay on at Lochranza as caretaker as I was considering converting to a data analytics career. Arran empties as the season ends and the hostel began to feel a little like the Overlook hotel.
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| Walking up Mullach Buidhe, September 2023 |
I was lucky in many ways to be offered some work at the Inverness hostel after Christmas, not only did this change lead me to meet my partner but I also got more hill days in walking Geal Charn Mor above Llynwilg and a lovely snowy loop over Meall a' Buachaille and its subsidiary tops (complete with my best ever views of a Golden Eagle). I hoped to find a summer hostel job near to Aviemore where my parter was living, this did not work out and I was forced back out to an island, this time on Mull. I was not pleased about this and struggled with motivation for the job and also with my general mental health. I did have a period where I lost a significant amount of weight (13kg) following my belated discovery of Michael Mosley and his Just one Thing podcast ( a discovery that shortly predated his tragic and untimely death). A mental wobble led to the weight coming back again.
I did not see out the season on Mull, Rowardennan hostel needed staff for their final stretch and I was drafted in, taking advantage of the time there to walk up my first Munro since 2017. I definitely found my fitness improve during my time here and again kicked myself for not being more bold in my walking over the preceding years.
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| I normally abhor selfies but decided to take one in honour my first Murno since 2017. Ben Lomond, October 2024 |
After this I managed to get a couple of weeks at the Aviemore hostel covering holiday as my partner and I had decided to trial moving in together. I again started to lose weight walking several big days over Sgor Gaoithe and Mullach Clach a' Bhlair and the Cromdale Hills. We moved in December and so the stresses of that lead to a period without much hillwalking.
This has recently changed I and have found some useful new motivation. I have lost around 13kg since late May and have many walks and backpacking trips planned for the coming weeks and months. I am optimistic that I have a combination of factors today that will allow me to successfully lose the weight without resorting to the new weight loss drugs that are so prominent in the media today. This blog is to serve, initially as a place to write about my walks, record my weight loss journey, and as an accountability measure. It may take on new unexpected purposes in the future but that is not for me to concern myself with today.
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| Cac Carn Mor Lochnagar, June 2025 |
Thank you for taking the time to read this first post, the next one will detail a couple of walks I did from near home at the end of June.
Happy adventuring and make sure you take some time to listen to the Mountain's Song while you do,
Chris July 2025
