The week I spent £107 on takeaways

I’ve tried every diet going. Weight Watchers, 5:2, Scottish Slimmers, The Cambridge Diet. I had varying amounts of success with them all – but nothing long-lasting or sustainable.

I’d start on a Monday, stick at it all week, see my weight start to drop… and then fall off the wagon at the weekend. It was a never-ending cycle of predictability.

Looking back, I now realise that it wasn’t as easy as just ‘going on a diet’; I had an unhealthy relationship with food that I needed to come to terms with first. But, as much as I’d tried, I wasn’t making much progress on my own.

A dangerous cycle

My Just Eat orders from one week in August 2016

I had got myself into an extremely dangerous routine of zero exercise, very little cooking and a reliance on takeaways.

Work. Eat. Sleep. That was my daily routine from Monday to Friday and at the weekends I mixed it up a little by just eating and sleeping.

I was piling on the pounds.

I went through short spells of trying to be sensible and organised by going to the supermarket to buy food to last me a few days. But I had no list, no plan, and no willpower to stop me from eating it all when I got home.

I didn’t enjoy cooking, I didn’t measure anything so I had no idea how many calories I was consuming, and I had no idea how many calories I even needed to lose weight.

It was much easier to just order a takeaway and I did that a lot. Just Eat is simultaneously the best and worst invention in the entire world. Having a choice of takeaways at your fingertips is brilliantly convenient, your address and card details are stored in the app and before long you can order dinner in minutes.

My food addict brain LOVED the convenience and I used to order from Just Eat all the time. I’ve just looked back at my order history and there’s a week in August 2016 where I placed 6 orders. SIX! And these aren’t small orders of a burger and chips or a mini pizza, they range in price from £15 – £20 and total almost £108.

I can’t believe I ordered so much and I’m amazed I didn’t get invited to their Christmas party that year!

This was my routine for years and I shudder to think how many calories I consumed and how much money I wasted on poisoning my body with junk food.

I don’t think I realised at the time just how bad things were. I had no energy, no-get-up-and-go, no desire to do anything with my spare time. It was a miserable existence.

Time to change

Something needed to give and it was an intervention from a stranger that led to me making the single biggest change in my life.

Continues: Shame and devastation at the kilt hire shop…