I’ve lost 10 stone in a year – but it still hurts to see people ridiculed for being overweight

I was a regular runner and was fitter than many of my friends, but people still called out ‘run, fatty, run’ from their cars

‘I was that girl crouching behind friends in group photos. I was the one sticking to the edges of public spaces, terrified that I might be taking up too much room’ (Katy Daly)

Recently the journalist Liz Jones (who once claimed she would rather “lose a limb than be size 20”) donned an “empathy suit” to mimic the appearance and the physical strain placed upon a morbidly obese woman far larger than her own size 8 frame.

The resulting article is teeming with reductive, fat-phobic observations – at one point, Jones says, “rightly or wrongly, I look down on people who overeat: no willpower, no constraints, they have never felt hunger in their lives”; she also says, “I’m disgusting, a drain on taxes” – birthed from an entirely inauthentic experience; one from which she escaped as soon as she could.

For my entire adult life, I was the size that Jones zipped on for a day, and when I read her piece I couldn’t shake the lyrics from Pulp’s Common People: “cause everyone hates a tourist”. Her article is useful only in that it unwittingly confirms how difficult it is for obese people to be understood.

Just 12 months ago I had bariatric surgery, a tool which has allowed me to lose 10 stone to date. There have been many ways in which my life has changed since then. Before, I was that girl crouching behind friends in group photos. I was the one sticking to the edges of public spaces, terrified that I might be taking up too much room.

I was constantly aware of how much I would sweat, shrinking from people in fear of disgusting them; talking myself out of applying for jobs I wanted because I thought they would assume I was lazy. I felt humiliated every time I boarded a plane, apologising to every other passenger who had to tolerate me. Imagine that. Apologising for existing.

But I didn’t want to change to look better. I have two daughters and I want them to find a kinder, more accepting world than I did growing up. I am glad that there is so much work done for them around body positivity.

I made my personal choice because there were signs that my weight would soon cause my health some damage. Surgery isn’t a short cut, and the change I wanted wasn’t cosmetic. My body works differently now – and it takes enormous physical and mental discipline for the surgery to count for anything. I wasn’t lazy then, and I am not lazy now. I work out every day – I run, lift weights and do cardio.

Before surgery, there were ubiquitous diets and exercise plans. I was a regular runner and was fitter than many of my friends, but people still called out “run, fatty, run” from their cars. Though I had a difficult relationship with food, I ate much more healthily than my husband – yet in public I was the one who was stared at.

My struggle had ups and it had downs, but I was driven to the point of obsession to change myself. There was nothing I wouldn’t do, but my body and my mind just wouldn’t react. Yet people who crossed my path in the street would spend just a few seconds deciding why I was the way I was, and how I could change.

Eat less, move more? I moved all the time – and telling someone who has an emotional dependency on food to eat less demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of addiction. Now, imagine being addicted to a drug which is cheap, sold from every other high street shop, easily delivered to your home, is backed by a limitless advertising budget – and that you literally need to take to live. That’s what it was like for me being addicted to food.

I am still the same girl, but the world treats me differently now. They don’t yell from the cars anymore when I go on nine mile runs, they smile and wave. They don’t point when I eat anymore. I’ve shared much of my weight loss journey on Instagram – I even shared how emotional it was when, for the first time in my life, I didn’t have to use a seatbelt extender on the plane. I still have insecurities and need to learn to love my body, but I am still me.

In October, I will be running the London Marathon. I have replaced my shame with pride. Not because I have changed, but because I haven’t. I ran for Epilepsy UK at my largest, and will run for them again this year. I run for my fitness. I run for my enjoyment. For my mental health and for my girls. I run for my friend Lucy, who passed away from epilepsy a decade ago.

I am the same girl and deserved the world’s respect and empathy just as much then, as I do now – and just as much as you deserve it of me. I don’t need to wear a costume and infiltrate your life for a day to believe you’re in pain. Why did Liz Jones have to do that to understand mine? You only need to listen to hear someone.