A British woman declared that she would live with her body even if she was fat after 17 years of dieting.
According to Yahoo Life UK on the 11th (local time), Amy Bates (37) from Birmingham, England, has been on a constant diet to maintain a slim body for the past 17 years. She has been on a strict diet, poking herself for her diet. However, Bates decided to give up her diet, thinking that ‘the inside is more important than the outside’.
Since his school days, Bates has had a larger frame than his peers. This became her complex and she took control of her diet from the age of 16. She ate sandwiches with a balance of carbs, proteins, and fats during lunch at school, and low-calorie energy bars and low-fat yogurt at her home.
She became a police officer when she was 19 and married her husband, Adam, when she was 27. Bates relieved her stress from her police job and her childcare by binge eating just one day a week.
Every Monday, Bates ate all the food he wanted to relieve the weariness of work and childcare. That’s how the ‘yo-yo phenomenon’ began, in which you gain more weight than before you started dieting.
After the yo-yo phenomenon came, Bates’ weight increased rapidly, and he changed his diet several times, but it did not work.
She decided to try something new, so she started studying with an expert on diet psychology. She accepted her obsession with an ‘ideal’ body image, which she had carried on since her school days, and took issue with her eating disorder, which included binge eating.
After six weeks of psychology lectures, Bates got rid of the fear of food calories and accepted food as the nutrients my body needed.
Bates ditched the scale last year. He then started exercising for enjoyment, not for diet.
She plans to compete with a friend in the upcoming London Marathon.
In an interview, Bates expressed satisfaction, saying, “After I stopped dieting, my mind became calmer and my relationship with my children improved.”
Source: Donga
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.