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‘I had to fight the demons’
For 43 year old Laura Jackson, from London, it wasn’t about the food. “For me it was the hole in my heart. Outwardly, I was always a happy, joyful person. But inside I just hated myself.”
In December 2003, Laura underwent surgery to insert a sleeve around her stomach so she ate less. And it was a success. “It was absolutely beneficial. And the reason I was pleased because it didn’t affect the body’s plumbing. I had no negatives.”
But she had only overcome the physical aspect. The hole in her heart remained. “I had dealt with the calories but now there was the underlying stuff,” she says.
She says surgery was a tool without which she would have eaten through her ‘real’ problems. “I genuinely didn’t think that I had any problem other than obesity.”
Slowly she understood that it was not that she had to “fight the demons” with out overeating. She focussed on healing the wounds and overcame what was “between her ears.”
Now, 5 years on, she is genuinely happy with herself.
“Except that I cannot tuck into a proper Christmas,” she says with a lighter heart and a 9 stone lighter body.
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