My name is Christie and I am obese

I made a new year resolution to sort my life out, get slim, get things happening, but hey, guess what. Two weeks later, I gave up. Now it is May, and I've been trundling along with life, same old thing, not achieving much, overcome with the urge to sleep for part of the day and then stay up late playing goddam useless Facebook games. Not much money to speak of - my husband didn't get his bonus this year, so we can't go on holiday or anything, and my clothes are falling to bits. Oh yeah, and I'm blasting out of most of them as well.

My daughter got a Wii fit for Christmas. I got on it, and the damn thing weighed me - and then called me obese. Not a good word. Fat people are meant to be "big" these days, not obese. Obese sounds offensive, it sounds like a medical condition. Last time I clocked in (at Christmas) I weighed just over 14 stone, at 5ft 5 and a half inches tall. I take a size 20-22 on top, and have a size 18 arse. I'm 43 years old.

I wasn't always fat. I used to be dead skinny when I was at school. I didn't care much about food either way and meals were very often just an interruption to other interesting stuff I was doing. That was always the case, till I was about 21 and left my job.

It was my backside that started to get big first, I remember people remarking on it. By the September of my 22nd year, I had put on a bit of weight all over, and then I got pregnant. From then on, it has crept up gradually, through two more pregnancies, and then in the last few years, it has gone from 12 stone to my latest weight. I have an underactive thyroid, which will no doubt have something to do with it, but is really not the whole story.

That couple of extra stone has made a real difference to how I look and how I feel. I'm pretty unfit, and can't walk very far without getting out of breath. I have weird aches and pains, my neck is uncomfortable at night, I think because of the fat around it, and my feet hurt like hell when I walk. I can't wear most ordinary shoes or boots any more either because I'm too fat.

The problem is, food is my life. It's my main thing. I get ravenously hungry and I fantasise about food and what I'm going to eat most of the time. I'm rarely actually full, and could just about always have another dinner. Diets don't work for me, I can't stick to them, and I always end up weighing more than when I started.

So here I am. My new year resolution failed, as a lot of things tend to do in my life, May is here, and I am still obese. I know there is more than the issue of just food here, although food is definitely more than an issue.

I really want to find some way of making obesity bog off. It's hampering my life. It's time for it to go.