Slave to the scales

Natalie Bradley, 33, Manchester

Sitting in the doctor’s office, I tried not to cry.

‘You need to lose weight,’ he said in October 2018.

A familiar voice was already whispering in my head and I tried my hardest to block it out.

Hit the gym now. Count calories. No carbs.

See, now, aged 30, I was clinically obese.

But not so long ago, I’d been desperately thin, hospitalised with anorexia.

It had started when I was 10.

I’m bigger than my friends, I’d think miserably.

So I began obsessively counting calories, walking miles each day.