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The reality of living with obesity
Sarah Le Brocq
All About Obesity CIC, Birstwith, Harrogate HG3 2NP, UK
I grew up on a little Island in the English Channel, nes-
tled between the south coast of England and France,
called Jersey. It was a wonderful place to grow up and I
had a fabulous childhood. I went through puberty early
as a child, which made me feel different to the other
children, and I didn’t like it. I went to an all-girls’ sec-
ondary school, which amplified how different in terms
of development my body was compared with the other
girls. This is when I started fixating on my weight. I
remember attending a slimming group with my mum
in my early teens, and I had tried my first very low-calo-
rie diet by the age of 16 years. After years of yo-yo diet-
ing (ie, weight cycling), the desire to find the answer to
weight loss grew stronger. By the time I left university
at 22, I was a UK size 20.
I then spent my 20’s experimenting with various
weight loss plans, losing a bit of weight, but always
regaining it and generally putting more weight than I
had lost. I had reached out for medical support and was
offered diet counselling, without obtaining effective
results. Just before I turned 30, the opportunity to take
part in a weight loss television show arose. The pro-
gramme was looking for people who wanted to lose at
least 60 kg, so I applied and I was chosen to take part. I
was provided with a personal trainer for 2 h a day,
5 days a week, and a new diet. I was filmed for around 9
months and I lost 55 kg. I went from doing very little
exercise, to completing an Olympic distance triathlon at
the end of the show. I felt fitter and I had developed a
routine for exercise, but I still didn’t like the way I
looked. Despite the fact that many of the restrictions I
had faced as a bigger-bodied person had gone away,
such as not being out of breath walking up and down
stairs, the stigma I experienced for years around my
condition, together with the feeling of blame and not
being “good enough” were still vivid and pushed me to
aim for losing more weight.
Over the next couple of years, I continued to exer-
cise regularly and follow diet plans, however, I started
regaining weight. This made me feel like a failure
and affected my mental health. With my scientific
background, I questioned the simplistic idea that I
was just eating too much and not exercising enough,
so I started looking into research on obesity and the
science behind it. I discovered studies reporting that
there are over a hundred different factors that contrib-
ute to why someone might live with obesity, ranging
from societal, environmental, physical, biological,
and psychological factors. This was an important real-
isation for me; I had spent over 30 years of my life
thinking that I was the reason that I lived with obe-
sity, and that my lack of willpower was to blame. I
understood that the blame I felt was due to the “eat
less, move more” narrative that society promotes as
the solution for obesity, and the messages from
health-care providers telling me I had to do some-
thing different. I suddenly realised that it wasn’t my
fault, and so many factors were out of my control.
This realisation and understanding of obesity, has
given me a passion to ensure that more people living
with obesity are aware of this understanding and stop
blaming themselves for their condition.
Since 2013, I have been volunteering with an obesity
charity, initially as an ambassador, sharing my story,
before becoming a trustee on the board in 2016. In
2022, I founded and launched a new obesity organisa-
tion in the UK. I connected with medical doctors in the
field who support the notion that obesity is a chronic
disease, and I am working on obesity stigma and how
this affects patients’ wellbeing. I currently sit on the
strategic council for the All Party Parliamentary Group
on Obesity, and I get called upon as a spokesperson in
the media for obesity-related topics. I presented at the
most recent Diabetes UK Professional Conference in
March 2022, and I spoke at the World Health Assembly
event at WHO in Geneva in May, 2022. My voice is
being heard at high levels in the UK, and I am begin-
ning to see small changes in policy. Patients’ perspec-
tives are also being included in more working groups,
such as the new obesity audit being led by NHS Eng-
land. More people in the general population and in
health care are acknowledging that obesity is a chronic
relapsing condition. In this direction, the European
Commission issued a brief in March, 2021, in which
obesity was identified as a “chronic relapsing disease”.
We still have a long way to go, but I am confident that
we will see a shift in attitudes and understanding. I truly
believe that we will look back in 15−20 years’ time and
be horrified at how we behaved towards people living
with obesity.
Contributors
SLB.
E-mail address: sarah.lebrocq@allaboutobesity.org
©2022 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article
under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
eClinicalMedicine
2022;51: 101648
Published online xxx
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
eclinm.2022.101648
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Comment
Declaration of interests
SLB declares financial payment from Novo Nordisk and
Guys & St Thomas Trust; payments from Novo Nordisk
for providing lives experience training to employees;
and being a strategic council member for the All Party
Parliamentary Group on Obesity; a patient representa-
tive on the Advisory Group on Nutrition Weight &
Health for the Royal College of Physicians (RCP); a
stakeholder in NHSE’s new National Obesity Audit; a
representative on the OHA Healthy Weight Strategy,
lived experience group; and a lay member on the NICE
Weight Management Committee; part of a disease
awareness campaign with Ethicon, Johnson & Johnson;
and carrying out consultancy work with the Transform
Hospital Group.
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