I left the UK for New Zealand in August 2016 and was pretty slim. I always enjoyed my food but after seeing photos of a holiday in Las Vegas in 2006 I went on a drastic diet and lost almost 3 stone. I kept the weight off pretty well despite my love for food, food and more food. This was most thanks to High Intensity Interval Training and from 2016, running. It was all about to change when I reached landed in New Zealand.

Food has always taken centre stage in my life and I am always thinking about my next feed so arriving in a new country, 12,000 miles from home I was just a little bit excited by all the different (and similar) food options.

Tim Tams, Lollies (sweets to us Brits), lolly cake! (cake with sweets in it to us Brits), pies available in every convenience store, the famous custard slice, hokey poky ice-cream and Whittaker’s chocolate. What’s a girl to do? Try everything of course.

I piled on around 9-10 pounds and then became quite down. I then started eating more to console myself and it was then a deeply entrenched habit that I couldn’t break. Feeling happy? Let’s celebrate with food. Feeling down? Let’s have some lollies. It’s my birthday, let’s eat everything in sight. You get the picture. It was awful and one of the worst things was my running suffered. More recently, I have managed to break the cycle and I’m overcoming binge eating. I’ve lost all the weight and my running is better than ever. I’ll post more about that later.