When someone doesn’t feel comfortable in their own body, they experience a certain kind of silent suffering in social situations. Megan Winstanley experienced it in the form of borrowed clothing. With ease, her friends would trade jackets and tops, sharing anecdotes about whose jeans fit whom. Every time, Megan had to go buy something new. She was aware of the reason. She simply didn’t know how to make the change yet.
The 31-year-old Wigan resident weighed 15 stone 10 pounds at her heaviest. She carried her weight in silence while working a full-time job for the local government. She freely acknowledges that when her emotions became too intense, she would secretly eat sugary snacks at nite. She remarked, “I would emotionally eat if I felt sad”. It wasn’t exactly denial. It was more akin to self-medication disguised as habit. One nite at a time, this type of pattern is simple to defend, but when taken as a whole, it is difficult to discern.
In 2018, the real reckoning took place. She had been traveling and leading a life that kept her occupied enough to avoid paying too much attention. When she got home, she saw herself in the mirror. “I just felt sick with seeing how I saw myself” she replied. “I felt depressed” . That moment planted something, but it didn’t result in an instant transformation those rarely work that way. A persistent, low-pitched discomfort that at last overpowered the solace she found in food.
Prior to her brother’s wedding, the first tangible step was taken. By sheer happen stance, she completely changed her diet, replacing chicken tenders and chips with rice protein oats and green beans. The list isn’t very glamorous. Protein oats are never put on a vision board. She lost two stones in the process something changed in her perception of herself as someone who could truly change.
She started tracking her macros for the first time, committed to a 12-week online calorie challenge started swimming for thirty minutes every morning. Only thirty. When you think about what it really requires to show up at a pool before work every morning, the simplicity of it is almost suspicious.
Megan had already restored her relationship with movement by the time the bodybuilding concept surfaced in 2022, partly due to a photo shoot and partly due to a growing suspicion that she might be more capable than she’d allowed herself to imagine. The swimming went on.
There is now resistance training. Things were momentarily complicated by a bulging disk in 2023, but it’s telling that by then she had gained enough momentum that a setback was perceived as a setback rather than an excuse to give up. She felt like she had more to prove after competing in her first PCA event without a coach. She remarked, “It set a fire within me”.
She engaged a coach. She continued. She claims to be in the best shape of her life at 47.5 kg. In her most recent competition, she came in second. She purposefully entered her thirties with the intention of making them her best years, almost defiantly.
It’s not totally incorrect, the “8 stone in the pool” summary of Megan Winstanley’s weight loss story undervalues the more difficult aspects. It is possible to swim for thirty minutes each morning. The discipline needed to stick with it, monitor your diet while working a full-time job, or enter a bodybuilding stage for the first time, feel horrible then return is something else entirely.
“Once you start going and taking it step by step”, she said, “it becomes natural and part of your identity”. That may be the most candid statement about long-term weight loss in a long time. not change. One morning at a time, just identity.