I, personally, have been through quite a change over the past few years. I used to be extremely overweight, unmotivated and working in a job I hated. I didn’t realise how much all of these things affected my physical and mental well-being until I decided to leave my job in 2018. I felt like I had no real purpose, and found it difficult to do daily tasks or even buy clothes that fitted my size, which all took a knock on my confidence. I decided that I needed to do something about it, so I first changed my job and started looking after myself. Some friends said to me “why not join the gym and come with us?”, but I was against this for a few reasons. Firstly, because of my size, I felt extremely self-conscious amongst all the regular gym-bunnies; but also because it wasn’t healthy for someone my size to go from nothing to exercising at the gym 5 days a week. I needed to begin gradually shedding the weight just through walking, and altering my diet. Carrying as much weight as I did and suddenly changing to extreme cardio could create long-term damage to my joints and organs. I bought myself a decent pair of trainers and took a short walk every day, walking a bit further each time. I also took up swimming, because it is a great sport that is low-impact on my joints. There were some quieter adult sessions in the morning before work, so I would head there and be one of the only people in the pool which made me feel a lot better.