New slimline Roz to tackle marathon

By Carly Udy
Roz Palmer was facing death - literally.
She weighed 147kg, fought for breath every night as the fat around her neck choked her and couldn't even walk for 20 minutes.
She was a social outcast and was not welcome at some restaurants. Some people even spat at her.
That was six years ago. Today, she's an athlete who's about to run a marathon.
For the first time in years, the 39-year-old is healthy and taking on life.
These days when she looks in the mirror, she sees an 82kg athlete who's run two half marathons and is about to run a full marathon next month.
"I'm a completely different person to what I was before and I do things now I never thought I'd be able to. I can ride a bike, I can wear seatbelts in every car, I don't have to use the disability toilets and I can have a bath - whereas before I could never fit," she said.
"I had heart and chest pains and I thought I was going to die. Ryan (my son) thought I was going to die. I wouldn't have survived much longer. I was in so much pain ... "
The 39-year-old has become a passionate advocate of obesity and struggles to even think about being that "fat" again.
The last time the Bay of Plenty Times caught up with Miss Palmer was in 2005, after the re-run of the documentary she took part in, Big, screened on Prime TV.
She was then 97kg and aimed to reach her goal weight of 60-65kg this year. While she hasn't done that yet, she's determined she will by the time her 40th birthday rolls round in August.
"To achieve a healthy body fat percentage is my ultimate goal."
It's one goal on a growing list, another of which she'll tick off on April 29, when she competes in the Rotorua Marathon, a 42km race around Lake Rotorua.
Three mornings a week Miss Palmer is up at 4am pounding 22kms of pavement in preparation. It will be her first and "one and only" full marathon, with the continuous endurance training taking it's toll. She's excited, having already competed successfully in two half marathons.
"My whole way of thinking, my priorities in life, just everything about me has changed," she said.
Miss Palmer, Miranda Gray-Taufa, Sharon Bishop and Gordon Walker, all opened their lives and battle with obesity to TV viewers in the year 2000.
Since then, Miranda has remained morbidly obese and last week featured on television's Inside New Zealand: Still Big? Sharon has since died.
Miss Palmer said there was a key difference why she had succeeded in her weight loss battle while fellow cast mates had not.
"I come across a lot of Mirandas and you can't help those that don't want to help themselves. You've got to look within yourself, the answers aren't on the outside, the answers are in within."
She said too many "fat" people choose to look at what they were eating rather than why they were eating.
She said both professionals and the media had no understanding.
"You've got to live with it."
There was too much emphasis on making money out of just dieting rather than helping people deal with the psychological reasons why they were overeating.
"I know so many people who are on diets and I ask them 'what are you going to do when you get to (emotional) maintenance?' My equation is that it's 80 per cent emotional, 15 per cent food and 5 per cent exercise."
It took Miss Palmer a whole year to start losing weight after the documentary because of public pressure to perform. She suffered years of depression before learning how to recognise and deal with her emotions. She believes obesity is as much of an addiction as drugs, alcohol and sex. Losing weight has been a physical and emotional rollercoaster. Miss Palmer said she'd had to learn to live in a different world.
"This is the first time in my life where I'm socially acceptable, I'm not an outcast anymore. I've been spat on and shut out of restaurants. I've always been put down and trashed. It really is coming from one world into another. People's biggest fear in the world is to be fat and they just don't understand it.
"The best part of (losing weight) is that I have the freedom to do what I want to do. I'm a participant of life now, rather than a spectator."