LONDON: The UK’s first MP of Palestinian descent has described in detail her struggle with obesity and depression.
Layla Moran, 37, the child of a Palestinian mother and English father, told The Sunday Times that she was put on a diet at the age of one after a doctor told her mother that she was “on the chubbier side.”
The former maths teacher, who is in a race to lead the Liberal Democrats, said the doctor advised her mother to monitor what she ate to ensure she did not become overweight.
“And all the way through, I don’t think there was ever a year where I wasn’t on a diet,” Moran told the British newspaper.
“I was going to sports clubs, I was encouraged to go cycling . . . it wasn’t that there wasn’t the opportunity; it was just really hard for me to lose weight.”
Moran was banned from desserts but still failed to control her weight, she added.
It was only after she broke her leg aged 23 working as a semi-professional cellist in an orchestra that she had surgery.
She jumped off a stage during rehearsals, broke her leg and became wheelchair bound for three months.
During this time, her weight ballooned and her doctor told her that the break would not have been so bad if she had been lighter.
“Because my body mass index [BMI] was above 40 at that point, the doctor asked if I had ever considered bariatric surgery,” Moran continued.
She decided to go ahead with the surgery and had a sleeve gastrectomy.
“Basically, my stomach was made smaller. And it worked. That first year I lost about half my body weight,” Moran said.
The first female Liberal Democrat MP from an ethnic minority background has also battled with depression and said she was diagnosed during her second year of university at Imperial College London where she studied physics.
Moran said she received help and took antidepressants but ended up getting a third-class degree.
The MP for Oxford West and Abingdon is now a “happy size 12.”
She hopes to become the next leader of the Liberal Democrats in a contest expected to finish at the end of August.
While she has spoken previously about her Arab roots and the current Palestinian situation, her interview did not mention Israeli’s threat to annex parts of the occupied West Bank this week.
In an interview with Arab News in 2018, she said the international community must be involved in the Palestinian-Israel peace process.
“As long as Palestinians are not equals in that partnership, it is not fair to put the onus of negotiation just on those two countries. The international community has to be involved,” she said.