So...

I've been absent. This blog was started because I figured it was a better way to get some of my thoughts down/shared than the book I'd started and not finished. Bite-size pieces rather than trying to complete an entire manuscript when I had so much else going on in my life.

Well... lots has been going on in my life. Whirlwind stuff. I got engaged in May, and I'm getting married in August. 53 days from now, to be precise. Yes, to my skinny boyfriend, mentioned the last time I posted here.

Most of the time this feels utterly normal; unlike any other relationship or almost-relationship I've had or almost had, it is easy and fun and comfortable to be with him, and to be myself with him. And then there are times when I have to pinch myself to realise what is actually happening here. I was so utterly crushed by my weight I did truly believe deep down that I would never be acceptable enough for anyone, would never be 'seen' by anyone, never be loved by anyone. And in the space of six months I've met this guy and am marrying him (we did actually know each other slightly many years ago, so he wasn't a complete stranger when I met him again in February. In fact, I was looking forward to seeing him, remembering what I'd thought of him when I first knew him).

I've continued to hold steady with weight; I've been basically between 145 and 149 for the past few months. I found some soy crisps in the shops that aren't normally available around here and ate far too many yesterday so I'm going to have to get back to purer eating soon; I don't want to end up putting weight on in the eight week run-up to the wedding. My fiance is actually underweight; it's almost comical. He's six foot one and weighs maybe a few pounds more than me. He's trying to put on weight, but finds it difficult. On the one hand that might make me jealous and angry. On the other hand, at least he doesn't eat a ton of food around me, so it's not like I'm watching someone pack away tons of food I can't eat, and stay thin. And I do hope that the combination of genes, should we be blessed with children, might make them luckier than I was in the weight-gene thing, so that they don't have to suffer what I have.

I've talked to him a lot about weight and dieting and low-carb. I've educated him so that he no longer makes the assumptions about fat people that most non-fat people make. That they're greedy and gluttonous and all you have to do is 'eat less and exercise more' to lose weight.

I recently read the book 'Rethinking Thin' which was frankly a very interesting, but extremely depressing read. It goes into all the science/history of dieting/losing weight (and how often dieting leads to *not* losing weight). It followed a group of people doing different diets over a 2 year period in which none of them really succeeded in losing weight. It showed that there is a genetic predisposition that leads to weight gain that is next to impossible to beat unless you focus your energy on the task every day of your life, and that scientists are working on identifying the processes but there is no cure yet (like we didn't know that from the fact we're still walking around fat...) It was a very very sad read for me. It took me back to the misery of being overweight. I felt like I was doomed even *though* I've actually lost the weight and am no longer that person. I really have defied the odds; it is now five and a half years since I started losing weight, I lost most of it in the first 18 months, and it's still off. I am over 100 pounds down from where I was 6 years ago and although it *is* a constant project to maintain my weight, I am succeeding in it.

I do think every single thin person in the world should read that book though. It might start breaking down the stereotypes that every fat person has to face, that it's their fault that they look the way they do.

Anyway, this is a very rambly post. Truth is, I was just avoiding work by reading some other blogs about weight and fat prejudice and remembered my blog and thought I should write something.

You know what's amazing? I'm going to be a beautiful bride. The dress I'm having made makes me look like a size six all over, because the bodice is the fitted part and I *am* a size six there, and the big skirt hides my size 10 bottom half. Not that a size 10 bottom half is bad, either. But it really is amazing to me, *beyond* all the other amazing things about this happening, that I can be a 'regular' bride. I'm not loathing dress fittings because I don't like the way I look and am just looking for something that will minimize my shape as much as possible. I'm goign to stand next to my skinny beanpole of a groom and I'll look beautiful with him. Even if I could have got past my own self-loathing years ago if I'd met someone to marry then, there's just no way I could have avoided being a fat bride. And that is not a terrible thing, at all, really, is it? But I would have felt like it was.

I feel so contradictory about all this weight loss stuff. On the one hand I feel like donating all my time and energy to the battle against fat prejudice, demanding that people treat fat people with respect and not let it be the last acceptable -ism. On the other hand because I felt that -ism so keenly, took it inside myself and internalised all the messages I was getting and felt so unworthy and unacceptable *myself* when I was fat, I also want to evangelise low-carb and try and help people lose weight. Because it IS better to be thinner. But 80% of the reason it is better to be thinner is nothing to do with health, the way everyone 'claims' it is. It's because you are treated better by the people around you. So if fat people were accepted as a normal segment of society, if people weren't conditioned to be repulsed by a hint of adipose, then most fat people coudl just continue their lives happily. It's the way you're treated that makes being fat so awful, the way you end up feeling about yourself. Not the fat itself. But there's absolutely no denying how happy I am that I am getting married weighing 145 pounds or thereabouts, and not 250 pounds.

Apologies if this is rambling and full of non-sequiturs. I'm not sleeping all that well, I'm very tired, enduring a heatwave, and I'm engaged so by definition I'm over-emotional 95% of the time!

Busy elsewhere...

Well, life is full of surprises. I'm sorry I've been AWOL, if anyone has missed me. I've been kind of busy.

About a month ago, I met someone again I once knew very vaguely about six or seven years ago and haven't seen since. Since we met again, we've been seeing each other often, and seriously. So it's kind of taken over most of my free time and the blog has fallen into disrepair.

Things are still fine, foodwise. I saw a low of around 145, although at the moment I'm up a bit because of a couple of carb lapses and time of the month stuff. Nothing to worry about, and I'm still determined to reach goal this year.

It was actually my birthday yesterday (I turned 34) and so I took some time to look back in my journal to see where I was weightwise a year ago. I wasn't really fully in control, I didn't want to get on the scale, I was somewhere around 163 or 164 and not happy about it. So a year on, being under 150 is a significant achievement. Happy with that.

Happy with a lot of things. This guy is seriously good news. Watch this space, because this could be, possibly, the real thing. Of course one of the most amusing things about all this is that he is someone who can't put weight *ON*. He's tall and skinny and needs to put on about thirty pounds. Irony of ironies. I can't imagine how cooking for us jointly is going to be easy...me trying to cut calories and carbs while trying to add them to his food! Well, at least, should it come to that, it might give our kids a chance at a decent gene combination for weight!

Anyway. Things are good. I'm happy. Although actually next week the new boyfriend is unfortunately going away for an entire four weeks (trip planned before we met) and so I may have some more time to update here!

Hope all others are doing well...

Fat Hobbitses

Over the past few weeks, I've done a rewatch of the Lord of the Rings trilogy with a friend. I've been so busy that it's taken me a while to come in here and write about something that struck me - when I originally saw the films, and when I saw them again recently.

I should tell you all that I was a Tolkien fanatic from a very early age. So I knew that book damn well. I'd go so far as to say ridiculously well. So when I first saw the interaction between Gollum and Sam, and heard Gollum call Sam "fat hobbit" as a term of disparagement, my antennae perked up. I don't remember that being in the original book. Sam *is* plump, and he likes his food...but did Gollum ever refer to it? When I first saw the films, I went back to the books to check. I was right. He calls him nasty. He calls him cruel. He never once refers to him as fat.

Leaving aside all the other things that bothered me about the films, this blog is about weight, not literature as film. But that change is so very telling. Fat is an insult. Fat is something bad. In Tolkien's day, when he wrote that book - in the 1940s and 50s), it wasn't. But now it's a way to mock someone. I mean why, really, should that be the case? Gollum is almost a prisoner, he hates Sam, who protects Frodo and is suspicious of Gollum...why is 'fat' the epithet he uses to hurl at him?

Because in today's world, being fat is bad, morally. It says something wrong about you. It can be used - it *is* used - as an insult.

There are so many films that could be held up as yet more illustrations of this attitude in our society. I remember, for example, one of the scenes in 'Love, Actually', where Colin Firth's character races across the Channel to find his love...knocks on her door and asks the man who opens it for his daughter...his daughter appears... and she's fat, plain, dowdy, and rude. Not the right daughter, clearly. And that's played for laughs. Of course she's not the one he wants - she's fat (and therefore dowdy). Why not just have a different, average sister open the door? The girl he loves is stick thin, but her sister is fat. Because apparently, we want the tension extended, we want it to be difficult for him to find his girl...and it's funny and ironic when a fat girl opens the door, because *obviously* he doesn't want her.

No wonder we all want to lose weight. This is the way the world sees us when we're not thin.

And on that note - I'm down to 146.2 now. Another 1.2 pounds and I'll have a BMI in the normal range for the first time since I was 12 years old. The scale has continued to fluctuate - I saw a low of 146.8 two weeks ago but then the scale jumped with my period and stayed up for 13 long days...but yesterday it was back again and today is lower still. I've been consistent with my food, and right now it seems to be paying off.

Reference Jeans

We've all got them, haven't we? Those one pair of jeans, that one top, that represent where we used to be, what we once fitted in to? They usually taunt us, fill us with despair, with longing for what once was.

I don't have a pair of reference jeans, but I do have a pair of reference trousers. I bought them when I was sixteen, when I'd been on my first diet and had managed to slim down to around 160 pounds from about 185. They only fit me for about six months; I hung around 160 for a while, briefly got to 154, but then by the time the year was out I was back to 185. At least I didn't - that time - put on even more weight.

That pair of black trousers sat in my cupboard in the years to follow. Sometimes they were hidden so far back I didn't know quite where they were. And yet, they accompanied me through my life. They came to university with me - why? They didn't fit me...but I took them with. One day they would fit again.

I don't actually live in the country of my birth (there's another factoid about the real me). When I moved, I took that pair of trousers with me. They were even further away from fitting me then. By my mid-twenties I weighed 250lbs and was filled with self-hate. I doubt I could even have pulled one leg up to my thigh, let alone seen if they'd do up. Of course not. There were other clothes I had with me; clothes that had fit at other diet points, clothes that fit when I got down to 174, for example, at university. They would sit in the cupboard, I would try to diet, try to get them to fit, see if wearing a jacket open or with just one button done up would work...

Over the past five years, I've gone through seven clothes sizes, or thereabouts. When I was at my highest weight, I was a 22/24 top, and a 26/28 bottom (UK sizes). Now I'm a 10/12 top, and a 14 bottom - UK, again. Given another few pounds and hopefully I'll hit a size 12 on the bottom as well. During that time - five years *is* a long time - I bought a heck of a lot of clothes. There's a whole post lying in wait somewhere about how it felt to finally be able to buy clothes in regular shops again. Sometimes I was almost sad when clothes didn't fit me anymore, even though it was for the great reason...they were too big. After all, some of them were nice!

I gave some away, sold some, threw some out, depending. Didn't get all that much money back, but never mind.

Last night, I've no idea why, the thought of those pair of black trousers from when I was 16 crossed my mind. I got out the ladder so I could rummage through the top shelf in my wardrobe to find them. They're sitting there with a few pieces of clothes I'd really liked, that I couldn't really throw out and hadn't managed to sell. (A friend came round, and I gave her three pieces of clothes last night - that was nice, to be able to pass them on).

Oh, those black trousers. They were too loose! They were also hysterically awful. Amazingly unflattering. Susannah and Trinny wouldn't have just shaken their heads in disapproval, they'd have taken them out to be burned. There are pleats coming down from the waistband. They're baggy in the thigh - and tight at the ankle. They're *awful*. I put them on and laughed. Why was I holding on to these trousers? I'm really glad to show myself that I now am actually slimmer than I was when I wore those trousers as a 16 year old. I'm also almost mortified that I ever did wear them in the first place! But then again - it was the eighties. Not my fault fashion was so very very bad. (At least the music was good). I decided, last night, that I'd throw them out. They're just taking up space. And I don't need them as a pair of reference trousers anymore. I've made it. The trousers that only briefly fitted me when I was 16 are now slightly too loose. I've put on 100 pounds in that time, but I've also lost it again - and then some. If I want reference trousers, I can use the ones I own now. My jeans - the first pair I ever owned - I bought in Gap a few months ago. They're the 'long and lean' style - love that name. They fit me way better now than they did when I bought them, even though we're only talking about a few pounds difference. I look pretty damn fabulous, if I say so myself.

There's a set of reference clothes I do still possess though - at the other end of the spectrum. It's an outfit I had made for my brother's wedding, almost 8 years ago. It was a gorgeous outfit; I designed it myself, found beautiful material. It is ludicrous now. Hangs off me. The skirt, which does not have an elasticated waist, won't actually stay up over my hips. I'm swimming in the top. It's clownish.

I'll always keep that outfit - not because I have any fear that I'll ever need it again, but to always be able to remind myself where I've come from.

It's so much nicer to hang on to something much, much too big for you than it is to look longingly at something that's much, much too small for you. Isn't it? :-)

What Might Have Been

i keep mentally preparing myself for the scale to go up again, since we all know it's a bouncy thing - and my period is due soonish, as well.

but this morning the scale said 147.4 - which is 0.4 down from yesterday.

i feel i should pinch myself.

i have to admit, that along with the joy as i get closer to goal, i am feeling some sadness as well. i can now see that i actually have a really good figure. very curvy, very classic - and that's even with the 15 pounds or so i still have to get rid of. and along with being happy that i'm finally accessing it, i'm feeling very very sad for the teenage me, and the young adult me - and heck, the me me - that i never got to have what many girls do have - which is that actual body as it actually should have been, *when* it should have been. and even now, while the shape is becoming more and more pleasing, the skin is irrevocably damaged. oh, i'll deal with it, but sagging skin and stretchmarks are not attractive. if it wasn't for skin issues, for example, i would now have no problem wearing a bikini. walking around in lingerie. my legs are still a bit fat, and my bum has a bit of an odd shape, although it's getting better and i reckon once i've lost the rest of the weight it'll be normal. and the rest makes up for that - or would do, if it wasn't for the skin issues.

i spent so much of my life hiding; clothes were for covering up a source of shame, not enhancing what i had. there really are some girls (my sister, included), for whom growing up, developing, was a source of pleasure. exploring their bodies was something positive. and i'll never have that back. even if i can deal with the demons and stop worrying about the bad skin, i'll never have that time back - i'll never have that time, never have that body that i could have had, if it wasn't for this problem with insulin. a problem nobody ever knew about. a problem i can't blame myself for.

i know some people have had similar issues to me, but there seem to be a lot more who put on weight later in life, and at least had some time in which they felt comfortable and positive about themselves (as much as any women can in this world). i just do not have a time i can look back on and say 'ah, but at least i looked good then'. when i was 13 we went on a family holiday and i think i may have been about 140 then, maybe a bit less, and i know that i got attention on the beach. but being 140 as a 13 year old i still felt fat/was told i was fat - and attention from adult men was not something i wanted, anyway, or knew how to handle. and by 14 i was already hiding my thickened body under t-shirts on the beach while my sister swanned around in her as-sexy-as-she-could-get-away-with swimsuit.

i'm not feeling bitter, more sad. so much time and life wasted. and no matter how much weight i lose, i will never have the body i should have had.

New Low!

This morning at 8am the scale said 147.8lbs.

That is a completely new low that I have never seen! It deserved its own entry. I wouldn't be surprised if stress over this potential new relationship is 'helping' out...but my weight loss *is* still within entirely reasonable parameters - 5.4 pounds in 23 days puts my BMR at 2000 calories a day instead of the 1800 i was estimating a week ago. And I'm quite prepared for the loss to slow down again, for the scale to go up again...but just seeing that new low is a wonderful thing.

I don't look half bad in sexy underwear, either ;-)

Small steps

I have to say, I don't usually spend a great deal of time contemplating my lower legs. But in the past couple of weeks as I've spotted them in mirrors every so often, I've wondered if maybe they've got a bit thinner. I am losing weight, slowly, but one tends to look at waist and hip circumference rather than ankles and calves to judge progress.

Well, this morning when I zipped up my black ankle boots, my suspicion was confirmed. Until now, they didn't quite go up all the way. The zip stopped about a centimeter away from the top. Not an issue, since they always go under trousers and you can't see. But today they zipped all the way up. Cool!

Talking of progress, weight was at 148.8 this morning. A new low. I'm really beginning to hope/believe that this time I might actually make it to goal. Not that I know exactly what goal is, since I haven't been at goal *ever* - last time I was anything close to this weight was when I was around 12 years old. There's no "I wish I looked like that/was that weight again" for me, since there was never ever a point where I had a good figure. So I'm assuming anywhere between 130 and 140 for an ultimate goalpost - I just can't tell till I get there. Now that I'm only 8.8 pounds away from 140 I can't imagine I'll be done when I get there, so it's more likely I'll keep trying to go down into the 130s. But now it actually is beginning to feel like this discussion might not just be academic; in another couple of months maybe I'll actually be at that stage.

God, I hope so. Five years is a long time to still be trying to get to goal.

On Display

A lot of this blog seems to be about the difference between life then and life now. Makes sense, I guess. What exact event prompts this entry? A party.

On Tuesday night, my brother and his wife made a celebration dinner for a cousin of my sister-in-law who just got married. There were about 30 people there, for a full, sit down meal, and they also hired a magician to come entertain us. He's really excellent this magician, I have to say - I've seen him do kiddie shows, but this was the first time he did an adult show. He was good. Anyway, my point is, we're all sitting there. There are a few people I know, and many I don't know. No close friends but lots friendly acquaintances. And when the magician started his act, he asked me to come up and be his assistant for one of the tricks.

And I agreed readily. And I sat there being watched by thirty people - and being filmed by my brother - and I didn't mind.

This would have been unheard of a few years ago. I hated looking in the mirror, I hated people looking at me, I hated being in any way on display. Heck, I didn't like walking down the street because people would look at me. Life was a constant series of humiliations just because of the way I felt so uncomfortable about myself.

Another reflection of the sea change now is the way my apartment is constructed. I bought the place I live in 2 years ago. When you walk in the front door, there is a hallway in front of you that opens up into the rest of the apartment, and on the wall just off to the left of the front door, but facing the front door, is a very large mirror. The mirror faces the hallway down which you go to reach the bedrooms. This means that every time you walk in the front door, and every time you leave the bedrooms to go to the rest of the apartment, you have to watch yourself walking in the big mirror. I think that a few years ago that would have been a reason not to buy the place. Or I'd have taken the mirror down and put a bookcase in its place, or something. Now I enjoy it being there.

I may not have complete equanimity about looking in a mirror naked, but clothed...it's fine. And I don't mind being on display at all. Sometimes I even enjoy it. Being comfortable in your skin is a wonderful thing. Something everyone should be able to take for granted, but I never had.

On a weight note, things seem to be on the move! I've been extra virtuous (I won't even mention all the things on the menu at the dinner party that I completely avoided) and this morning the scale said 149! Pretty close to the lowest ever. The only time I've seen lower than that was in November when I saw 148.6 for a day - but it was the day after my boyfriend broke up with me, and I'd eaten nothing. So this 149 is more 'real' than that 148.6 was. Not that I don't expect the scale to go up again; there are always zigzags...but it's moving in the right direction.

Speaking of boyfriends, something happened this week, most unexpectedly, with a friend of mine. Who now may have become something a little more than a friend. We'll see. But at any rate, I swear that romance is good for my weight loss. In the summer/autumn when I was dating my ex, I found that losing weight was easier than it had ever been before, and that sometimes even when I wasn't trying to lose weight I did. It must be something to do with adrenalin/stress - both good and bad. Anyway, Wednesday night was the night things changed with this friend of mine. Wednesday morning when I weighed myself it said 151. Thursday morning it said 149.2

Don't know what's going to be the outcome of this...thing, whatever it is. But I hope it continues for a while, because it could really help me get to goal!

Life, thinner

It was a beautiful morning this morning. Bright blue sky, sun shining, a fresh breeze. I had a dentist appointment; just the regular six-month check-up. I decided to walk; it's only about 25 minutes away, and it's good to get some exercise.

Hair freshly washed, I donned some nice clothes - black trousers, black silky undershirt, white fitted shirt, black thin choker, big hoop earrings. (I've discovered, incidentally, that black under white is a very nice look). I started walking, listening to my ipod. Half way there, there was a cab pulling out of the driveway in front of me. I wasn't really looking at the cab driver, I was just listening to my music but then he caught my eye and smiled/nodded. So I smiled back, then went on my way.

Then he drove up behind me and spent the next five minutes trying to persuade me to go out with him. He was cute, young, not gross like some cab drivers who seem to think you'll want to date them even when they're clearly twenty years older than you. I smiled and kept walking, he kept pursuing. Eventually he gave me his phone number, and managed to wrangle my name out of me - but not my number.

I'm not going to call him. I'm not being a snob, honestly, but I can't see myself with a cab driver. Not for reasons of prestige, or class, but of common interest/intellect/intelligence. And I'm not one to be interested in 'a bit of fun'. It's just not me. Still, it was flattering, and nice. Put more of a spring in my step.

Then I got to the dentist - I had an appointment with the hygienist, then the dentist. Hygienist, female, starts with compliments on my appearance, and asks how I do it, whether I'm in the gym all the time. Nope, says I, but I eat low-carb. A short discussion on that, with her doing most of the talking, since by that point she's got her equipment in my mouth. When we finish up, and she says she'll see me again in six months, she says something along the lines of "don't go getting any thinner!". I say, well, twenty pounds, maybe fifteen, I hope. She replies "ok, fifteen, maybe, but definitely not twenty."

Quite amazing to think I'm that close to goal that people would tell me I don't need to lose any more weight.

Then I have my appointment with the dentist - male, married, attractive, mildly flirtatious. He starts off with telling me I'm looking good. I tell him he does too. He makes a comment on how nice it is to start the day complimenting each other, and having made each other smile, he's off to work checking out my teeth. He finds a small cavity - so I'll be going back in a couple weeks to get that sorted out.

Then I walked home. Catching quite a few second looks from men I walked past.

It really is a very nice, very fitted white shirt.

Incidentally, the scale is continuing to be recalcitrant. In the two weeks that I've been dieting hard, I've gone from 153.2, down to 151.8, back up to 155, down to 152.2, and then this morning, up to 153.8 again. Averaging 1200 calories a day, with no splurges or carbs. I'm in mid-cycle, so that might account for the current spike; that does happen to me sometimes. I'm trying not to let it get to me, and telling myself to keep track of what I *should* now weigh, given the calorie deficit I'm in (151.2 by now), and my body will catch on eventually. It's happened before - I'm a plateau and whoosh kind of gal.

The kind of experiences I've had today do make it easier to deal with the frustrations of the scale.

There are pages more I could write about this ugly duckling turned almost swan, and I will, and they will be hard, painful posts...but right now I just wanted to record today's events, with a smile - and get back to work.

The Vagaries of the Metal Monster

Sometimes I flipping hate the scale.

I'm almost done with week two of my cutting calories as well as carbs effort. Week one ended well; once all the carbs were out of my system I weighed in at 153.4, and by the end of week one I was at 151.8. A decent result for 5 days of very low cal eating. Then I went away for the weekend; always dangerous BUT I was angelic. I ate only what I should have eaten; when I got home and fitdayed my stuff I'd stayed well under maintenance calories both days. But on Sunday the scale was up to 155. For no reason whatsoever. I expect a jump like that if I'm carbed up, but I wasn't. TOM was not on the way. No bloody reason at all. And I've spent the last few days trying to get back to where I was last friday, even though I'm *not* needing to buckle under after a splurge. There was no splurge. This morning I'm still half a pound up from where I was six days ago, despite the fact I've continued to eat at around 1200/1300 cals a day. I should be rights be down to 151 now, not at 152.4

I know that I shouldn't pay attention on a day to day basis; that it's week to week and month to month that matter, and the scale will fluctuate in annoying ways for no apparent reason. It still pisses me off. It's not a hardship for me to eat low carb, generally. But I do resent having to count calories too, if I don't see the results. Tonight I'm going out for dinner, and I just started trying to work out what the calories could be in the roquefort salad I usually get as a virtuous meal in that particular restaurant. Too high, is what they'd be. So I'll probably go for something else; or actually eat dinner before I go, and just get a soup or something.

I just don't believe in the 'purity' of that calories in/calories out equation - not after five years of low-carb, and other experiences of dieting before that. Example. When I was 22, I stuck to Weightwatchers for about a year. I managed to struggle down from about 210 to 175 in that time, eating what must have been around 1400/1500 calories a day. Then my mum introduced me to a book called 'The Carbohydrate Addicts Diet'. I read it with interest, since it was so obvious to me that I was a carb addict. I figured I'd give it a try. I was sooo sick of starving myself, and the carb addict diet said I could have a meal of whatever I wanted once a day! I set to with relish. And although I managed to be moderate for the first few days, I was quickly bingeing for that one hour 'reward' meal. I ate everything I'd been denying myself for a year, everything that I'd been craving. In one meal, I could eat a burger and chips, chocolate, ice cream, crisps... or a huge bowl of pasta, also accompanied by crisps, chocolate, etc.

I must have upped my calories - no exaggeration - by at least 2,000 a day. Possibly more.

What happened? During the two or three months I stuck to the diet, I didn't lose any weight. But I didn't gain any either. I probably tripled, even quadrupled my daily calorie intake, having been in almost starvation mode for a year, and I didn't put on weight. That's as pure a refutation as calories in/calories out that I've ever seen.

I gave up on the diet after a while because I wasn't losing weight. And because it was difficult to do at the time, with my particular lifestyle (and I was less skilled at cooking then, too). Tried all kinds of other things that didn't work either, and that just had me putting on weight until I was up to 250lbs about two years later. I always thought of that diet as a good way to maintain, since I hadn't put on weight, but since I needed to lose, I didn't think of doing it again for a long, long time. Why I went back to it is the subject of another post.

This post was just about the bloody scale. And that calorie intake vs expenditure just not working as *simply* as it is rumoured to. If it did, I'd have been at goal years ago. I've been doing this for five years now, and I'm still in the 'overweight' category according to my BMI. Only by a few pounds, but still. I could reconcile myself, almost easily, to having to stay low-carb for life. To being ever-vigilant, ever-different to other people. If only I was AT my goal weight. To struggle just to stay 20 pounds *heavier* than I want to be, after five years of sustained effort, well that's just not fair.

But then, life's just not fair, is it?

And I can't let this stop my efforts in calorie cutting or strictness. Because giving up certainly won't help either, will it? So I'm staying vigilant, and I'm staying low-cal, low-carb. I'm going away to friends for shabbat this week, and I've already spoken to them about the menu so I know there should be food that's good for me, even if I can't control calories one hundred percent.

Maybe on sunday there won't be another unexplained weight spike, and then I'll feel better.

I'm still thinner than I've ever been since I was 13 years old. I need to focus on that.

being the cool aunt

something my niece said to me today is going to be the perfect segue into a post on the concept of retail therapy.

i have to say, i really like what i was wearing today. when i was in canada recently i bought a very cute black waistcoast (vest, for the americans/canadians reading). i have a long black flowy skirt from zara with beading on it, which i paired it with - together with a gorgeous sheer pale dusky pink shirt i have. the shirt has ruffles at the front, and long sleeves with flowy long cuffs. i had the silky ruffles falling from inside the lapels of the waistcoat; a feminine highwayman, if you please.

when my niece saw me this morning (i'm staying with them this shabbat) she exclaimed "i love love LOVE your clothes!" My niece is eight, nearly nine, and just about the most girly girl you can imagine. she likes clothes, and ballet, and barbies, and make-up. She is just about as far away from the nerdy bookworm I was at her age that it is possible to imagine (not because I was fat at her age, I wasn't. But I was a shy, awkward bookworm all the same).

My niece often compliments me on my clothes. In the same vein, one of my friends recently told me that she thinks I'm the best dresser she knows. I was almost rendered speechless by that compliment.

There is so much behind my reactions to things like that. Being the cool aunt that my pretty, girly niece admires. Being someone who is seen as cool or funky at all! If we go chronologically, then I'd say it's the nerdy little kid who was always bullied for being uncool that finds it quite amazing.

Then, of course, comes the fat, awkward teenager, who was never complimented on what she wore or what she looked like. okay, it was the eighties, but still. (and in fact, i cringe when i think of what i had to wear during the eighties even when i dieted and spent about six months at a kind of normal weight - baggy sweatshirts and leggings are not the ideal wardrobe for someone curvy like me. I need to accentuate my hourglass figure, or I just end up hiding my figure altogether.

But things just got worse after that. I lost weight briefly when I was sixteen during my first foray into weightwatchers, but by 17 it was all back on again. I felt like an alien when my friends would discuss what to buy where, where they'd found a particularly cute skirt/pair of trousers/top. When they'd pore over fashion magazines. I was an alien, let's face it. None of those clothes would have fit me. When I got to my all-time high of 250lbs...well, I don't even need to say it, do I.

If I'd done anything other than sink into myself when anyone mentioned the joys of retail therapy, it would have been to laugh bitterly. What did I know of retail therapy? Retail torture, more like. Every time I went to any mall, all I could do when I saw the shops with all their gorgeous trendy clothes would be to walk past, on my way to the one outsize shop that had sizes for elephants like me. Those shops were for people from other planets; it would be too humiliating to even walk in. I was sure that people in there would just look at me as if to say - what's she doing in here? Nothing in here will fit her.

My friends often tell me that even when I was very overweight I still looked good; that I dressed well, etc. (That I always had a pretty face, etc). And of course, I tried to buy nice clothes. Tried to select from the one or two shops that catered to my size the clothes that weren't made for grandmas. But actually going shopping...picking up clothes from the racks and taking them into the changing rooms to try them on? A very particular form of torture - from having to face what size I was picking off the rack, to having to look at myself in a full-length mirror. I didn't do that very often. I just felt loathing when I did. I wanted to recoil from myself. How can you escape, when it's your own body that you want to escape from? I often wonder what kind of stresses my body was under when I think of how I loathed it myself. Can your cells understand how much you are repulsed by them? How much you long to be someone else? Somone normal? Like all your friends, who can go into shops and get whatever they want?

As I lost weight, shopping for clothes gradually became easier. (It was damn expensive, going through approximately 7 clothing sizes, but oh so worth it!) At first it was just exciting to be buying smaller sizes, although I still didn't like the reflection in the mirror. I remember the time I first realised I could shop in regular shops, even though I was still buying the bigger sizes. As the sizes went down, the joy increased. It wasn't till I got to about 175lbs that I could look in the mirror with anything like approval, and really it wasn't till about 165lbs that I could really be relatively happy with what I saw. Oh, there are still flaws even now, at 152lbs, and it's still not perfectly easy to buy clothes - my waist is disproportionately small compared to butt/hips and so it's rare to find trousers/skirts that are truly flattering - but I buy a zillion and one tops.

I have a lot of clothes now - and that's all clothes that fit me, too. I've given away or sold an awful lot of clothes that I bought whilst my weight was on the way down. And I guess I know how to dress, too, since I get such compliments for being a good dresser/stylish/etc.

But the thing is, the real thing is, that I finally get what retail therapy is all about. Buying clothes really can make me feel better now.

It's still not always easy looking at myself in the mirror when I'm in the changing room. There are so many flaws; I've not finished losing the weight, and my body bears the scars of my battle with obesity, and short of plastic surgery they'll never go away. I've also discovered a truth that my more 'normal' friends always knew - that even 'normal' weight people carry their weight differently, and so different styles suit different people. There are some clothes I can't wear because they just don't suit my shape. But there are other clothes I can wear that wouldn't suit someone else. That's the way it is, and that's fine.

But now, when I go shopping, it's with real pleasure. I'm not looking for clothes to hide in, clothes that I'm constantly pulling at to make sure they're not clinging to unsightly bulges. I'm looking for clothes to accentuate my tiny waist, to highlight the hourglass. I'm seeing a defined jawline in the mirror. (I don't think I'll ever ever take my collarbone for granted; I just love the fact there are hollows now, and defined bones...)

When I go to the shops and find something that particularly suits me...well, the joy I feel is, I expect, beyond what any 'regular' person experiences when they think of retail therapy. There's so much more behind it; not least, of course, the memory that a few years ago I couldn't have done this at all. I'd have had to walk past those shops, feeling humiliated, feeling alienated... an outsider in so many ways. Verboten.

Even discussing the various clothes I pick up with sales assistants has lost its sting. I remember trying on a skirt a few months ago. It just wasn't flatternig; it gathered at the waistband, and the way it hung was just bad on me. The sales assistant agreed; said it wasn't flattering, made me look big. And I didn't feel hurt, didn't feel humiliated. It was true; it wasn't flattering on my figure. Didn't do anything for me. When I discuss sizes with the sales assistants, it's the same thing. There is no pain in saying that I'm a UK size 14 on the bottom, while usually a 10 on the top. Oh, there's still joy when I fit into a size 12, and I still can't quite believe I'm a 10 on top (unless we're talking button-down shirts - my bust size often makes a size 10 too small in those). And I still *want* to get down to a size 12 bottom. But there's no shame in what I am. It's just fact... it's better, actually - I worked to get this. I defeated considerable odds to get this. And if I do always see the flaws when I look in the mirror, I also see the positives. I can look damn good in clothes. Sexy, even. I am very curvy, and while that has its difficulties, it also has positives. I wear figure-hugging clothes now. I walk tall, most of the time, and feel good. I buy clothes. And more clothes. And more clothes. Sometimes I want to scream with joy when I try something on and it looks fantastic. This was not me, a few years ago. I spent years excluded from these joys that should belong to everyone.

I don't think I'll ever take it for granted.

Small joys

I've got at least five posts sitting in my head waiting for me to find the time to write them down, and those are just the posts that I've pondered over the past week or two; they don't even include the "history of my weight loss" posts that i'm planning on detailing at some point.

life has taken over, i guess, briefly. but i'll be back. (and as a brief update, food is going great, i've got the carbs well and truly out of my system, and i'm now at 153lbs)

so what i actually popped in to share was one of those small, sweet joys that happen from time to time. leaving aside the true joys of retail therapy (a looong post) having lost weight, i'll just say that i had an appointment today, and once it was done, i paid a short visit to a couple of my favourite clothes shops to see if they had anything for me. i've got a wedding to go to in a month or so and i need a nice top to go with my 'wedding' skirt. anyway...i found a couple of nice things, and took them to the cash register to pay. the woman behind the till asked me whether i wanted a strappy top - one of those body-hugging lycra things that are just so indispensible as part of your wardrobe - to go underneath one of the tops i was buying. i actually had looked for just such a thing, but hadn't seen any. she said there were some, and that she'd go and find one for me. she looked at me, and asked me what size i needed, and as i hesitated, she said "small, right?"

what a difference five years makes. five years ago nothing in that shop would have fit me at all. now, the sales assistant is correct in her assessment that i need their smallest size! (i bought it - it fits perfectly and is just what i needed).

small joys that aren't really all that small, after all.

Doing It All The Time

Calianna "I don't know how you do it all the time."

(Hi Calianna! Nice to have someone who understands this particular pitfall).

I have no choice. I have to keep on keeping on, or I'll be 250lbs again within, oh, about 2 years, I'd say. There are some days when I wish I'd found low-carbing much much earlier than I did. Say when I was sixteen. That way I could have avoided the yo-yo dieting, the extra stretchmarks and loose skin, the pain of living at all at 250lbs. But then if low-carb had been the first 'solution' I'd found, maybe I wouldn't have been so absolutely sure that it actually is the *only* solution for me. And then maybe I'd have tried to experiment; to find a way to work back in things like bread and crisps as a frequent part of my diet. I know that won't work for me. But the reason I know is because I have the experience of trying to diet low-fat and I know how absolutely horrendous and impossible it was. People are always commenting admiringly on my willpower and self-control, and they did so even more when I was heavier and actively losing the weight, but to me, the only reason these past five years of low-carbing have even been possible is because they take far less willpower than anything else ever did.

Or rather, what I have to exercise now is pure emotional willpower. Fighting taste-buds, fighting circumstance, fighting the convention of 'spoiling yourself' with carby food, etc. But I'm not - or not usually, anyway - fighting insulin surges anymore.

I have a very strong respect for how strong that sucker is. Because it always, always won against me. Most of the time it won after only a few days - even at the end of day one of a "i'm dieting again" mantra. Occasionally - for only two extended periods in my life - I managed to beat it long enough to actually be consistently on a low-fat diet. Sheer torture, and *that* was real willpower. I am amazed now that I managed to stay on weightwatchers for almost a year when I was in my early twenties. Fighting those cravings and that hunger all that time? Incredible (And tragic, of course, because the rebound after I finally snapped is what took me up to my alltime high of 250lbs).

Anyway, I didn't actually come on here today to talk about that. I came on to say that I was just eating lunch. I had 2 100% beef patties, spread with some thousand island dressing made with low-fat mayo and low-carb ketchup, some slices of homemade pickled cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and raw onion, wrapped in lettuce leaves. And as I was eating it, I was really enjoying all the tastes, and it struck me that really, the only thing that the beefburger bun is good for is to make it easier to hold all that stuff together. That it really doesn't add anything in terms of taste.

And my next thought was: I must be getting over the carb cravings now, if I can think that.

Phew. It's wednesday now, and the carb blowout was friday/saturday. Over the past few days I've eaten way too much food, but it's all been low-carb. I have eaten nuts, and very high percent cocoa dark chocolate, but nothing that's not 'legal'. After 3 days, I'm beginning to feel normal again with regard to my cravings. Soon I'll start cutting calories again.

In a few hours I'm off to Pilates. I started doing it once a week a few months ago, but stopped in October when I was faced with so much travelling it wasn't worth trying to arrange a session for the few weeks I would be around. Now I'm back, solidly, no more travel for a few months. So every week, wednesday at 4pm. Every little bit helps.

Always Look on the Bright Side...

I feel horrible today.

I'm too hungry, I've got a weird headache and the hunger is the odd kind that won't go away if I eat. I am eating lots of food, too; not stinting on calories, but keeping the carbs low.

I'm in withdrawal, and it's pretty nasty. It won't be fun for the next three days or so.

But - looking on the bright side, and it really is a bright side, sort of - it makes things so much clearer. The very fact that I can recognise that my body is going through withdrawal shows how aware I am of my body - and, what's more - how aware my body now is of the various poisons/good things I put in it. That didn't used to be the case. I could eat whatever I wanted with impunity - unless you consider the fact that I weighed 250lbs. What I mean by impunity, obviously, is that other than the carb cravings which I didn't recognise as anything other than normal, I didn't have any specific reactions to different foods. But that makes it harder to make healthy choices, really, doesn't it? The very fact that I feel so awful now shows me - beyond the scale - what I was eating was not good for me. Getting through the next few days might not be easy but I know I'll do it, and I know how my body will feel afterwards. Much, much better. Light and lean. (Feel. Not look - I'm not lean yet!) Food fills without bloating, hunger is real, and satiable. This is such a different place to where I was a few years ago. My body really is a chem lab that gives me clear results.

That's good - even if the short-term experiment is making me feel crappy!

This is day one of my new 100% regimen, by the way.

Which includes:
- this week, full low-carb eating, no indulgences, but no stinting on calories until the carb withdrawal has worn off.
- from next week, calorie counting.
- drinking plenty of water
- pilates once a week and weights once a week (there'll be another post about why i can't do that much more exercise without my health suffering)
- making sure that i don't enter into a position where i'm not in control of food more than once a month (this involves care in planning shabbat)
- daily weighing of myself
- daily use of fitday for food logging

A Sense of Proportion

Before I begin, I'd like to say hi to kaz and suzique! Hi! It's really great to get comments from people I didn't 'know' already when I began the blog. It's weird, because I *have* been part of online forums before and I'm used to people reading what I write; knowing it's been read and appreciated. Starting a blog isn't like that, because there's no guarantee anyone will find your little corner of the web. But I wanted to focus more fully on the weight thing, and a blog seemed a good way to go to restart my writing. So I'm really pleased it's reaching new people - thank you for letting me know!

So despite my intent to remain - for now, at least - basically anonymous on this blog, I'm going to give you some relevant info that means you'll have less than 2 billion or so women in the world to identify me from...I'll cut it down to a few million. I'm Jewish, and live in a somewhat traditional framework. This is relevant because it means that the life I live makes staying low-carb quite a unique challenge.

Why? Because beyond all the festivals which are always but always centred around food (and pretty much always high-carb food, at that), every week there is a day in which you eat two three-course meals, in company. Saturday/Shabbat is a social day, and because I'm single I really don't have the option of just staying at home and avoiding temptation by cooking my own meals for my family. I do host meals occasionally, but more often I'm invited out, or go away and stay with friends/family.

It creates a bit of a quandary. In the normal course of a week, things are very much under control. If I'm cooking for myself at home, then obviously I decide what I eat and if I 'stray' then it's only my own fault. If I go out to eat with friends in a restaurant, then I can always find a low-carb option. (The issue of how it feels to always have to choose a low-carb option even once you've lost the majority of your weight is a whole other post). For now, because I've just spent the day with close friends and have eaten mounds of carbs, I'm going to focus on the hard part - when you are invited to friends.

Imagine being faced with dealing with Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner - only having to do it every week - twice. It can certainly make trying to lose weight, or stay on plan, a chore. Sometimes it's downright impossible.

There are various ways I have for coping; and this is where the title of the post comes in. I have to strike a balance between focusing on eating well, and on living well. When I say that I don't mean it because I resent having to cut carbs out of my life (that's another post). I mean that I choose not to stay home and refuse invitations because I know I will not be able to eat the way I should.

First of all, every sabbath meal begins with bread. And wine. Sometimes the wine is dry, but often it's sweet - and this is a ritual thing where it's not always easy to pipe up and say 'can i have dry wine please?' - even if the dry wine makes its way to the table later on in the meal. Take a meal I went to a few weeks ago, for example. Friends of mine invited me. Definite friends, not just acquaintances, but not close friends. There are certain friends who know me well, and when they invite me, will ask me to remind them what I can and can't eat so that they can be certain I'll have food. And I'll often take something with me - for everyone - a side dish, or salad - so I know I've supplemented the supply of 'legal' food. But when you receive an invitation to dinner and it's not a close close friend, and you're a single person who spends at least part of every week in slight anxiety as to what plans you have for the weekend, or whether you have any at all, you're not going to make things difficult for your hosts. You hope that there will be suitable food there, and wait and see. It's often easy enough to expect there will be 'legal' food around - friday night meals, for example, often start with dips like humus and various vegetable dips to go with the bread (and I just eat them without bread), followed by chicken soup, some form of roast chicken and various vegetables. So I avoid the potatoes and the dessert, have a tiny taste of the bread to fulfill the requirements, and eat healthily. But that meal a few weeks ago, we went straight from sweet bread to sweet potato and pumpkin soup - delicious but not exactly low carb - then to meatballs with rice and salad, and then dessert. That was it. For me to stay on track, I'd have had to refuse the soup and bread and sit eating nothing through first course, then eat meatballs without rice and have some salad, and then refuse dessert as well. And as it is, I took the salad, so I'd basically have only eaten one thing that the hostess made. I'd have made the hostess feel awful, and I'd have felt ridiculous myself. Also, there were only five of us for a nice intimate dinner. Not the kind of situation where you can expect people to not notice you're not eating.

In circumstances like that, I eat. I know that I'm going to eat too much, because carbs do that to me - I'm not someone who can say 'ok then, i'll have a bit of bread, a small bowl of soup and a tiny spoon of rice and focus on the meatballs and the salad. Once the carbmonster is let loose, it truly goes on the rampage.

My reasoning is thus. I have to live. I have to enjoy life. And I will not enjoy it if I refuse invitations to be with my friends and celebrate together, and stay home eating a salad, just so that I can stay thin.

It's not that this isn't an issue that I take seriously. It is. And there have been times when I *have* made decisions for the weekend based on food. I'll decide to make a meal myself, and invite friends, because I know that way I can control what I eat. And not to plan a second meal out, even if it does mean I'll spend a large portion of the day alone. Because I don't want to derail myself.

I got to my current weight 2 years ago. Since then I've been on an up-down mini yo-yo. Up a few pounds, down again. It was quite a struggle, even. Not that I can even now imagine ever getting really heavy again - the highest I got during the last two years after getting to a low of 154 was seeing 163, and that was immediately after vacation and carb splurging, and a bit of it was water weight from the glycogen load. But I wasn't happy about the fact that my 'stable' weight had become more like 158/159 than 154/155. This summer I made a concerted effort to change that, and from June till September I was strictly controlling calories as well as carbs. During the week I really was very strict, and generally stuck to approximately 1250 calories - because I knew that the weekend would never be that strict even if I did manage to control my food. And at that time, when I was being very strict at dieting, when I was invited out I *did* make sure that there would be suitable food for me. I can't remember now but I think during that 3 month period there were very very few times when I could only eat unsuitable food.

I got down to around 150. Broke the 154 barrier. Stress over a relationship in September/October even saw me down at 149ish.

Then I spent two months travelling for work, and mourning the end of the relationship. After the rigours and focus of the summer, I couldn't do it anymore. And travel makes it hard. This is another relevant matter; I eat kosher. Mostly. Which means the low-carb options that are usually available for travellers aren't always available for me because I can't eat meat/chicken etc just anywhere. (Lordy, lordy, talk about fussy, hey? Low carb *and* kosher!)

But it's back to that sense of proportion. I know there's no sense beating myself up about it. I know there are times to worry and focus on the eating and times to let go a bit.

I do mean a bit. I dont' mean go on wild forays of carb-binging. Untrammelled excesses. Because if I did that I *would* quickly be back at 250lbs, hating myself again. I've never let myself gain enough weight to even go up one clothing size, let alone the six or seven I've gone through during the past five years of transformation.

This weekend I went away to very old family friends. Parents of my best friend growing up. They - and the sister of my aforementioned best friend - live near me now. It is wonderful being with them - they are a fabulous family whose company I genuinely enjoy, and they welcome me so openly. It's comforting and comfortable. Truly relaxed. But I know that the food won't be good. Typical Ashkenazi fare. Last night was chicken soup (good) but everything else was well nigh impossible. Meatballs in a sweet and sour sauce. Chicken schnitzel not only with breading but with a sweet sauce on top. Sweet and sour cabbage. Sweetened carrots with prunes. Roast potatoes. Notice the sweet theme? At times like this there's no point worrying. I just sit back and let the carbmonster take over (we'll leave it for another post how these things actually make me feel ill and horrible afterwards).

Tomorrow is another day. After two months of travelling and letting go, I'm back somewhere around 155. Probably more after this week, with the food poisoning aftermath and then this latest freewheeling eating experience. I've got no more travelling planned for a few months. I'll stay at home next shabbat and have friends over to me. I'll visit my siblings for some weekends, when I know I can expect them to make good food for me. And I'll be back to my standard fare. This week will be difficult because I'll be dealing with the day after the day after again - which is one reason why I have to keep next weekend 'pure'. It takes a while to get properly back in the saddle again.

Sometimes, honestly, when I've been lax for a while and put on a couple pounds, I really expect to look in the mirror and see my old self again. That somehow I can't have that full-up carb-bloated feeling after a day of bad eating and not immediately see 250lbs of me in the mirror. I'm almost surprised when I still look the same. Still got a defined jawline. Still got that 29" waist (28" when I'm down at 150lbs). Even if I feel flabby and too full (well, even with the 28" waist I'm still flabby - talk about hourglass - I've got a 13" difference between waist and hips).

So - living my life - but balancing the needs of my body with the needs of my soul. I know people who never ever stray from eating low-carb. They've had enough bad experiences with being heavy that they know they just can't go off plan at all or risk sliding backwards forever. This is one of the reasons that I'm glad I came to Atkins by way of the more moderate Carb Addicts diet. It made me more aware of my abilities to 'survive' a cheat. I know that falling off the wagon isn't irrevocable; that I can get back on. I've been doing so for five years. I know when the alarms start ringing in my head and I know I can't afford to remain lax any longer. I am *always* at least 80% on plan with my eating - but I know that even 80% on plan will mean I put on weight, albeit at a slow rate. I know that to stay on track and not put on weight - and heaven help me, perhaps lose some more too - I need to be on track 95% of the time.

Tomorrow's day one again for me. It's time to be 100% for a good long while. I want to see 150 again. Then maybe I could actually see 140. Haven't been there since I was about 12 years old. I'm only 5 foot 4, and small boned (something I didn't realise till I'd lost weight). I wear a size 6 or 8 on top, but a size 10 or 12 on the bottom - and I'd really like to be an all round size 8.

Wish me luck!

As I Wake...

Ok, I lied. The next post isn't going to be about the basics of low-carb. It's going to be just a little bit about hunger and cravings.

It always amuses me when I read an article about the low-carb diet, which is generally disparaging, and then they add in this little gem: "low-carb reduces hunger." Um, hello? HELLO?????? Did you just hear what you said? Dieting is about reducing the amount of food you eat. That means you tend to be a little bit hungry. Hunger is hard to ignore. That means people eat more than they should. LOW CARB REDUCES HUNGER, DUMMIES!!!

The reason they write it as this tiny little sidebar comment is - in my opinion - they don't really understand that many fat people aren't 'greedy'. They're not eating 'too much and all they have to do is cut back and exercise'. Many fat people are fat because their bodies keep demanding food of them and it's downright painful to refuse.

This morning, I woke up hungry. It's like I was saying in my last post - this is the day after the day after, and today's going to be difficult, carbwise. I ate carbs two days ago, and now I'm paying for it, because I'm hungry now. Is that such a big deal, I hear you wonder? Well, yes, actually. It's different, you see.

Before I low-carbed, I would wake up in the morning and the first thing on my mind would be food. Crappy food, at that. I never woke up with images of omelettes or salads floating in my head. No, it was crisps and chocolate. And I would often be eating those things before I started work. When I was a kid, it was on the way to school. And then in break, at the tuck shop. And then at lunch time. And then on the way home from school too. (And then I didn't want the nutritious supper on offer). Eating that way made me feel sick, often. But I couldn't stop.

Nowadays when I wake up, the first thing on my mind is either - time to visit the bathroom, or let's see what email I got overnight. I have the luxury of working from home, so often after I've paid that initial visit to the bathroom I'll head straight for my office in my pjs, and start working. I do get showered and dressed eventually, honest. At some point I'll realise I haven't had breakfast and I'll go make myself my eggs. It might be an hour after I wake, it might be two hours.

Food just isn't on my mind. And it's not in the pathways of my brain. I experience real hunger now, the hunger that 'normal' people experience, not the hunger that carb-addicted people experience. And right now, because I ate carbs two days ago, I'm experiencing a small resurgence of the carb-hunger. Which is why it's only 8.30am and I've only been up for 15 minutes, but I'm hungry and thinking of breakfast. At least it's only to the extent that I need my eggs sooner than usual. I'm not heading facefirst into a pile of chocolate.

Incidentally, I realised something about my first post that I think might be misleading to anyone who comes along to this blog and isn't already an expert in low-carbing. I said that I discovered that my weight problem was about an insulin imbalance.

That made it sound like I'm really different from other people. That there is some obvious recognisable and recognised medical condition that made me the way I am. Well, that is and isn't true. If you're overweight and you find it hard to restrict your consumption of bread and pasta, you might have that same insulin imbalance. The Hellers, who wrote the Carb Addicts Diet, think that as many as 80% of people who are overweight have this imbalance.

Nothing abnormal will show up on any regular blood tests I do. The glucose levels are measured from blood that is drawn at fasting levels, and that's not when my insulin goes whacky. I know what's wrong with me because I've read the Hellers book, and Dr. Atkins' book, and I've researched low-carb with a passion. I've lived it for five years and learned a lot about my body; a body that previously seemed designed only to spite me and frustrate me and be infinitely uncontrollable. Also, just because I 'found out' what was wrong with me doesn't mean I had an easy time losing weight.

Even when I lost 50 pounds in 9 months, that only works out as about 1.2lbs a week - and at that point I was over 100 pounds overweight - you could expect a little faster weight loss than that. And it came in fits and starts, too, even at the beginning I'd stall for over a month without losing anything, and then lose 14 pounds in two weeks. But I never absolutely knew that next whoosh of weight loss was coming. Then I stalled out at around 190 pounds and didn't lose anything at all for 8 months. And then when I switched from following the Carb Addicts Program to the Atkins program and jumpstarted my weight loss it still took another two years to lose that additional fifty pounds, which is less than half a pound a week, again in weird increments, not steady at all. During all that time I had to hang on to the hope that I'd continue to lose weight, and hang on to my diet plan in the face of temptation and difficulty. And travelling. And eating at other folks' homes, where I wasn't in control of the menu. I've had all the trials of dieting just like other people, it has not been easy. This past two years of maintenance I've seen my weight fluctuate up and down about ten pounds, as I get less and more careful about what I eat. And I still want to lose more weight; I'm still not at my goal yet. After five flipping years.

All I'm saying is that I didn't find some miracle cure and that made everything easy. I found a miracle cure and it made everything possible. And that I'm not that different from many other people out there, who may not know what the root of their problem is. Just like I didn't.

It's been the saving of me. I hope they find out too. That's one of the reasons I'm writing this.

While I Rip and Burn...

CDs, that is, not clothes that don't fit, or recalcitrant scales.

I've got a new laptop and external hard drive that holds soooo much stuff that I'm sitting here organizing all my music files and burning yet more CDs so I can get *all* my music on my new 30gb ipod.

All very exciting.

Meanwhile, I'm stuck at my computer waiting for the CDs to burn - this one is taking an unconscionable amount of time - so I thought I'd take the opportunity for a post.

Right now, at the beginning of this blog, I'm taking things that are happening to me on a daily basis as a starting point for some larger discussion. So, what's happened the last couple of days?

I was ill. Went out for a very nice meal with my parents on monday night, but a few hours after I got home, I started to feel really sick, and ultimately ejected all the contents of my stomach in a rather violent and unpleasant manner. It left me feeling weak and horrible, too, I wasn't better once my stomach was empty. This meant that Tuesday became a bad food day (as well as just generally a bad day).

I'll leave the larger discussion of 'why low carb' to another time, and talk about one of the issues of low-carbing.

Who wants to eat chicken or eggs when they feel nauseous?

Nobody. Definitely not me, at any rate. Which does leave me with a problem on the days I do feel nauseous. (Seriously, I'm really concerned for what will happen if I ever get married and get pregnant).

Carbs are not good for me, at all. If I eat them, whether we're talking sugary stuff like chocolate or cakes, or complex carbs like whole grain bread or pasta, they make me feel hungry - and that feeling has effects that last for days, making sticking to plan difficult. I love them, don't get me wrong, but they do nothing good for me at all. Well, except for my tastebuds. Unfortunately those damn things still love carbs.

Still, when my stomach is off there's really no choice for me. Some people might just not eat at all until they feel better, but I'm not that much of a martyr. In the five years that I've been low-carbing I've worked out how much leeway I can give myself, and how easy or hard it will be to get back on the wagon depending on how badly I get off track in the first place.

Yesterday I ate a yoghurt, and a few slices of wholemeal bread with butter. And since I knew it was a wasted day , carbwise, and I felt miserable as hell anyway with my sickness, I also ate a couple of packets of crisps, some biscuits and some chocolate. Not exorbitant amounts, given my dodgy stomach, but on a regular day I wouldn't have had *any* of it.

It meant I stayed hungry, when if I'd eaten other food I wouldn't have been. Seriously. It flies in the face of all 'accepted' nutrition laws, but put it this way: If I eat a plate of spaghetti bolognese, well, first off, one plate won't be enough - I'll need seconds. Once I've had seconds, I'll feel full temporarily. Like, for half an hour. Then I'll start feeling peckish again. I'll have an uncontrollable urge to eat, even though really I'm not hungry. But I'll actually feel hunger. After a meal that could easily top 1,000 calories. Whereas if I ate just half a plate of the bolognese, sans spaghetti, it'll fill me up for the next three hours or so, until it's time for the next meal. No hunger, no cravings, no interest in more food; real satiety. On probably a third of the calories, at that.

Seriously. Less is more, if the less is protein and fat, not carbs.

That phenomenon has really been the key to my success at losing weight - and the reason I put on weight in the first place (double-edged sword that I'd rather not have to know about at all, really).

So, what's going to happen to me over the next few days? Well, yesterday I ate carbs, but today is another day, right? Half right. A new day always fixes part of the problem, so today it hasn't been hard to stick to my usual low-carb choices. Wanna know what I ate today? Breakfast was my usual two fried eggs (in pam spray) with some lc ketchup, lunch was burgers wrapped in lettuce, with tomato, pickle, onion and thousand island dressing made with low fat mayo and low carb ketchup, and supper was chicken breast with spicy vinegary garlicky courgettes. At various points in the day I had a couple low-fat, sugar free bio yoghurts, and a handful of pecans. Tomorrow is going to be the problem, though. The day after the day after. That's when the carbs still in my system from two days earlier make it harder to stick to the straight and narrow. I'm tempted because the carbs are still in my system; I'm hungrier than normal and I crave carbs the way I don't when they're not in my system. It takes a few days to restart the system, as it were. This is difficult when every few days comes the weekend, and socializing and group meals. But not impossible.

Anyway. I don't think this has been a particularly coherent post, but then I'm far too excited about all the new music about to go onto my ipod to really focus on this :-) So next post I'll try and do a basic, thorough explanation of why low-carb works. What the end of hunger really means.

Wish me luck to beat the cravings tomorrow without succumbing to bad eating!

Twenty-five compliments...

This post is in honour of Eri, my first commenter. Actually this is one of those strange moments of synchronicity that occur from time to time, because if I am remembering correctly, what I want to talk about is related to a sentiment that I think I first heard expressed by her, and I was planning on writing about it anyway.

The sentiment is: "It takes twenty-five compliments to supersede the effect of one insult."

Or words to that effect.

I thought that was a good segue into a look at what happens to someone's appreciation (or lack thereof) of their physical selves when dealing with the issue of obesity.

This is obviously a huge (no pun intended) topic and one post is only going to cover a small amount of it. There will be other posts. About vanity, and looking in the mirror. About accepting physicality at all. But for now I will talk in general about being treated as an attractive woman.

I'm not used to it.

I'm not sure I ever will be. If we take the twenty-five compliments route, and I estimate that I spent at least twenty years of my life feeling like Quasimodo, then I'll need roughly five hundred years of being treated like Esmerelda to actually begin to grasp that, yanno, I'm actually not too rough on the eyes.

This weekend I was spending time with my sister and her family. I'm friendly with some other people who live in her area, so I went visiting with them at various points during the day. So at one point I was talking to one of these friends - who is someone I like, but really more of an acquaintance - about my travelling for work and how fun it is, and he said something about my boss just wanting to be able to fly a pretty face around the world.

Maybe someone else would take that kind of comment as their due. I store it up in the compliments repository, marvel at it, take it out and stroke it from time to time. He thinks I'm pretty!

Later on I went to visit some other friends. These are closer friends. I was telling them about my various online dating experiences (which deserve their own posts, and will get them), and one of them asked me how often I meet people who it turns out have been less than honest in their online profiles. I told him that I meet something like 5% of the people who contact me. I told him that one of the online dating sites has something like 900 emails in my inbox. (of course i don't delete anything and it's been going for a couple years, but still). He and his wife made various comments about beautiful women and he joked that he could photoshop my photo to make me ugly, see if it would change things.

Again, they see me as beautiful. And these are people who did know me five years ago. Quasimodo-me.

My parents were visiting my sister as well over the weekend, and as it happened, an old friend of my Dad's was there too, visiting one of his children. He knows my sisters, but had never met me before. He's known my Dad since they were in their twenties. He was just a tiny bit too interested in me. Not in a really lecherous kind of way, and all very jokey. But enough that I could tell he found me attractive. When I left, and kissed both my parents goodbye, he joked about getting a kiss too.

Surely, I'm not that kind of girl. I don't get attention like that. I used to phrase it thus: If Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus, I must be from Jupiter. I just wasn't included in that kind of appreciation.

I got a cab home from the train station. In the cab, the driver started telling me about all the people he's had in the cab, all their stories. He told me he could tell I was single because I dress well and am warmer, more open than married women tend to be. He also guessed my age at 28 - people always assume I'm younger than I am. He then went on to discuss why people stay single, holding forth with a myriad of opinions, but during the conversation I was variously described as beautiful and obviously a quality woman. Then of course, he wanted my number.

This kind of thing has happened frequently over the past couple of years, but hardly at all before that. When it did, occasionally happen, I'd just think there was something wrong with the guy. Unless it happened during one of the exceedingly rare months when a diet had worked and I was thinner.

I didn't actually have any kind of real understanding of what I looked like, and whether it was abstractly 'good' or not. Even facially, ignoring the fat. I've always liked my eye colour, which is an unusual greeny-blue. Once I worked out how to control my hair, I knew it was the type that women often envied - but I knew all too well how rarely it actually behaved itself. And somehow knowing that in abstract I had good 'parts' didn't make up any kind of 'whole' that I could approve of.

I think the first time I began to even conceive the idea that I might have decent looks, maybe even 'above average' whatever that means (and just writing this I'm cringing that people I know will read this and think I've developed an over-inflated ego because surely it's not true...) was when I joined a support group about weight loss and put up before and after photos, and people started commenting - and complimenting.

My parents never made me feel beautiful. Or pretty. Or even acceptable. In fact, the one time I remember my mother telling me that my dad had said to her he'd seen me with my friends and I was the prettiest one there, I looked at her in disbelief because it so obviously was nothing even close to what he really thought of me. Ok, my parents and their attitude to weight is at least five posts. So let's leave that for now.

Have I mentioned yet the beautiful sister with the perfect figure who was 2 years younger than me? Of course I have to have one of those, right? Someone who embodied (embodied! exactly!) everything I wasn't. I couldn't have an average sister, no, I had to have the one with the perfect, sexy figure. At one point she was literally half my weight, and we're basically the same height. Well, she'll get plenty of posts too (right now she's actually a couple pounds more than me. but then, she's had four kids. i've had none)

So, it takes twenty-five compliments to negate the effect of one insult.

I'm still storing them up.

I need them to neutralise the years of nasty comments in the street from strangers. The years of feeling not good enough, not approved of, judged in my own home because my parents couldn't bear my being overweight. The years of being absolutely ignored by the opposite sex, of knowing that I just wasn't part of that whole romance thing. Watching as my friends were asked out and dated, and I wasn't. I still find it pretty damn hard to accept being the object of romantic attention. And yes, that's very complicated and deserves several posts, too.

What can I say I have achieved? That even though sometimes when I get looks in the street I worry that I've got a stain somewhere that I'm not aware of, most of the time I now know - even if I don't quite comprehend - that the stares are actually of approbation and not disgust.

There are people in the world that think I'm beautiful - even if I'm not one of them yet.