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.