Beginnings

Last night I was out for dinner with a newish friend. We've known each other for a while as acquaintances, and a few fortuitous bumping-into-each-others led to an actual arrangement to go out and chat. Since we were eating dinner, I mentioned I ate low-carb. This meant that some of our very enjoyable conversation was about eating and weight. I told her the basics. That my weight issue, it turned out, revolves around abnormal insulin and therefore low-carbing is what has worked for me. That I've lost around 100 pounds and kept it off over the past five years. She's only known me for two or three of those years - she never met me when I was at my heaviest.

I mentioned that I'd started writing a book about the process, the emotions, the difficulties, the joys, of losing weight - and of being heavy in the first place. I also said that I've found it next to impossible to carry on writing the book because of the demands of my life, and work. I said I'd thought of writing a blog but hadn't got round to it.

As we exited the very crowded restaurant and I had to maneouvre around the tables, and squeeze past the other patrons, I turned over my shoulder and said to her - I could write a whole post about these two minutes. Exiting a crowded restaurant and having to squeeze past people sitting at the tables around me. The route to the door. A few years ago I would have been mentally planning the least embarrassing one. Now I walk out without thinking about it. I've changed. I don't have to worry about whether I'll be too fat to get past, that I'll feel humiliated and embarrassed that everyone's looking at the fat girl.

So today I finally did it - started a blog. I'm not sure whether I'll ever have time to get back to writing the actual book of my journey (written the first few chapters, had positive feedback, including from lit agents, but that's where it ends for now). But I've got time to post my thoughts here and there. Well, here, really.

Having said which, I'm going away for the weekend and I don't actually have time to write anything more at all right now. But I thought given that I've created the template, I should actually submit one post! So it'll be a couple days before I write more about that squeezing past tables phenomenon. And how my life has changed in so very many ways...