Up to date ...

SO!!! To (hopefully) bring it all up to date .....

After all the, ultimately failed, attempts to remain at some sort of acceptable weight I am exactly where I started 33 years ago - but content at that and determined NOT to pile it all back on yet again.

I have to say that the acceptability is my own - nobody elses. I don't think anyone has ever actually criticised my size .... weeeeeel apart from the teasing and name calling at school. What I mean is, the people who matter to me have never even appeared to notice. I know some of them are probably just too polite to mention it but I genuinely believe that even to those who DID notice - it didn't matter. One thing I've learned over the years is that most of what we believe people are looking at, thinking, saying to others about us, is in our own heads. In truth people are too busy leading their own lives, navigating their own 'issues' and workloads to even care.

It's rather liberating to throw off the mantle of 'what people think' and decide that if YOU are the person on the beach who makes other people feel better about the way they look then 'what the hell'! Come on now - we've all been there haven't we!? Surrepticiously glancing around - head turned one way whilst behind the mirrored sunglasses our eyes are everywhere until we can establish that we're not the biggest, or at the very least not the ONLY landed whale there that day.

As I write I wonder if throwing off that particular mantle has led to me actually doing this for ME for the very first time. To it not being about anybody else or for any other reason than I wanted to.

I've never been a great fan of 'incentives' to be honest. Not in the form of events anyway. If you're slimming for a wedding or a holiday or Christmas or something, what happens when that's passed?

One incentive for me this time was to be able to wear my own rings again. For about 7 or 8 years I haven't been able to wear my wedding, engagement or eternity rings. I can wear them now but there's no room for 'improvement'. When I had them sized down in 2000 I was nearly 1&1/2st lighter than I am now but they do fit. There's an incentive that won't go away and won't be at all forgiving either! If that further 1&1/2st dropped off me I wouldn't complain (well not if I was still healthy!) but I'm not going to make the effort to get it off. I think that I was too light then and that was part of the reason for being unable to sustain it .... well that AND being a total pig of course ;o).

What got me started this time was the sheer stress of feeling so 'fat' and sluggish, I'd avoid going upstairs if I possibly could. I now have 5 grandsons and an ageing, disabled mother so I needed to be fitter. And - not to be too graphic but there was a time when my arm really wasn't long enough to be able to wipe myself properly - so much blubber was there to negotiate its' way round. At the same sort of time, I couldn't kneel down in the bath (come to think of it I probably couldn't have knelt down anywhere else for that matter but I never tried) there was so much fat on the back of my legs. I guess I'd just had enough.

I'm very grateful that family & friends accepted me just as I was. It made it easier to gain weight (is the only thing) because no-one seemed to notice. By the same token they didn't particularly notice as I lost it either - not quite so heartwarming - but understandable. When I sorted out some 'before' photos a little while ago - one of them being on here - my eldest son was quite shocked. Even though he's in the photo he doesn't remember that I looked like that. And I might add that I wasn't at my heaviest in that photo. I'd lost either a stone and a half or two stone, I can't quite remember.

So from 15st 9.5lbs at my heaviest I weighed in this week at 10st 3.8lbs. This after 10 weeks of maintenance but I don't kid myself I've 'cracked it' - not by a long chalk.

With just 5 more sleeps till my first 'thin' holiday for an awfully long time the only fly in that particular ointment is the new 15kg luggage allowance GRRRRRR!! I could have done sooo much more shopping!!??!! ;o)

Katelios, Kefalonia - next tuesday here we come!!!! :o))) xx