Have any of you ever visited the website StumbleUpon?  I’m often behind the curve on cool stuff, so you may have all known about it for ages, but I’ve only just found it and I’m loving all the gems I’m discovering. I’ve even installed a button on here, in the little box underneath the email subscription just in case any of you use it regularly and want to share any of your favourite blog posts. For anyone like me who’s curious about stuff, it’s an awesome find.

I’ve just read an article on there about a genius concept dreamed up by a couple of fellas in New York, who found a novel way of recruiting new members for their gym – they’re giving folk free membership, and only charging them if they don’t go. Now I don’t know about you, but I’ve paid a gazillion times to join a gym, only to rock up a couple of times before running out of steam. I imagine they’ll make it a big success.

Imagine getting walloped in the wallet every time you pulled on your fat pants for a bit of sofa surfing because you’d decided that body pump wasn’t such a great idea after all. For folk like me who take no persuading to do exactly that, it would be a brilliant incentive to drag my sorry ass to the gym. It’s sort of reverse psychology for couch potatoes, and a great example of how tipping normal on its head could drive a real change in behaviour. Irrespective of how it’s formed, under duress or otherwise, a habit is a habit right?

As someone who has a fully functioning stubborn streak, reverse psychology works well on me – one sniff of a suggestion from someone that they don’t think I’m up to doing whatever it is they want me to do and I’m all over it, with I’ll fucking show you who can’t do it ringing the bell in my head. Trouble is, reverse psychology delivered clumsily would have the opposite effect. You think I’m fat? I’ll show you fat, you fucking ejit, nom nom…

For me, it boils down to the people I surround myself with. I’m schooled now in spotting a diet saboteur at five hundred paces. I know the people who are going to encourage me to be bad so they have license to be bad too. I also know the people who can be relied upon to protect me from myself by using the kind of distraction techniques that work on toddlers if they see a craving brewing…any port in a storm and all that.

Most of all I’ve let the people around me know what I’m trying to do and why, and how important it is to me. And whilst I’ve used this line before I make no apologies for using it again because it fits…the only thing that’s bigger than my arse is my pride, which refuses to let me fail publicly.

One of my closest friends has been incredibly supportive on this journey and she’s a wise old owl. She’s also irritatingly skinny and always has been, so she’s never even had to step through that minefield of thoughts and feelings which go hand in hand with psyche of someone who’s fought a lifelong battle with food. Her take on the whole thing is refreshingly simple.

When you’re about to give up, just remember why you held on so long. If it mattered then surely it matters now?

Got to admit, when you put it like that…

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In the way that these things often do, something I read this week has kind of got stuck in the pipes inside my head, and usually that happens for a reason you know? I’m not talking about divine inspiration or at least I don’t think I am, I tend not to have a personal hotline to the The Big Guy. But sometimes I think it’s my subconscious mind’s way of giving me a poke on some yet-to-be-explored issue.

In the personal statement blurb at the top of a CV I was reading, I found the words relentless in pursuit of satisfaction. Which to be fair was a very strange thing to write on a CV. The rest of the words over the next couple of pages weren’t much cop either but once I’d pushed the thanks but no thanks button my head immediately fished that phrase out of the recycle bin and it’s been buzzing around between my ears ever since.

The concept of satisfaction fascinates me, especially when you link it to your aspirations and dreams. I’ll give you an example…I dream of being a size twelve, right? It’s the size that I loved when I got there last time, and I maintained it without too many problems for around a year. Granted, I only managed to maintain it because I wanted to continue getting in the pants of Mr Muscle and as a fat girl there would have been no chance, but I did a fairly good impression of being a gym bunny for a while and the size sort of suited me.

But even as a size twelve I wasn’t entirely satisfied with my body. I was in my early forties, and the natural southern migration of various appendages had already begun, speeded up to a degree by years of carrying additional baggage inside my skin. My shape was fine when everything was tucked into spanx, but without the assistance of tightly elasticated undercrackers it didn’t hold up too well.

Naked, it kind of looked like someone left the heating on a bit too high and I’d started to actually melt. So not quite the bikini body I’d been hoping for, you know? During the year that I existed in a pie-free zone, I spent a small fortune on lotions and potions all promising to tighten up this and rejuvenate that but in reality they made me smell nice and I spent a lot of time being slippery but that was the extent of it.

I spent an even bigger small fortune on new clothes in skinny-girl styles and then refused to wear them because my arms were too flabby or my knees were too wrinkly. I wasn’t satisfied. And you don’t need me to tell you that even all the way back then, although I didn’t realise it at the time, Vice-President in charge of dissatisfaction was my very own Asshole voice. I mean come on, who else could put a downward spin on being skinny?

I was reading an article a few weeks ago about a lady who’d lost a lot of weight but she had similar issues with loose skin and was just as unhappy as she’d been when she was fat. She was very wobbly and didn’t feel good about herself at all, and she came right out and said it…I wish I’d never lost the weight in the first place. Actually, that bit made me cry. That’s the sound of hopes and dreams dying right there.

I don’t think I’ll feel like that. I didn’t last time, despite my wobbly bits. Even though I went on to regain every pound I’d lost plus about another seventy on top, and the reality is that without clothes I’ll probably look like some kind of worm with arms and legs, when I cross the boundary of Skinny Town I will still be grateful that I got there at all.

I’m thinking carefully about what I’m going to get, so my head has time to get comfortable with the reality and I’m satisfied with what I end up with, you know? Wrinkly knees and bingo wings are a given. A midriff which doesn’t always move in sync with the rest of me is fairly likely depending on my forward momentum. And maybe a face like a deflated balloon…hell that’s even started in the chins department.

But for all that, my wrinkly knees will come without the red-hot poker which has lived inside my joints for the longest time. My midsection will no longer enter the room a good thirty seconds before the rest of me, and I’m confident that I’ll be able to reach whichever bit of body needs tucking into whichever bit of clothing.

I’m not aspiring to a bikini body, just a healthy one which will fit into normal clothes from non fat-girl shops whilst it’s busy being active and catching up on the life I want to live. That sounds pretty bloody satisfactory to me 🙂

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 I had an interesting conversation yesterday evening with someone I phoned for a bit of advice, who thinks I could do better on here, you know, on the blog. I was hoping he might be able to signpost me towards a techie person who could help me with the subscription widget – I’m two weeks into it being on the blink now, there’s no sign of our friends off-shore breathing life back into it any time soon and I’m nearing the end of my rope.

He couldn’t help, as it happened, however during the course of our conversation it seemed that there were a couple of things, three in fact that he had an opinion on. His opinion was welcome of course, I’m always open to feedback as you know. Thing is, he hasn’t actually read the blog.

I know, right..? That’s what I thought too. A self-proclaimed subject matter expert who doesn’t write a blog himself and hadn’t actually read any of my words. Not his cup of tea at all, as he pointed out…clearly he’s not a middle-aged woman with fat issues. But still, he took the time to point out how I was doing it all wrong because he knows stuff.

When I said it was mainly words and not many pictures, I swear could hear him pulling a face – apparently you lot won’t like that. He wanted to know how many words, and I told him, roughly. It seems I write too many, and again you lot won’t really like that either, hell it seems half of you won’t even bother reading them. It seems I should make it sharp and punchy instead. With lots of pictures, because you’ll like that.

He asked me about my search-engine optimisation build – whatever the chuff that is – and apparently my approach to that is all wrong too. In his humble opinion I should write every post with that in mind or I’ll ‘never get anywhere’. Pepper it with keywords in all the right places. Right then. I did mention that people seemed to be finding me okay but he was having none of it. SEO is where it’s at, in his book.

He totally couldn’t get his head around the fact that I don’t really talk about the diet. I tried to tell him it wasn’t a blog about a diet, it’s more about what goes on in my head whilst I’m on the diet. Reflecting on past mistakes and trying to clear them from the path ahead of me to make the journey easier…clearly that concept was a bit beyond him. Actually by this point I’d cottoned on to the fact that he was a complete tool, but still I tried to explain. Don’t ask me why…I think that’s my fat-girl driver kicking into overdrive, which makes me crave the approval of other people even when their opinion shouldn’t matter.

He left the conversation having dismissed our blog as shit despite never reading a word of it, but here’s the thing…I didn’t. I thought about what he’d said, and the Asshole voice tried to chew my ear but you’d have been proud of me – I just closed it down. The thing is, I love the fact that you lot enjoy dipping in and out and some of the chatter helps you in your own journey but I never ever lose sight of the fact that I’m writing this for me.

I read something very profound once from Steve Jobs, who is one of my heroes. What he said was this:

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

Looking back on what I’ve done in the past and talking about it is helping me slowly join the dots. By picking out the patterns which have led to downfall after downfall, I have nowhere to hide going forward, right? If I can see where I went wrong, and I continue to do whatever it is, I’m as good as choosing to do something which I know is going to fail. And you bet your sweet ass that if that’s ever the case, it won’t be a subconscious choice because for the first time I’m not playing at this. I’m the one in control.

It feels to me like I’ve found the balance I need, between a fair amount of soul searching, some insight and self-reflection and a level of honesty with the posse which has been truly liberating. Laughing about stuff isn’t deflecting from the issues, it’s helping me to diffuse the intensity in my own mind. That’s important too, because when it gets too intense I’ve been known to check out and put stuff on the too difficult pile. I don’t even have a too difficult pile this time around, I’m just dealing with stuff as it comes up.

He’d definitely disapprove of this post eh, it’s a monster. But this isn’t the face of a worried woman 🙂

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I had the most bizarre night’s sleep ever last night. For one thing it seemed to go on for ever, which on a school night is awesome. Most times it feels like the alarm goes off almost before I’ve gone to sleep you know?

I’m a very sound sleeper, in fact my mum used to say I could sleep on a clothes line. I’ve always been the same, but I still don’t ever seem to get enough sleep. Thing is, my head is usually so chock full of stuff that I want to look at, or find out about, I end up mooching on line for hours when I go to bed. Once I start looking for things to inspire my mind down one alley or another, time burns away without me realising and it’s often after midnight before I settle down to actually sleep.

Not last night though, I had a relatively early night. I’d had a lovely evening trying on clothes. After losing a ton of weight my friend has had a wardrobe clear-out, and as luck would have it the stuff she’s getting rid of just happens to be around the size I’m going to be needing fairly soon. Perfect timing, right? I staggered home with two massive bags of stuff and it felt like Christmas morning as I explored the contents and tried stuff on.

I’d also caught up on the last episode of Britain’s Next Top Model on the TV whilst I was eating dinner, so those two things combined are probably responsible for the fact that I’ve spent all chuffing night on the catwalk.

I walked for Chanel – of course dahlink – and Gucci and lots of other posh folk who exist only to dress pencils. The clothes hung off my skinny string bean frame like a clothes hanger (except for the bit where they clung to my impressive and exceptionally perky norks, hey come on it’s my  dream) and all the celebrities watching me from the front row shuffled their bony asses in their respective seats and sighed with envy as I looked down on them and strutted past with attitude.

The towering heels didn’t pinch my feet, because my feet were skinny feet. No stubby toes or cankles here thank you very much, and definitely no feet that looked like blown-up toddler feet stuck on the end of fat fifty-year-old legs. No, the legs which my skinny feet were attached to were tanned and smooth, and born to advertise hosiery. Oh, and about nine feet long.

You can imagine how pissed off I was this morning when I woke up to find myself zipped back into what looked like a lumpy old pillow as I shuffled past the mirror. I didn’t even look on the way back once I’d put my contacts in, I didn’t need depressing even more by seeing the image in full HD.

I’ll tell you what though – I’m hungry for more of the person who came out to play in my sleep. Oh I know I’m not going to get nine feet long legs with elegant feet, and my days of smooth golden skin are long behind me. Best steer clear of towering heels too, I was never very good at staying upright on them even in my younger skinnier days. But I’m hungry to get to that place when all of me struts to the same beat, instead of trying to stride out confidently and feeling my arse follow half a beat behind as it wobbles around in my pants trying to keep up.

To get dressed without having to breathe in and say a quick prayer that the thing which fitted me last weekend still fastens. To give myself a quick once-over in the mirror and then not have to worry for the rest of the day about my appearance, or what other people might be thinking about the way I look.

That’s the kind of freedom I’m looking forward to. I’m happy that I’m taking a step nearer to it every day 🙂

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Hmm, there’s a song in there somewhere. Fleury got it spot on in the last point she made in her list of life and diet parallels in the guest spot when she said don’t invest too much time in regrets. I couldn’t agree more. Regret is something I’ve always tried to avoid because in my experience, given too much focus it can turn the sunniest of dispositions into a vipers nest of dissatisfaction.

Me, I’ve done some really daft things. When I look back there have been more than a few pockets of chaos in my life over the last fifty years or so but then I reckon anyone who gets to the ripe old age of fifty without losing the plot once or twice hasn’t really lived. I’ve got to hold my hands up and admit that some of my life decisions haven’t really stood up too well to scrutiny, but I don’t regret those things, not a single one of them.

The most notable involved me getting rather too carried away by the possibilities of internet dating when I dipped my toes in the water for the first time. My first evening ever on line involved what seemed like a fairly casual chat with a tall dark handsome and enigmatic man from across the pond.

Uh-oh…I can hear the sharp intakes of breath from here, knowing me and how prone I am to believing in fairy tales. Do I even need to tell you that I fell hook line and sinker for a bloke who, as it turns out, was not quite what he seemed. No shit, how could it possibly go wrong..?

Lets just say after the wedding – six weeks after meeting for real just a couple of months later – there were several things which came to light which were rather unexpected. Like the additional ex-wife and daughter he’d forgotten to mention, the long-standing bromance with his old friend Jack Daniels which several rounds of rehab hadn’t managed to unpick, a mountain of debt that even Chris Bonnington would have baulked at, and a positive gaggle of other ladies on this side of the pond who hadn’t been quite as gullible as me, the dumbass who actually put a ring on it.

It was only after he’d emptied my life savings I woke up and smelled the coffee, and realised that perhaps it wasn’t quite the fairy tale ending I’d imagined. But do I regret it..? Not really. If I hadn’t chased the dream, right now, ten years or more on I’d still be living with the nagging doubt that just maybe, I might have turned my back on the one person in the world I was meant to be with, all because I’d been too scared to take a chance, you know? That would have screwed with my head big time. So no, despite learning a very hard lesson, no regrets.

There is one thing I regret, and that’s the lifelong broken relationship I’ve had with food. I love food, I mean I’m a proper foodie. But when you’re driven by a compulsion to eat to the point where you’re out of control, and the need to do that gets an iron grip on you, you walk such a fine line between greed and guilt the whole time it sucks all the pleasure out of the experience of eating. And yet, you carry on regardless. I regret that.

I often wonder how different my life would have been if I hadn’t spent huge chunks of it zipped inside this fat suit. Without question it has limited me, and opportunities I might otherwise have had haven’t come my way because I’ve hidden from them. But that said, I quite like the person I am now and they reckon don’t they, that we’re all a sum total of our experiences and the things which have carved their deepest grooves into our psyche.

I didn’t turn out too bad and if I’m holding fat responsible for opportunities missed, I’ve got to give it credit for some of the good stuff too…writing and chatting with you lot every day is a joy, and it would never have happened if I’d lived all my life skinny would it… 🙂

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