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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