On the surface of it, the prospect of working off-site for the afternoon is generally something I enjoy. We have lack of decent-sized meeting rooms in the office so if there’s a few of us squashed in for a longish meeting it can get annoying, you know? Besides what’s not to love about a change of scenery.
I was off-site yesterday with one of the teams I support, and our venue was a local brewery. As one of our suppliers, they were keen to host us and they’d even offered us a complimentary lunch. I was a tiny bit worried about that – I know it sounds silly, but you do when you’re sticking to a food plan and someone else is in charge of what’s on your plate. Whatever, I figured I could flex enough to deal with it and to conserve my daily points just in case, I made my porridge with water at breakfast time. Which, by the way is taking dedication to a whole new level because it tasted more like wallpaper paste.
Just before I left, I took a phone call from a colleague wanting to know what size shoes I wear. Weird question…um, size seven…why..? Turns out the brewery were going to kit us out and give us a full on factory tour. Excellent…except. What if ‘kitting us out’ involved actual clothes? And what if they got to me and looked me up and down before shaking their head sadly and pointing a finger…she can’t do the tour, we don’t have anything to fit her…old worries take a long time to die, right?
I needn’t have spent the next hour in the car worrying about it. As it turned out the outfit comprised nothing more scary than safety glasses and a bright red hard hat disguised as a baseball cap with a day-glo yellow high-vis jacket. Apart from looking like Ronald Macdonald it was all okay…but the fat-girl paranoia had kicked in big time and given me a very uncomfortable morning as I speculated about what might happen.
Still, on the bright side, it doesn’t hurt to be reminded with a sharp poke in the ribs now and again as to exactly why I’m on this journey. My days used to be filled with worries like that…which room is my meeting in and therefore which chairs are in that room? The ones with arms? Oh no my arse won’t fit in those ones. Oh no, I have to go there..? God that’s at least a ten minute walk from the nearest place I can park my car, I’ll be wiped out by the time I get there…maybe there’ll be somewhere I can have a rest between A and B…on and on and on.
I had to navigate my whole life worrying about the problems that being fat threw at me on almost an hourly basis. And now, I don’t. The legacy it’s left me with is the odd soupçon of worry here and there…well you know what, I can live with that. Nine times out of ten these days I worry for nothing but it helps to keep me grateful for the fact that I’ve escaped that life.
Something I’ll never take for granted 🙂
