Tuesday, June 07, 2005

The other me

I've been pondering recently who I would be if I wasn't fat. How much has my size shaped my life, my lifestyle and my choices.

First of all I want to get one thing clear. I don't regret a thing about my life. If being fat meant that I spent my time with my head buried in my schoolwork rather than out with friends shopping, then I'll take that. That's what's given me a great education and the start of a great career. If it meant I wasn't chasing boys then that's what's given me independence, self sufficiency and self reliance. If it meant I wasn't constantly keeping up with the latest fashions, then that's what got me through university without getting into serious debt.

But still I wonder about this other woman, this other me. The one who realised at 11 that she actually liked sport rather than at 26. Actually, this me did like sport at school, I was on the netball, rounders and rugby teams at various points, but I didn't realise I liked sport, and I didn't keep it up. But I digress. Who is the other woman who didn't decide to rely on food for emotional support?

What would she have done, and what choices would she have made? Would she be sitting here now happy with her lot, or would she be wishing that she was, well, more like me?

I'll never know. As I lose weight I see different sides of me emerge, I go shopping and I half enjoy it. I have more confidence in my body as well as in my mind. But whoever I become in the future will always be a "formerly fat" person, rather than an always thin person. Someone who is always aware of her history with food and laziness, and someone who can never get back those lost, thin, teenage years. And someone who always has the benefit of the great times and experiences she had in her teens and twenties that she might have missed out on had she been thin.

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In other news, plenty of scale and non scale victories alike. I'm now a smidgen under 16 stone for the first time in years, and within a stone of becoming merely overweight instead of obese. I'm running like a pro. Well, not quite, but I feel myself getting better and better at it every day. I bought a suit from a high street shop and then found myself going back in an attempt to swop the skirt for a smaller size. Not a plus size range or anything like that, I'm just too thin for the biggest size. My clothes get baggier. My mother is finally supporting me. Not that she was discouraging me before, I just don't think she realised how important this is to me. But now she's been congratulating me on my shopping basket, encouraging me to go to the gym (I wanted to go, but didn't know whether I should stay in to spend quality time together), and generally being a star. I guess this says that I'm into this, and I have to stick to it.

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