If you believe, clap your hands

Do you believe in fairies? Say quick that you believe. If you believe, clap your hands!

I've said this before, but what I've achieved really has been hitting me recently. I've started to look at other people and realise that I'm not the fat one any more. I'm not necessarily even average, I can be in a group of people and actually be the thin one. I'm heading towards a size 12, and the other day I caught sight of myself in a miror and marvelled at how flat my stomach looked. Sometimes I look down at my thighs or my hips, and I see it, I really do. I see it every time I look in the mirror now, and sometimes I almost want to cry and let out the emotion I feel about what I have done for myself.

I never really had any conception of what I'd look like at this, or any other, weight. I've been aiming blind, on the assumption that anything lighter is better than what I was, and that I'd think about the details when I get there. Kind of like heading for a house in a town at the other end of the country, and only looking at the street map when you've found the town itself. I knew what a healthy weight range was, but didn't want to have any fixed ideas about where in that range I wanted to fall. I still don't, to be honest.

But the one thing I had, every minute of every day was a belief that I would get down there. Maybe not quite to a healthy weight, but that I'd get to roughly where I am now. I've never really had doubts, and I'm sure that's why I've succeeded.

Like Tinkerbell, I think that if you don't really believe in your ability to lose, it will fade and go out. No matter whether I've been losing or having little mini plateaus or gains, I've known, deep down, that it's all part of the journey, and that if I do the right things I'll lose. I've been able to pinpoint things that have caused me not to lose and put them right. I've never had any doubt that if I exercise and eat healthy food I'll stop. And that's really what's kept me going. I've not got worked up about little setbacks, because I know I'm doing things right.

What has really helped me has been doing things the "wrong way round". I started losing weight before I started trying to, if that makes sense. I decided to join the gym and sort my diet out for general health reasons, not weight reasons, and it was only later that I realised that I'd hit upon precisely the combination that would make me lose weight. So I knew when I started consciously tracking my loss that I was on the right lines for me, not following a diet that worked for someone else but wasn't right for me.

I've believed throughout, and that light has stayed on. I really don't know if I could have done this if I didn't believe, truly, that it was th right thing to work for me. I'm not sure that belief on its own would have worked, but I wouldn't have got anywhere near here without it.

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Still more changes. I had to work late tonight, and there was a pizza order. I'd spent a lot of last night cooking a gorgeous salad (yes, that sounds like a contradiction, but I roast a load of peppers and tomatoes, grill some chicken, then chop it all up, add some extra veg and dressing etc, so it does take a while), and I hoped that I'd either be able to escape early enough to eat it or at least pop out for half an hour or so to go home and pick it up to bring in.

So I didn't order pizza. That was an achievement in itself, but I then astounded myself by not only turn down slices I was offered, but also by finding myself feeling positively nauseous when confronted with the smell. I still do eat pizza, but this one just had such a greasy smell, and I really didn't fancy it. That's never happened to me before, and I'm at a loss to find out where this sudden pizza aversion came from!

Anyway, I escaped at about 8.40, came home and ate the salad. Disaster averted. (now I just have to hope the phone doesn't go, to ask me to go back in).