Drum roll.

In my head I hear a drum roll. What does it signify? A break through? A moment of truth? A significant event? Perhaps.

Weighed myself this morning, against all my instincts. Drum roll now please. A while ago I decided that a preoccupation with food and weighing myself was very unhealthy. There is nothing worse than a diet bore. (Well there is, there's lots worse, but you get my drift...) I have friends who, when you go out to eat with them will labour the point that certain foods are just 'bad'. They are of course right, but I have been so tempted to say "Oh just shut the f*ck up and enjoy yourself!" I have to ask is my attitude worse?

I am not good in the company of food saints. In fact I am not good in the company of anyone who goes on and on about their personal project and dieters tend to be the worst offenders. Now I am one of them, but I refuse to be dragged down to the point where I am like them. I am the reluctant dieter. I'll do it because I have to, but apart from this blog, I'll go about the business of being more selective around food quietly. I might even break out and eat something 'bad' just for the sake of it. So there!

It's restriction that makes me mad...but perhaps I am stupid to get so worked up about it? Perhaps there is another way and I can purr rather than scowl because I don't really mind being on a permanent healthy eating campaign?

I actually LIKE health-giving foods. My boys had to follow a low fat, low sugar, high fibre diet from infancy. There was no way I was going to serve them food which might endanger their health. (Now they are older they make their own choices, which is as it should be, but I know all the theory about carbs, proteins, fats etc. I was checking food labels way back in 1987, before it became the norm to do so!)

Anyway..enough pondering my reasons for remaining the way I am...the fat woman. I don't want to be a fat woman. So how do I go about changing that? I HAVE to get my head round the fact that my life has to change, and my biggest problem is couch-potato-itis.

Right. I am not a couch potato in that I sit glued to the TV, eating constantly, huffing and puffing when I have to get up. No, I am not like that. Honestly. If anything I am a computer-potato. I love to write, I love to read, I love to surf. I am happy in front of my PC and can't imagine life without it. I can't bear trashy day time television.

However, I have  become a bit of a hermit. Oh I don't shun the world, and I don't lock myself away, and I still socialise with friends and my partner (who lives across the other side of town from me) but...now I don't work and now the kids have grown, I don't have much reason to go out. The day is mine to choose what I do with it...and I tend to gravitate towards my PC for entertainment, learning, knowledge and interaction..via writing. If writing burned calories I'd be anorexic. Thing is, cyber interaction involves no movement. My arse has spread so much from sitting that it has a shelf on it. Not a good look. (It would have been great during the Edwardian era though. No need for a bustle under my dress.)

I have to MOVE. That's what I have to do. I have OH's exercise bike in my sitting room. I get on that every now and then..but I don't have a routine. I live in suburbia, so if I go for a walk I walk past houses...and on main roads, busy with traffic. Where is the fun in that? I could drive to a park...and pay a parking fee for the car, but to be honest, walking alone for the sake of walking just doesn't appeal to me. I like walking, always have and I do it well*...but now, I have no reason to just go out and walk. I burned calories when I was working. I was always on the go. Now I have stagnated - I retired early in 2005. I gave up a good salary because I thought after 31 years of slog I was worth it. It was a bad decision with hindsight. Poverty (OK, so not REAL poverty, but a lack of disposable income) had ensued, as well as a much slower, less active life-style. So it would make sense to walk...or at least to build some activity into my day. My legs would thank me for it too. I know the blood pools in the legs if I sit still for two long, and the thought of deep vein thrombosis DOES worry me.

Why I resist being good to myself is a bit of a puzzle. It's a daft mentality.

OK, I weighed myself. This is where the really loud drum roll is needed. I am 15st 13lbs. That's 223 lbs. (I don't do metric. Sorry Europeans. Grrr. I hate metric measurements too. Another thing to add to my "I refuse to recognise this" list.)

Strangely, my weight hasn't fluctuated much in the last two years. I have been in and out of hospital and always my weight has been around the sixteen stones mark. Those nurses weighed me..and told me how much I weighed, but it was in kgs, so made little sense to me. (If they'd said 'lard arse", "morbidly obese" or "fatso" it would have been much more helpful.) I can't visualise kgs. Nor convert them. Well I can but can't be arsed to when pounds and ounces make sense. When I was working I weighed between 12 and 13 stones...that's between 168 and 182 lbs, so even then I was overweight, despite my activity.

I have bored myself now. Sorry if I have bored you too.
So..that's my starting point. One more pound and I would have been sixteen stones. 224lbs. I shall look out for that number on the scales, and perhaps for now, my goal is to stay below it.

I have eaten the two Magnums (yesterday) which were tempting me from my freezer. They have gone. A minute on the lips, a lifetime on the hips. Yep. So far today I have had a bowl of oaty-nut cereal (yeah, I checked the calories on the box) a banana, two mugs of tea, one mug of coffee and a Go Ahead Fruit Bake, which is a cakey thing for fatties or people who think they are being good by not tucking in to something REALLY gungy and cakey. An apple would have been a better choice, but hey-ho.

I am off to my partner's house for lunch. That's what usually happens on a Sunday. He cooks a roast dinner...which I enjoy. Perhaps today I'll have only one roast potato..

See. I am being virtuous already. I want a halo.

* Oh....partner knows I walk quite fast. He said only recently "You move quite quickly for a fat bird..." I think that was a compliment?

Enjoy your Sunday.

Ooops...what's today's quotation?

Each individual woman's body demands to be accepted on its own terms.

~ Gloria Steinem (1934 - ), feminist. O Magazine, May 2004

Hmm. Not sure about that. Love me, love my fat? Love me for what I am? Given I don't love my rolls of blubber, and want them gone I feel I am NOT acceptable as I am. I am loveable. My fat isn't..it's despicable. Where's a shrink when you need one?