A measly loss of 100 grams this week. It’s too tiny to bother with the statistics! I had a great week, exercise wise. But the eating came undone on Saturday (lunch AND dinner out on the town) and then I made Anzac biscuits on Sunday. I looove baking so bloody much and it felt so nice to be melting and stirring and dropping blobs of dough onto a tray, but unless I can give away ALL of the goods I am bound to end up eating a lot of it. Sigh.
Still, onward and downward. I will focus on the positives. Some of my clothes are swimming on me! My H&M pants that were so tight at Xmas you could see the outlines of the front pockets now require constant hitching up. And a size 16 cord jacket I bought before the wedding now actually fits properly. Huzzah!
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As I mentioned before the Scottish Companion now knows about this site. But he has vowed not to read it. I didn’t ask him to stay away; he just said that it’s my private space and he’s not going to intrude.
If the situation was reversed I’m not sure I would have been so polite and respectful. If he’d told me he used to be really fat and depressed and it was all online to read about, I’d HAVE to snoop around. I mean, to see photos of your spouse 70 kilos heavier? I would be consumed with morbid curiosity! Does that make me evil? I’ve checked the SC’s browser history to see if he’s wandered by, but he still hasn’t. Bloody hell.
There’s part of me that desperately wanted him visit and slog his way through the archives. I wanted him to see the hard evidence of how different I used to be. Not because I’m so proud and tra la la la happy about it and want to share the success, but so he had proper context. I’ve only made vague references to my lardy past, so if he visited here he would see how HARD it was, the dramatic changes that I had to make, to get the backstory about the Food Issues I still grapple with today.
A few weeks ago we were out running. Or more like he was running, and I was gasping for air and turning redder than my hair. I had that blind, white hot irration pre-menstrual RAGE coursing through my veins, sulking with every step. It was just so freaking hard, and we still had another 25 minutes to go (I need to write a whole other entry about how this running is really screwing with my mind, but I will just stick to this particular day for now). I was so cranky that we had to keep going for so freaking long; I was cranky that he was barely breaking a sweat while my own heart clobbered against my ribs. Cranky cranky cranky.
You know how twisted up a PMS-y mind can be. SC was jogging along sweet and supportive as ever, yet I was simmering. How rude to "make me" run AGAIN when we’d only run two days earlier! Didn’t he realise how hard this was for me? Did he realise how much of a beginner I really was? Did he realise how hard it is to build up fitness when you started out so unfit you may as well have been comatose?
Suddenly I spluttered out of nowhere, "Did you know, I used to weigh twice as much as you do now. Puff puff puff. TWICE as much! I couldn’t walk around the block! Puff puff puff. Just try and imagine that, two of YOU stapled together! Puff puff puff. That was me! So that’s why this is really hard! And making me cranky!"
Well, I thought, That’s him told!
I thought he would be stunned by the long-awaited revelation of Before statistic (and even then I undertold it by about 10 kilos – he weighs 75 kg; my highest weight was just shy of 160 kg). But he just said, "It doesn’t matter what you used to weigh. The important thing is that you worked hard to change things and now you’re just taking that to the next level!"
Bah! He was supposed to say, "Well that’s huge! Good for you! So it must be a big deal for you to have even run this far today. So why don’t we quit right now and go home and I’ll make you a cup of tea and toast!"
Menstrual psychosis aside, can you see the underlying problem here? My perception of my body and physical abilities has still not caught up with the reality. I still see myself as this enormous chick who should be applauded for making the effort to waddle to work or stand up the back at a gym class.
But the reality is that I am no longer a Special Case. My husband sees me exactly as I am right now – just a chick who’s taken up a new fitness challenge. But sometimes I am denial of this new reality. I know I am capable of pushing my body much further, exercise-wise – but part of me resents that I can/should/need to work so much harder now.
I can’t keep clinging to this fat chick persona. I know deep down that my body has changed and it is capable of so much more these days. But even as I push myself hard with this 5k training, I still have these days where I feel like I am still The Fat Chick. The other day I was having coffee with the girlfriends of two of SC’s friends, who are now becoming my friends. We’re all madly into health and whole foods etc etc so we got together to drink herbal teas talked about quinoa and yoga and brazil nuts. Every time I’d pipe up with some healthy tip or idea I had this dark thought lurking that they were thinking, "Who is this big lump, thinking she knows all about health and fitness?".
I have this strange insecurity about my new friends. It’s been so long since I’ve (non-online) female friends, aside from my sister; I’ve not really made any new female friends since I started losing weight. So when we’re sitting around talking I feel shy and awkward and worry whether or not they like me. Which is ridiculous, since they are warm, intelligent women who would never be judgemental, and must think I am alright since they want to meet up every week. But sometimes I feel so strange, talking to women about women’s things. I feel like I’m gatecrashing a slumer party. I’ve always been so private and closed up about this stuff, because it was all tied up with my weight. In the Fat Days I would sit there silent and smiling as my friends talked about boys and cute clothes, coz I felt like I didn’t belong. But now I am fit and happy and I actually have a boy, yet I still feel like the fraudulent Fat Chick.
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Eventually curiosity got better of SC and he asked me about the Before Statistic as we snuggled up that PMSy evening. "Did you really used to weigh 150 kilos?" he said, incredulous. He asked what life was like for me back then. He was really nice about things, his usual calm and sweet self, saying how proud he was of me. But I found myself feeling defensive and not wanting to talk about it at all. I just started crying there in the dark. I suddenly felt ashamed, like every one of those 70 kilos has reattached to my body. I imagined I was looking down at us the bed and there was this huge blubbery pile of me and a ridiculously tiny SC curled up behind.
Please don’t write to say I should stop whining and appreciate what a gem of a man I have. I do realise this, and I let him know it. I love him so ferociously I can’t even express it. Please remember this entry is about what was going through my PMSy head that day and how losing a stack of weight really mucks with your head sometimes. Crazy days.