We’ve all had that feeling – someone came into your room whilst you were sleeping and injected our thighs/bum/stomach with fat that wasn’t there yesterday. Those jeans surely weren’t this tight last week.
Recognise this? And is the answer really in the latest celebrity diet, promising you won’t go hungry, even though you’re not allowed any chocolate until week 4, by which time you’ll have given up, beacause what normal person can give up chocolate for such inhuman period of time? (All you girls whose poison of choice is something more savoury, like Pringles, this applies to you too).
Personally, after struggling with body image problems for years, I feel I am approaching (albeit very slowly) some sort of peace with who I am. It helps that I lost 3 stone a couple of years ago, and then put back on 2 of them. I know that fairy dust doesn’t rain from the sky and that you don’t suddenly become a superstar just because you reached your ideal weight. Sure, I felt better about myself and my wardrobe was more fun and I did have more confidence, but my friends didn’t like me more. I wasn’t better at my job. I was still me- the me I am now.
Don’t get me wrong – I still want to lose weight, and have just started another diet. This time though it’ll be different. I can’t focus everything on how I will look and feel in several months time. No more “when I get to target I can do this/wear that”. This time I’m going to eat what I want – just less of it. We’ve all picked up an encyclopedic knowledge of what we should be eating, so when I have a roast dinner, I’ll go heavy on the veg and only have 1 yorkshire pudding. When I have a salad I’ll be greedy over the grated carrot (maybe that doesn’t do it for you?) and only have a bit of dressing. Lets face it – if we can’t eat normal food, we won’t feel normal, and we’ll slip back into burger and chip land quicker than it takes to say alfalfa.
In the meantime I’ll go out, drink lattes with friends, have a bottle of wine at the weekend and buy clothes I can wear now – not wait until I can wear the sort of dress a woman in her 30s shouldn’t be thinking about anyway. And on the fat days? Wash my hair, make-up my face, put on some magic knickers and some fabulous jewellery and knock them all dead!
| © RIYAN Productions |