Fat and 40

My birthday cake!

So it arrived. My 40th. Last Wednesday. I can’t quite believe I’m 40 and I can’t believe it’s been 500+ days since I set up this blog. Blimey. Where does the time go.

So. The point of this blog was that I didn’t want to be fat and 40. And here I am, fat and 40. But there’s an important difference – I’m fine with it. I really am.

I was watching Dancing With the Stars recently and Kirstie Alley – getting her arse kicked by the Quickstep – asked Maks (hubba) if the skinny girls he’d taught had as much trouble with it as she had. He said yes, they had, and told her to stop obsessing about her weight. She said, ”I have to get confident with where I am. I’ve never been confident with where I am, whether I’ve been 114lbs or 230lbs, it’s like ‘come on!’ you have to find a place where you go ‘this is good’. And I don’t want to be dead when I say that.”

And that’s how I feel – comfortable. I know I’m fat and I’m okay with it. I’d like to be slimmer, but partly that’s just because ‘lose weight’ has been on my to do list for as long as I can remember and I feel like I’ll feel like a failure if I don’t get around to it. Does that make sense? If, on my death bed, I think to myself “So, I never lost that weight…” I imagine my response will be, “Meh.”

But this blog hasn’t been a waste of time, far from it. I’ve learned a lot about myself writing these (not very many!) posts. I no longer see my weight as a character flaw, for one. Also, over the past few months I’ve found some exercise I love to do (walking and Zumba). I’m going to try to do some form of exercise every day (but I’m not going to beat myself up if I don’t manage it). I think the difference is that I’m doing exercise because I enjoy it and like the way it makes me feel rather than thinking “Oh, if I do Zumba three times a week, I might have lost some weight by… whenever.”

I still overeat, but I’m working on that. (Or at least I’m thinking about how I’m going to work on that – it’s hard!)

Anyway. So I probably won’t be blogging here again, but thank you for all your support and encouragement! You’re all ace.

100: I am not fat

I know I haven’t blogged here much, but I haven’t had much to say. Really. But now my big birthday is only 100 days away and so I thought I’d check in.

The fact of the matter is, I’m going to be 40 in 100 days and I’m still overweight. And I’m going to be what I wanted to avoid: fat and 40. But I’m okay with it. I feel better about my body than I ever have done before. I’m strong. I’m healthy. I am, when I put my mind to it, sexy. I’m still not eating as well as I could, but I’m trying to listen to my body (one thing I think I am getting to grips with is recognising when I’m thirsty rather than hungry).

When I was writing the last post – um, ages ago – I found myself fixated on one little bit: the words “I am fat.” I stared at them for a while. Because, you know what? I’m not fat. I have fat.

I am a woman. I am a wife. I am a mother. I am a writer. These things define me, fat doesn’t.

Saying “I am fat” suggests – to my subconscious, at least – that’s it’s a permanent condition, an essential part of me. And you know what? It ain’t.

I’m currently reading Brooke Castillo’s book If I Am So Smart Why Can’t I Lose Weight. Cringe-making title aside, it’s one of the best books on positive weightloss I’ve ever read. Castillo addresses the ‘I am fat’ issue too:

How many times have you said that you feel fat? As if fat were an emotion or a way of being. You can have fat on your body, but you cannot be fat or feel fat. Your true being is weightless. You cannot just be your body. You cannot be your fat. Fat does not reside as an emotion in your psyche. Fat is merely tissue, stored potential energy.

I love that. And it’s made a big difference to the way I think about it all. And, yes, I know that some people might think, well, big whoop, but you still want to lose weight, right? And, yes, I do. But I’m not beating myself up about it anymore and that’s a big change for me.

I’ve also just finally got around to reading Julia Cameron’s The Writing Diet. It’s not good. But I do like these four questions to ask before stuffing your face:

1. Am I hungry?

2. Is this what I feel like eating?

3. Is this what I feel like eating now?

4. Is there something else I could eat instead?

Now I just have to try and remember to ask those questions before eating rather than after…

202: And that’s okay

So if you follow me on Twitter you’ll know that on Wednesday I took Joe to the doctor because he’s quite rubbish at walking (Joe, not the doctor). I wasn’t all that worried because he does walk, he just seems a bit lumbering and he falls over a lot (partly because he keeps trying to, you know, run before he can walk!) but I just thought I’d get him checked to be on the safe side.

Joe was walking around the waiting room and when the doctor opened his door, Joe toddled on through and the doctor said, “He’s walking very well!” I said, “Is he? Cos that’s why we’re here!” and he said something about Joe’s gait – a “rolling gait”, I think he said, which would make sense because Joe does have something about the Father Christmas in his walk. So the doctor said it was nothing to worry about, adding, “He’s just carrying a bit of extra weight” and then, looking at me, “Looks like it’s running in the family.” Or something like that. I was slightly taken aback and also had a moment of “ouch” but then I thought, well, fair enough. (I was actually more offended on poor little Joe’s behalf – Joe ain’t fat!)

When I got home, I tweeted about it because, you know, that’s what I do and I was met with a hail of outrage. Lots of people said it was unprofessional, others thought I should complain, another said it wouldn’t be okay if a man in the street it, so it’s not okay for the doctor to say it. And while it was very sweet that so many of my friends leapt to my defence, honestly, I was a bit bewildered. Because, you know what? I am carrying a bit of extra weight. More than a bit, in fact. According to my BMI, I’m obese. For my height, I could comfortably weigh three stone less than I do now (more than a quarter of my weight, in fact).

But more than that, the responses on Twitter acted like the doctor had insulted me. He hadn’t, he’d just baldly stated a fact. It wasn’t the most tactful thing anyone’s ever said and, yes, there’s an argument to be made that he shouldn’t have commented on my body at all, but he’s a doctor – my reaction would have been different if, say, the postman had said it. If I’d tweeted that he’d said, “Well done on losing the baby weight!” would people have been so outraged? I doubt it.

For me, it was like a lightbulb moment. A couple of people on Twitter said it would either have sent them straight to a binge or they would have immediately gone on a diet. And, in the past, it would have been the same for me. In the past, I would have cried. In the past, I probably would have been outraged. But in the past I was always trying to hide my weight. I didn’t want people to know I was fat. It’s probably part of the reason I love the internet so much – I’m not fat online. I’m just me. And when I’ve arranged to meet people I know online, one of the main things I worry about is “They’re going to be surprised at how fat I am.” But lately I’ve come to accept that I am fat. And that’s okay. Like I’ve said before, it doesn’t mean anything about me as a person, it’s not a character flaw – I’m just carrying a bit of extra weight.

You know when Berger tells Miranda “Maybe he’s just not that into you?” and the other girls are horrified and Miranda’s thrilled by it? That’s kind of how this feels to me. I’m fat. And that’s okay.