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.

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…

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.

While I was lying there, I can remember thinking about my body. About how it was wrecked, yes, but also about how it had done something amazing. I’ll never hate it again, I thought. Doh.

On the way to the massage last week, I realised that I was wearing saggy knickers. That I hadn’t shaved my legs or underarms or done anything to my bikini line for quite some time. Oh well, I thought, I bet she’s seen worse. Once I got there and was in the nip, up on the table, covered by a towel, I started to feel self-conscious again. Nearly naked, in front of a stranger. I told myself to think of the woman like a doctor. She’s seen it all before, she’s just concentrating on the massage, she’s not thinking about my flabby, pasty, skin. And not shaving might be a choice, for all she knows. Why should I have to shave anyway? It’s no one’s business! I relaxed. It was a really good massage.

She asked me to turn over. I turned. Again, I felt self-conscious. Again, I talked myself round. Then I started wondering if she would massage my stomach. I remember the moustache-masseur asking me if I wanted my stomach massaged and I really did. My stomach was in the worst state of all. I remember he said, “I ask because some don’t want it touched.” I’m generally not a fan of my stomach being touched, but a massage is different and it was great. This time I thought if she asks I’d say, “If you can stand it.” In my mind my stomach is stretch-marked pizza dough. I heard myself apologising for it in my head. And then I thought to myself “If you can stand it? IF YOU CAN FUCKING STAND IT?!” My stomach. I was lying there thinking about apologising to a complete stranger (albeit one who had just been touching me in places no one but David has touched) for my stomach. And I thought, well, what the fuck? Really. What’s that about?

And then I remembered being a teenager or maybe even a bit younger and going for a haircut and realising when I got there that I hadn’t cleaned my ears and being mortified and saying to the hairdresser, “Sorry about my ears” and the hairdresser laughing and saying, “Why does everyone hate their ears!” and wanting to say, “No! The wax! I haven’t cleaned them!”

And I lay there and I thought, “Have I always hated my body?” And I realised, yes, I probably have. And I wondered why. And I decided to try to stop. Really, this time.

I woke up early this morning and I was thinking about how, a couple of months ago, I had a week or two of eating fruit instead of chocolate and I felt much better. I had more energy and I found it easier to get out of bed in the mornings. I know. Who knew, eh?

But then I fell off the wagon and started scouring the kitchen for “something tasty” and buying chocolate on the way home from school and shouting, “Get biscuits!” at David as he heads off to the supermarket.

This morning, I was making excuses to myself. I’m on a deadline. Meg Cabot referred in a recent blog post to her “deadline diet” and so that’s what I’ve been telling myself. It’s the “deadline diet”. Once the book’s done, I’ll “be good” again. And then I stopped. And mentally slapped myself in the head.

Why does it have to be all or nothing? Why do I have to label myself? Why do I have to tell myself that I’m “being bad” not and I’ll “be good” later? Why can’t I just accept that sometimes I feel like eating crap and so I eat crap? And sometimes I feel like eating fruit and I eat fruit. And that’s okay.

Honestly. Pigeons learn quicker than me.

I don’t go on diets. I think life thin must be fantastic in some ways, but miserable in others. Of course I’ve been on diets – never that successfully, I have to say – and after Freya was born I did this long detox and I was miserable. Miserable! And I remember looking at Freya and thinking, “I don’t want her to think, ‘Mummy doesn’t eat potatoes,’ or, ‘I’ll have the macaroni cheese, but mummy will just have a salad.’” I don’t want that to be one of her main understandings of what it is to be a woman.

It made me well up. That was totally what my mum was like. The potato-avoiding, salad-eating, I mean. That’s what I was taught from a very early age. Women don’t let themselves eat what they want. (In fact, I learned ‘women don’t get what they want’ too, but that’s another story.)

I was thinking about it the other day in relation to David. I’ll sit here and have a cup of coffee and then sometimes I think, “I fancy another coffee” and then I think, “No. I shouldn’t have another coffee until I’ve had some water. I’ll drink a pint of water and then I can have another coffee.” David’s mind just doesn’t work like that. If he wants a coffee, he has coffee. If he wants water, he has water. If he wants three sandwiches for his lunch, he has three sandwiches for his lunch. And then he has a yoghurt and a biscuit. And probably a coffee. And he doesn’t think about any of it. It must be so quiet and relaxing in his head…

But I just wanted to mention this photo from Jen Lancaster’s blog. I love Jen Lancaster. I’ve read her memoirs and found them hilarious. I particularly loved that she decided to write a weightloss memoir (*Such a Pretty Fat) as a motivation for finally losing weight and then found that she just wasn’t that bothered about it. She’s happy as she is, she likes food, she loves her life and it’s just not that big a deal to her. Sounds familar…

But recently she wrote about this photo, taken with Miss USA and Daisy Fuentes (US TV presenter and former fiancee of Matt Goss, fact fans!), which she captioned “One of these things is not like the other, one of these things does not belong…”:

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m never one for self-loathing.  Aside from grousing about the occasional bout of frizzy hair or forehead crease, I’m happy with my appearance.  I’m pleased with most of what I’ve got going on and I never shy away from a mirror.  However, when I’m standing a foot away from Miss USA as well as the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, it’s easy to forget that I rather like me.

Which is why I looked at those two and announced, ”Hey!  Let’s all take a picture together so I can feel really good about myself!”

And they fucking thought I was serious, so they yanked me into the shot with them.

I guess the good news is that superior physical genetics don’t include the gene that detects sarcasm.

And yet somehow that doesn’t make me feel better.

But when I saw the photo, my first thought was “God, Jen looks gorgeous.” I didn’t think she looked “gorgeous… for a fat lass” (as they say around here) or “such a pretty face” or that she’d look better thin. I just thought – and think – she looks gorgeous. I think she’s totally holding her own with the other two.

My point isn’t to rave about how lovely Jen Lancaster is, but that this is quite a leap for me. I’m fairly sure that in the past I would’ve thought, “She looks great, but she’d look even better if she was thin.”

It’s pretty slow-going, but I do seem to be getting there with this whole body image thing.

The first time I saw this picture, something amazing happened. My first thought was, “Aw, don’t I look happy?!” And then I thought, “God. Don’t I look fat?” But I don’t care. Do I wish I looked thin and glamorous and amazing? Yes. Just so I could look at the photos and think “God. Don’t I look thin and glamorous and amazing? Go me!” but would I have enjoyed the party any more than I did? Nope.

During the party, I didn’t think about my weight at all. Well, okay, I did mention it a couple of times because I still feel like I have to comment on it to people who haven’t seen me for a while. I assume they’ll be thinking ‘God, hasn’t she put weight on’ and so, for some reason, feel like I need to let them know that a) I know I have and b) I’m okay with it. It’s irritating and I’m trying to stop.

But would I be happier if I was thin? Couldn’t be.

(I don’t mean to objectify Kelly Brook, btw, but I couldn’t stop staring at this photo the first time I saw it. Apart from her total gorgeousness, it’s just such a glamorous shot. Do “real” people ever come out of the water looking so perfect?)

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Wow. How did that happen. 100 days down. So does that mean I’m a fifth closer to being 40 than I was when I started this blog? I think it might do.

And, yes, I know I’ve barely blogged, but a lot’s going on. Not just book-related, but me-related too. I genuinely am starting to feel comfortable in my own skin. Most of the time. There are still occasions when I don’t feel like myself. There are still people who make me nervous and people with whom I can’t be honest, but most of the time I feel like the me I always meant to be, if that doesn’t sound too wanky.

Partly it’s because I’m doing what I love. All this book business just seems right. Of course, it all might go horribly wrong (and soon, since the book’s already out), but somehow I don’t think so. I think this book is going to be a success and I think I’m going to write lots more books which will also be a success. And I don’t even feel like a tool for writing that (you know, with the proviso that I know how much of a tool this will look if I’m wrong!), but it just feels to me like writing novels is what I should have been doing all along. And, at the same time, not what I should have been doing all along because I do believe that we are all doing exactly what we should be doing in each present moment.

Anyway, this blog wasn’t meant to be about writing, it was supposed to be about my weight. At the beginning I said that my weight doesn’t bother me, but worrying about what other people think about it does. I’m getting better about that. I know that at my book parties, people I haven’t seen for a while will think “Blimey, she’s put on a lot of weight” (or, as a member of my family once said – not about me, thankfully – “She’s piled on the beef!”) and I am a bit embarrassed about that, but I’m truly starting to feel like… “So what?” All the extra weight means is that I’ve had a baby and I work from home too close to the fridge. It’s not a moral failing. It doesn’t make me a bad person.

Sorry this post is a bit all over the place. I’m just trying to get everything down while it’s in my head…

The other thing that’s been amazing is The Food Philosophy. I’ve mentioned before that I did the course a while ago, but it’s different. It’s better than before and I think it’s revolutionary. What Sue says is that the problem is not weight, it’s dieting. That’s not the revolutionary bit, because “no diet diets” have been going on about that kind of thing for a while and we all know diets don’t work in the long term. No, what Sue says is that we’re basically addicted to the buzz we get when we think that this time we’re really going to do it, lose the weight.

I’m over-simplifying, obviously and I will go into it in more details, as much as I can, in the future (when things are a bit less hectic), but I know that I’ve spent so long saying “Right, this time I’m going to do it” then I’ll watch, say, Friends and get a bit of a sinking feeling when I see Monica or Rachel, instantly thinking “God, aren’t they thin. I’ll never look like that” closely followed by “Oh but maybe I will! I’m going to really do it this time! Won’t it be great when I look like that?” Quite often as soon as later that very evening I’ll forget that I was supposed to be losing weight, stuff my face and then remember (funny how I only remember I was planning to “cut down” after I’ve eaten something, never before) and then I’m annoyed with myself. That stage may last minutes or months, but sooner or later I decide again that I’m going to do something about my weight and I get that “buzz” of what could be… The thing I’m finding hard is that because it’s an addiction, I do it automatically. I find myself thinking in terms of “when I’ve lost weight” frequently and it’s hard to stop.

One reason this resonates so strongly with me is that I’ve done this for as long as I can remember. From when I was a teenager who clearly didn’t need to lose any weight to when I was 25, 8.5 stone and at Weightwatchers. So I know it’s not about the weight because I’ve felt the same way no matter what weight I’ve been. In the past it was because I was unhappy and I thought that being “thin” would make me happy. But that doesn’t apply anymore because I’m really happy now.

I have three reasons for wanting to lose weight once and for all:

1. So that other people won’t look at me and think – “fat”. And I’m learning not to care. It’s hard, but I’m certainly trying.

2. So that the worry about my weight isn’t constantly at the back of my mind. And as I’ve said before, it’s the obsessing that’s the issue, NOT the weight.

3. So I can buy clothes that fit and flatter me. So obviously, this is really the main one. If I’m always going to be this size, I’m resigning myself to never wearing anything nice. Because they just don’t do clothes for size 16, 4’11″ women. They just don’t. Or if they do, I’ve never found any. And I really want to wear nice clothes. I want to wear clothes with personality that reflect *my* personality. And I can’t find any. (Then again, now that I’ve written that, it occurs to me that I didn’t wear “nice clothes with personality that reflect *my* personality” when I was 8.5 stone, so again, this may well not actually be a weight issue. Although if I wanted an extra challenge to finding decent clothes, adding “plus size” to “petite” has certainly worked.)

So, yes, in my own rambling way, what I’m saying is weight isn’t the issue. But I’m not going to stop blogging because, you know, better out than in.

So how’ve you been..?