Acceptance

Weightwatchers is going OK. I am not still experiencing the heady rush of losing weight ever week, asI was to begin with, but its going ok. Its difficult, and yet more easy than I ever thought it would be. I never feel like giving up, simply because it works. It actually works. Even if the scales don't reflect it, I feel lighter and lighter and lighter, and some of my clothes are now very baggy, and others which were too tight are now finally fitting, after three years of being shoved to the back of my wardrobe. It has been really hard letting go of the scales and instead relying on how my clothes feel - something I always said I would do after losing a stone, but is, in fact, in reality a lot harder than one might think. Thank god for my supportive, amazing friends who happily listen to me witter on, agonised by the scales, and gently shove me into the right direction, listening and never ever saying the wrong thing. All the diet books I have ever read have cautioned against telling friends or family and instead advise you to do it alone, or with a buddy, but I knew, and have yet to be proven wrong, that none of my friends would be funny about it, because my friends love me, and in the words of H when I first, nervously told her about it, 'I don't think you need to, but if you think you need to, I will support you and help in any way I can'. Who could ask for any more. So firstly, I suppose, I really want to thank the girls. All of them. For everything. For understanding that I am not drinking, or always willing to eat a cupcake, but equally for understanding that that does not stop them doing so with me there, and that in fact it is important for them to do so with me there, so I can learn how to cope with not always eating a cupcake or getting pissed whenever I feel like it, because like it or not, my body hates alocohol more than most, and eating a cupcake a day may not make some of my friends put on weight, because they have quick metabolism and blah blah, but it will make me do so. And I, simply, have to accept that.

I suppose acceptance is what it all comes down to. Not acceptance of my body shape - I don't have a problem with my body shape. I love my body shape. Yay waist, yay boobs, yay hips. That is pretty unalterable. I can never ever wear peg-leg trousers, or smock tops, if I want to look the actual size I am rather than double it. I will never know the ease of not always having to wear an enormous bra. And that has never been a problem. I mean acceptance of what I need to do to feel happy within myself, and acceptance that it is worth doing, because I deserve to feel happy. I didn't like having flabby arms, or back fat, and now that I don't, I feel so much better. (Incidentally, where does it go?? I feel like that episode of Dr Who where the little fatty aliens come out of peopel's skin. Its the strangest feeling). This is unfair. Life is unfair.

Some people aren't good at music, or sport, and I am, or rather my body is, not good at eating things without putting on weight. That is life. It is pretty unalterable, there is never going to be a point where my body turns round and magically starts metabolising at double the rate it did previously, just like there is never a point where someone who is tone deaf is ever going to turn around and not be tone deaf. Or vice versa. But here's the thing - accepting this fact has been the most liberating thing i have ever done. It has totally changed the way I look at food. It has ceased to be a battle, and become a fact of life I live with. While I am eating a salad, others might be eating a steak. I'm not depriving my body, I am helping myself accept my body for what it is. I know there is alot of stuff about body acceptance around, but I don't think any of it quite focuses on this crux. In order to accept your body, you have to look at the bare facts. I am never going to be a hard-bodied size ten because I am not willing to starve myself and exercise myself into the floor to get there. I am perfectly happy where I am, or rather getting to where I will be, which is something I can maintain with ease and feel happy for life, and thats fine by me. I can admire Venus or Serena Williams, who are maginificently Amazonian, just as I can admire Gisele, who, for whatever reasons, be it genetic, or a marvellous plastic surgeon, or a serious exercise regime, is banging. Everyone is different, and that should be accepted and celebrated. I have never understood the female-on-female envy. Again, I am lucky in my friends - the scene in Mean Girls where they all cluster round the mirror, bemoaning their pores and hips, and Lindsay Lohan comes up with 'I have really bad breath in the morning', always makes me silently gives thanks that my friends, during my teenage years or at university, have never ever indulged in this. Everyone has just looked different and got on with it. Becasue everyone does look different. That's the joy of the human reproductive system. Diversity. The media has lost sight of this, in their ceaseless divison of 'plus-size' and 'skinny models' and 'normal people'. What really matters is how someone feels in their own body, because that shines through ever pore of their being. Look at America's Next Top Model - the girls who do best know how to use their body for their craft, not the ones with the killer killer bods. Look at athletes, who are hyper-aware of every muscle, fast-twitch, slow-twitch, and how they need to use them to win. Look at girls on the street. The ones who love their bodies, be they model-thin or something far from it, are for more attractive than others. Perhaps not immediately, but as soon as you strike up a conversation, it becomes clearer than clear.

Acceptance. Its pretty awesome. And thats quite enough two-bit philosophizing for one day..

Xxxxxx