-7lbs 24st 2lbs (338lbs/153.31kg) (-9lbs/4.08kg)

So that’s what it’s like to have a bare week.

I’ve kind of always wanted to do that: a week with no sweets and no junk of any kind (although I did get one sweet treat during the week when I used my Boots Advantage Points to buy a bag of Haribo Cola Bottles) and to literally just eat the food that was in the house.

Even when I went to Mum and Dad’s house on Wednesday, I didn’t have too much junk: a wee apple pie and two biscuits while watching the TV.

So that’s pretty much ruling out my actual food as the source of my plateau. Which means I’m eating more junk than I think I am, and not writing it down in LiveStrong.

Which is the more worrying thing.

I’m gonna need to nip that – I’d say “in the bud”, but I think by now, it’s a fully-blown flower – if I wanna get to goal any time soon.

Good to know, though, that my exercise isn’t going to waste after all.

Still going strong with FullFast. I think it’s really helped me this week, with it being such a bare week and all.

(I ran out of cereal last Thursday; my bread went mouldy on Friday; my milk turned sour yesterday – but I was lucky I remembered I had long-life UHT milk in my cupboard – and I’ve been eating chicken for the past three days!)

I can’t wait to go shopping and get some fish in. I’m gonna get some liver in, too, and attempt to make my own pâté. I’ve never done that before, but I really like pâté, and it’s a good Paleo thing.

Weird thing is, I don’t even like liver.

*laughs*

Mirrored from FATGIRLslim.

Before I got my new glasses last October, I thought I was imagining it when I thought that the sweat from my head was dripping down the arms of my glasses and onto my face.

But since I got my new glasses, I’ve actually noticed, physically seen drops of sweat rolling down the legs of my glasses, sometimes onto my cheeks and sometimes onto the bike.

Tonight, the air conditioning didn’t seem to be working – it wasn’t moving, at any rate, which usually means it’s not working – so it was hot as hell in the class. I was sweating after the third track, which never usually happens. It usually takes until One Direction’s One Thing, a push-up track (I think) five songs into the routine, when the sweat starts running down my face.

And the sweat was dripping down both legs of my glasses. It was ridiculous. It was dripping onto my cheeks, down my neck – best feeling in the world! – and onto the bike. I remember when I started, there was a guy called Dave – I think I talked about him a couple of times – who sweated like nobody’s business. The whole area around his bike was soaked in sweat, and I remember thinking, “I can’t wait until I make a mess like that!”

It’s not quite like that, but I do sweat onto the bike. I sometimes sweat onto the floor. I sweat onto my knees. It all depends on how my hair is that day, but…

I think it’s awesome.

Except for when my glasses sweat. That’s kinda weird, and gross.

I’m more than halfway through the first week of using FullFast, and so far, it seems to be working.

It’s a sublingual spray – meaning you spray it under your tongue – made mostly with herbs. When I do the review, I’ll do the whole ingredients, etc.

I’m not sure, yet, if I’m feeling full because I think I should feel full because I’ve used the spray, or if I’m feeling full because the spray’s actually working.

Either way, I seem to be feeling more full after my meals, when I use the spray, which is awesome.

(Of course, I’m Old Mother Hubbard right now, so I can’t snack on anything, which helps, but. Not being hungry helps. )

We’ll see how the scale looks on Sunday.

Mirrored from FATGIRLslim.

±0lbs 24st 9lbs (345lbs/156.49kg) (-2lbs/0.90kg)

If I’d realised, at the start of the year, that it was going to be one of those months for a few months, I think I’d have bought a load more Tony Ferguson shakes, had I been able to afford them, and gone back on the plan.

I’m sick of this up and down and plateau. I remember hitting a plateau when I was at Weight Watchers in Ireland where I was stuck around the 25st mark for a year and a half and it almost killed me. I was doing everything right; I was eating right. I was walking every day or doing my dance mat. And I was still stuck on this plateau.

I know, right now, that my food is not perfect. My diet has way too many bad carbs in it. But that’s what I can afford. I need a job, to be able to afford fresh fruit. (I know that Susie commented on one of my entries and made a good suggestion of frozen veg, which is just as good, if not better than, fresh veg, and I’m going to go with that.

But frozen fruit isn’t quite the same.

I just need to start eating my butternut squash or sweet potato chips/fries with my meals again, instead of cous cous. I get plenty of protein by way of chicken and fish (and some red meat, when I eat it), but at the moment, I’m simply eating way, way too many carbs.

I was also sent a sample of FullFast Food Supplement Spray to try. It’s supposed to help curb your appetite, so it’ll be interesting to see how this next week goes.

See if I can do the butternut squash/sweet potato thing. I’ve got three butternut squash in my cupboard, as well as a bag of sweet potatoes. So it’s not like I can’t. And if I get them all chopped up and ready today, and put them in the vegetable drawer, it means I can just take them out and put them in the oven when I need ‘em.

Sounds like a plan.

Mirrored from FATGIRLslim.

I’ve been promising it for… months, I think.

I’ve gone through about four different banner images, and I finally- finally got one that I liked!

In a departure from my usual style, too. Which is what was causing all the problems.

The colour scheme, though, is taken directly from the original Fat Girl Slim website, back when I hand-coded everything in HTML every week.

It’s nice and bright and cheery.

I like it.

If you’re interested, here’s one that never made it:

It’s quite terrifying.

Mirrored from FATGIRLslim.

Last night, I managed to make it to my Spin class without too much pain and hassle. I had to use my walking stick for the last quarter mile, because my back started tightening up, and I really didn’t wanna get to The Water Palace, only to have to sit out of class.

(This is why I tend to leave for classes ridiculously early. I get to sit down, once I get there, and let the aching in my back subside enough that I can do my class.)

Halfway through class, though, when we were doing pullbacks, I just…

I simply couldn’t. I know that for other people, it’s probably easy to hold onto the handlebars and get their ass over the back of the seat, but after a minute, my back started saying, “You do know that you’ve been bent over for a minute now, right?”

My back and I have conversations like this all the time.

“You do know you’ve been standing up for five minutes now, and you haven’t taken your painkillers yet?”
“You do know you’ve been hunched over this sink for fifteen minutes now?”
“Hey, you know you’re lying in bed wrong? It hurts when you lie in bed like this!”

And so on and so forth. I try to appease my back as much as possible. Four different painkillers, and I’m trying to do exercises to improve core strength, so my back isn’t taking all the strain of the weight of my stomach and boobs.

But during last night’s class, I could have cried. I’m happy with Spin because it poses very little problems for my back. (My backside is another matter.) I still feel like I got a good workout in, although I wasn’t able to do what everyone else was doing.

Ditto the standing runs; my knees can’t take the lower body isolation too much. I’m getting a tubigrip for my right knee, which has gone from, “Ooh, ow, that hurts,” to, “Wow, I didn’t know that my knee was filled with sponge and SEARING PAIN.”

I said to Doctor David, and he confirmed, it’s weight-bearing related, and the best thing I can do is keep exercising.

But the amount of pain I’ve been in this past week?

I’ve felt like giving in to it, and giving up. Just holing up in my apartment and lying in bed and crying with the pain, or sitting on my couch and eating myself into a stupor.

But d’you know what?

I’m not gonna.

I’ve been there. I’ve done that.

That’s what got me into this goddamn mess of searing pain. I know my eating habits could be better. I have an eating disorder; it’s not an easy thing to change.

But I’m trying. I’m not giving up. I’m not going to go back to lying in bed and eating an entire tub of ice cream every night after dinner while I watch DVDs.

D’you know what I’m gonna do?

I’m gonna go to my classes. I’m gonna work through the effing pain, even if it kills me – and sometimes it feels as though it might.

I am going to lose this weight, because I am sick of being in pain. I am sick of the way my body is screaming in agony because of what I’ve put it through.

I’m done with hiding in my room.

No more giving up.

I’m not giving in.

Mirrored from FATGIRLslim.

I have no idea why this didn’t actually post on Sunday. I’m very confused. My apologies…

+6lbs 24st 9lbs (345lbs/156.49kg) (-2lbs/0.90kg)

Well, that’s what happens when I don’t go to classes, but eat the same amount of food, I guess.

As I mentioned, I was having back problems this week, so I actually didn’t get to any of my classes. I went to Sunday’s Spin class, and my back was fine getting there, but halfway through class, it started getting really tight and painful.

I have no idea what’s going on with it. It’s pretty damn annoying, let me tell you.

And so is the weight gain. As I didn’t track my food this week (bad week for mental health, too; I just didn’t feel like doing anything other than playing my video game or lying in bed cringing with pain) I don’t actually know if I ate enough to constitute a 6lb-weight gain, but I feel like I didn’t.

Oh well.

Back at it this week.

Mirrored from FATGIRLslim.

I know I only posted yesterday about doing Dance Factory and everything, but to be honest, by the time it came to bed time, my back was playing up something terrible.

I’d managed to wash my dishes last night after my Dad disconnected my old washing machine (new one literally just got delivered as I started typing) and left the drain opened so all the water kept running out; I threw a bucket under it, washed my dishes, and my back kept on…

Twinge-ing.

It’s still doing it today.

When I got the message that my machine was due to be delivered today between 3pm and 6pm, I KNEW that meant it would be delivered when I was meant to be at Spinning, so I asked Mum and Dad if they’d house-sit for me, wait for it to be delivered, and then install the damn thing while I was out.

What happened, instead, was this:

I cancelled my class, because even sitting down, my back is hurting me. Standing up to make my lunch earlier (throwing some chicken pieces on a wrap with my Paleo mayo and the last of my salad), it was tightening like a bastard.

There was no way in hell I was walking to my class, doing my class, and walking back.

Not tonight.

It’s probably because I ran out of Morphine SR and Tramadol at the weekend. I went for four or five days without Morphine, and three days without Tramadol. I ended up having the worst nights’ sleep I can remember, because I kept having to turn over to relieve the pain.

And it’s just… it’s not quite settled down yet. My back’s still sore.

I’m hoping I’ll be fine by Sunday, because I really don’t want another £4 of charges for cancelling classes (I got £4 for cancelling Wednesday night’s Spin and Body Combat; I was gonna try Body Combat again, but oh god, ouch, my back. I couldn’t even think about – like today – walking up there, let alone doing class and walking back.

I’ve got an appointment to see Dr. David on Tuesday morning. I know he can’t up the amount of painkillers I’m on, but maybe he can give me another prescription for Robaxin.

I just don’t want this to set me back again. I need to be exercising, getting stronger and fitter.

I don’t want my body to fail me, after I’ve failed it for so long.

Mirrored from FATGIRLslim.

Do you remember, four years ago, when my Dance Factory Mat broke? I swore I’d get another one, or a DDR mat for my XBox, or something.

If anyone was feeling generous, I’ve got a wishlist set up on Amazon with health things – I need a Kinect, first and foremost, but anyway, moving on:- here. *shameless*

For my birthday this year, my Mum was kind enough to buy me another copy of Dance Factory – with the mat! – and today’s the first day I’ve:

1. Not been playing any other video game;</p>
2. Had enough electricity to run a TV and PS2 and not worry about running out;
3. Not been going to a class and
4. Had a CD of my own to dance to.

I made up a whole playlist, 15 songs long, and I then deleted said playlist from my iTunes for some reason. When I boot my PS2 up next time, I’ll take a note of what’s on the CD and post the playlist. It’s kind of awesome.

Anyway. Like I said, it’s 15 songs long, about an hour – intentionally – and here’s my stats:

If you’re on “fitness” mode, it lets you enter your weight. I remember, last time I was playing this, I was too heavy. I just put in the maximum weight (350lbs, I think) and that was that.

Now I’m 339lbs, and it’s fine! That’s cool! It should have calculated everything correctly!

Obviously it’s not as strenuous as Zumba®. I only started sweating near the end, but it’s still calories burned, and something I could happily do on off days, or when I’m bored, or when I feel like annoying the shit out of my downstairs neighbours with the squeaking of my floors.

Hell, I could take the PS2 and the mat back to my parents’ place, and let my Mum have a whack at it. It’s easy enough to follow, and I think she’s missing having the Kinect from when my little sister and brother-in-law were living with them.

But yeah. Almost 900kcal in an hour, dancing to awesome music (Katy Perry, 30 Seconds To Mars, Usher, Lady Gaga, and I know it ended with THE FINAL COUNTDOWN, because how else can you end an awesome playlist of dance?) and having fun.

This is why I go to classes. It’s way more fun than any other option. If exercise wasn’t fun, I’d have quit a long, long time ago.

Mirrored from FATGIRLslim.

-2lbs 24st 3lbs (339lbs/153.77kg) (-8lbs/3.63kg)

There! Got myself moving in the right direction again.

Considering how my weekend went (fat weekend at my big sister’s house while I house-sat and pet-sat), I’m pretty happy with a 2lb weight-loss.

There was popcorn-with-butter! There was a little tub of pâté that I used on my sandwiches, and then ate on Thins! 175g that I finished over two days!

(I do like pâté, it has to be said.)

But I still went to my Spin class on Sunday. I also burned 300 calories doing a dance thing on the XBox Kinect, which is awesome, but needs some better songs.

(I was gonna do The Biggest Loser Extreme Workout, but oh, my god, the controls are so wonky on it that it took me about five minutes to get into the main menu, so I gave up on that pretty quickly, and just danced my pounds away instead.)

At least I didn’t have one of my Back Attacks™ when I came home. Usually, after staying at Linda’s, that’s when I have one. Something about different pillows or different mattresses and then coming home to my own, usually triggers an attack, but yay! No attack!

And a sweet 2lb weight-loss, too, to get me back into the 330s!

Mirrored from FATGIRLslim.

The weigh-in is going to be a little late this week.

It’s actually going to happen on Tuesday. I’m staying at my big sister and brother-in-law’s house this weekend, simultaneously petsitting and housesitting while they flit off to Norn Irn for a friend’s (baby’s) Christening.

So I’m in Linda’s house, with a scale that only goes up to 23st 8lbs, and I’ve still got a week or two (or maybe three) until I get to that stage.

So I have no scale with me that measures up to my weight.

Tomorrow, I’m not getting home until probably after 6pm, by which time I’ll have eaten all of my main meals, so I won’t be weighing myself tomorrow.

Hence Tuesday.

So y’all can just chill out for two days; have a couple of Mimosas or something and enjoy the sunshine, even if not the heat that normally accompanies such a thing.

I know that I’ve been out in the garden a couple of times today in the sunshine, kicking the football around with the dogs (and actually chasing them around the garden/attempting to dribble the ball/chasing Sheeba around while she had the ball) and having fun with it.

Hopefully it’s doing me some good.

Mirrored from FATGIRLslim.

When my elder sister, Linda, was eleven or twelve (I think) she started going to modern, street-ish, dance lessons, with her best friend. In her bedroom, we’d choreograph silly little dance numbers for our parents, my two sisters and me, and then we’d dance for them.

(We also recorded our own radio station: Spicy News. That started with my Aunty Fiona, and continued through Linda and I, down to Lorna and I. The cassette tape has gone missing, but I still remember the best joke from it: “A hole has appeared in the wall of a nudist camp. The police are looking into it.” When I watch The Soup with Joel McHale, that’s what I think of. He’s just doing adult Spicy News.)

But when Linda was off doing her street/modern dance thing, I was kinda bummed out, because I wanted to do ballet. There was a class in one of the buildings down the street – the church, maybe? – and I wanted to go, but Mum couldn’t afford it.

It’s something I’ve always remembered and wondered how it would have changed me: would I have made it? Could I have been a ballerina?

If Linda was eleven or twelve, I’d have been nine or ten; I’d have already started binge-eating behind my mother’s back because of my abuse. I’d already started gaining weight.

At nine or ten, I was playing netball in school, but I was also inches taller than everyone else. I think I started my period at ten years old, and BAM. SUDDENLY! BOOBS. HIPS.

WEIGHT.

I think back on it now, and in primary school, the name-calling and teasing was probably jealous. The girls probably wanted boobs and hips (although they probably didn’t want the periods, after they experienced their first one).

But I wonder: if we’d had the money to send Linda and I both to our respective dance classes, would I have lost weight? I’m pretty sure I’d have been told to lose weight in order to dance. Strength and flexibility and health, etc, in the dance world is crucial.

I’ve always thought about that, and I’ve wondered how different my life would be: would I have ever gone to a Spinning class? I went to a Spinning class because I was terrified of breaking the bike, and Gillian, my Weight Watchers leader at the time, was asking us what we wanted to do that our weight was holding us back from.

If I’d done ballet, I’d probably have naturally gone to Zumba, just for the fun of it.

But it’s annoying, sort of, because now I know that ballet is something that I’ll never do. It’s happened to an alternate universe Tracy, where I never gained weight, and we could afford to send both of us to dance class.

I don’t know if I’d want to live in a world where I don’t Spin.

But I’d love to be a little bit more supple, and a little bit more flexible. Maybe those’ll happen in time, when I start stretching (proper stretching, not “cool-down” stretching) during my workouts.

Hm.

I dunno.

The things I think about.

Mirrored from FATGIRLslim.

±0lbs 24st 5lbs (341lbs/154.68kg) (-6lbs/5.44kg)

Considering, once I did the math, I had a deficit of about 12,500 calories this week, between exercise and food, I’m pretty annoyed about that.

But at least it’s not a gain, that’s the only way I can look at it. Must have been all the bread I ate yesterday.

(It’s like Old Mother Hubbard’s house here. I have bread [wholemeal] and couscous, plus some frozen stuff. It’s insane.)

It’s possible gonna be the same for the next week, actually. Usually, when it comes to blog-renewal-time, I’ve had advertisers to cover the cost of webhosting, and you might have noticed that…

Uh. I have no advertisers this year. I emailed them; nobody got back to me. No adverts on the site; no money from advertisers.

So I’m going to have to be very, very careful with money for the next two weeks, because I’m gonna have to pay for my webhosting myself, and hope that nothing unexpected comes up.

(If anybody feels like helpin’ li’l ole me out with my webhosting fees, you can do so here. Minimum $10 via Paypal. And you know I’d appreciate it. Money goes straight as a credit towards my account, so I can’t use it to buy tasty, tasty ice cream.) /shameless self promotion

I know it’s not gonna be as bad as all that, really. It’s when I get to the end of next week that’s gonna be the problem, when I run out of everything. God, it’s insane.

Note to self: stock up on plenty of chicken breasts and smoked haddock fillets while at Farmfoods this week.

Urgh.

Who knew living on your own would be such a hassle?

Mirrored from FATGIRLslim.

What I wouldn’t give for a gym that looks like the photo above: EMPTY.

The past couple of times I’ve been in the gym, it’s been… well. Hell.

I love going to the gym. I can zone out while I’m lifting weights or pushing weights or on the Arc Trainer or the stationary bike.

What I can’t do, lately, is get on the machines I want.

Last night, I was on the leg extension machine, wanting to go on the chest press when I was finished. There was a guy on the chest press machine who did maybe five reps, and then started texting someone. That was when I started doing my leg extensions. I do fifteen reps, and four sets. And he was still texting when I was done.

I got off the leg extension machine, wiped it down, and stepped over to him. “‘Scuse me, are you done with the machine?”

He pulled out his earphone, and gave me the dirtiest look I’ve ever been given.

“Naw.”

No, of course not, you’re just sitting there, wasting space.

Fuck it, I thought, I’m not standing around cooling down waiting for that asshole to get off the machine. I got out of the gym, got my stuff, and walked home.

And it’s not just the weights machines. There’s supposed to be a 15-minute time limit on the cardio machines, and I’ve seen people be on them for 20, 25, sometimes 30 minutes at a time. Since the Water Palace got the renovation in the gym and the new machines with the TV screens on them, it’s usually boys watching football. (Nothing more annoying.)

But on the machines facing the actual TV screen, the boys just sit there watching the TV, no matter what’s on, sometimes. It’s worse if it’s football. But it’s really, really difficult to get on these machines sometimes, because people insist on sitting around, watching TV or texting or something, instead of using the gym for its actual purpose.

If I had the money, I’d have a home gym with the best machines, and I wouldn’t have to deal with gym boys who pose in front of mirrors and take up the machines so they can watch football or text their friends or whatever.

But if you’re seriously just sitting there, and I ask you if you’re done, don’t say no. GET OFF THE MACHINE AND LET ME USE IT UNTIL YOU’RE DONE TEXTING, PLEASE. Have some manners, for the love of god!

Mirrored from FATGIRLslim.

+6lbs 24st 5lbs (341lbs/154.68kg) (-6lbs/2.72kg)

First off:

I’ve backdated this to post yesterday. Apologies for not actually posting it yesterday. I was at my parents’ place for a lot longer than I usually am, and by the time I got home, I cooked my dinner tonight (Monday), and went to my bed.

Re: weigh-in?

Huh.

I know that after an 11lb weight-loss last week due to sickness, I was expecting to maybe gain back, like, maybe a pound or two?

It’s not like I pigged out this week. I couldn’t afford to pig out this week. My treats were: a two-pack of Aldi Tiramisu and a tub of Chocolate Philadelphia on toast (obviously spread over four or five slices of toast, not a single slice).

I’m wondering if it’s because I’m using white bread this week. I know that’s obviously not all of it, but it could account for some of it; the slices are much larger, and about 50 calories more than the wee Hovis I’ve usually been using. I’ve been having sandwiches instead of a wrap filled with meat and salad.

Hmm.

Anyway, it’s not the end of the world. I’m totally back on my feet this week, even although I actually didn’t feel like being at Spinning yesterday (I was almost late; I got a shitty bike; I just felt like crap) and the rest of the week is gonna be A-OK.

I’m still pretty annoyed about that, though.

Knocked out of the 330s AND the 23 stones.

Oh well. I’ll be back.

Mirrored from FATGIRLslim.

Last night when I was walking home, I got honked at again. Their car window was open, and they yelled something at me. I have no idea what they yelled; as usual, I had my iPod on.

I stuck my middle finger up at them as they passed me. I know they were either turned around to look, or looking in the rearview mirrors.

Tonight when I was walking home, there were three (or four, I’m not sure) girls coming towards me, just before the roundabout to McDonald’s, and they were sort of spread out across the pavement. I moved right to the edge to let them pass, and one of them just kept on moving where I was walking.

Normally, in Scotland, when this happens, I expect one of two things:

1. The person will ask you for: a cigarette/a lighter, delete as appropriate, or</p>
2. The person will distract you by asking you things while their friends try to get into your bag.

Luckily, number two has never happened to me. But this is what I was expecting. She started talking to me even before I got my earphone out, so I had to get her to repeat it.

“Can I have your number?” she asked.

“No,” I replied, confused.

“Why not?” she asked. Her friends were murmuring at the other side of me. I was worried about my bag and its sweaty Spinning-shoes contents.

“Just… no.”

I had my confused face on and everything.

Her friends said something along the lines of, “She’s totally attractive!” and I don’t know if they meant me or her, and I honestly don’t care.

I’m fairly sure they were winding me up. I’ve been The Fat Girl for long enough to know how this one goes:

Fairly attractive person approaches you, with friends just behind.
Fairly attractive person asks you for number/a dance/a kiss/to go home with them, delete as appropriate.
You say yes.
They promptly burst out laughing, because it’s all been a big joke, on you.

The fact that it was a girl approaching me is the even stranger thing. It’s not like I wear a sign that says, “I’M QUEER!“

So I freaked out a little.

I’m still The Fat Girl.

But what happens if I get to Goal, and inside, I’m still The Fat Girl?

What happens if I’m healthy and happy, and someone legitimately approaches me and asks me for my number?

What if that girl tonight was legitimately being nice? (Even although I’m fairly sure she wasn’t being.)

I don’t know. I think, like it took me ages to realise just how big I’d gotten, it’s probably gonna take me a long, long time when I get thinner, to realise that I’m no longer fat.

I just…

I know that I said that I’d like a relationship.

But what if I don’t allow myself to have one?

Mirrored from FATGIRLslim.

I always do my best thinking in the shower, of all places. Probably because that’s where you’re just kind of standing there, massaging the shampoo into your head, and you’ve got nothing better to do.

Or, in my case, you’ve got the music option on your Blackberry blaring, and you’re singing along badly.

Tonight’s music of choice was Katy Perry, and when One Of The Boys‘ title track came on, and it got me thinking.

The theme of the song, if you haven’t heard it, is a girl, a sort of tomboy, who blooms and stops being tomboyish and finds that a lot of boys or one boy in particular, or whatever, starts finding her attractive, because she’s no longer tomboyish and etcetera.

Anyway. The lyrics got me thinking.

So over the summer
Something changed
I started reading Seventeen
And shaving my legs

I was all excited this week, about getting into the 23 stones, because that was my high school weight. NOBODY should be excited at hitting 335lbs because it’s their high-school weight.

When I was in high school, I always remember thinking, every year, that that was going to be the year that everything was going to change; that I was going to lose weight and I was going to become thin and healthy and popular (ironically) with boys.

It never happened.

Every year, it always just got worse. No matter what my parents did, it always just got worse and worse, through no fault of theirs.

But I still wanted it. Every year, every summer, I wanted it. I wanted to go back to school after every summer, and I wanted to be thin, and beautiful, and popular.

Every year, as an adult, I’ve wanted the same thing. To be thin, and beautiful, and popular.

So what’s different now?

Well, for a start, now I don’t care so much about being thin as being healthy. I understand that being thin will probably come with it. But mostly, I wanna be healthy. I wanna be able to stand up without pain. I wanna be able to walk around a shopping mall for an hour without having to sit down because my hip’s radiating agony.

I wanna be able to wear high heels.

I’ll admit: I kinda wanna be noticed by girls and/or guys, and not for the reasons I’m used to. I’m still trying to get over this whole having-my-heart-broken thing that happened in January, but it’s been a long, long time since I had a physical relationship (I’m talking almost ten years at this point) and I wouldn’t mind getting into one again.

But not until I’m fit and healthy and happy in my own skin.

So yeah:

I wanna be a flower
Not a dirty weed
And I wanna smell like roses
Not a baseball team
And I swear maybe one day
You’re gonna wanna make out
Make out, make out with me

(Lyrics © Katy Perry and are used without permission)

Mirrored from FATGIRLslim.

-11lbs 23st 13lbs (335lbs/151.95kg) (-12lbs/5.44kg)

No, the above number is not an April Fool’s joke. For one thing, I HATE APRIL FOOL’S DAY WITH A MAD PASSION, and two… why would I?

No. The above number is basically because I didn’t eat a single jot of food for over a 50-hour period this week.

Not a way, I must add, I’d recommend to lose weight.

I didn’t manage to get to any of my classes. I left the house exactly three times. I managed to eat a full meal on Friday for the first time since what I’ve now dubbed, “The Puking Incident.”

I lost 11lbs in a week because I’ve barely eaten anything.

I don’t recommend it. Being sick sucks.

But I’m gonna try and go into next week looking at the positive side of this: I’m in the 330s, and, UK-wise, I’m in the 23 stones. I’m back at a known high-school weight: I was 23-stone, according to one of my diary entries, when I was 16. Probably when I joined Scottish Slimmers.

Right now, I’m gonna get ready for my first Spin class in a week, and keep my fingers crossed that I can keep up the three-squares-a-day and only snacking on healthy things that I’ve been doing since Friday morning. I’ve been snacking on Muller Corner yoghurts – not low-fat ones – because they’re under 200 calories, and much better than me running over to the Co-Operative for a bag of Doritos to watch in front of a movie.

Just gotta keep going.

Got my work shoes on, now that I can bend down to tie the laces again without feeling like I’m gonna vomit. *laughs* /bad metaphor

My Mum was very, very unwell last Friday night. Like, passing out at the top of the stairs and vomiting in her own armpit and onto the carpet kind of very, very unwell.

My big sister also got a really bad migraine on the same day. We thought maybe it was something to do with the birthday party, but Dad, Greg and I were fine.

I always go visit my parents’ place on Sunday, after Spinning (unless they’re otherwise unable to come pick me up, or doing something else). I left their house feeling fine, but yesterday?

Yesterday, I had my Spanish Speaking reassessment (I get the feeling it went pretty well) and I spent the rest of the night doing my Spanish reading/writing reassessment. When I went to bed last night, it felt like everything that I’d eaten hadn’t digested, like it was still sitting in my stomach. I went to my bed at about 1am… ish.

At 3am, I was lying on the wrong side, facing my window, when I felt a sudden need to…

Well.

Vomit.

I made it to the bathroom just in time. If by just in time you mean projectile vomiting all over the back of my toilet and over the side of my bathtub, onto the floor. Luckily, I have no actual flooring down in my bathroom; it’s just that scratchy Council-standard non-slip flooring.

It took me as long to vomit as it did to clean up. I think I turned inside-out at one point.

And then I went into my kitchen, and I did something I haven’t done since I was a kid: I took a bucket into my bedroom with me. Thank GOD, because the next time I puked, I didn’t even have time to make it to the bathroom. I puked in the bucket.

And then?

Pardon the TMI, but: diarrhea. Lots and lots of it. I got about three hours sleep the whole night, because every time I lay down to sleep, I either needed to puke, or poop.

I got out of bed at about noon, watched 40 minutes of an episode of Buffy, and went into my cupboard to find my summer duvet, tossed off my winter one and curled up under my summer one.

Shivering, shaking, running to the bathroom every fifteen minutes or more. I took my usual morning pills, and I was excited when I kept them down. I didn’t vomit, but every time I drank, it shot out the other end, either in pee or poop form.

I don’t know what the Council were doing, but it sounded like they were refitting a door or something downstairs. It was noisy.

But I managed to fall back asleep about 1pm, and slept until after 4pm – the most restful hours of the day so far.

When I got up again, I got dressed, and headed across the road to The Co-Operative, and picked up a few bottles of full-sugar soda. My Mum used to do this thing for us when we were younger: she’d buy us full-sugar Irn Bru, and she’d shake the fizz out of it, give it to us. No fizz to upset our stomachs, but we’d get sugar to give us energy. I looked up Oral Rehydration therapy, and I should add a little salt to it, too. Between vomiting, diarrhea, and not being able to eat anything all day, I really need something.

Funny side-story? I’m not even hungry.

SAD side-story? I had to cancel my Aquafit and my Spinfit for tomorrow, and, come tomorrow, I may have to cancel Thursday’s Zumba. I haven’t had to cancel classes in forever.

But I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before: unless I’m really, really unwell, I don’t care about it. But I couldn’t do classes like this.

Plus, as I said to my mother, I’d be terrified that I’d poop in the pool.

+4lbs 24st 10lbs (346lbs/155.13kg) (-1lbs/0.45kg)

I have absolutely no excuse for it this week. It was my birthday. My big sister bought me a pack of chocolate-covered marzipan, which I ate on Thursday, the day after my birthday. My Mum bought me a box of Ferrero Rocher, which I ate on Friday. My Mum baked me a cake, which I about a third of.

And I just plain ate too much food.

So I’ve no excuse for it this week except that I “enjoyed” my birthday week, if by “enjoyed” you mean “panicked that I only have a year left until I turn 30″.

What that means is that, if I want to reach my goal by my thirtieth birthday, I have 52 weeks to lose around about 200lbs. This is not impossible.

It is, however, pretty damn difficult.

I am going to give it my very best shot. This means probably Paleo, as much as I can. Atkins, when I can finally afford it. South Beach if I can’t deal with either of them.

Thing is, I’ve said to myself since I was about 25: I don’t want to be like this by my thirtieth birthday. I’ve spent my teens and my twenties like this, and I’ve wasted my time. I haven’t been a normal teenager or a normal twenty-something.

I’m gonna hit thirty, and if I’m anything nearing a normal weight, I’m gonna have a midlife crisis. I’m gonna start living my teenage years out. And it’s gonna either be amazing or it’s gonna suck awesomelly.

But that’s the thing. I’ve gotta get to a normal or nearing normal weight. I haven’t been there since I was about 12 or 13.

That’s 17 or 18 years, next years, of being overweight, ugly (in my own eyes), teased and picked on and wanting to be normal.

And that’s all it is, y’know? That’s all I want.

I just wanna be normal.

It means I’m gonna have to work really effin’ hard to get there, but…

I’ve got my workin’ shoes on, and I’m gonna give it my very best try.

I turned 29 yesterday.

I started the morning, just after midnight, by crying a lot because my Ex made me this awesome remixed mp3 of the Kingdom Hearts theme tune, and we talked for, like, two hours, during which I didn’t cry.

Then I had to get up at 9am to make sure I was awake in case the Council came to fix my shower. (When it rains, my bathroom leaks through my shower pull cord. It trips my power, and I have to get the Council out to disconnect my shower and let it dry. They did it last Friday and said they were going to get someone to reconnect it on Monday. They didn’t. So, Thursday reconnection it was.) They arrived at 1pm. I dyed my hair. I showered.

I got a phone call from my little sister! She and my brother-in-law moved back to Canada, permanently, on Monday. BUT YAY PHONE CALL. She’s only been gone since Monday and I already miss her.

And then I did my hair, AND I GOT DRESSED AND TOOK A PHOTO:

This is how 29-year-old me looks. Not much different from 28-year-old me, except apparently I wear short dresses for photos I’m going to post on the internet.

(I usually wear it with leggings. It barely covers my butt when I tie the tiers at the back too tight, and that’s bad.)

But then I had to get undressed and re-dressed into my gym gear, go to Zumba, and then get picked up to go to my big sister’s place.

Linda was doing me a huge favour and COOKING FOR ME – or, well, us – and we had fajitas and cake and PRESENTS and A ZOMBIE MOVIE.

We watched this terrible movie called Zombie Apocalypse which was so bad it was funny; we spent the whole movie planning how we, personally, would survive a Zombie Apocalypse.

(I would be screwed. The Yale key to my security door is terribly sticky, and takes a lot of wiggling to get it in. I would be eaten before I got in my door.)

There was popcorn and soda and PISTACHIOS and it was AWESOME.

My family are amazing. My birthday was awesome.

And then I woke up today and started the day with freaking out about how I’m going to be THIRTY next year. It’s the big Three-Oh.

So I’ve decided:

I’m NOT turning 30 next year. I’m taking a leaf out of my older brother-in-law’s book.

Next year, I’m celebrating the 10th anniversary of my 20th birthday!

And y’all are welcome to celebrate it with me.