The thorny issue of weight loss

Once upon a time a girl went out on a date.

She’d met the guy in a bar on a drunken night out, and in a moment of madness given him her number. He asked her out for a date and she hesitated but thought “Why not?”

On the date she asked him what he did for his job and he gave her possibly the worst answer she could have heard...

“I work in a gym.”

Her blood ran cold. How had she managed to end up on a date with Mr Fit?! There hadn’t been any warning signs, he’d looked completely normal in her vodka-induced haze. She was a girl who didn’t do gyms. There had been gym literally outside her flat for 2 years and she could barely muster the effort to go there twice a week. She was a size 16 and fairly happy with it. Yeah she could be slimmer, yeah her muscles could be tighter, but she did ok in life.

She wondered if they could ever really be compatible. If his life was so focused on being fit and healthy and hers really wasn’t, could the two of them ever get along? She didn’t like to think that it could get in the way so she decided it would probably be fine.

She went out with him for a long year and half.

She wanted to be thinner, he said he would help her. He wrote her gym programmes and she went to the gym like a good little gym bunny. She almost got to the point where she enjoyed going.

The problem was the food. She just pure and simple straight up loved it. Any kind of food. All kinds of food. What greater pleasure is there than eating a good meal?

However when the girl was with Mr Fit she constantly found herself feeling guilty. Feeling guilty for eating a big bag of Sensations all to herself. Feeling guilty for ordering the ‘bad thing’ on the menu. Feeling the judgement when she ate something loaded with fat and calories.

She was in short, miserable. Thinner. But less happy.

And then he left her for someone else anyway.

The lesson she learned was that if someone is that focused on that kind of lifestyle and the other person isn’t then the two just won’t work together. She wasn’t prepared to ever be made to feel guilty for enjoying herself when it was doing no harm to anyone else.

Fast forward two years later...

The girl weighs more than she ever has done. She lives with a boy now and understand that that’s the price you pay for being a good little girlfriend and making all the meals and wanting to don a pinny and bake cakes.

But she knows she’s too fat. She knows that even though she’s nearly 5’10” and can secrete the weight about herself much more easily than someone who is 5’5”, that there’s nowhere for the weight to hide anymore.

She’s signed up to the gym but hates going. Now that there isn’t the constant pressure of going out with Mr Fit it’s hard to find the energy to go.

People say to her “You have to lose weight for you” but she doesn’t really know what that means. How do you know when you’re losing weight for you? Are you losing weight to feel more attractive? What is it that makes you think that you are unattractive – is that you want people to admire you? Surely that means that you’re losing weight for other people? Isn’t it their problem if they don’t fancy you? Are you losing weight because it’s a nightmare finding clothes that fit you? Doesn’t that mean you’re losing weight to conform to what Topshop says you should be wearing?

It’s as if society can’t conceive of the notion that you might be happy being a tubster.
Will she become a different person if she loses a few stone? Will that radically change her personality? She hopes not because she thinks she’s a pretty ok person as she is and what faults she does have don’t have anything to do with her thunder thighs.

Will you love her more if she’s a size 12? (She’s realistic, to be any less she’d have to live on licking on celery stalk once a day and miraculously alter her bone structure.) If so then she doesn’t really need you as part of her life thanks.

Do you hang around with her because she’s a nice person and fun to be around or because she can wear skinny jeans?

Will she be a better daughter/sister/cousin/niece/auntie if she has a lower BMI?

It’s all a little confusing.

And then someone says the words she dreads even more than “I work in a gym”. Someone asks her if she wants to join Weightwatchers with them. This girl is Weightwatcher-phobic. She knows that everyone that does it thinks it’s amazing but she also knows a lot of people that have done it and become world class bores, recounting in great detail how many points there are in that slice of carrot cake you’re eating and extolling the virtues of WW’s like brain-washed converts.

She hates the thought of counting points and keeping a track of what she’s eating, it would make food the centre of her life and not in a good way. It makes food an ‘issue’ and not something just to be enjoyed. She has friends that have fallen down the slippery slope of eating disorders and one who still hasn’t made it back up. She’s all too aware of the dangers that come with obsessing about food. Her friend says that she became anorexic because she wanted to gain control in her life, but surely isn’t the disease and the concept of food controlling her? How far of a hop, skip and a jump away is it from counting points? One day you’re counting up to your allowance, the next you’re thinking to yourself, “Hell what if I just took another point off, surely I’d lose more weight? And what about another and another?”

But the girl figures she might as well give it a go.

If nothing else she’ll probably get fuel for some blog posts out of it.



PS For the record. The boyfriend loves me just the way I am. He knows I have issues with my weight and when I mentioned WW he said that if it made me happy then he was all for it.


PPS And another disclaimer. I'm not dissing Weightwatchers here, it's more a general outpouring of thoughts and feelings regarding the whole subject of dieting and weight loss. I am walking into WW with a positive attitude. Really!