The Fatslayer Chronicles

I’ve not been updating this blog quite so regularly lately, mainly because I feel increasingly unconcerned about the whole weight loss business.

I haven't lost interest in getting healthy and in losing weight – I’m still losing a pretty steady 1.5lbs per week. It’s just that I’m no longer focusing on the process, and consequently it doesn’t seem remotely important to discuss it.

To illustrate this a bit better, I'm (amongst other things) a woman; a girlfriend/partner; a daughter; one of 6 siblings; a Geminian; a red head; a political left-winger; a cycling enthusiast; a guitar player; a Boss fan; a terrible singer; a chartered accountant; a boss; a subordinate; an avid reader; a dog owner; a cheese-hater; a car driver; a cottage owner; a roller-coaster lover.

All of those things are a little bit of what I am, but none of them define me, and I rarely if ever think about them consciously. I don’t leap out of bed each day thinking ‘I’m a red-headed female accountant born in Gemini with a Leo rising sign…’ for instance. I’m aware of these things on some level, I guess, but they rarely if ever intrude into my daily consciousness.

It’s the same with weight.

When I started back in March, I thought of little else BUT my weight loss programme. I could hardly concentrate on anything else, because I was feverishly calculating how soon I’d get to goal, how much exercise I needed to be doing, what my BMI and basal metabolic rate were, how many calories I should allow myself, how many inches I needed to lose.

Jeeze, I was like a woman possessed.

Then the novelty wore off, and I realised that this journey was the equivalent of emigration, not a two week hop to the Greek islands. I suddenly realised one day that it was days, if not weeks, since I'd really sat down and thought of what I was doing as dieting. I was eating healthily almost on auto-pilot, and not thinking about diet, or calories, or rules or regulations at all. I was just eating - healthily - without any self-consciousness or design or concentration. I was just doing it.

That was a bit of an epiphany for me. On my previous 'practise attempts' I'd been obsessed from the start - right up to the moment when I fell spectacularly off the wagon.

The intensity and obsessiveness hadn't yielded long-term success - probably because that sort of intensity simply isn't sustainable in the long term.

This time I feel that something has finally clicked for me. It's all so normal and ordinary. I don't lie in bed every night feeling for hip-bones, or scrutinise myself in the mirror looking for cheekbones or evidence that the number of my chins is decreasing. All of those things will come in their own sweet time, and they won't change my life in any fundamental or important way when they do. Sure, it'll be nice to find I have a neck and collar-bones, but in the grand scheme of things it's pretty small fry.

By the same token, I haven't been overwhelmed by the need to shop for new clothes, either, even though K's started calling me Coco-the-Clown because my existing clothes are so baggy. When I really need new clothes I'll go and buy some, but for the time being it's nice having plenty of room in the ones I've already got. I never was particularly vain or concerned about my appearance, and it's nice to see that that hasn't really changed - I'd hate to become one of those shallow clothes-horses that I've always taken the piss out of previously - that would be a step too far in the hypocrisy stakes!

I'm just taking the gradual alterations in my shape in my stride, taking a second to feel good about the positive changes and then moving on to think of other things. I think that's pretty healthy - don't you?

For the first time ever during a weight-loss phase I'm not thinking about the process at all, and barely registering the results either - and guess what - it's strangely liberating!