laptopdancer
... is probably not a lot different to anyone else's here!
I do remember vividly the first time I ever thought about my weight. I was 9 years old and had just started at my first Australian school, after my family moved here from New Zealand. I didn't have a new school uniform yet, but had already made some friends and we were playing chasings in the playground. As I ran past a group of older kids, one said: "That new girl's fat!"
And that was when I went on my very first diet.
And so it went on - blah blah blah babycakes. There were times I lost plenty, but it all came back - and then some! I had a loving family - a mother who struggled with her weight, but then had great success with Weight Watchers. She could do it, why couldn't I? My brother works in the Australian management of a major international gym chain. So why didn't a daily hour of cardio for a year, plus resistance training every second day, get me the results I sought? My sister-in-law is a personal trainer, who was formerly known in Sydney business circles as "the princess of pain". She suggested I really wasn't committed enough. Sheesh!
I lost interest in clothes and nursed a shoe obsession instead. I started pretending I didn't care, and in the end I (almost) convinced myself.
The weight began to rise, slowly but surely. The last straw came when my boyfriend and I visited a theme park - and a 16-year-old girl blushed and stammered and finally told me I couldn't ride the roller coaster because I was too heavy. My face burned all day.
Several months later an Aunt visited from overseas, and over lunch evangelised about her gastric bypass. I could see the results for myself, and so I started the research phase. My boyfriend assured me that he loved me as I was, and he'd support me all the way - as long as I wasn't just doing it for him. I laughed, and assured him I was doing it for me. And I read and googled and consulted doctors and pondered: could I do it? Could I really take charge and become - to all appearances at least- a normal person?
That was back in September, and now here I am.
This time, it's going to work . I know it's a lifelong journey of a million million steps, each of them taken in very high heels. And I know that sometimes my "ruby slippers" are going to pinch and chafe and maybe even give me blisters.
But I can do it. For the first time in ages and ages, I know I can.
