Dieter

You know how they say that anorexics look in the mirror and see a fat person?  My problem’s the other way – if I’m honest, I look in the mirror and think I look OK (verging towards not bad at all, in the right light).  It’s only when I look at myself in a photograph that I realise I look like a jolly salad dodger.  Who wants to look ‘jolly’?   (Apart from Father Christmas, and he’s hardly sporting a body to die for.)

Several years ago I lost a lot of weight.  It was the best thing I’ve ever done and at the time I was full of confidence about keeping it off.  Since then, however, two cheeky stone of excess flab has slowly sidled up to my stomach and thighs (surely it can’t be anything to do with my love of food and wine and apparent lack of a ‘feeling full’ signal?) and the time has come to do something about it.

Losing the weight (aiming for three stone as even at my lightest I was a stone heavier than I ought to have been) will have several immediate advantages.  LBRG have some really exciting bouts coming up and I’d like to play in as many of them as possible – this involves being fit, and wheeling three stone less around the track will definitely help.  I’m planning on trekking to Everest Base Camp next Easter and three stone less to cart up a mountain can only be a good thing.  More importantly, my clothes don’t fit and I’m too tight to buy new ones.  Oh, and it’ll make me healthier, blah, blah, blah.

Losing weight is simple – eat less, do more – but as anyone who’s tried it knows, it’s not quite as straightforward in practice.  Also, I am the queen of cheating.  I have always enjoyed a good debate and will happily argue that black is white, just for kicks.  Unfortunately this means that I am quite capable of convincing myself that a bottle of red is no worse than a glass because if I have it all in one sitting my body can’t absorb it all and I’ll just pee it out; when I am drunk, having clearly absorbed the whole bottle, and it becomes clear my logic was flawed, it’s too late.

Being quite sporty, it’s also easy to deny the importance of my fatness by claiming that I’m fit and healthy, despite being only 1.3 BMI points off obesity.  I’m certain that I am fitter than many people of my size but I need to face the fact that I’m simply not as healthy as I would be if I were slimmer.  I know Roller Derby needs people of all sizes, but I’m going to take the chance that I’ll be just as effective a blocker if I’m littler, and who knows, maybe I’ll be a decent jammer one day?

So, with all these thoughts in mind, I embark upon the dieter’s journey.  In the meantime, however, it’s lucky my team play in that most flattering of colours, black!