227. This is the Worst it Need Ever Be,

It's day two. And here I am, fresh out of the bath, nomming down on a piece of fruit and wondering how I got here. OK. Two out of three of the things in that sentence are true. I have just had a lovely bath and I'm enjoying a banana. But when it comes to wondering how I got to over six stones over my ideal weight, I know exactly how I got here. Binge Eating, Yoyo dieting, Drinking too much. In short, a fairly warped relationship with food and drink that has led me to gaining on average 7 lb a year for the last 12 years. It wasn't all gain, of course, I lost weight several times on low carb diets, good old fashioned diet-and-exercise diets and even normal just eat less and better diets (although never much weight on that one), but the pounds would always pile back on, bringing friends. And so here I am, at the heaviest I have ever been wondering how much I will lose this time and actually, is it worth it because surely I'll just put back on more weight than I'll lose?

It doesn't have to be that way, of course. Some people do lose all the weight and then keep it off long term. I read a depressing (and hopefully incorrect) statistic recently that only 2% of people do that. I think I won't do that as long as my issues remain - as long as I am a compulsive eater, the weight will go back on; as long as I have a 'relationship' with food, rather than it being a fuel for living that can potentially taste really good, the weight will go back on and as long as I use food to celebrate, commiserate, deal with stress and anxiety and block out pain the weight will go back on. I don't know what to do about this (d'uh, would I even be writing these words, would my backside be as big if I had a strategy?) but I'm hoping over the time it takes to lose the weight - and I better had lose the weight - and write this blog that I can go further to working it out.

Its time to be positive, anyway. This really is the worse it need ever be and I could always be lighter than I am today. My first goal is 209lb. And when I get there I'm going to buy myself a lovely pair of celebratory shoes. I will!