Oh to be skinny again
It’s my fasting day and I brought out this photo to remind myself why I was bothering. I was skinny then - very skinny - and I guess I looked quite good - well it’s the tan and the lack of detail in the picture - seen through a nostalgic mist.
And I’m finding it a bit more difficult in the cold of winter when thoughts turn to food more frequently to feel enthused about my 5/2 diet. So some thoughts on being skinny and dieting and what to eat for dinner - there are no eggs so I can’t have scrambled eggs again.
THAT WAS THEN, THIS IS NOW
So here I am - then and now - before and after. Not good is it - after I mean? Well to be honest the now picture is not actually now - it’s two years ago before I started to diet. Probably me at my worst - breathing in hard I would guess. Though I don’t really think I look a lot better now. The legs are like tree trunks and the paunch is still there. The picture at left is then - but not so far back then as the original black and white - it was taken in the Maldives when Bryn was about twelve - so I would have been in my early forties - the rot had not set in though - well a bit more flabby around the top of the legs perhaps.
And I do believe that it’s not just the food we eat that makes us fat (or the lack of exercise) - though obviously this is a component. No - when I was young and skinny I could eat anything - and I did - large quantities of potatoes for a start - and I didn’t put on weight. I tried - at university - to put on weight. Ate all the wrong things in vast quantities but it didn’t work. I put on a minute amount of weight and felt rotten doing it, so I gave up. But come menopause and it all piled on and I ended up as the Michelin lady you see above. (Maybe I should use the term Rubenesque to make myself feel better!) So I reckon hormones must play a part somewhere.
Once upon a time I was skinny and I thought this was not a desirable thing. I was very self-conscious about it. And my relatively big boobs. Of course I now realise that this is what the western world sees as an ideal - skinny with big boobs. (Think Barbie dolls.) But I didn’t think so. Frankly the boobs were a huge embarrassment. Everybody at school was dieting and moaning about being overweight, so I felt left out - I couldn’t join in the conversation.
“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Michael Pollan
“Every single diet I ever fell off of was because of potatoes and gravy of some sort.”
Dolly Parton
Even the medical profession seemed to concur that I was underweight. We were all skinny in my family - I vaguely remember taking an iron based supplement medicine kind of thing to boost something - and my poor sister had to go and run round a sun lamp. Heaven knows what that did to her. Mind you, as I aged I think I probably did feel quite pleased at being a size 8 even if it did mean occasional difficulties finding clothes - but then I made most of my own clothes back then. But I don’t think I have ever really thought I was perfect. (And I wasn’t.)
Anyway I am now definitely rather less than perfect - somewhat overweight - which is not at all healthy. But I never dieted because I found it all too hard. It was all just depressing, particularly as the dress sizes continued to rise. We might want to fight the image thing, but it’s very hard to do. Then along came the 5/2 diet - at last something I could try - it’s so much easier to eat nothing, or next to nothing, than to just cut back. And it has worked. So far I have lost about 10kg. The aim is 15kg - which would take me down to 60kg - ten more than I was for most of my life. I can’t say I feel at all skinny though - the stomach is still far too big and I’m flabby all over - I still feel fat. I suppose I should do exercises but that really isn’t me. Should walk more though.
I could go on and on about obesity I guess - poor people - it must be so hard to take all of that weight off when you have put it on. And it’s all been said about eating the wrong foods at the wrong end of town. So I won’t. Not that I had a real healthy diet as a child myself - I mean - toast and dripping, fish and chips, steak and kidney pudding, baked beans on toast, roast potatoes ...
Back to me and my fast day - I have been pretty bad about eating anything interesting on my fast days, but today I am without eggs, so I can’t opt out and have scrambled eggs. I think I’m going to poach a chicken breast with carrots and peas and parsley - dare I put in a potato? Because Dolly Parton is so right - can’t go for long without potatoes.
And we really should definitely do at least one vegetarian day. Not that I think vegetarian is necessarily all that healthy - mostly because of the extra amounts of dairy and carbohydrate one tends to use to make up for the lack of meat.
Maybe dragging out that old photo has achieved something after all as I do seem to be heading down a more creative path for dinner. No wine though.
“Pasta doesn't make you fat. How much pasta you eat makes you fat.”
Giada de Laurentiis
