My mind says I’m in my
twenties but my body says, “Yeah, you wish.”
Is it just me or does anyone else have a love/hate
relationship with mirrors in changing rooms.
Especially the ones that have the three way mirrors. You go in with your selected “this is gonna
make me look skinny” outfit, try it on and then get a load of your rear
end/hips/tummy/bust or indeed all five (yes five!!! I still haven’t figured out where the fifth
bulge comes from but it’s there!) And want to put your foot through the image
in the mirror. This is the hate
mirror. I hate the way it makes me look
when I felt alright about myself before I tried on that damn outfit. Sometimes this mirror also reflects three
small children by my side and I hear the fourth one laughing away in his buggy as
Mister Husband distracts him. I seldom
get into a changing room alone; it’s as if the boys are making me face up to
the fact that it is because of them, because I am a mother, my body will never
be the same again. Making me realise I
should be realistic and put down the size 12 and pick up the size 14. I have a healthy body image. I reckon I do, at least. Yes, sometimes when I remember I’ll suck in
my tummy. Most times though I have a
small child on my hip and I can shift him around a little bit so he hides that
nice soft area for me, thank you very much, Screecher Creature. I do not intend to spend the rest of my life
struggling with my weight, I refuse to count calories. In fact, I haven’t got the first idea about
them, or “sins” or “points.” I pretty
much eat what I like but I do try to be sensible about it. Yes, there are days when I give the finger to
“sensible” and eat a small child’s body weight in junk food. But if I want to have that slice of cake
after dinner, I usually go right ahead and have it. Back to those funfair mirrors. The love part of the mirror relationship is
when they make me look lovely, slim me right down, some of them even give me
high cheek bones, but when I get home it’s a different story. The cheeks are back to their usual roundy
pudginess and the ones that I could have sliced cheese on are left behind in
the shop. Where I should have left the outfit as well. Is it the lighting in there or what because
those trousers sure didn’t look like that in the shop. Mannequins have a lot to
answer for. I see something on a
plastic, unrealistically proportioned androgynous thing in the window and for
some reason I reckon it’s going to look like that on me. I know immediately when something isn’t going
to fit. With trousers, my thighs are the
telling point. Midway up I know by the
hesitancy of the garment to go any further if I need to abandon the
mission. Similarly when trying on
something that needs to go on over my head.
My head is never the problem; it’s getting it down over the tops of my
arms that can cause major panic. I
remember trying to try on, or attempting to try on, a dress. It reached that point of no return on the
tops of my arms and I should have listened to it. But I didn’t.
I thought if I could just pull it down a tiny bit more, I’d be home and
dry. I wasn’t. I got stuck.
Arms held rigid over my head with the dress handcuffing them in place. Half of it covering my face. I couldn’t see, I found it impossible to move
and suddenly, increasingly difficult to breathe. I thought I was going to die and my thoughts
immediately turned to what kind of underwear I was wearing. Were they clean? Did they match? Did
they match? I am the mother of four kids, my underwear never matches! I had to borrow my labour breathing
technique. This is different from
regular breathing. With regular
breathing, you just, well, you breathe. But with birth breathing, you kind of huff
and puff and pant a little bit. And try
not to hyperventilate. I could feel
beads of sweat starting to break out on my forehead and the tops of my arms
were starting to go a bit numb. It was
only about a minute but it felt like time had stood still. Not only was I going to die from suffocation
by a dress, the event was going to end up on YouTube. I have this little paranoid fear that a perv has
stashed a camera into the ceiling over the changing cubicles and is recording
women in various stages of undress. I
usually tell myself that I’m no-one’s demographic but dying inside a dress
might earn him some money if he sent in his video tape to one of those Candid
Camera TV shows. Well, stranger things
have been known to happen. I forced
myself to calm down and managed to shoehorn myself out of the dress. Anyone in the cubicle next to mine would have
been forgiven for thinking I was giving birth with all the grunting and
groaning I was doing. I also managed to
tear the dress a little bit. Just a
little bit. As all the best midwives
say, “just a stitch or two and you’ll be as good as new.” Same thing with the dress. You should have seen the state of me, however. A lovely red line gouged into my forehead
from where the dress got stuck. I make
sure I listen to my arms, and my thighs, these days whenever I am trying
anything on. You will see from my log
below that I seem to be going backwards instead of forwards. ‘Tis most annoying. Looks like I may start getting strict with myself
or I’ll never shift that half stone.
But, the odd thing is, my shape seems to be changing. I managed to fit into a size 12 trousers this
week. I had to put it back though as
despite being able to close it up and move (a little bit) in it, I knew even a
sip of water would make me regret wearing it.
Nearly there but no dice. I’m
still doing my weights in the mornings and evenings and I think next week I
will up the reps a bit to make it more challenging. The evenings are closing in now too and pretty
soon my runs will be weekend events only.
I am trying to make the most of them while I can. Stay good!
August 2012 - eleven stone three and a half pounds.
9th August – eleven stone.
16th August - eleven stone and half a pound.
23rd August – eleven stone and
three quarters of a pound. (only a quarter of a pound but still)
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