Note to self

I read a feature in both the American and United Kingdom editions of Marie Claire recently (I have an obsession with women’s magazines) about how when you drop weight, it’s hard to accept yourself as skinny, or skinnier, because your identity as a “fat” person is often so deeply embedded in your idea of who you are.

I still definitely think of myself as a geeky teen with spots, too much black eye make-up, a sulky attitude and an aversion to anything involving movement. While most of that hasn’t changed, nobody could tell me now that I don’t work out enough.

It sounds obvious that when you lose weight, you stay the same person, but I think secretly — as ridiculous as it sounds when you spell it out — we think having a killer body will give us more confidence and make us more fun and popular. Well, that’s certainly what I always hope to achieve. It may not seem it from my partying and writing about personal things, but I am painfully shy sometimes, and I always think if I didn’t have a little excess bulge, I’d be a lot more outgoing and I’d probably just wear hot pants all the time. It’s easy to use your flabby bits as a kind of protection from the truth, whatever that might be.

But even when you do drop a few kilos, the imaginary protection it provided doesn’t shift. It’s even more stubborn than cellulite, and I know ALL about cellulite. Even though people are beginning to tell me I’ve lost weight, I always think it’s because I’m wearing a flattering outfit, or because they feel as though they have to say it, or because they’ve seen a good photo of me. I even have trouble believing the scales and my smaller clothes sizes.

It sounds silly, right? But to me, I look and feel exactly the same as before. I can start to see muscles in my stomach (maybe a four pack, if you squint in the right light), but I still feel like I have to make a comment when I’m doing something a little indulgent. Like, if I’m drinking Starbucks, I’ll say “oh my god, I’m so greedy. This is why I work out all the time and am still fat.” I feel as though, if I pre-empt it, nobody can say it behind my back or think I’m lying when I talk about how much I work out. Nobody has ever even slightly suggested that, but my paranoia and poor body image remains, even after the muffin top has diminished a little bit. If I’m eating in front of other people, I still feel like one of those gigantic bedridden people you see in newspapers who are shovelling down a plate of greasy French fries.

It’s such a waste of time to be so consumed with body image when I know my health and fitness levels are good. It’s the same with virtually everyone I know, though. We all have these perceived physical hang-ups that stop us doing what we really want (for me, that’s wearing hot pants and talking to hot gym instructors).

I’m not sure how long it takes for your brain to catch up and let you see what everyone else does; which is a perfectly reasonable-sized human. Not fat, not particularly skinny. I guess I always thought fat came off my butt last (Nicki Minaj has nothing on me), but now I realise it’s actually the imaginary fat in my head that’s the most difficult to shift.