Sunday mornings, to me, can feel pretty much the same as other mornings. That's what it's like when you live on your own and you work from home most days. I mean take today, for instance, its no different from Friday was. And thursday, for that matter.
Yesterday I was up early though. We had to be at the health Farm by 9 am.
I packed track suit bottoms, light sweatshirt and thin hoodie to wear, just in case the robes were a litle tight. Tip for fatties: when its boiling hot, as it was yesterday, wear your usual long sleeved tops in layers, but choose very thin cotton fabric, with a soft drape, in white, while still keeping your bottoms in black. This way, you still look summery, and no one notices that your little podgy body is all swathed in fabric, while everyone else has skimpy little sun-tops on.
As we got out of the car, i saw other day-guest women heading inside who were all different sizes. I was releived that some were big-bums, like me. Anyway, the robe fitted, and even though i looked ridiculously like a bale of towels on legs trying to be a Michelin man lookalikey, there were actually plenty of others of simliar form. I expected a health check, or to be weighed, at least. But, phew, no. To my surprise, about 50% were big fatties, 30% decent sized women, 18% slim ones and only 2% were fit and healthy, with that glowing skin and media looking body (and they both had their boyfriend/husband with them, whereas everyone else was with a girlfriend or two or three). Little note to men: Health farms are for girly getaways, you men look silly attached to your girlfriend-who-dragged-you-along-and-you-daren't-let-her-out-of-your-sight-because-she-so-beautiful complex.
Well, moving on - my friend and I, we lounged around for a bit, then went into the lovely pool and then the massage-jets pool, and the jacuzzi. It was all very nice. Most of the time my body was under the water, but on the quick trips betweeen pools, well, i just thought, "Oh come on, no one knows you here anyway - walk like you've no cellulite". Fortunately my swim suit fitted me - its one i ordered from ebay. Thank goodness for ebay, hurrah!. Thats anonymous shopping at its best.
Ive known my friend since we were eleven, and while we were lazily loping around the pool i said to her, "Remember the Cambridge Diet?" and she said "Yes" (I used to be a Cambridge Diet seller about 19 years ago, i'll tell you more another time, reader). And i said, "well i'm going on it for 6 months - well, not that but something similar. No food, just the shakes". She rolled her eyes. We swam off.
Over lunch, my amazing friend told me something that amazed me. On realising that the starvation diet comes with group counselling, these days, she suddenly remarked that my mother was a woman that always talked about food. Further, my friend recalled a time when we were twelve years old when my mum came home from the supermarket and was putting away all of the family's food into the kitchen cupboards, while talking to my friend.
The conversation between my friend and my mum was basically my mother going on about how she had 'discovered' the shops own-label-brand and that "It's all so wonderful and now we are having only this label food". My friend, being a polite girl, was nodding and smiling, but inside she was gasping, for what she saw was an obsessed woman taking item after item after item (and there were loads of food items) of own-brand-yellow-label products out of shopping bags. My friend told me, while i was slowly eating my coconut salmon salad with egg and new potatos, that she didn't see one other 'real' brand item. Not one. No Kellogs, no lurpak, no heinz, no McVities, no birdseye, no nothing. No highly advertised brands at all. None of the usual thigns that were in our house. Just own-brand-label after own-brand-label of items for the whole family to eat that week. And as i popped a black olive into my mouth, my friend detailed how my Mum was singing the praises of the availability of the own-brand goods for their cheapness, and speculated that my mother was feeling truimphant that she had 'saved' so much money.
By the time the vanilla mouse with raspberrie coulis came to the table, i was in no doubt that my friend thought that this incident with my mother was almost Martian-like. I, though, couldn't remember it, no matter how much she emphasised all of the details of the scene. I had to take a glass of water in order to clear my head. Surely that would help me to recall the memory? No it didn't. So, i just have this bizarre second-hand snapshot to digest, along with my health farm three-course lunch.
We wandered into the garden to take tea and read the papers. There my friend stunned me into silence by offering more of her childhood observations of my own childhood, while we casually sipped our caffiene loaders around the duckpond.
She shot me with sentences like,
"I always knew you were odd around food".
"You used to talk about food and no other kid did".
"You would talk about your body, saying how fat it was and how you had to go on a diet". (note to reader: i, your blogger, was a moderately plump child, but then a thin teenager and have always been a slim-ish, albeit weight-swinging-up-and-down adult).
Round two: "And even though i was a skinny kid", my friend reported, "you encouraged me to go on a starvation regime with you. My mother was hoffied, but my dad told mother to just leave me to it, knowing i would work it out".
"We would go down to the marketplace and you would go appreciating the cheeses and critiquing them like they were Monets, Renoirs and Picassos. And then you'd come away with a purchased portion of what you deemed to be the finest that day, and we'd go somewhere and eat it".
"We talked about food when we went into town, instead of having a laugh with the boys".
As I watched the mother-duck wadlling along with her seven little chicklets in tow, leap into the pond and then climb up the mini-waterfall and out of sight, I continued to sip, smile and make encouraging noises in responce to these revelations. Inside I was screaming, "What! an twelve year old girl, doing things like this.....".
At the time i felt nothing, but now as i write, i think that i feel sadness.
Even as my friend failed to inspire me to remember, I knew that it was truth. Those scenes that she described just all felt right. They were the kind of things that would have been in my world. Yes, those scenes surely did belong in my history. Good Grief! I did those things. I thought those things. Good Grief again. And I had a mother that totally controlled the family around food (which i knew) but a person that went to a supermarket and made a decision on behalf of all of us that we would all accept these items of food in their foreign packets and, for all she knew, their inedible ingredients.
Mind you, knowing my dad, I bet we all had fun opening the packets, tins, etc, and discovering what was inside. Not the usual, predictable taste, texture and smell, but something exotic, odd or nasty! No doubt we laughed.
The day at the health farm wore on, and my friend and I were separated for the rest of the day, while various twenty year old girls, in fake tans and blonde pony-tials, applied creams and oils to our bodies in a variety of polite and well thought-out ways.
It was all very delightful. Wonderful dreamy music, soft lighting, even twinkling ceilings, gorgeous smells, sleep-seductive rhythms, and tingly, hot-and-cold sensations. Oh, my eyelids droop down in submission even now at the thought of it.
As i semi-slumbered my way through it all, I noticed that mini-movies were playing in my head. For instance, I 'saw' myself in my minds eye in a carefree manner, wearing nice gently tailored clothing (in the colour mauve) and in slow motion I was moving, almost a skip and a twirl at the same time, with a smile on my face, gladness in my heart, and confidence in my eyes. I was thin in that scene and it was a scene that has never happened, but one that is going to happen in the near future.
"How very interesting", i thought. That certainly wasn't planned, it just popped into my head. Musing over this incident prompted me to recall something that one of my weightwatchers buddies had said to me after i re-joined for the third time and i had finished telling her that i had just passed my exams and so it was time to come back to weightwatchers.
She said, knowingly, "Oh do you feel as though you're on a mission now?"
I smiled back knowingly in an auto-pilot way, and responded with "Yes".
However, my eyes did avert hers, and i did not get any sense of conguity in my body.
Ah hah! So now i know it wasn't true, i did not at that time believe that I had gone back to weightwatchers with the mission of losing weight.
Now, hoever, i DO NOWfeel that i am on a mission to lose weight. I know that soon, not very long at all really, I will be thin again. And i know that this VLCD, very low calorie diet method is the means by which i am going to acheive that thinness. I see it in my mind, and i am very much looking forward to it.
How nice for me :-)
