I can eat anything….

Yesterday I read a post by my fellow sleever Tracy that hit the nail on the head for me. You can read her post HERE.

There comes a time, when you’re a year or two after your surgery that you start to feel almost normal. You can finally stomach eggs without vomiting, you can eat an almost real portion of food, you can attend a party without anyone questioning your eating habits….and life is pretty much back to the way it was before the surgery, minus a 100lbs or so.

But this is a dangerous time. If we start to feel normal and forget our bad relationship with food then it’s very easy to slip back into unhealthy eating habits. “It’s ok, I can eat popcorn at the cinema, I’m slim now” “Oh that one piece of cake is fine, I’ve lost my weight” or my personal favourite “I’ll burn this off at the gym later on”.

Telling ourselves little white lies that allow us to eat CRAP is not good for us. It’s eating that CRAP that made us overweight to begin with. Now I’m not saying I forbid you to have a treat every now and again, but keep an eye out for the occasional indulgence turning into a regular eating pattern. Once we re-establish a taste for the sugary salt laden processed junk food it’s very hard to stay away from it.

I know all too well… I managed to gain albs over the last couple of months, and being honest, for the amount of junk food I ate, 5lbs was not too bad a result on the scales. I’ve become the queen of “Now I’m slim, I can eat anything”. This isn’t true…. maybe it feels like I can, but IF I do, then the weight slowly piles back on. It only took a few days of me ditching the junk food to get 3lbs back off again. Imagine how long it would take if that 5lbs was 50lbs. We all say we won’t be that person who gains the weight back… but in reality we all have the potential to be that person if we don’t watch we eat on a daily basis.

We all have our demons with food…our personal battles…. and in order to deal with these battles, which are likely to last a lifetime we have to remember that we are not normal…..we will never be normal….

But what’s so good about being normal anyway?

Picture from Not Enough Cinnamon.com

Size normal….

On a day to day basis it’s hard to find something that motivates me to make the right decisions, to eat well, to exercise, to avoid junk, to keep positive.

Obviously the overall desire to be slim, healthy and happy is my lifelong motivator, but on a day to basis sometimes I require a more visual motivator I can relate to.

Yesterday I went shopping at The Trafford Centre, a mall type place in Manchester. Usually my shopping consists of browsing book stores, getting a coffee, and avoiding clothes shops at all costs, but yesterday I wanted to try on high street clothes.

A new shop Forever 21, has opened up after years of success in the USA so I was desperate to browse through the racks of clothes that I’ve spent years lusting after and never been able to fit into.

For the past 10 years I’ve shopped at Evans, New Look ( plus size department ) and supermarkets, and since surgery I’ve still been shopping at Asda, Matalan and general cheap type places. High street stores were “out of my league” “scary” and sold clothes “too small to fit me”.

Walking into Forever 21 yesterday U was overwhelmed by the sheer amount of clothes in front of. So many options to choose from, so much variety of style and colour, and what’s more everything in sight was available in a size that would fit me.

There sizes are american so I had no idea where to start when it came to trying on clothes. I found a top I liked and took 3 different sizes to the changing room with me.

Large was baggy and loose, Medium was fitted around my breasts but loose around my stomach, and shockingly small fitted my like a glove.

Small??? Size S??? This must be a joke.

I ended up buying a Large size shirt, but with intent as it’s a baggy loose fitting oversized denim shirt so I wanted it to be big and baggy, but the feeling of trying on that size small t shirt left me thrilled for hours.

As I queued up at the tills I had time to observe the other customers within the shop, and in true Hazel style, my first reaction was to compare myself to them.

But my usual self hatred and criticism was no longer a valid response. As I looked around the store I saw girls my size, girls bigger than me, women a lot bigger than me and wearing very unflattering outfits I would never have dared to wear in public.

I carried on people watching as I left the store, observing that 90% of the women around me were now the same size or bigger than me, something I have never experienced before.

For the first time ever I felt good about myself in a public situation.

I realised that whilst my goal may be to wear those size 10 jeans, or that XS t-shirt…..what I had achieved was something so much better, I was now size normal.