Nic Dempsey

Last week, the delightful dfordalrymple also known as Christina (I wanted to use delightful and dfordalrymple in the same sentence and I can if I want!) came for dinner. We talked about cocktails, flats, cold flats, cycling, blogs (if you haven’t already you should read Christina’s, she’s clever, articulate and very funny), singing, why casual dating is too much admin (her words) and lots of other things.

I’ve been reflecting on our conversation about bootcamp and my ‘Don’t be a fat bridesmaid’ plan. Christina has written about her struggles with disordered eating and I’m not going to rehash them here. However, Christina said that she could understand the bootcamp from the point of view of wanting to be fitter and truely healthier but not to be a size 14, (or whatever your chosen ideal is) and I agree healthy is a different thing from thin. I am roughly a stone heavier now that I was 6 years ago but I still fit into a lot of the clothes that fit then because of all the strength training I’ve done with Jem, my muscles are more pulled in than they used to be.

It’s almost become an article of faith, healthy is better than thin and be honest, how many times have you heard a friend say that they just want to be healthy and known that what they really mean is thin. Because eating clean is only about 40% of being healthy.

I should clarify that I don’t think that Christina is doing this, but the conversation just got me thinking because although I don’t want to be a size 10 I do want to be thinner as well as healthier.

There you go I said it. Although I’m pretty happy with the person I am, I want to be thinner, it’s one of my aims for the year after all.

Here’s the thing. I’m overweight, mostly because when I’m sad or bored or I want to treat myself, I eat. Destructive eating. Eating because I don’t value myself.

When I’m happy and feel in control, i.e when I’m working towards healthy by exercising, I don’t eat like this.

When Stef died, every time I wanted to sit on the sofa and cry and eat and drink, I got up and went to the gym. I spent hours on the treadmill and I lost 3 st. Looking at the time, I can identify why I could do that, it was because Stef wasn’t there to do it for me, without Stef to show and tell me I was valuable, I had to do it myself. Then other stuff got in the way and made me feel worthless and I slipped back into my old feelings about myself and my old ways.

So much of my struggle with my weight and fitness has been about my struggle to feel deserving of good things and to feel that my life has value in and of itself.

This is a very long winded and confusing way of saying that for me, deciding to eat well, going to bootcamp, exercising more and making the decision to try and lose weight, is about deciding that I am a person deserving of good things. Not because I’ve been nice to others, not because of anything I do but just because. That decision changes the destructive patterns of my behaviour.

It may be that in the course of treating my body better, my goals change. I get to a weight that isn’t my goal and I’m happy with it but given the weight I am now, eating clean and exercising regularly will lead to weight loss because it always does.

When I say I want to be thinner that’s what I mean. I want to be at a stage where I treat my body with the respect it deserves and I’m working on it.