Baby got back

Up until quite recently I was constantly thinking/worrying about my weight. I hate to be a cliché, I really sodding do, but it’s just part of being a girl/woman/human to criticise how you look. Admittedly I have been prone to take this self-criticism to the extreme: the thing is, I imagine that everyone, really everyone, looks at my wobbles and rolls and sneaky double chin that continues to escape from my jaw bone, and thinks “God, how can she even think about eating another chocolate bar? Why does she continue to eat crisps? Why is she even still sat in this room right now - get yourself down to the bloody gym you fat lazy bitch!”. But I do eat another chocolate bar, and I do continue to eat crisps, and I’m not down the bloody gym, I’m sat here writing about it, which is doing nothing for my waistline at all. Unless typing burns off, like, 5000 calories an hour, which I’m pretty sure it doesn’t due to said weight issues. It doesn’t help that my friends are all skinny and stylish and lovely, thus when we’re all out together we spend the whole time looking like Pussycat Dolls featuring Lisa Dingle.

But these thoughts are getting a little tiresome now. In fact, I’m bored to fucking tears with it. I yoyo diet so much I don’t know where I am with it all. It’s not as if I’m grossly unhealthy; I don’t need a crane to take me to Asda, and I’ve never been featured in Love It! Magazine talking about how I like to squash men with big flabby boobs (which was a real article, by the way). I very rarely drink (in fact, if I’m honest, I don’t even like alcohol. The appeal of getting drunk is completely lost on me). I’ve never even held a cigarette; fast food is only consumed when in need of food, fast; and the idea of me ever taking drugs is frankly hilarious. So if I want to eat Chinese and chocolate cake on the odd evening, I will. If I want to do an hour on the exercise bike, I’ll do that too. I’m just living; you don’t have to put much thought into it. If being a size 12/14 means that someone like Ed Westwick will never fall in love with me, then that’s fine. I want someone who loves me based on much more than aesthetics. And he probably snores loads, anyway.

For a years and years, I wholeheartedly believed that if I was really skinny and beautiful and looked the spitting image of Cheryl Cole, my life would be truly wonderful. Then I got a sodding grip. I don’t need double D’s, size 6 denim shorts and a spray tan to have a wonderful life. No one does. It’s an illusion leading to delusion, and it’s not fair. So much time is being wasted with people wishing they were something they’re not. I’m not going to waste such large chunks of my life on this frivolous nonsense anymore. My life is wonderful, for many reasons. Here are just a few:

1) Most importantly, I’m healthy. Corny I know, but when you actually sit and think how lucky you are to be healthy, it’s quite overwhelming. Millions of people my age are governed by blood cell counts and organ donation lists and God knows what else. I’m not one of them. And I’m so grateful.
2) My mum is bloody fantastic. We have such a close bond and I love her to bits. Without her support and encouragement I would just be, like, a blob of nothingness. She’s selfless, thoughtful, generous, strong, funny… she’s just the best.
3) My friends. The ones who are like family, the ones who I have nothing in common with yet get on with like a house on fire, the ones I bicker with but secretly wouldn’t be without. They’re all a part of who I am; they’re the ones I can laugh with until I suffer the first stages of a stroke, the ones who know how freaking weird I can be at times but are still hanging around, the ones who know what I’m thinking without me having to say a word. Wonderful.
4) My Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and little diva, Maddie. (Her brother Alfie is a proper lush head too, but technically he’s mums). I only have to leave the house for an hour but when I return she greets me with so much enthusiasm it’s like she’s witnessing the resurrection of Christ. She is so loving and gives the best cuddles in all the land. Animals are beautiful. Particularly Maddie.
5) Books. For reals, a good book makes me feel like everything is right with the world.* The best kind of books are the ones that have you so engrossed it’s like you can crawl inside their world and exist on every page, and re-reading them is like going home.
6) Live music makes my life wonderful. As do musicals, theatre and stand-up comedy. All of which I go and see on a regular basis and I love it. I’d spend my money on concert tickets over a manicure any day.
7) Travelling; I’m lucky enough to be going to New York for my 21st birthday with some of my favourite people in the world. If that doesn’t make my life wonderful, there is absolutely no hope.

And you see, I’d still have all of those things no matter what the scales say, or what I look like. That’s good enough for me.




*Equally though, a bad book makes me very angrysmashsmash. See ‘best-selling author Katie Price’.