30.iii

Damn scales stuck again at 126, grrr, how can this same number inspire both elation and frustration?? hoping

Clothes really loose now, husband noticed that formerly skinny jeans pretty baggy, is hoping I will stop.

When I am thin, yes I will.

My mother and sister, who are both like sticks, said ooah, you are so thin - nowhere near as thin as either of them are and in weird voices - well I am messing with their comfort zones by not being the clever fat one, so they are bound to feel threatened.

But frankly? I long long ago stopped giving a flying fuck for what they think.

26.iii

OK, lowest weight in about 15 years, feel like Bridget Jones - yesssssssssssssssssssssss.

128, must must must keep this up. Am miserable as fuck which actually helps.

Read a wonderful thing over at trithin's great, honest and touching blog - again I parapjhrase because I am old and my memory is screwed. Essentially, she said that deciding NOT to eat for the day removes SO much anxiety - what will I eat, when. what if I'm offered something that makes me want to shove the whole table down my neck etc etc.

So today, I won't eat anything except soup and coffee.

Tomorrow, probably more of the same then I might have something on Sunday.

It's good to have a plan. Especially when everything else is so painful and uncertain.

25.iii

Managing to stay purely on liquids, low calorie soups and coffee coffee coffee...

I do think half the battle here is boredom-management. We all seem to be fine during the day when we're busy and active and as soon as we are home and at a loose end near the fridge, the danger starts.

Think I might need to find more absorbing stuff to do after work and before I can realistically piss off to bed.

Have spent the day talking loudly in meetings to drown the sound of my gurgling and empty stomach and being super-busy returning calls over lunch to avoid the wonderful buffet. A lady followed me with some cake, it was my favourite kind EVER. I sent it back, though she said 'I didn't see you have lunch.' I told her I suffer from IBS, that shut her up.

Looked good, but my increasingly baggy (gah, and very expensive) suit feels much better than it would have tasted.

Stay strong and willowy ladies.

24.iii

Didn't eat a huge amount over the weekend but felt utterly stuffed and uncomfortable when I did. Also drank a shedload, which inevitable showed on yesterday's scales, but a day of fasting is making inroads into that. Will fast for the rest of this week as I am away on business which always makes it easier - hotel gym and no room service. Bliss.

I also laughed so much over the weekend, have almost forgotten how to do that.

Will check in properly with everyone's blog later today. Hope you are all well and happy.

19.iii

Lovely comments, thank you so much. What a difference it makes to log on and see that the outpourings and mad little thoughts have resonated somewhere.

Scale has settled on 129, couple of days post-target but we'll take it.

Got a tricky weekend of celebrating a couple of lovely things, but have offered to do the entertaining which works on a lot of levels:

• It's my menu, my safe choices are in there, even if I eat 'normal' amounts, it will be clean and healthy fish and veg and rice
• I can belt about getting drinks and making up beds and burning calories
• I will not be guilted into eating fattening stuff that someone else has slaved over

That, and reading a lot of these blogs, makes me so happy I am older and not longer under my parents' roof.

Thank fuck.

I wish you all a lovely weekend - be kind to yourselves and strong, remember the bigger picture and that there are so many wonderful non-food related things to do in this world.

18.iii

Scales, inevitably, stuck. Crap. Still, we know this is normal and we look at the inches instead. A waist is appearing. Panties are too big. This is good. NEED to remember this and not let the goddam numbers win...

Husband and I took my nephews out to eat last night so had to have a bit of steak and salad. Moved it about on the plate more than I ate, and was super-animated so nobody noticed.

Back to miso soup and coffee today, it's Thursday fuck it and I need to see some 20s appearing.

Old shirt on toady, feeling loose which indicated someof the dreaded disgusting back fat is melting.

Hope that you are all feeling strong and wonderful.

16.iii

Read this somewhere recently, am paraphrasing:

"Have you ever noticed that when people comment 'you've changed' what they mean is that you no longer live like they do?"

Yup.

This year I quit smoking, drinking and pretty much eating.

A lot of people are taking it VERY personally. Well, fuck them.

The sun is out, I stuck to liquids yesterday and will do it again today AND tomorrow. Fleeting glimpse of 129, want it in my life so I can get stuck into the 120s for March.

April and May will be tough, want to be in the teens. I am small, so it will really show and everyone is used to me looking like a short square thing not someone willowy.

However, we will get there.

I know one way I could dump 13 stone overnight, and I know it would free me up to be myself. All this drama. Am so fed up with it taking up my thinking and dreaming time.

15.iii

Another sodding pound gone. And stay away too.

Am starting to feel very tired, but that may also be the ridiculous amount of stuff I have been doing, partly because I have to and partly because while I am busy, I don't think about food.

Need to fast today and tomorrow though. Hard to concentrate when lovely things are in the fridge. Need that iron will back. No food, just liquids. Need to see more of those bones now. Ghosts of ribs and hipbones. Flat stomach, indentations in my thighs.

Have thrown away jeans that were too small for me last year and are swamping me now.

Will keep occupied tonight taking winter clothes out of the closet making lists of things I can buy when I am finally at 112.

12.iii

Still losing, but can feel iron resolve dissolving in face of baguette scents and hot steaming bowls of stew. Need to read and be inspired by some of your blogs and remember how very temporary this all is.

I need to be in the 120s by the beginning of next week.

Distractions? Thinspo. Walking. DVDs. Fresh air. Dog. Organising clothes - winter ones put away.

Read an inspiring post a while ago from a girl who harnessed the perfectionism and obsession we have within us, and used it in her professional life - competitive, driven, focussed, single-minded. Wonderful and positive way of looking at this.

Hope that you are all coping and feeling strong and beautiful.

10.iii

Christ, the scales are still telling me the right thing - I know this won't last, but it's good to see the restriction working so effectively.

I find reading all these other blogs so motivating - it's such a taboo subject, especially if you're supposedly an adult like me, that we should be setting all the 'love your body, accept yourself' Disney crap examples to other girls.

Fact is, in my youth the French, whom I spent a lot of time around, did this all the time and made no bones (ha) about it. I spent many holidays in a very chic family - the elder duaghter worked for French Vogue and was an elegant bag of bones - the mother chain smoked and picked at tiny bits of delicious stuff and my 11 year old exchange mate starved herself so she could have hipbones like her sister. They hated fat people for looking like shite in nice clothes and when I lost weight staying with them, they gave me gorgeous hand me downs and made up my face.

Clothes are looking better on me even though I am still technically a porker, but I am really enjoying the feeling of control and emptiness such minimal consumption brings.

9.iii

Another pound gone - hope it will stay away and isn't just fibbing scales. Clothes considerably more comfortable and still loving that fasting feeling of cleanliness, lightmess and amazing amounts of concentration.

Want to get rid of sooo much. Things, mainly. Crap I've mistakenly thought would make me happy. Clothes that remind me of that fat unfitting feeling. Stuff people have given me because I never throw anything away - give it to me, off your conscience and into my bottomless one.

And my favourite, not, countless pairs of too-tight trousers given by my mother, smiling - 'These are just hanging off me.' Screw you, mama.

And don't even get me started on the emotional clutter...

7.iii

Fast lasted til I had to go out on a business dinner and ended up having a cocktail and steak. Otherwise, nothing but liquid all week then broke it with a huge salad last night and have been in agony ever since. Have now learned from all your experiences that it was a stupid plan and should have been slow and little.

Was travelling on business last week and not eating makes time so much more elastic and easily manageable. I read, watch movies and dream, feeling the horrible lard melt away.

Am also more sharp-tongues - colleagues, friends, all getting the blunt side not the dressed-up kindness. Am I an arsey bitch because I am hungry or am I feeling less that I have to do that craven fat-girl thing of 'please love me?'

Whatever it is, there are some very fundamental changes afoot in my life. It has to do with spring as well as losing weight. I want my surroundings to be clean, simple and beautiful. I am sick of all the mental, emotional, physical clutter I am trying to carry and organise. So I have done my washing from last week, cleared out the fridge and the old papers and am now making pot of chicken soup.

My house smells warm and safe.

2.ii

Mood bit teary and bonkers today, due inevitably to hormones, though am glad for once that I recognise this instead of my usual mid-tears-and-snot rant thinking 'oh, wonder if my period is due..'

Scale back to 135 again, oh joy. Am slow and steady as a tortoise though. Will not be derailed and am trying very hard to stay under 300-ish calories a day. I don;t feel hungry or deprived and I must say that thinking big-picture long-term is a huge help. Two people commented today how much weight I have lost (over 15lbs since January). Told them I have stopped drinking. Didn't mention I have stopped eating too - they are way too plump-mummy and would force-feed me biscuits in seconds.

Was very pleased though as am in new size 10 Topshop jeans which I shrugged comfotably into. I should really be a size six though with my dwarfy height!

Remembered in the car today a night in my teens when my (as usual) drunk father was crashing on my bedroom door telling me I stank, I was a slut and I was fat and lazy. Amazing what happens behind nice middle-class intellectual doors after 8pm.

He and my enabling head-in-sand mother live very close to me. I see them less often than they would like but enough for me to not suddenly think 'Oooh, good plan, I'll just go back 20 years and drag it all up so you can see how shit you were and understand why I will NEVER be a parent like you pair were.'

No, I will finally believe with all my heart that I am gorgeous and that I can be thin and that I truly deserve lovely things.

1.iii

God, the utter utter bliss of sunshine - March at last, Easter on the way and spring around the corner.

Scales, fuck, gnash, fell fleetingly to 134 on saturday and whizzed back up to 136 today. But I know that this is to be expected and slow and steady wins the race.

And today, after a month of hardly eating a thing, I am wearing a beautiful skirt with a massive belt hoiking it up. The last time I wore it, last winter, it was snug. Today I look like an orphan.

Any clues on the effects of fasting on mood? I have been feeling wonderful today, despite the naughty scales and I wonder if it's more than just a glimpse of sun?

I feel so much more sorted, in control. Less blown about by the whims of every other fucker and actually writing my own story. As though control over what I eat (and don't drink) translates into the ability to concentrate and achieve in other areas.

I have really enjoyed work today. I bought a hyacinth and an unusual silver pot to keep it in on my desk.