12.v

Haven't posted for a bit as been faffing about with the elusive goddamn scales, and forgetting that the odd nibble here and there actually registers. No lying from them. Though clothes are literally hanging off me. Wonder if 119 might not be a good place to stop before I look skeletal - not too attractive at my age...

Anyway, am low low low and re-motivated today to stick to what we KNOW works - soup, diet coke, coffee and the odd handful of grapes.

8 stone 7 for my birthday on Saturday?

21.iv

Future perfect? Way too much of the future tense in my head - when I'm thin, I will...

Bollocks to that. I am thinking of myself as the skinny one from now on. That will inform all my choices. I am skinny because I choose to exist on diet coke, coffee, fruit and soup. I am skinny because the fat-oozing cakes and cheese and everything else hold absolutely no appeal to me.

I am the skinny one in my group of friends not always moaning about being fat, being hungry, having a crap metabolism, whinge whinge.

I might not LOOK like the skinny minnie right at this exact moment, but if I keep sabotaging myself by thinking I am waiting until I am thin for my life to start, I'll be here a fucking long time.

Suck on that, stuck scales...

20.iv.

Need, need, NEED to get back to the iron will of a week or so ago, that says a steadfast, tight-lipped 'no' to every mouthful of shepherds pie, lemon cake and other little nibbles I think don't matter when in fact, here they are, stopping that elusive number from leaving 125 and getting into proper acceptable waters.

It's hard finding the resolution some days. Today I have stuck to liquids as I did yesterday, but the weekend was a fucking fiasco.

I fit into a size eight, but am too scared to go and buy anything in case I balls everything up and wake up suddenly clothed in the kilts and jodhpurs of fat that I wore for so long.

I even had a dream of myself last night at University; laughing with a huge fat tummy, surrounded by thin thin thin girls who didn't need to pretend they were happy.

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.

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.

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.

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.

25.ii

So here is the introduction. There is whispering, it is faint. Quieter than the long years of voices who chorus in a cringe, 'big girl, fat thighs, you don't deserve nice things, slut, drunkard, great big belly, lose weight, be thinner like them then maybe someone will really like you.'

But they don't. I hid behind the fat-jolly-don't-care face I have fashioned from hurt and just pretend. Pretend I don't mind, that I haven't noticed how monstrous I am, that I haven't noticed all of them noticing how fat I am. Years in a T-shirt on a beach, being the best swimmer so I could hide my bulk under water. So I could stay in the pool instead of lumbering around the thin girls.

Enough. My turn in the sun. I want to be skinny, make them all jealous. All those girls who skipped about, sniggering, choosing me to highlight their slight frames, their elegant limbs.

They are older. We are older. They are married, their bodies gone slightly to seed - they no longer push to be the alpha skinny one; they have mated.

Well I will have the last laugh.