Raising the Standard (Bloody but Unbowed)

Form up...

This was originally intended as a diet blog. I was going to minutely record my successes as I blazed my way to the glory that is thin and beautiful, while keeping a journal of all the wonderful ways my life opened up as I became more mobile. I would let everyone follow my meanderings through the local landscape, mooch along with me as I explored the cityscapes I've always taken for granted, lean over my shoulder in admiration at all the artistic wonders I'd produce with my boundless new energy.

Yeah. Plans never survive the first engagement with the enemy, and I had more enemies than I realised.

Some of them I knew - boredom, depression, agoraphobia, childhood issues that could stretch to the moon and back. Those, I was confident I could overcome. I knew those enemies. I'd observed them, spied on them, built up maps of their incursions into my life. They were easy. It was the hidden enemy that hamstrung me, last time and every time before it. I have a major investment in being invisibly fat.

I'll revisit that, once I get my thoughts in order. It's a big think to think, and it has to be broken up into more easily thinkable lumps. I've spent a lot of the last two years carefully but relentlessly chipping bits of my issues away, examining the shards for the important gems of wisdom before leaving the dross behind me. It's an ongoing process, it might even be a lifetime's work.

In the meantime, I've twice managed to lose some weight and twice managed to gain it back again. Both times, instead of beating myself up for "failing" I've gently but thoroughly examined the entire process, and learned from it. I know what works, what doesn't work, and the things that set me up for a fall. I know the things I like about the process, the things I hate, and the things that need to be done anyway.

I'm nearly ready to try again.

I'm no longer that bothered about being thin and beautiful (and those things are hardly joined at the hip, anyway). I'm bothered about being taken seriously. I'm bothered about my own contentment, and I'm bothered about my future.

I'm no longer so content to be invisible. I don't need it. But I want to be visible on my own terms. I don't what the first and only thing people notice about me to be the amount of real estate I take up.

This blog is not a diet blog. It's a blog about the things that make up my life. The way I eat is part of that, but so is just about everything else.

Move Out...

Onwards.