Chubby Chops - a life in pictures. Part 6

No more diets

Picture № 25, 1993, in Spain with John and my parents,

celebrating my 40th birthday

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We had lovely holidays – here we had rented a beautiful villa not far from Valencia, to which city outskirts my parents had moved from Argentina to spend their retirement. It was a time to take stock, and I didn’t like what I saw – I was nowhere near getting my weight problem under control, and saddest of all, I had left it too late to have children. All those years obsessing about my appearance and I was going to have nothing to show for them.

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Picture Nos. 26/27/28/29 - Bristol Rugby, early nineties.

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During this time I was asked to take pictures of the Bristol rugby team at their home games for use in their programmes, which I did for several years. I was allowed to be on the touchline with John so that I could run up and down. No, don’t ask – there’s no photo of me because I would sooner have had my throat cut. It was usually blustery, cold, wet and muddy, so I had to wear thermal underwear, plus normal clothes plus waterproof gear over all of that.

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John would prompt me when he could see at which end of the field the action would be, and I’d waddle down with camera, my pockets bulging with spare film. The worst bit was at the beginning, when the Bristol captain would run out with the little mascot – usually a child under 8 dressed wearing the Bristol strip – and I had to stand in the middle of the field and photograph them as they ran out, throwing the ball to each other. To do this, I had to position myself out in the middle of the pitch, ready and waiting 5 minutes before they emerged, then after the pictures were taken run back to the touchline.

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I knew the 8,000 spectators weren’t interested in the navy blue Michelin woman shuffling onto the pitch before the game, and up and down during it, but I reasoned that before the game or when nothing much was happening, they would be casting about for something interesting to look at, and their gaze would fix in amused fascination on the rotund photographer… I always ensured I was on the same side of the field as the television cameras, so that there wouldn’t be a ghost of a chance of my appearing on the local news afterwards.

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John would squat on a little folding stool on the touchline, tucking into his supplies – a hard-boiled egg with salt in a piece of tinfoil, a slice of buttered bread, a Kit-Kat chocolate bar and his ever trusty hipflask of brandy, not to mention the scalding cup of coffee bought at the ground, shaking and slopping as it jostled for position with his cigarette.

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It was fun, but there were limits to my coping with the exposure and self-consciousness I felt before 8,000 people, however anonymous I was, and several years later when the photographic technology grew apace and other photographers had more modern equipment which meant that the printers of the programme could get the pictures to them faster than I could, I dropped out with relief. I was also getting tired of the “If it’s Saturday it must be cold and wet” routine.

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Photography was wonderfully absorbing and took my mind off areas of my life about which I was unhappy, and specifically it meant I was behind the lens, and not being captured by it. In 1995 I was pleased as punch to win one of the trophies at my local camera club.

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Picture № 30, 1995, aged 42, with Group One Backwell Camera Club Trophy

I particularly enjoy candid portraits, and take pictures at dress rehearsals – amateur opera in the past, and Gilbert & Sullivan productions now. The advent of digital cameras has made the whole process so incredibly easy, and enables me to concentrate on the creative side (with mixed results, I don’t claim to be a David Bailey).

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Picture № 31, two members of the chorus at a performance of The Mikado

about 10 years ago

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As I developed on the inside, sadly I expanded on the outside too. Being freed of the tyranny of trying to be slim and pleasing other people, vanity ceased to be a factor in my life altogether, and I rarely looked in the mirror.

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Picture № 32, 1995, out for dinner with John and old school friend

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Later in the year an old school friend came to stay, and when she sent me a photo of the three of us at dinner I realised that the situation had got worse, and as usual my misery showed. However this pained expression was mainly reserved for photographs, which I simply loathed posing for – I’m told that I was capable of as much cheerfulness and humour as anybody…

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(To be continued)

-oOo-

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Chubby Chops - a life in pictures. Part 5

A recovery - of sorts

In October 1984 I managed to get unpaid leave from my wine merchant employers, and for two months stayed with my parents where they were living temporarily in Johannesburg, South Africa, during which my mother did all she could to help me. She took the decisions about meals out of my hands by putting me on her strict Scarsdale diet, and I enrolled locally on an aerobics class three times a week. I went to a local public swimming pool and sunned myself to get a tan, so the first few weeks were an agony of hunger and complaining muscles mixed with sunburn.

Gradually it all settled down, and though I never got to like the hideous practice of leaping about causing myself discomfort and breathlessness, I could appreciate that it speeded up the process no end. There were no scales around, but I must have lost at least another 1.5 stone (21 lbs, 9.5kg) – there was nowhere to cheat or get food, and the aerobics teacher had known what was at stake, and she worked me hard in the 30 degree heat.

Picture № 19, Christmas Day 1984, Johannesburg, South Africa

– about 9 stone (126lbs, 57.5 kg)

My Dad was very proud of my achievement, and took lots of pictures of me. It was a mercy however that my mother had her little cheap fixed focus instant camera with her and insisted on taking a few herself, because good ol’ Dad had forgotten to put a film in the camera... (Likewise my extraordinary adventure the day before in a cheetah enclosure when I had posed sitting with and stroking them had gone unrecorded for the same reason.) He was mortified, but my regret was that there were now virtually no records of my great effort – except this one above, clutching a tin of hairspray.

I returned to England early in the new year of 1985, tanned and slim, to find it was already too late. My husband had opted for his mixed doubles tennis partner, a former mutual friend, and I moved into a flat in February.

25 years on, I think I see it all more clearly. I believe what feelings he had disappeared after the first couple of years, and whereas a mature person would have ended it then and there with a minimum of fuss, an immature one such as he was then, stayed on for another six, feeling increasingly trapped and resorting to unkindness as a release, whilst letting himself drift off towards someone else. Leaving someone you no longer love is so much easier when there's someone you do waiting round the corner.

Strictly from my own experience, I find men to be like children where relationships are concerned - they would far rather the woman took the lead, while they concentrate on the macho aspects. They don't on the whole understand their own feelings, or how to handle them. Rarely are they able to analyse their own or their partner's behaviour and draw conclusions which drive the relationship forward. If they get it right, it's instinctive.

...Anyway..., these posts are about the history of my weight problem and not about other aspects of my life, so suffice to say that the next few months were very difficult, and for the first time ever, I lost my appetite almost completely.

Picture № 20, Spring 1986, aged 33

(compare with № 18, I’m wearing same dress,

which now fitted properly…)

My weight went down to 7.5 stone (105 lbs, 47.5kg) and this is virtually the only photo of me at the time – friends and relations were reluctant to take pictures of me because of my state of mind. As usual it’s written all over me – I’m not very good at hiding my feelings. Despite the unhappiness I could acknowledge when I looked at myself in the mirror that I was at last slim, though I remember smiling ruefully to myself as I gazed at the amazing petite image before me, reflecting that I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to enjoy it. I did however buy size 10 denims, and derived a grim satisfaction from having to lie down on the floor to do up the zip, though getting up afterwards was a bit of a challenge.

Unfortunately I also thought that this was it now, this was how I would be forever. It had taken divorce to finally ‘sort me out’. Oh but it didn’t.

In trying to climb out of the doldrums, I got myself involved backstage with an amateur opera company, and made new friends, among whom was John, now my partner. Somewhat older than me, he was gentle, kind, undemanding, understanding and totally uncritical about all matters regarding weight. He also loved my experimenting on him with my cooking.

After eight years at the wine merchants, where I had progressed some way up the secretarial tree and had studied part-time to get a diploma in wines and spirits, I opted for voluntary redundancy when there was a change of boss, and moved to an office equipment company to be an office supervisor, where to my surprise I learned that I enjoyed pure admin (do stay awake…).

John and I spent weekends going out and about looking for subjects to photograph, and ate out a lot.

Picture № 21, mid 1988, with John, in Tenerife, Canary Islands
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Gradually it started to pile on again, helped in no small measure by the appearance of Haagen Dazs ice-cream, which I ate by the tub full when on my own. Hardly surprising then that I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, since it was present on both sides of the family anyway, though I only learned about this afterwards.

Picture № 22, late 1988, aged 35 with my niece.

I have a wonderful relationship with her (you may have seen a picture earlier in this blog where I’m holding her little son), and once again I’m hiding behind my favourite Bolivian alpaca poncho, which you’ve also seen before.

Meanwhile my job with the office equipment distributors ended in redundancy following a series of takeovers, and I spent a bizarre 6 months working as a PA in a crematorium.

(Anecdote: a member of a bereaved family thought it would cheer them all up to tuck the dead man's mobile phone – switched on - into the coffin out of sight, which the bright spark then rang during the funeral as it was taking place by the graveside. The crem’s funeral administrator, a prim, permanently worried little man who was always hovering in the background to ensure everything ran smoothly, appeared at the office looking white as a sheet, and as he gulped down a cup of tea told us the story, and that the family, far from being ‘cheered up’, had been absolutely livid, and had to be stopped by the vicar from beating up their relative.)

When this job came to an end, I ended up as an office manager at wholesale seed merchants for 19 years, and much enjoyed being in agriculture. Though I grew up in the capital city of Buenos Aires, my mother's farming background had ensured we spent every available holiday on working farms, so to some extent I understood the business and greatly sympathised with its difficulties.

Four years after divorce, and many gorgeous dinners later therefore, this was what I looked like:

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Picture № 23, 1990, in Gravesend, John’s home town
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Finally admitting I needed outside help, I went to slimming club classes and at first the kindergarten approach suited me – over the next few months I lost two stone and was one of several chosen to go to London for the day to meet the Slimming Magazine Slimmer of the year.

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Picture № 24, 1990, with Slimming Magazine’s Slimmer of the Year
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But… and this is so familiar to slimmers… I couldn’t keep it up. Now that there was no pressure, and experiencing something like contentment for the first time in my life, my weight zoomed up again. It wasn’t just that I felt better – I had at last ‘allowed’ myself not to think of diets and food. I realised that a large part of my brain and waking hours for years and years had been spent worrying about it, planning meals, feeling guilt and self-loathing, worrying about what other people were thinking about me – and when I let myself off the hook, it was wonderful: I became interested in so many different projects and subjects. The main new enthusiasm was photography, which has never left me.

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(to be continued)

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-oOo-

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Chubby Chops - a life in pictures. Part 4

Marriage Picture № 13: 1978, aged 25

with husband, and sister on a visit from Argentina

Married life was lovely at first, and though it made me feel self-conscious, I didn’t really take the teasing about my small spare tyre very seriously. I just preferred to time the business of getting into my (large) nightie when my husband was brushing his teeth, and I applied make-up carefully to ensure he concentrated on my face and not the rest of me. Very dedicated to squash and high in the league, not to mention fanatical about tennis, he tried to encourage me to take up some form of exercise, but I didn’t want to - when not at work I wanted to be at home. He wasn’t interested in the new dishes I cooked – he liked his cottage pie and roasts – so I experimented on myself, and had a lovely time trying out new recipes.

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He put up a poster in our bedroom – you might recognise it, it was famous at the time. The girl played tennis locally and he knew her by sight – the front that is.

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Picture № 14: That bloody Athena poster, 1980.

Me, typically, hiding under the duvet.

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I hated it, but he told me he would take it down the day I was slim. I’m afraid I didn’t learn assertiveness for a few more years.
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A pattern started to evolve. I wanted to please him, so I would manage to lose a few pounds. He felt that I had to learn how to lead a healthy life with temptations around me, so it wouldn’t be right to ban tempting high calorie foods from the house – specifically biscuits, or to avoid going out for meals. It made perfect sense, but I just couldn’t cope with it. If there were 5 biscuits eaten from the packet, I’d wolf down the rest of the packet, go out and buy another identical one and eat the first five biscuits from the new one, so he would think I hadn’t had any. My confidence was fast disappearing.
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The psychological problem with diets if you're like me: when you break it you don’t limit the damage and carry on, or pick yourself up, dust yourself down and start again. No, you say f… it, I can’t do it – and go back to the way you were before. Except you don’t go back to where you were: you go further than last time. So – lose two pounds, gain three, lose three pounds, gain four, and so on.
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We were forever going to or giving dinner parties. Our friends were all professionals of one sort or another, slim and sporty. Squash and tennis were discussed to death. “Would you like a second helping?” Both hands up, palms facing the hostess, righteous look on face and pursed lips “Oh goodness I couldn’t possibly! That was SO delicious but I’m really full. But I’d love the recipe!” (Caroline thinking either “that remark makes me want to put two fingers down my throat” or “shit, I suppose I can’t have any more either then”.)
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Picture № 15 - at a wedding in 1981...

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...hating the dress I was wearing because I had been told before we left the house that it was a dress for a slim person.

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The self-loathing started around then. I adored him and so wanted to please him, and felt so weak and pathetic because I couldn’t control my eating the way everybody around me seemed to be able to do. Going to a slimming club would feel like “coming out”, and I was so ashamed of the fact that I couldn’t do it by myself. My parents used to say on their sporadic visits from the southern hemisphere “you’re putting on weight you know” and “why aren’t you pregnant yet?”, my husband the same but differently “you know, people like one to be slim – you’re never loved in the same way if you’re fat” and “either get slim or get pregnant”.

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Get pregnant? And have another reason for blowing up like a balloon? With my history of dieting, the 7 pounds odd at the end of the nine months would be the only weight I would ever lose, and if he looked at me so disapprovingly now, what would it be like when I gradually inflated as in that deeply unpleasant Monty Python sketch where the diner in a restaurant gets bigger and bigger during the course of the meal and then explodes at the end in the most disgusting manner imaginable? That was me, only female. I wasn’t broody, I was far too scared of my own body spiralling out of control to want babies, and unbeknown to me at the time, too unloved to receive any help from him.

Picture № 16 - Another wedding in 1982,

a large and sumptuous affair

I was by chance standing next to actress Karen Dotrice when the official photographer came up and snapped us – I was mortified beyond belief that I had been photographed next to a very skinny celebrity, and the smile is totally fixed. I look at this picture now and my heart bleeds for the unhappy young woman who doesn’t look anywhere near as gross as she felt.
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And so I comforted myself in the usual way – the inevitable mash potato from childhood, in high calorie form, polenta ditto (not the posh, upper class and neatly shaped stuff you get served in restaurants with ‘jus’ and sun-dried wood shavings, but the nursery type of my childhood as made by my Italian grandmother, with full cream milk, lots of butter and melted cheese, the consistency of – yes – mash potato), and oh boy was I an expert on jam doughnuts. I could bore for England on what makes a first class jam doughnut… And even ice-cream - though after the joys of growing up with the wonderful ice-cream in Argentina introduced by Italian immigrants, where every village has several superb ice-cream parlours boasting 100 different flavours, British ice-cream was to me the absolute pits in those days. (In fact most people still adore the horrible liquid Styrofoam stuff squirted out into a peak which has been pumped full of air and chemicals, and with a chocolate flake in it. When I’m dictator I shall hang its inventor up from the highest tree. Sorry, I digress.)
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Then he’d have another go at me and the cycle would start all over again, with even more self-loathing. He was never angry or violent – he just gave the impression all the time of feeling deeply disappointed with me, and was always quiet.  Seen from this distance it was very unkind and uncaring, and the remarks were frequently made in front of other people. He offered to pay for me to go to a health spa for a holiday where I would be put on a diet, but was never willing to get involved personally in trying to help me. He clearly found overweight people generally repellent. I cried on the quiet and felt trapped by my own weaknesses. Friends around us were having babies but I wouldn’t even consider it.
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I was barely aware that the relationship was slowly deteriorating – and when I thought about it, I knew it to be my own fault. Like the proverbial stork however, I felt wedded for life and trusted that we would work our way through it.

Picture No. 17, 1983, at yet another wedding, of a friend

The body language speaks volumes here I think, and I could barely smile. I thought the white collar would show off my face, and the shawl is there because a poncho wasn’t smart – it was just another way to cover up.
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In 1977 on my wedding day I had weighed around 9 stone (126 lbs, 57 kilos). Now in 1983 I was about 11 stone (154 lbs, 70 kg). At my present size two stone doesn’t mean as much, and in fact I can’t wait to weigh 70 kg again, but at that stage of overweight, an increase of this magnitude is extremely noticeable, and I felt very ugly.
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Some years before I had found some pseudo-ephedrine pills at a chemist which didn’t require a prescription, and I used to take them on holiday so that my husband would think I was being very careful and restrained with my food intake, and be pleased. I didn’t take them all the time because I could see they were bad for me – they increased my heart rate and made my hands shake a bit, and worse still, I had noticed that they made me feel very anxious about silly, unimportant things. I eventually cut them out altogether for that reason.

Picture № 18, 1983, in Crete, aged 30

This one makes me cringe to remember – my husband took it when we were on a holiday in Crete with another (slim and very attractive) couple, and I have cut them out of the photo, on my left. It’s evening, we’ve just showered and are ready to go out for dinner. I’m standing apart from them, feeling totally alienated in a summer world where one is next to nude all day long, on the beach. The couple are recently married, all over each other, she’s gorgeous. She eats sparingly at dinner, my husband asks me why I can’t follow her example. I feel fat, self-conscious, and totally unloved. Ugh.
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By this point my parents had moved to Johannesburg, South Africa for a few years, and we planned to visit them in October 1984. I had managed to lose a stone or so (14 lbs, 6kg), but my husband issued me with an ultimatum – that after our two week visit I should get unpaid leave from work and stay on for a couple of months, losing weight under my mother’s watchful eye and attending regular aerobics classes. I simply had to lose the weight or there was no point in carrying on together.
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I was stunned, but resolute.
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(To be continued)

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-oOo-

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Chubby Chops - a life in pictures. Part 3

The Student
I arrived in England from Buenos Aires in August 1973, apprehensive, excited, scared, self-conscious, timid – but determined to get a university education. Relatives gave me moral support and pushed me gently in the right direction when I needed it.
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I worked for a year first as a Spanish Assistant in a comprehensive school in Surrey and joined an amateur South American folk group, Viracocha. Here we are, tastefully posed in front of a washing line.

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Picture № 7, early 1974, aged 20, with Viracocha (London)
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.I thought it was because I had played the Spanish guitar since the age of ten and had a repertoire of folk music and Joan Baez under my belt, but it turned out that they wanted me to play the bombo – a drum made of hide – and as I was the owner of a guitar and four ponchos, perhaps we could share them at gigs…

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Ulterior motives notwithstanding, they were a nice bunch, and remained my friends for many years. We played at student venues and only covered our travel costs; it was a very enjoyable time.

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The ponchos were of course my means of hiding what I regarded as an unsightly body – long hair for the top half, poncho for the rest.
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I went to the University of Bristol for three years to study Spanish and Portuguese, and was a late starter at learning how to cook in the various flats/apartments where I lived. (During teenage years I would have preferred “come into the kitchen to learn how to cook” rather than “go and tidy your room” - but I suppose I was too goody goody to voice the opinion.) Following frantic requests, Mum sent basic recipes by post, and I chose what I liked. How to make soup or brain fritters didn’t feature prominently among my new cooking skills, and neither did vegetables in my diet.

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Picture № 8, 1974, now 21, at Bristol University
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Mars bars did, however, and it was a bad omen that when I was eating one, my eyeballs would roll back and I would go into a sort of ecstatic trance... My student boyfriend didn’t seem to mind, but by 1975 I felt quite gross and had hated having to pose for this picture with fellow students, particularly when the other girl was so slim.
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The course required me to spend the summer of my second year working in Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries, and I was to have a wonderful time in Lisbon and Castellón de la Plana during the baking hot and dry summer of 1976 (remembered by all British people who are old enough) – but before my departure, I knew I needed to boost my confidence by losing weight. I read slimming magazines, learned all about calories, and put myself through a punishing routine, the only time I’ve been able to do this – presumably because it was the first time I had tried it. I lost about 10kg or so (this seems like small potatoes now, but it was a superhuman effort to me then).

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Picture № 9, Benicasim, Spain, aged 22, summer of 1976.

So, I was able to wear a bikini on the beach (only time ever!) and was keenly aware of feeling “normal”. I remember that sensation so well, and have longed ever since to recapture it. Boyfriend came out to join me and we travelled around northern Spain – a happy time.
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.The following term was difficult – I was having to catch up with studies because I had spent too much time enjoying myself, and my relationship started to founder.

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Picture № 10, Bristol, aged 23, autumn 1976

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With that came eating for comfort, and back to the poncho for camouflage – this picture was taken just a few months before we parted company, as the body language shows. I’m perfectly aware now that I was barely overweight at the time, but the lessons from my peers in Argentina had been well learned, and what I saw in the mirror was a fat person – in fact I used to try not to look in a full length mirror unless I absolutely had to. The mirror never lied, but my head told me otherwise.
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I wasn’t unhappy however – at this point my attitude towards overweight was still the usual (i.e. being able to talk about it out loud ...“ooh look at me I’m so fat, chocolate is my downfall” etc etc…), and more importantly, my approach to food was normal, i.e. a bit over-healthy, but no anxiety had crept in – that came later.

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Looking for pictures has forced me to remember things I didn’t even realise were in my sub-conscious back then, for example that top of the list of comfort foods was mash potato, the object of my dreams as a malnourished five year-old at boarding school.
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Meanwhile I was in my final year, and going back to counting calories put me in control once again (that word is always there with slimmers, isn’t it?)

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Picture № 11, aged 24, graduation in Bristol, July 1977.

Six months on by the summer of 1977 I had met my husband-to-be, got engaged and graduated in July. We were married in October, and he repented at leisure, but I’ll leave that for another day.

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Picture № 12, wedding, October 1977, Buenos Aires

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Meanwhile I started to feel self-conscious again when he told me on our return from honeymoon that at 63 kg I was just too heavy - I had thought I was OK…
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(To be continued)

.-oOo-

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Chubby Chops - a life in pictures. Part 2

Picture № 6: Aged 19, February 1973,

Buenos Aires, at my sister's wedding

Words to a 19 year old

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Plans were in progress for me to travel to Britain later that year to work for a year and then go to university. It was an exciting time for me, and full of dreams. As bridesmaid I adored the floaty long dress in shades of turquoise which I was wearing. There were paua shell earrings to match, and in my hair, specially waved for the occasion, an antique brooch turned into a hairclip fashioned from iridescent blue butterfly wings. You can’t see that I also wore a gold chain round my neck with a medal given to me by my godmother – it had my name on one side, and the date of my confirmation on the other. Nor can you see the pink topaz ring on my left hand, a gift from my father on my 17th birthday. I was very proud to be dancing with him at the time when the photographer took the picture. My father died in 2004, and I no longer have the jewellery, as it was stolen from my home in March this year.

I came upon the picture recently while looking through my Mother’s massive collection of photographs, and thirty-six years on I am struck by the confident innocence on the face of a person who seems far removed from myself, another entity. I got to thinking what I would have said to her if I could somehow have spoken to her across the time divide…

Her heart: Naturally what interested her most at the time was romance – not men, not sex – just romance, though she pretended it was her academic future, of course. She knew she would meet a wonderful man – probably English, perhaps in uniform, heart-achingly handsome and a bit like the soldier in the film Ryan’s Daughter – and because in life (as she saw it) one had only one bite at the cherry, it would be a very important decision, and thereafter they would live in happiness and fidelity for the rest of their lives. Now I would want to tell her gently that she had a lot of toughening up to do, because her heart would be broken three times, and each time it would feel that life was not worth living, and that she would never recover. But it was and she would, and in fact she was going to have harder battles to fight. I would have told her that it’s much simpler to understand what makes a man tick than it does a woman, and that it was important that from the beginning she should command respect from them for her feelings, even if it meant they thought she was unfriendly. I would have begged her to be patient, and take her time before choosing, and that despite parental disapproval, living with someone before marriage was the only real way to make the most informed choice.

Her head: She thought a university degree meant an equal opportunity to have a successful career – she had never stopped to think that in her home environment she had been a bigger fish in a smaller pond. In Argentina she was the younger daughter of the headmistress of an English school, where she had been taught to love books and write well in two languages. In England, this merely meant that she was being the same as everybody else she mixed with, and her innocence was even more overwhelming than she could have foreseen. With no one around to offer advice, her confidence suffered. I wish I could have told her not to be timid, that though no better than anyone else, she was no worse either, and could have sought advice so that she didn’t automatically settle for secretarial work after graduation. I would also have told her firmly not to feel or be over-respectful towards working colleagues just because they were senior to her, or male.

Her body: The hardest of all battles – peer pressure. In Buenos Aires the pressure to be very slim, and to be as attractive as possible to catch a partner (by whatever means), was immense. Even here at nineteen she felt overweight. Sadly the combination of the two factors set the pattern for the rest of her life. It was unfortunate that she hadn’t been taught to enjoy exercise, and her journey to obesity was a very predictable one. I would have told her to be kinder to herself, to discover her own self-worth, and know that self-improvement, if it is to work, must be for yourself, not for anybody else. Most important of all I would tell her to fight back, and not to allow herself to be treated as a failure.

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Herself: But… though the journey to self-knowledge is never easy, I would want her to know that you get there in the end. Being loved gives you confidence, loving makes you brave, but unhappiness eventually brings both a new kind of strength and gratitude for all that is good in our lives. It helps you get everything into perspective because you become harder to impress, and less prone to embarrassment. You learn how to protect yourself against the hurt.

Decent medical help for the obese was bound to come sooner or later. I’m so very glad for the sake of that nineteen year old that it came within her lifetime.

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(to be continued)

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-oOo-

Chubby Chops – a life in pictures. Part 1

Perhaps this is more for me than for you. Sometimes it helps to sort out where it all started. If you feel a yawn coming on you can just look at the pictures…
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<< Picture № 1: 1956, aged 2 ½

Probably the one time in one’s life when it’s OK to have a double chin! I (um) grew into my ears later on….

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(I've just noticed when uploading the post that this picture has a lot of similarities with the 2009 blog profile picture over on the right - look at the fringe and double chin!! Hey, the gap is only 53 years...)
Picture № 2: 1957, aged 4 >>.

I don’t remember this picture being taken, and yet I can tell you the dress was blue and white and – er – clearly not my best one. Summers are hot in Argentina, and so was my grandmother’s patio. Cruel haircut!

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This was my last summer before I followed my older sister to boarding school for three years. It was 200 km SW of Buenos Aires along a dirt road that was a permanent, rut-filled, sticky mud bath and took my parents several stressful hours each way to make their permitted monthly “Parents Day” visit, and was managed by a British couple who understood very little about running a school for children under 11. There were 36 of us in the school, and only two classrooms, so the forms were separated by being put at different tables. Consequently I learned little, and only understood this many years later when I struggled in vain to keep up with my contemporaries at new schools, and finally recovered at 13 when I repeated a year. Bullying was unchecked, and in my first year I was 5 years old and knew little about defending myself. One particularly sharp memory is of being chased up a tree by some boys, and being held prisoner there for a very long time (a couple of hours perhaps) during which I shook with terror and tried not to whimper. My sister left at the end of that year to return to Buenos Aires and go to a senior school. I had to toughen up quickly after that...

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However the main problem with the school was the food – or the lack of it. They didn’t believe in mollycoddling us, and clearly thought they were feeding us enough to live on but nothing extra. Food brought by families on Parents Day sometimes got shared out later, sometimes not. I used to dream about mash potato dripping with butter – great mountains of it, which I would try to climb…

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<< Picture № 3: 1960, aged 7
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Two years into my time there and this picture was taken for an ID card to enable me to travel to Uruguay for a winter holiday. I was overjoyed to be out with my father having my fingerprints taken, and couldn’t stop grinning. My weight was right down from three years earlier, the skin drawn tight over my cheekbones, and I remember I used to lose a lot of hair. The untidy and severe looking alice band I wore was to stay in place for many years…

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During the winter and summer holidays (1 and 3 months respectively) I’d return to Buenos Aires deliriously happy to be home, and Mum would comment that I looked peaky, and would feed me up and deny me nothing. It wasn’t until three years had gone by that a doctor told her that my ailments were caused by malnutrition, and that I should be removed from the school straight away.

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Picture № 4: 1963, aged 10, at my new school back in Buenos Aires
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A set-up shot, where I’m supposed to be pointing at Argentina, but actually I’ve got my finger on Brazil….

The stoking up after the malnourished years has taken its toll: three heaped spoonfuls of sugar in hot drinks, many repeat helpings of mash potato later, and I’m fast turning into a little butter ball with a proper double chin. The good old alice band brings out the chubby face even further.

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<< Picture № 5: 1967, aged 14, wearing the school uniform of my secondary school

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The four intervening years were a constant battle to be as slim as my school friends, (it’s so important not to stand out when you’re that age, isn’t it?) and I was a bit on the chunky side and painfully self-conscious, hence the look into the middle distance. I was under the impression that long hair would make me look slimmer, so I was forever pulling it forward to cover my face, as you can see.

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I'll carry on next time.

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(To be continued)

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-oOo-

Go to Part 2                                      Return to most recent post

LasagnaGate...

Reading Tina's entry today about her adventures with a lasagna yesterday has reminded me of mine last Thursday, the day after my fifth fill.

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We were going to the theatre in Clevedon with friends, and decided to have dinner in a pub on the sea front first. By ordering lasagna I thought that by sticking to minced beef I would ensure that I wouldn't have a problem .

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The only three careful mouthfulls I had weren't careful enough, and I trotted downstairs to the ladies (where they had run out of toilet paper...) three times before we had to leave to get to the theatre. My friends were full of sympathy, but I felt physically and psycologically awful, as if I were a secret bulimic.

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The little local theatre we headed for wasn't letting us into the auditorium till 10 minutes before the show, so we all queued patiently in a long, winding, orderly and very British trail stretching outside and across the street, all chatting amicably about how lucky we were with the weather because queueing in the rain would not have been very nice...

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And suddenly I knew that I absolutely had to get to the toilet again. I muttered this very quietly to John and asked him if he could lead me inside and find out where it was. My knight had (fortunately) left his white charger at home, but he might as well have unsheathed his sword and snapped back the visor of his helmet, because to my unspeakable embarrassment he forged a path through the tightly queuing throng as if he needed to part the waters of the Red Sea (have you ever tried to break into a British queue?) calling at the top of his voice as he dragged me behind him "EXCUSE ME, WE MUST GET THROUGH, MY GIRLFRIEND IS FEELING VERY ILL AND SHE MUST GET TO THE TOILET STRAIGHT AWAY" - not once, but over and over, as politely horrified people stumbled back in haste and looked at me to check for leprosy. Even in my efforts not to throw up in front of them I tried to grin weakly, rolling my eyes, and say "OK John, I think they get the picture".

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A year ago and earlier I think the embarrassment would have been the stronger feeling - I would have been mortified, despite the kindness which inspired the gesture. But you know what? Take a bow, blogger friends, because having read about your experiences over the last six months I understood this was normal, part of the price I have to pay to get to where I want to be. So what the hell. An abortive dinner and five PB's later, I enjoyed the show, and the following morning I had lost 1.5lbs.

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Tonight at home the spaghetti bolognaise I prepared for dinner has had the same effect. So OK, I get the message. Pasta is the problem and I'll avoid it from now on.

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So to all the non-bandits who think I've got something infectious when they see me looking bilious: leave me alone. I paid a lot of money to feel this uncomfortable.

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Fifth fill - 8.5 ml

Since my fourth fill in May it's begun to feel a little more the way it ought to. I felt quite strong restriction during the first two weeks and three pounds came off relatively easily, without much willpower involved at all. I hoped from that point the weight loss would speed up a bit - at the present rate of a kilo a month I wouldn't reach my target for nearly 4 years! In week 3 it slowed down and combined with occasions when I knew I was swallowing more calories than usual - not bingeing, I can't do that any more, but I was consuming high calorie foods because it was such a relief not to PB. Last Sunday I finally weighed myself and was horrified to note I was up by 4lbs.

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I resorted to that-wot-I-shouldn't: I still had in my medicine drawer from 2005 some Leptos purchased on the internet from Vanuatu (!). The active ingredient is sibutramine hydrochloride monohydrate, which seems to act on brain receptors - if I've understood correctly - to tell them I'm not hungry. It doesn't have any speeding up effect like any other slimming pill I've taken, it works superbly on day 1, considerably less on day 2, and so on. Articles I've read do not recommend because it can affect blood pressure etc, and when you stop, your brain seems to work harder to make up lost ground. So not a good idea overall, and I'm definitely not recommending them - just telling you about it.

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Spookily it also had the effect of restricting me a bit - so in addition to the help provided by 14 lengths in the pool, I managed to lose the 4lbs in 3 days and it showed on the scales at the hospital yesterday when I attended for my fifth fill. I must be prepared for this next month and not resort to pills again.

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This visit was one of the least comfortable - it took them three goes before they found the port. I've noticed that when I'm in pain I'm usually 'brave' enough not to make any sound, but I have no control whatsoever over the expressions on my face, and I must have screwed it up something rotten, because they kept apologising! OK today though.

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I now have an extra half ml - 8.5ml in my band altogether. As expected I can't eat much and took most of the morning to eat my half cheese sandwich. Bread is still possible, but oh so slowly.

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I asked the bariatric nurse yesterday about the EasyBand, and to my surprise she knew about it, but very little - for example she thought that the patient controlled the remote which loosens or tightens the band, and didn't know if it was available in the UK (I think it is, but for now confined to one company who have exclusivity, so one would probably have only one location where it was fitted). All bandit bloggers by definition don't need to know about all this, as they're already "sorted", but in the interests of keeping informed of new developments in this amazing technology I thought it worth while mentioning.

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Ever heard of the “EasyBand”?

This is a TAGB - a Telemetric Adjustable Gastric Band - available in the UK under the brand name EasyBand.

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I'm certainly not advertising it of course, as I know nothing about it other than what I found out this week by Googling, but in principle it sounds like the best of all worlds. There are no fills, everything is done by remote control - I attach some blurb I found below.

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My own comment: surely it's therefore just a matter of time before they make one which we can control ourselves with our own remote? Imagine that - with a zap you loosen it a bit if you're uncomfortable or you want to enjoy eating out without restriction, then another zap and you're back on the straight and narrow.... I feel like Mr Toad in the children's book Wind in the Willows, who as Toad of Toad Hall is a rich landowner, always on the lookout for a new vehicle that's smarter and faster... (parp parp!)

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"A remotely controllable gastric banding device for placement around the stomach of a patient for the treatment of obesity. The device comprises a gastric band having an inflatable chamber for adjusting the inner circumference of the band, a pressurized reservoir with a valve for providing fluid to inflate the inflation chamber, a valve for releasing fluid from the inflatable chamber, and a controller for controlling the valves. The controller is remotely controllable from outside the patient.

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The new band - the EasyBand - is adjusted electronically. It consists of a silicone tube containing a metal loop instead of salt water. The tube also has a computer chip linked to a tiny motor (the size of a 10p piece).

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Once the band is in place, a wire attached to it is fed up through the body and into the chest. On the end of the wire is a tiny receiver, which sits just underneath the skin by the breastbone.

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To tighten EasyBand, a doctor presses a button on the handheld gadget. This sends a signal down a wire to a transmitter placed on the patient's chest.

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The signal is picked up by the receiver implanted in the body and forwarded to the microchip. The chip activates a miniature engine that tightens the band and reduces the size of the stomach.

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Information on the band's diameter is beamed back to the control unit, allowing the doctor to control any changes."
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Instructions to self

Some thoughts that are helping me to cope with the long road to what I perceive to be normality – in no particular order (and not including the E word, as I should, but that’s just my own foible. Go to the gym if you must…)

1. Patience – it won’t happen overnight. It took a long time to get myself into this mess. In any case it’s best that it’s slow, as it means less saggy skin, and gives my brain and body more time to get accustomed to the new regime, which will probably last the rest of my life. Better to have pitfalls along the way, and forgive myself for them – I can allow myself this luxury now without getting blue about it because the band will still be there the day after the pitfall. No morning-after pill necessary…

2. Calm down, slow down – no point getting in a state about body image, failure to eat the right things, indignation that the band isn’t actually padlocking my jaws together for me. Forget willpower, if I just slow down and think for a cotton-picking second, it will work. Maybe I haven’t reached the right fill, maybe I’m still stubbornly going to the supermarket and throwing certain things into the trolley which I know are anti-band, such as confectionery, snacks and crisps. Just think: if I cut those off my impulse shopping list, I could safely leave in my favourite main meal foods, in the knowledge that the band will take care of my not having too much of them. I can no longer gorge, gobble, bolt my food – the degree of physical pleasure has changed. I must slow down my eating process, and see how it starts to work. OK, so I may still PB, but nobody said this was going to be pain-free…

3. Promise myself I won’t go hungry – not get anxious about food. Think about ‘head hunger’ – why I feel it, what triggers it. Talk about it to John to bring it out into the open. If I’m still hungry promise myself a bit more after 15 minutes if I still want it.

4. Don’t weigh myself too often – I don’t need to. In the bad old days I would have liked to weigh myself three times a day if I could get away with it, and I’d punch the air in triumph – yessssss! – and that would encourage me to keep at it. Well now I know that with a few simple rules it’ll happen anyway, and if I tip-toe onto the scales too often (holding on to something, then slooooowly letting go…) and there’s no change, I'll get all despondent and whine at the first person I see afterwards.

5. Comfort eating: meet it head on – I’m unhappy, fed up, whatever, and in the past I’d immediately reach for a treat (deadly word) or a food that took me back to safe childhood, when adults told me it was OK to have it. Think this one through; ask myself if there are any other activities which could be used as substitutes. For me, eating is primarily a physical pleasure, and it’s possible that there aren’t that many available to each of us – our lives are all different. So try this for size: what works for me sometimes (Little Miss Perfect I ain’t) is to sit somewhere comfortably, preferably with very little light, totally alone, and daydream about the time ahead – which will come – when I’m at the weight I want to be. What will my party dress be like, how will I feel when I walk into a room, how will it change my approach to people I find difficult, how would it feel to find myself on a stage, what clothes would I now wear to feel and look sexy? Will I have a tummy tuck? Laser eye surgery to chuck out those spectacles? Teeth whitening? A skin peel to improve my complexion? A radical haircut or tint? Or the best fantasy – how will I now flirt with someone I fancy? The list is endless.

6. Distraction – there are days at work when there’s so much on that I’m surprised to find I haven’t thought much about food, and as a result have begun to appreciate the value of finding a project that will (a) keep me far from the kitchen and (b) thinking of other things. In the old days the tyranny of diets meant that I was obsessed with food all day long, when I was next going to eat, how many calories could I allow myself, etc. Then one day about 15 years ago I thought ‘enough’, I was sick to death of thinking of food. I stopped dieting, and almost immediately discovered a passion for photography which absorbed me completely. For a long time I didn’t gain weight at all – I was always out and about, trying out new techniques, joining a camera club, talking about F stops… but gradually I must have started to eat more, because slowly the weight started to creep up again. I should at this point have found something else to keep me busy, and I didn’t. Blogging is brilliant for this, by the way.

7. Know that the band is working without my having to remind it to do so, and I am comforted and cheered by the thought. So now all I need is patience, which is where we came in…

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