Friday 24 August 2012

Big Bird. Week Four. Smoke and Mirrors

My mind says I’m in my twenties but my body says, “Yeah, you wish.”
Is it just me or does anyone else have a love/hate relationship with mirrors in changing rooms.  Especially the ones that have the three way mirrors.  You go in with your selected “this is gonna make me look skinny” outfit, try it on and then get a load of your rear end/hips/tummy/bust or indeed all five (yes five!!!  I still haven’t figured out where the fifth bulge comes from but it’s there!) And want to put your foot through the image in the mirror.   This is the hate mirror.  I hate the way it makes me look when I felt alright about myself before I tried on that damn outfit.  Sometimes this mirror also reflects three small children by my side and I hear the fourth one laughing away in his buggy as Mister Husband distracts him.  I seldom get into a changing room alone; it’s as if the boys are making me face up to the fact that it is because of them, because I am a mother, my body will never be the same again.  Making me realise I should be realistic and put down the size 12 and pick up the size 14.  I have a healthy body image.  I reckon I do, at least.  Yes, sometimes when I remember I’ll suck in my tummy.  Most times though I have a small child on my hip and I can shift him around a little bit so he hides that nice soft area for me, thank you very much, Screecher Creature.  I do not intend to spend the rest of my life struggling with my weight, I refuse to count calories.  In fact, I haven’t got the first idea about them, or “sins” or “points.”  I pretty much eat what I like but I do try to be sensible about it.  Yes, there are days when I give the finger to “sensible” and eat a small child’s body weight in junk food.  But if I want to have that slice of cake after dinner, I usually go right ahead and have it.   Back to those funfair mirrors.  The love part of the mirror relationship is when they make me look lovely, slim me right down, some of them even give me high cheek bones, but when I get home it’s a different story.  The cheeks are back to their usual roundy pudginess and the ones that I could have sliced cheese on are left behind in the shop. Where I should have left the outfit as well.  Is it the lighting in there or what because those trousers sure didn’t look like that in the shop. Mannequins have a lot to answer for.  I see something on a plastic, unrealistically proportioned androgynous thing in the window and for some reason I reckon it’s going to look like that on me.  I know immediately when something isn’t going to fit.  With trousers, my thighs are the telling point.  Midway up I know by the hesitancy of the garment to go any further if I need to abandon the mission.  Similarly when trying on something that needs to go on over my head.  My head is never the problem; it’s getting it down over the tops of my arms that can cause major panic.  I remember trying to try on, or attempting to try on, a dress.  It reached that point of no return on the tops of my arms and I should have listened to it.  But I didn’t.  I thought if I could just pull it down a tiny bit more, I’d be home and dry.  I wasn’t.  I got stuck.  Arms held rigid over my head with the dress handcuffing them in place.  Half of it covering my face.  I couldn’t see, I found it impossible to move and suddenly, increasingly difficult to breathe.  I thought I was going to die and my thoughts immediately turned to what kind of underwear I was wearing.  Were they clean?  Did they match?  Did they match?   I am the mother of four kids, my underwear never matches!  I had to borrow my labour breathing technique.  This is different from regular breathing.  With regular breathing, you just, well, you breathe.  But with birth breathing, you kind of huff and puff and pant a little bit.  And try not to hyperventilate.  I could feel beads of sweat starting to break out on my forehead and the tops of my arms were starting to go a bit numb.  It was only about a minute but it felt like time had stood still.  Not only was I going to die from suffocation by a dress, the event was going to end up on YouTube.  I have this little paranoid fear that a perv has stashed a camera into the ceiling over the changing cubicles and is recording women in various stages of undress.  I usually tell myself that I’m no-one’s demographic but dying inside a dress might earn him some money if he sent in his video tape to one of those Candid Camera TV shows.  Well, stranger things have been known to happen.  I forced myself to calm down and managed to shoehorn myself out of the dress.  Anyone in the cubicle next to mine would have been forgiven for thinking I was giving birth with all the grunting and groaning I was doing.  I also managed to tear the dress a little bit.  Just a little bit.  As all the best midwives say, “just a stitch or two and you’ll be as good as new.”  Same thing with the dress.  You should have seen the state of me, however.  A lovely red line gouged into my forehead from where the dress got stuck.   I make sure I listen to my arms, and my thighs, these days whenever I am trying anything on.  You will see from my log below that I seem to be going backwards instead of forwards.  ‘Tis most annoying.  Looks like I may start getting strict with myself or I’ll never shift that half stone.  But, the odd thing is, my shape seems to be changing.  I managed to fit into a size 12 trousers this week.  I had to put it back though as despite being able to close it up and move (a little bit) in it, I knew even a sip of water would make me regret wearing it.  Nearly there but no dice.  I’m still doing my weights in the mornings and evenings and I think next week I will up the reps a bit to make it more challenging.  The evenings are closing in now too and pretty soon my runs will be weekend events only.    I am trying to make the most of them while I can.  Stay good!
August 2012 - eleven stone three and a half pounds.                                                                                     9th August – eleven stone.                                                                                                                                   16th August - eleven stone and half a pound.                                                                                                 23rd August – eleven stone and three quarters of a pound. (only a quarter of a pound but still)                                                                                                                                               





 

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