Self-image 2: mirror mirror

Like Wendy, I have availed myself of the services of a personal trainer. I’ve been going for four or five weeks and I really like it.

This morning, he asked me to do some step-ups on the PowerPlate, which is a strange vibrating sort of step. You do the same things on the PowerPlate that you would on a step like what Wendy has, except that the vibratingness works your core muscles (not like that!) and improves your balance, strength and posture. I had to put one foot on the step, lift myself up off my back foot so that I was balancing on the foot on the step, and then raise two dumbbells up above my head and back to shoulder level, then step back down, then do it again. (I am not describing this very well.)

I may be fat but I’m still in pretty good nick. STOP LECTURING ME.

Okay look this is really just a Sunday morning rant. I have noticed that people who are slim sort of assume, without thinking about it, that they are healthier than people who are fat.

I’m not sure that that is strictly true.

Yesterday morning the internet shopping arrived.

(a) Natural yogurt, cured ham, light cheddar, Philadelphia light. Cornichons, olives, onions in brine. Chopped tomatoes, fresh wholewheat pasta, tins of soup and beans.

(b) Fresh salad leaves, cucumber, aubergine, green peppers, skinless chicken breasts, neck fillet of lamb, lean mince, tofu.

(c) Ham and cheese pastry slices, steak pies, Scotch eggs, bacon, full-fat sausages, Meat Feast Pizza, chocolate-cream-filled profiteroles and a fresh cream Victoria Sandwich.

This is shopping for me (Licensed Porketeer), my mother (overweight) and my little brother (5′11 and 9 stone soaking wet).

So who’s going to eat what?

Mrs Oldlady would have been so proud

I fell in love with pilates last year.

I feel bad - like I’m going about this all arse over tit, actually (not pilates you should feel good if you manage to get arse over tit in pilates because it is how some of the positions are performed). I feel bad because, in order to do this blog right, I feel like I should be starting from the beginning and relating to you what it was that made me start wanting to lose weight, how I feel about being a woman naturally prone to podginess, how I worked very hard to get rid of several stone and how I’m so unbelievably annoyed that I’m stuck at the last third of the way that I could just spit. All those things I need to talk about; but they’ll come in time - I just need to get the disappointment of today off my chest first.

See, I fell in love with pilates last year - I found a class in London, in a drafty church hall near work, with a nice northern woman who walked constantly around the class, placing calming hands on trembling backs and correcting tiny wrongnesses, occasionally saying ‘Good!’. After two weeks I noticed that my gym workouts - mainly based on boring cardio and fixed weight training - were becoming more effective, all due to the focussed muscle-toning powers of the mighty and simple pilates, and my mighty and marvellous teacher. In the third week she told me I was a natural, and had a ‘very strong core’ and I immediately decided I loved her and texted my beloved informing him I was becoming a lesbian and leaving him for a bendy northerner. Sadly, she had to leave the class to save the world elsewhere, and shortly after the class came to an end. Then I went freelance and …well, the story gets a bit dull for about a year after that. Needless to say, though, I evangelised the miracle of pilates wherever I went.

And then I went to another class today. And promptly fell out of love again.
You can find out why if you like by clicking