If weight loss is a journey, where am I going?

My husband had to leave for work at 5am today. He tries to be quiet but at that time in the morning even applying roll-on deodorant is loud. Try as I might I couldn’t go back to sleep.

I’ve categorised Fat Tart as a diet blog, so in a spirit of comraderie I thought I’d take my unexpected awake time and use it to look at some diet bloggers. There are hundreds of them. So many hundreds that there are helpful lists; 100 best diet bloggers, 100 best paleo diet bloggers and on and on. Without exception they are much more helpful than this Fat Tart. You will find a plethora of tips, kindly advice, aspirational text, diet food to buy and exercises to do. But for all that I was a little depressed by these bloggers who lay bare their souls, their misery, self loathing, self doubt and their ‘journey’ to a more positive, better, healthier, happier them. Many of them blogging as a full time job!? How does that work? Anyhow I was left wondering why I don’t consider my weight loss and soon to be fitness regime ‘a journey’. I’m not going anywhere. When I’m thinner and healthier I imagine I will still be me. As an adult I have been very slim and I’ve been very fat, and from the inside looking out my world looks pretty much the same.

So is the ‘journey’ referred to by virtually all diet blogs more about what other people see? It must be hard to live life with the pressure of living up to other people’s aesthetic expectations. I think this is where my out look is different, I don’t put much store in what people think of me, I aim for a do no harm approach to life, I like to be helpful, I would be ashamed if I was cruel. What people think of me probably says at least as much about them as it does about me. I have a friend who says that my lack of regard for the opinions of others regarding my behaviour, how I look etc, is arrogant and anti social but I’ll let you imagine what I think about that! We all see others through a filter. I obviously view the world through my filter. When I was young I didn’t think that how I looked was the most interesting thing about me. Now middle aged I don’t consider the way I look to be the most interesting thing about me. I am light hearted (if heavy arsed) and I’m not going anywhere but I do hope to be slimmer and more healthy in the near/middle future.