Is there such a thing as being too honest?

I've been thinking about this on and off during the day. Which is bad as I really should have been doing some work!!! I really must transfer some of my WW's enthusiasm over to my work-life. Anyway, I digress.


I've been mulling over how honest one should be in a blog, especially one that's visible to other people. I mean the whole point of keeping this diary is so that I can note down things I learn about myself as I go along, which would really point to being 100% honest, but what if the truth is so ugly it's embarrassing. Looking back at my post last night and my ridiculous feelings of resentment at my flatmate taking up WW's I cringe - I could well come out of this exercise not liking myself very much if I'm not careful! It's strange, it's kind of cathartic putting it all down on paper (well on theoretical cyber-paper ... you know what I mean) - all those things that are bottled up in your head and you can't or won't say to those around you. At the same time I worry that the few people who read this, and who have been so wonderfully sympathetic up til now, will start to get fed up with the real me - the neuroses, the trivial anxieties, the self-centred-world-revolves-around-me-ness of it all - and will deservedly tell me to get a life and stop rambling.


I just started reading the Dietgirl blog earlier - I've started from the beginning, as although I know what the outcome is (a staggering 12.5st loss for anyone who's not come across Dietgirl), I really want to read her journey from the beginning. It's heartbreaking reading her opening entry; she writes with such brutal honesty and so descriptively, that you can imagine yourself there in the WW's meeting on the first night looking at the scales in terror, thinking they're not going to be able to weigh you because you're too heavy for them. It brings back every moment when the same feelings of fear and humiliation have bubbled up in me - going climbing with friends in France and being terrified that they wouldn't have a harness big enough, and the well-meaning but unsubtle lady at the costumes department at the theatre - following my enquiry as to whether they might have any Marilyn Monroe style dresses in the wardrobe she just looked me up and down and said "Not in your size, my love". It's hard to keep your head held high in those moments, when the blush is burning your cheeks and you just want to hide in the corner.


I think the real reason that Dietgirl makes such an impact is it is warts and all. You see, I don't want to read a story of someone's effortless journey to goal, or be told how easy it is and how perfect they are - I want someone to put the blunt truth out there and force me to look at it and accept it - that it's not going to be easy, that there will be hard times, despair, disillusionment and upset along the way, but that ultimately it is achievable because other people have done it. Other people, not so very different from myself. I want to see how they coped, and read that I'm not the only one having these experiences. I want to celebrate their successes with them so I'll know what I've got to look forward to, and to learn their coping mechanisms for when the going's not so good. Most of all - when I'm feeling isolated because I don't think anyone else in the world can ever have gone through what I'm going through - it's nice to remind myself that I'm not alone.


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Oh, and for anyone wondering - although I nearly turned round and went back to the car about 50 times before we even started, I did get to the cliff face and the harness did fit (that's me in the grey and red top) ....












.... and whilst they didn't have a Marilyn Monroe dress, I made a substitute with something I already had. The occasion was for a Children's TV themed party - I went as Miss Piggy ...