Rolling back the years

I had a strange thought earlier, that I'm quite literally rolling back the years with this weight loss malarkey. It's quite a nice thought really. At the current time I weigh about the same that I weighed in my gap year, which was in 1999 / 2000. Once I've lost another stone, I'll be back into my sixth-form years 1998/1999. About a month ago, I was the same as my final year at uni, which was 2003. But I feel more confident than I did at any of those times. I also look better if I'm honest, and think I will always continue to do so, no matter how much smaller I get.

I was definitely a late bloomer in the style-stakes - I spent years wandering round in the sartorial wilderness before I finally stumbled across a clue, made it all my own and started to use it. I clearly remember the day at uni that I came across a gorgeous, long, funnel-necked cream wool coat in the sales after Christmas. I looked at it. I coveted it. And I was scared of how damned impractically, screamingly, decadently look-at-me it was. I put it on and I felt glamorous. And I think that is that moment that my shopping addiction started. I blame that coat because it made me feel good, and every subsequent shopping trip was an attempt to capture that feeling again.

The problem I now find is that whilst I found it hard to accept that at the time I was getting too big for my clothes, I'm finding it even harder to get my head round the fact that I'm getting smaller again. I walk straight past shops where in theory there might now be clothes that fit me, because I've still got my big-girl mentality firmly on. Weird. When I take in stuff to try on in my new slightly smaller size, I half expect the sales girl at the changing room to scoff and ask if I'm sure I don't want to try that in a bigger size. The only thing I can do is keep chipping away at the weight, and know that one day, when I've tried on everything there is to try in this smaller size and it's fitted, I'll accept that that is what I am now ... and then presumably I'll have to start the same battle all over again with my brain over the next size!

I guess I'm feeling pretty chipper (I love that word!!) this morning because the scales say that I've dropped down by another half a lb since weigh in Monday, and everything I lose now feels like new territory. It's not obviously, because I had to go through it on the way to getting bigger, but it's been so long since I was here, that it feels new. Everything I lost until I got to 14 and a half stone was the weight I'd lost in my final year at uni, and was then revisited again when I moved home from London in 2005, so it felt like it was the same old ground, covered in the footprints of my previous visits. I guess to continue the metaphor, this ground hasn't been visited in so long that the previous outward bound footprints have blown away and I can tread a new determined set in the virgin territory. One small step for weight loss, one giant leap for Sue. :o)

p.s. the couscous tasted just as good the second time round. Yum.