A month or so ago I stood on the scales, got off, checked the settings... yep, kilos, not pounds.... hmmmm. I was the heaviest I’d ever been not pregnant. Well, maybe I was pregnant! That would explain a tightening I’d felt around the waist band. A pregnancy test confirmed that I was just fat.
A few other things fell into place and I found myself in the weight loss ZONE. Currently, 6 kgs down 6 to go.
Exercise of course plays a part in flab reduction. My exercise of choice is walking and I can walk faster and longer each week. Certainly faster and longer than I’ve been able to manage since May last year when I ruptured a disc in my spine (that story another time...). So, walking, in public... I needed some exercise clothes! Nice outfits that blended in with other people out walking, jogging, riding. Not the daggy comfies I wear around the house. I’d seen some tops I’d liked in the window at Lorna Jane. So in I went, motivated and psyched up ready to try on and buy!
The girl (for surely she was 12) behind the counter took me in with a glance from toe to head but forgot to look me in the eye. I was determined not to be intimidated (I did, however, feel a quiver in my hackles). Another retail child slave, obviously under nourished, approached me, smiling with vacant effervescence and said,
‘HI! What have you been up to today?’
Well, I ask you. What a question. It really is just plain rude. What if you’ve just had the most terrible day? Or, worse, nothing, I’m doing nothing, just another day of same old same old, thanks for reminding me of my boring, fat life. I was being uncharitable, she WAS only being nice, but I was a whale in minnow land. A grumpy whale.
‘Not much, just a bit of shopping!’ I beamed. Oh the effort.
‘That sounds like fun!’ Yeah, right, why aren’t you at school?
I assured her that I was ‘just looking’ and started a tentative wander around the lycra laden store. Except for the BLARING MUSIC (I must be getting old) there was only silence and the sound of clinking clothes hangers as I worked my way to the back of the rack looking for the XL. None.
I turned to Bubbles and asked, with all the courage I could muster, ‘Do you do an extra large?’
‘No’, she said, ‘but we do an extra small.’
That doesn’t help me, love.
When I’m skinny I’ll go back, Pretty Woman style and say, ‘Do you work on commission? Big, big mistake. Huge.’
And, no, I don’t have a photo for this post.
