**DISCLAIMER: THIS IS A PERSONAL POST! YOU MIGHT NOT BE INTERESTED!!**
But its my blog, so tough shit.

Tonight I have returned from my first full week (in quite a long time) following the Weight Watchers diet. The good news is that I had a pretty easy week (didn't feel too hard done by) and lost a whopping 4 pounds.

Clearly I've been fat for quite some time, so why have I finally decided that now's the time to do something about it? I guess there are a few reasons for this.

The first is fairly normal. My clothes were getting tighter. Now at my heaviest I was a size 24, occasionally having to buy a 26. When I lost weight last time, more than 4 years ago now, I swore to myself that I'd never get there again. Currently, I'm a size 22, but when my size 22 trousers start leaving marks where the seams press into my legs, it means its nearly time to start buying bigger trousers.

Secondly was the boring numbers. I occasionally popped onto the scales at the gym, and could see that it was wavering around where it was when I decided to take things into my hands last time - my heaviest weight. I tried to ignore it, telling myself that my regular gym attendance would start sorting that out. But of course I was still eating far too much of the wrong stuff, mostly out of laziness, so this just wasn't happening. If you move more, but don't eat less, it generally won't have the desired effect - but its easy to keep hoping, rather than doing.

Lastly is the most personal reason, and the one that is most difficult to talk about because it involves a real change in our future. I've known for some time that I want to have kids. David has agreed we can try for one, and we're arranging our lives around that, with the move and everything. However, neither of us wants children at the expense of my life, and I am aware that there is considerable medical risk in getting pregnant at my (not to be revealed) weight. That's a hard thing for someone who makes a real effort to live her life regardless of her size to admit to, but there it is. Anyway, we agreed that we wouldn't even start trying until I lost 4 stone. And I will.

I think it is sometimes hard for people who haven't been significantly overweight to realise how it feels to take off at least part of the self-protective confidence that you project to cover the fact that you're fat. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying its all a facade. It was once, but if you spend long enough being fat, and still caring how you look, you learn to make the best of things, which gives you some genuine confidence to keep for yourself. What I am saying, is that making the effort to start watching what I am eating, is admitting that I am not entirely happy with myself, and that's a hard thing to do.

Its also hard, as someone who loves her job, and works hard to be taken seriously in a male-dominated world, to admit that I want kids, that its important to me. I know that in making that decision I'm going to essentially cut myself off from a large part of what is currently my life, as a lot of my social interactions - almost entirely with David - will be impossible to keep up. The decision's been made though, and it won't be many years before I (at least try to) make it happen. This doesn't mean I'm giving up on building the company though.

Anyway. This week I took the first step on that road. The step to being healthier and towards starting a family. 4 pounds is a lot for one week, but I've eaten and drunk plenty, and only rarely felt hard done by (unreasonably - "I want strawberry shortcake"). I dread to think how much I had previously been eating, but now I know precisely what's going into my mouth.
I'm please, so for today, that's all I have to say about that.

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