Dawn Porter’s quest for size zero

I remember watching a TV prog about Louise Redknapp do a similar thing around 18 months ago, and although I didn’t ever watch the Dawn Porter one, I accidentally stumbled across it online tonight. Let it first be said that I LOVE Dawn Porter. I love what she stands for and everything about her. Every single one of her TV shows is about how it is OKAY to be a “normal” average woman and she is absolutely terrific. I’ve always thought she had a bloody lovely figure too!!

** warning ** am about to post my measurements **

CRAZY CRAZY stuff here okay … I was reading Dawn’s diary from where she was doing this BBC show about dropping down to size zero and she posted her starting measurements… and I had this weird thing going on in my head because I’ve always looked at her and thought how perfect / ideal / normal / fantastic she looks and then I realised that her measurements aren’t actually that far off mine!!!!

Dawn Porter’s “before” measurements … ie before she did the BBC thing where she tried to get to size zero in 8 weeks. She even called herself a “perfect” size 12 and measured 34-28-36. UGH this is a brave thing … maybe you guys will appreciate that I AM fat if I post my measurements. I am currently 36-28-37… my hips are just a tiny little inch more than a woman whose figure I have always felt was perfect!! She is just about an inch taller than me if that makes a difference! I want my hips to be at LEAST 36″ to be “happy” and preferably 34″. Considering my hips started at 44″ I’ve lost 6″ already off my ass!

Dawn made it down to a UK size 6-8 in 8 weeks (US size 2-4) and looking at her figure on the right … yeah, that is where I want to be. She still has a full chest and a defined waist and still has curves. According to her diary … she started as a size 12 on this quest for size zero and lost 17lbs to be a size 6-8. My “current” goal is 12lbs loss from size 12 which should put me at a nice and healthy UK size 8-10.

If Dawn can do it … and she was on a regimented 500 cals per day … then I KNOW I can. I want to be at LEAST a UK size 10 by the end of October, and the aim is for size 8 by the end of November. As to Christmas … well I haven’t even THOUGHT about how I am going to get through THAT one yet.

A freak and a hypocrite

Woah what a day. A day that started at 5.30am too because on a Sunday morning I work on a market stall as part of my busines. It’s a regular market and it is held every Sunday. It is an early start and a very physical start with loading & unloading, building the stall and setting everything out. I’m also right next to one of the many mobile food vans and as a vegetarian for the past 21 years, the smell of bacon cooking will do it for me every time. It’s almost a relief not being “allowed” to eat it!! I do live vicariously through the smell of it though!!

It is always so very easy not to eat anything on a Sunday because I am usually always busy so I don’t even need to think about food, but I had my 10 year old daughter with me and she has her own body issues that I really REALLY don’t want to make worse. I actually caught her sitting on the sofa the other day prodding her belly and I can’t help but wonder how much of that has been influenced by me and I hate myself for it.

She is a perfect and healthy 10 year old with nothing but a bare whisper of perfectly normal puppy fat on her that is hardly there anyway and shrinking as she grows taller as nature intended! I want her to grow up healthy and confident but I can already see the start of ED behaviours in her (obsession with healthy diet, but love of sweets & candy, ritual staring at herself in the mirror etc) and that scares the crap out of me. I hide what I go through as much as possible and never EVER talk about being fat or overweight or anything like that in front of her. I do NOT want my daughter to go through this. She is already such a fragile and emotional thing and I do my utmost to encourage her positively and to build her self confidence. Shame I can’t do the same for myself eh!

So anyway, when the bacon smells hit her little nostrills and her eyes lit up this morning …. I bought her a bacon bap and I bought myself a cheese & onion toasted sandwich too (NOTE ONION … THAT’S A VEGETABLE – THAT’S A WHOLE FOOD GROUP!) and I made sure that she saw me eating it and I was making all kinds of noises about how hungry I’d felt and how it was SO good to have something to eat, and how tasty it was … all a pile of crap and nonsense of course … it felt rough and dry going down my throat. I was full and bloated after a couple of bites and even an entire bottle of water didn’t help wash it down.

BUT my daughter saw me eating.

I had to eat in front of her at dinner as well … although my husband and I are in the process of separating it is still amicable and knowing I work out on the market all day with our daughter, he had cooked dinner. I usually feed the children early on a week night and then tell them I have my dinner when they are in bed. Anyway, he’d made spaghetti bolognaise for the family and he’d made me a huge portion of penne pasta with some mushrooms, grated parmesan cheese and a few slices of garlic bread.

My husband doesn’t understand my eating disorder. He does know I blame him for a lot of it but he just tells me I look fine and rolls his eyes when I barely eat a mouthful. Did I ever mention I HATE to eat in front of people??? I ate the mushrooms that were mixed with the pasta and I tried to count how many pieces of the penne I ate but with conversation over the meal (a great way to hide the fact you aren’t eating much – talk LOTS) … well I lost count.

I feel like such a hypocrite. How do I carry on my quest to be thin without screwing up my daughter?!?! My husband and I currently agree that after we separate, they will live with me … but if I go too far, how can I argue that I am the best for my kids? How do you know when too far is too far when you have been fat, ugly and overweight for so long?

Trade on the market wasn’t so good today and I wondered how much of it was me? See, when you are out there all day in the public eye – you get to see all sorts of people from all walks of life. You see the uber skinny and the hugely fat. You see weird shaped people and people who look okay from the back until they turn around and you see that it’s actually a woman not a bloke and her tits are drooping down to her knees.

Men notice me – a lot more. I’ve definitely picked up on that. I don’t wear half as much make-up as I used to either, so it must be from the weight loss. I used to hide behind a lot of eye make-up and rarely ventured out without lipstick. Since I’ve lost weight, I barely slap on a little mascara and some lip gloss! I had so many more men than usual come up to my stall, and I swear it was just to engage me in conversation. It didn’t make me feel good because I knew they weren’t going to buy anything.

I sell mainly to women. My “target” customer is 18-55 FEMALE. I sell around 10% to men. I noticed today a lot more “skinny” women come up to my stall now … and the more overweight ones walk past. Do the fat ones see me as a threat because I have lost weight? Do the skinny ones potentially see me as not just another fat person anymore?

This isn’t good for trade when the majority of the public is overweight!! I wrote a post just a couple of days ago about how I suddenly felt more judgemental about the way I looked at people … and I spotted then how people were looking at ME differently. Today being out there in the public all day, I REALLY noticed it.

I wore my new jeans today … the first time in a scary number of years that I have been as small as a size 12… a “perfect” size 12 too apparently even though I NEED to be a size 8. Funny, I always feel the need to quantify that as a UK size 12 – I believe that is actually a USA 8. I love how US sizes are smaller … I also now feel a need to book a flight and go shopping for size 8 clothes! hehee!

It was actually a beautiful day today and the sun was shining. I had a vest style top on under my zip up sweater, and it was actually WARM and when I walked the length of the market up to the toilet block, I took my sweater OFF. Okay that may sound weird, but when you are wearing new “tight” jeans that fit you perfectly, and a slim fitting top with no wrap or cover-up … you feel VERY VERY exposed!!

I had a smile on my face (it was a nice day!!) and almost felt confident as I felt the warmth of the sun on my back and the cute guys looking at me and smiling back.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Why can’t I be happy with that? Why can’t I be happy with being technically textbook perfect weight for my height? Why is it the more positive feedback I get the more I want to lose. Ugh it works the other way too when my friends say that I look great but probably shouldn’t lose more … WHY not? What’s wrong with not wanting to be average? What’s so wrong about enjoying the fact that although I have lost weight … I’m still fat (yeah ok in my eyes, but size 12 isn’t exactly skinny either) I want to lose more. I have a goal in mind and that’s where I’m heading.

On the upside … I posted yesterday that my weight hadn’t changed in 3 days. I did NOT weigh myself at 5.30am … fuck ok that’s a lie … I weighed myself at 5.30am when I got up, and was horrified by the gain of a pound, but quickly justified I’d drank a fair amount of alcohol before going to bed and hadn’t been to the toilet since I’d woken up. I weighed myself tonight and I was the same tonight as I was in the morning before … so that should mean a LOSS of at least one little tiny pound by tomorrow morning. Phew … I worried that I had hit a wall there!

Clothes shopping with an eating disorder

It is so weird to wear something that actually fits me. I like it … no, really I do. I like the way that these new jeans hug my figure, show off my shrinking body and frame my backside. I like the way they are tight and I can see the gap at the top of my legs.

Okay that is all a lie – except for the bit about the gap at the top of my legs. I do REALLY like that.

I DO like the jeans though – hell for £25 I’d better do – I don’t exactly have money to waste … and I’ve had a lot of positive compliments on how good I looked wearing them today which has helped with the self confidence thing, but UGH I have to admit I miss my baggy clothes. Wearing clothes that almost fall off of me make me feel so much thinner.

These jeans fit perfectly, and if my clothes fit me perfectly then I need to lose more weight so that they are baggy so that it is visually obvious that I have lost weight. Although they do fit “perfectly” I look so FAT in them. I am also not yet the size that I thought/hoped I would be by now.

Going shopping was always going to be a strange experience … not reaching for the larger sizes but at the same time not being entirely sure what size I was … and knowing that no matter WHAT size I ended up buying, it would never be small enough.

I took a UK14, a UK12 and a UK10 into the dressing room. Before my eating disorder bit me on the behind, I was a very unhappy and FAT size 14-16.

I tried on the large size first and immediately felt fabulous. I didn’t even bother doing them up because it wouldn’t have been worth it – they would have fallen off anyway.

I wanted so so so so desperately to fit into the size 10, but I didn’t even try them on in the end. I knew that it would just upset me if they ended up being too tight because then I really WOULD feel fat to try to button it up over a muffin top blobby stretch marked stomach and I am not that thin yet.

Instead … I confidently (yeah I know – weird!) tried on the UK12 and they fitted. Actually they are a little large around the waist band, but they are stretch denim, and the fact that they are a little big gives me the boost to my ego that I need.

A UK size 12 is apparently perfect! Can you believe that? It’s the ideal figure for UK women (well, the ones I’ve spoken to anyway and ones who don’t have eating disorders). If you are size 12 then you are officially something that others are jealous of.

I don’t give a frigging monkey’s left armpit what other people consider perfect and ideal. I couldn’t give a hoot if people are jealous of MY body because *I* hate and detest it and am working on changing it. It isn’t about what the rest of the world think … it’s my life and my issue. My problem – period.

Judgment – it is an ugly thing.

I’ve always tried to lose myself in the crowd before … as a fat overweight person you don’t want people to look at you, so it is easier to hide yourself away.

Other than taking my children to school, going to my work place (where I work alone anyway) and putting fuel in the car, I have hardly been out of the house in the last few weeks and had no social life whatsoever. I have also pretty much been living in my overalls because a) what I do for a living is messy, and b) most of my clothes fall off me and look ridiculous! I also haven’t wanted to deal with people or see people because all I get from them is how much weight I have lost, and how I should probably not lose any more.

Today I had to go into town – no choice – and I wore the one pair of trousers that I have that fit me and that’s only because they have an elastic waist that I’d tied up.

PEOPLE WERE LOOKING AT ME. Not just any old people, but overweight women in particular. I felt their stares and sneering judgmental glances on me. Women never looked at me like this when I was fatter and that made me feel even worse because I was looking back at them with their ugly muffin tops, six chins and flabby bellies and realised I was judging them for being fat and not the other way around … and that they probably hadn’t been looking at me in the first place. Oh the guilt. I felt destroyed.

I bought a new pair of jeans. I HAD to because I need something that fits me. Part of me resented handing over £25 for something that I am hoping won’t fit me for long because I still have those last 12-13lbs that HAVE to go before I reach my “goal” … you know … the one that will apparently make me happy when I am THIN, and the thing I hate almost as much as being fat … is waste.