After a lifetime of failing....or did I?

I have always had trouble with my weight - up, down, up, down. At school I was always the fat kid in the class who couldn't hope to be as pretty as other people. My mother often would say - in so many words - how she was embarrassed buying clothes for me. Coming from a family of thin people didn't help either. I remember a little ditty my dad used to come out with: "Little Fat Anna, She Swallowed a tanner, and squashed it into a threepenny bit". Oh I'm sure he never meant it cruelly but that's the way it sounded to me. I cringe now just writing it.

And yet, you know, I wasn't that fat - just not as thin as the others! Just this afternoon I have been looking through the big box of photos we have acquired during our 38 years of marriage. I was not fat. I wasn't ugly either. In fact I was quite pretty; not striking, you know, but not mirror shattering either. Guess what else? As I picked up picture after picture I was thinking "I don't remember seeing this photo." I never would look you see. If it had me on it I didn't look at it.

Since the End of April I have lost 17lbs with a well-known Slimming organisation, which is grand but I was so bored with their regime and the amount of money it was costing me that I decided to give it up and try something else.

I have been a counter of calories all my grown-up life and I knew calories insideout. Over the years I've learnt a bit about nutrition too so what the calories are made of is also important to me. I became a decent cook, so what food tasted like was equally important. Things were getting complicated!

Then I got disabled. Or rather the disability I have had all my life (that's for another time) progressed considerably and now I am mostly in a wheelchair. The ultimate complication for a slimmer. It's like being tied up in a corner. You can't do the exercise that every single 'diet' always harps on about. No walking, jogging, cycling; not even any crawling. And nobody was able to present to me a plan for getting round this, so I decided to have a go myself.

Last Thursday was my final weigh-in at the slimming club and on Friday I 'filed' them. I don't want to say just now what my plan is - I'm not exactly clear myself - but it involves most of the things Minerva has been talking about: Keeping a food diary, eating when hungry, stopping when full, not letting myself get keeling-over hungry, drinking plenty of water - and learning to like myself.

Sounds daft doesn't it, but I wouldn't mind betting most fat people have that problem. They don't really like themselves much. I think we tubbies fall into 2 categories: we're either the life and soul of the party or we're the wallflower in the corner who wouldn't say boo to a goose. I've been both in my time. I was a wallflower in my teens, in my 20s and 30s I've frightened more geese than you've had hot dinners and from mid 40s until now I'm back to wallflowering. But it won't do, my weight is getting in the way of the little mobility I have. It may not sound so bad to you when I tell you I am 10st 9lbs (149lbs) but at 4ft 8ins tall it's way to much.

So there you have it . I'll try and check in each week and let you know how it's going and what I've been doing.

Allegra, x