Day 3. Not a girl, not yet a woman.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever thought of myself as a woman, an Adult Woman. I wasn’t someone who suddenly grew big breasts as a teenager. I didn’t bloom, I kind of slowly morphed a little bit, so I didn’t have to look at myself as someone different – older – with a woman’s body.

WOW… as I write this I am realising that that’s the thing! I didn’t consider myself as having a woman’s body, so how could I think of myself as an adult woman?

It was the end of the 80s, what can i say?!!

Which would mean that my thoughts were always that of the inbetweener… not a girl, not yet a woman. Not fully grown, and therefore not fully grown-up perhaps. This is not to say that I was/am immature, on the contrary I’ve always been highly responsible, independent and proactive. But now that I dig into how I viewed myself; my body, my thoughts, my thoughts towards my own body, and therefore my thoughts about what a Lisa is, I can see that I did not (do not?) consider myself as Grown.

Now, today, I have decided to look at myself in the mirror and call myself a

Grown Up Woman.

Not a Woman’s Lot

With this extra weight that I’m currently carrying, my breasts have bloomed a bit more (as is the woman’s way) and that’s quite nice. But I still don’t like the blooming waist. Or the blooming thighs and I refuse REFUSE to accept that this is IT from here on, simply because I am of a certain age. I refuse to sit back and mutter “hormones” or “menopause” because… YES BECAUSE I can also see that there are many women, also of a certain age, who are not a certain size. And I am willing… not just willing, I am happy to change my meals, my activities, and my thinking to create the next version of Lisa. I have never been my optimal Self so I think it’s now or it’s never.

I am determined to create Lisa Season 2, and since I am also planning to have a Season 3, there’s a lot of living ahead of me. I’m not slowing down now, I’m just changing gears.

A ‘Happy’ Sized Body Does Not Equal A Happy Mind.

I have only once - fleetingly - been the size I like for myself, and actually I may have been a ‘happy’ size, but I was not happy in myself. Granted, I was for a little while, but it was so difficult to maintain. I achieved this new size – 57kg  (I was aiming for 55) – by going to a slimming clinic when I lived in Singapore. It cost me a small fortune, and I had to commit to a strict diet plan and 3 sessions of acupuncture per week. I was so shocked by the fact that I had been brilliantly sold to and had readily handed over my credit card, that I decided to stick to whatever they told me to do 100%, otherwise it would be a huge waste of my hard-earned money.

And it was hard. It was emotional. It was painful! I had to be brave, and focused. I had to lay still whilst 12 needles were stuck in me 3 times a week. I had to be disciplined and I had to allow myself to feel the deep despair when the needle on the scales refused to move. I had to trust, and narrow my thoughts and my focus to simply following the programme, until it worked. Which it did. 9 weeks or so later I was 59kg… and sometime after that I was 57. I never made it to 55, but I didn’t mind. I felt happy and proud of myself. But it took a huge amount of thought-discipline to ignore the vast array of foods that were now out of bounds for me.

Then the main reason I was able to keep to this reduced eating plan was: I was made redundant. So I was out of a job, out of my apartment, out of Singapore and living in a state of lack. I was assessing my next move and had started studying, but I was in a state of reduced finances, so it was easy to also live in a state of reduced food and therefore of reduced weight. I had also quit drinking (this was a strict part of the diet)  so I was understanding the world and myself through a new lens. So I was not feeling confident, or sure of myself, or sure of anything come to that, so I didn’t feel like this was me living my best life, on the contrary I was subsisting. As soon as I was back to working full time, back in the bosom of society, the weight came back on.

So, I know that, for me, a happy size does not equal a happy mind, hence the reason I am so determined to understand better how to create myself in a happy size and in healthy abundance. I am also open to the idea that when I reach my happy size in a state of healthy abundance, that it may not be the 58kg that I have set for myself. It may be that I am suddenly enormously happy and content being 66kg and if that’s the case, then YIPPPEEE!!

The point is not to be A SIZE , but to be a size I am happy being. It must be sustainable and that means it has to be natural to whatever a Lisa Season 2 thinks like, behaves like, and believes like.

More tomorrow.

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