Sunday night already........ah boo

Having had a nice, relaxing day I'm now feeling more than a little bit stressed....and not just because it's Monday tomorrow..... A has returned from his Dad's house in his normal Sunday night mood, i.e. grumpy, rude and disobedient..oh joy... my blood pressure and stress levels have risen accordingly...  The hardest thing about being a single parent is having to do everything without back up....I'm currently trialing the 'bore them into it' style of parenting - where you just repeat requests calmly and in a monotone until he gets fed up...it's somewhat successful, as are the threats to remove his mobile phone - a major distraction at times... Staying calm is the only thing I can do, because losing my temper never helps and ends up with me feeling like a failure...

I was thinking today (dangerous I know) about my weight, and how the problem has developed. There's a picture of me, aged about 14 I think, and I'm so skinny in it....but I always liked sweets and chocolate, and I can remember spending pocket money on them and then sitting in my room and reading whilst eating - thus linking two of my favourite things forever. I can also remember being told that I'd put on weight if I carried on like that, and being partly defiant/disbelieving and partly scared by this. As I got older I did start putting on weight but was by no means fat, although being told that I 'had a belly' was excruciatingly embarrassing - I remember being in the bath and trying to 'pinch an inch', and then feeling awful when I could. When I was 19 I was a size 14, again not huge, but I remember feeling like I was massive, and that I was a total failure for being that size. Of course now, I'd give anything to be a 14 again, maybe one day. Even though, again, I wasn't fat I was being told I was, constantly and I believed it. As a result I began to comfort eat, something which is self-defeating but surprisingly common.

I went to Australia when I was 22 and was again convinced that I was huge - looking at the pictures after I realised that I wasn't and this was almost a turning point. Even when I became pregnant I was happy (for the first time in a long time) with the way that I looked. Since then my weight has steadily gone up, plateauing at times, even going down on occasion, but overall going up...it's been a combination of depression resulting in comfort eating, not exercising, and sheer stubbornness. Because this is the other weird thing - I'd get bolshy about my weight, thinking/feeling that I'm the same person whatever weight I am, it's none of anyone's business, how dare people judge me  by my weight etc. etc. To be honest a lot of those thoughts still apply, the difference is that I want to change. There's no point hating myself anymore, for letting myself get like this, for being lazy and greedy all those years, for being stubborn... But it's so difficult, I've been like this for so long that it's almost a habit to hate myself...

I will get through it though... but I do want to say this, please think before you make casual comments about someone's weight - you may not mean it nastily, you may not even realise what you're saying, you may be saying it because you care - that's great, but be careful, those remarks can haunt people for years. Don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming anyone but myself for how I am, but I do know that feeling that people looked down on me for being overweight hasn't helped. Telling a teenage girl that she 'has a belly' may seem like nothing to you, but to her it can be humiliating.

Ok, enough heavy stuff for now, I'm off to watch men in uniform *drool* and relax for a bit... :)