And mine told a very different story this morning from the one I heard from the scales last Sunday. To explain:
All week, the question has been bugging me – how on earth did I put on a pound and a half in seven days when I was so careful? It just didn’t make sense – and it made even less sense when one or two people (who don’t know what I’m trying to do) commented that I looked as though I’d lost weight. I was determined not to weigh again just yet, so this morning I thought I’d try something else.
A year or so ago, I read in India Knight’s column in the Sunday Times about how, around five years earlier, she’d shed five stone – and kept it off. One of her tips was, “Find yourself some trousers of truth”. They should, she said, be a pair which don’t fit you when you start, so that you can gauge how much you’ve shrunk by how close they come to fitting.
My trousers of truth are a favourite old pair of jeans, which button up rather than zip. I’ve had them for about fifteen years. Back in 1994, they were really comfortable, but for more years than I care to admit since then, I haven’t been able to do the buttons up – not if I’ve had any plans to breathe anyway. The last time I tried them on, a few weeks ago, I could pull the two edges of the opening together – but if I forced the buttons into the buttonholes, there was no way I was going to be able to sit down. This morning when I put them on, they fitted exactly as they did when I was twenty-six.
Spurred on by that, I decided I would get back on the scales after all. Believe it or not, she now reckons I’ve lost the weight she said I put on last week, plus a pound. Great news! – but I Can’t help thinking that’s as unlikely as putting the weight on in the first place – not least because, on Wednesday afternoon, I attacked the chocolate biscuits, as I put it on my Facebook page, “in revenge for tiredness and frustration”. In future, I think I’ll take Paul McKennagh’s advice – “Forget to remember and remember to forget to weigh yourself for weeks at a time …” I think I’m better off trusting the trousers!
Tags: children; charity; education; school; "weight loss" (Paul McKennagh"
