Friday 18th Feb 2022—Duvets and Dumbbells

I hate the way my body looks so I have stopped looking at it. I wash in bits, stealthily, like my drinking. The bottom part one day and the top part the next. “It’s too cold for a shower,” I say. So, I never have to disrobe completely, and I avert my eyes as I pass the mirror. Once trussed in tight undergarments with flowing layers on top to disguise the bulges, I can look

During the pandemic, my last good bras disintegrated. Buying a new bra was problematic owing to the lockdown but not a big issue as nobody was looking at me in my underwear, or without it either for that matter. Only the Westies see me in the naughty naked nude and to be honest they only get excited by the sound of the fridge being opened.

However, I don’t like going bra-less, I’ve never really enjoyed that swinging-free feeling, and at my age, the old girls need a bit of support. I want something that will lift and separate and am waiting for those wonderful 1950s cone bras to come back into fashion. In the meantime, I plunged (pardon the pun) for some Lycra vests with built-in shaping. They can be a bit tricky to get into. If you try to get them on over your head the body part tends to roll into a tight sausage and cuts you in two until you manage to unroll it again which is difficult to do without dislocating your wrists. I have found it is better to step into them and pull them up. Once on and teamed with my very firm Bridget Jones knickers the caterpillar folds are somewhat controlled and I look more like a firm barrel.

I suffer from body dysmorphia though I never fully accepted it until around six years ago. Being slim was never enough because in the mirror I always looked fat. As I browse through old photos now, I gasp at how slim I was. (photo above was 'when I was fat' Honestly, check out that back fat!)

Now I really am carrying too much weight. At 170cm tall and with big bones, I weigh 80 kilos. It’s just too much—my ideal weight is 70 and even then, I wouldn’t blow away in a breeze. The extremities are fine, but in the middle, I look like a large duvet. I have tried every diet known to man. Of course, I know the one thing that would help is giving up the booze. The one thing that evades me.

On January the first, with my New Year’s Resolution bravely in hand, and sipping a cup of tea, I began my research for diets and exercise programmes, and I came to the conclusion that high impact was out and I would need to do resistance training.

I tried various online challenges—did I tell you how much I love YouTube?  5,000 or 10,000 steps a day, HIIT training, SIT training, dancing to get fit, planks and sit-ups—but they all got tedious. However, they did get me back to a place where I could finally take on a doable challenge.

100 squats a day, sounded easy—the warmup nearly killed me. I did ten the first day. The morning after I couldn’t walk and sitting down was even worse, so I missed that day but went back the third. Over the next week, it started to get easier, and eventually I began the challenge proper.

I am around 20 days in now and though I can’t see a difference I can feel one. I can bend more easily to pick up dog poop, I can run up the stairs again and I can throw my legs out of bed in the morning with less of the creaking and clicking. I’m not perfect, but I’m much better. Most interestingly I found that my balance has improved. Stepping into my firm underwear in the morning used to present quite a challenge but now I can stand on one leg again like a pelican and I don’t need to sit down to dress.

Where is that little girl who could limbo under the garden rake about an inch from the ground? It only seems like yesterday, yet it’s a lifetime.

Along with the squats for my legs, I needed to work on my upper body strength. As a person living on my own, I have to do some lifting at times. I needed some decent dumbbells, so I searched online but thought that they were quite expensive and resolved to make some much cheaper.

I spent a happy hour googling and watching a YouTube tutorial and dutifully went off and bought four plastic water bottles for 21 cents each and a broom pole for 80 cents, then lugged back 25 kilos of sand in my famous old-lady shopping trolley; cost 1.23 euros. The nearest builder’s merchants was a bit of a walk and I was sweating profusely by the time I got home but I figured it was good exercise.

I cut the bottles, as per YouTube, and taped them into neat balls for the weights, they looked really cute. Before filling them with sand I tried inserting the pole—no good—it was too big. I got out my files (yes, the girl still has a fine set of files left over from her sculpting days) and tried filing the bottleneck to make it fit over the broom handle—no good, it was going to weaken the connection—So I tried warming the plastic to stretch it over the broom handle, but it wouldn’t soften. I needed a thinner pole, so off I trotted again, and I hunted high and low at our local Chinese Bazaar. They had everything except what I was looking for, and then... I found dumbbells; cost 27 euros the pair—I didn’t hesitate although added to the 2.97 I had spent on materials, not to mention the hours I had put into their creation they cost me around five euros more than the original pair I had priced online, that I could have purchased and had delivered to my door. The truncated bottles went into the recycle bin—Is anybody interested in a bag of sand?

I no longer fantasize about being skinny again—though secretly I do—my priority is to get fit and active and remain independent, because one thing I am adamant about now is that I will not give up my independence again, not for anyone.