lost in translation

I just updated my weight stats to convert the kilos back to stones and I seriously had no idea I'd been that light* at my lowest.

It has taken a long while for my brain to adapt to the change of going to metric here in Oz. I was so proud that I could cope with the figures enough to understand my gains and losses in that context I'd stopped converting over a year ago. Doh! Big mistake, huge! (to quote Pretty Woman and reveal my age).

See, this recent weight gain was not mindless. I didn't have 4 months without looking at the scale then all of a sudden decide to find out just how much I'd put on. Oh no. Weighing myself regularly to see just how bad my out of control binge eating was getting was all part of the torture. Now I'm thinking if only I'd converted back to stones during the rise I might have realised I was only 13 stone - which I haven't been since high school - and I might have been able to short-circuit the downward... well upward really.. spiral sooner.

Of course this is with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight vision.

Just like with my other regularly thought "if"; when I was 12 my teacher thought I looked miserable so got a health visitor to help put me on a calorie controlled diet. This got me to obsessing about calories to the point where my school books were covered in sums, I wouldn't chew gum as there was no nutritional information on it and if I didn't lose weight I'd starve myself to my own calorie limit, a good half of the number she set me, until I craved food so much a binge was inevitable. I was going through puberty and I hated my body. I'd stopped all the valuable activity I loved because the dancing studio installed a nightmare wall of mirrors. In photos of that time I can now see I wasn't the michelin man I thought I was, I was really only just a bit bigger than all my gorgeous friends.

With my 20-20 hindsight goggles I realise now all I needed was some help with self-esteem and that a diet with no emotional support was quite possibly the worst thing for me. It started this yo-yo nightmare of losing weight, not getting to goal then binging till I've put back on one and a half times what I'd lost.

Oooh the problems I could solve right now while I'm wearing these magical hindsight specs...

But who's to say I'd have listened to any form of reassurance? Who's to say my inner beliefs of blimpness weren't already strong enough for me to have found my own path to blobdom without any help from others? After all that wasn't the first diet I'd ever tried, it was just the most affirming one, this was a teacher and a health visitor confirming everything I had learned to hate about myself. And who's to say I could or would have stopped myself binging even if I knew the magic 13 stone number?

* "light" being a relative term of course

p.s. another day and no binge btw. I'm far too busy with my new introspective outlet to remember this was supposed to be me being accountable... the naval gazing is only a side order

UPDATE: I just re-read this post and wanted to make it clear I don't in any way blame anyone (not the teacher nor the health visitor) other than myself for my weight gain and even then I'm learning not to blame myself. It's not about blame.