Fat To Fit Blog XLV: 20 week weigh in, new goal.

Weight Loss Goal: 42.5lbs

Starting Weight: 189.5lbs (13st 7.5lbs)

Current Weight: 153 lbs (10st 13lbs)

Weight Loss This Week: 1lb

Weight Loss So Far: 36.5lbs

Current Weight Loss to Go: 6lbs

Goal Weight: 147lbs (10st 7lbs)

After meeting my goal weight last week, I've been thinking a lot about what I look like now and whether I'm a 100% happy with it. I look pretty damn good in my opinion but there's that slight inkling of I can do better. I've decided to keep going because I've made it this far and I think I can keep going for a bit longer to make it closer to an ideal weight for my height. Ideally it would 10st 5lbs but I am going to go down to 10st 7lbs first and see how I feel then, I think at this point its easier to break down the goals in half stone increments especially since I don't have that much weight left to lose. Also that would be a total loss of 3 stone which seems absolutely insane but it sounds like a reasonable goal for me :)

I know I would never venture below 10 stone again in my life as I looked absolutely awful, if you want proof look at my driving license or old photos of me, I didn't look well. Even though I didn't purposefully lose all that weight as it was through stress I know I should never go back to that. At 8.5 stone especially, I looked like a zombie! As most of my friends will say to me I'm a curvy girl. I go in and out that's the way I'm meant to look so if I lose too much weight I'll lose that curviness. And at the end of the day this blog is called 'Curvy to Less Curvy Girl' not 'Curvy to Stick Bean Girl'.

It seems crazy after 5 months i'm still ranting and raving on here but I appreciate anyone that reads this as it's my life line. I'm glad to have it here, I should really keep a hard copy to look back on as it's been such a journey but it's not quite over yet :)

Fat To Fit Blog XLIV: Generic World

Despite reaching my goal I still feel like I'm getting there to being that happy and confident person I want to be and will use this blog to get used to looking this way again. I keep catching my reflection in the mirror or seeing myself in photos and thinking that can't be me. But in other ways I feel like I've lost sight of myself a little bit over the years. I think if 16 year old me saw me I don't think she'd like what she saw. The way I treat myself more than anything. I envisioned such a bright future at that age, school was over and I was free from a lot of the torment but I'm still in the mindset of not being respectful of myself. Still nothing is good enough in my personal and academic life, I work hard, I try to do good and I just feel like there's never enough or what I'm doing isn't warranting the results like I wanted.

Listening to old music earlier especially reminds me of the person I used to be and I'm debating whether I sold out or I just grew up. I see people even older than me still sticking to the alternative culture and I just feel especially since university I've thrust myself into being conventional.

Sex, alcohol, short dresses and heels and dancing to whatever is new in the music chart in that week.

It seems superficial but it makes me really miss Subculture and Anarchy, I felt at home there back in Birmingham. The closest thing here is Rock Society and I don't do societies and tried them last year and hated the snobbery. I miss Teen Culture, dancing around for a few hours, with no alcohol and having an amazing time. I think I forgot you could have nights like that. I miss that innocence that seems to be gone now. And to be honest going clubbing is completely overrated. Its expensive, and you pay to stand in a crowded room listening to generic music with generic people, there's nothing special about it. You're just one in a crowd but still I go every week.

It just makes me sick I could be one of these people but a part me feels like I hate living to go out so I can forget who I am and what I am doing. Its a good escape but its not really facing any of the problems I have. Trivial problems could be dealt with a good session but I think I've thrown myself into this lifestyle to forget who I am and forget everything that has happened as it's so easy to blend in and sway along with music. I used to have the confidence and the defiance to be different and not scared of what people think of how I looked or acted. I need the girl that didn't give a fuck her hair was green/blue/purple/pink/red, would have piercings, get tattoos because she liked them and didn't have to think about what people would think of them. The girl who would wear torn up clothes or something completely insane just because the moment struck her that day.

I may have lost this weight but it's made me realise I've lost that girl, that strong defiant girl who didn't care what everyone thought of her. That's what matters not that I'm 35lbs lighter, it matters I've lost that part of my personality that I felt made me special, it made me different from other girls and everyone needs to feel they have that something special about them that makes them an individual. I had a strong mind and sense of fun about the world. I need to run round and blow bubbles and confuse random strangers. I need to reclaim those parts of me by not shying away in seminars as I'm scared that my opinion or interpretation will be wrong or argued against. I need to find the fun in the normality of life. I know I need to grow up but I don't want have to lose those parts of me. What you look like may seem pretty superficial but I think blending in has made me into a shell of my former self. All this time I've been on about losing my spark but never really talked about what the spark was so how could I have found it again without realising this?

This rant is mainly coming from spending all day making notes on Soviet Studies journals on Gorbachev and feeling a bit trapped but I think it's been good to talk about what's on my mind. Ever since last saturday when I went out for halloween and got dressed up in a corset and looked like a weird gothic vampire, it reminded me of the old me who made such an effort for Halloween and loved everything about it, When I was 18 I spent all day in a costume at work and then went straight to a house party. That's Laura! This year I couldn't be bothered with it all and that depressed me that I felt that way about something that was my favourite holiday of the year. I shall have to come back and read all this again to remind myself to capture those things I feel made me special and bring them back into my life.

Just as a P.S Trapt used to be one of my favourite bands and now I barely listen, no more :)