Feeling Fat

I was accosted the other day by one of my lovely blog readers. Hello MadHouseMum, she said. I’m enjoying your blogs, but all of us who know you, know that you are lying. You haven’t got a muffin top or a bra bulge! and off she cheerily went. It was strange being outrightly called a liar – albeit in a very jovial way and I gave partner a slightly concerned look. You see, the thing is, I have, but I guess that everything is relative. What lovely blog reader sees is a relatively fit person – I do teach Taekwon-do for love and money – and she knows that I have always beasted personal trained people for a living. What she will not realise, of course, is that through injury I have not been able to train so much and since my shoulder operation last month, I am not able to train at all. So, although outwardly I still look relatively trim, inwardly I am feeling fat and unfit. The only diets that I am used to are fairly extreme carb starvation combined with hard training, to get down to my competition fighting weight, but now I am faced with trying to watch what I eat because I can’t exercise. Now, I feel like I am seeing diet and exercise and the struggles therein from an altogether different perspective and from my perspective right now, it is hard and I do notice those bulges that I’ve blogged about.

I looked at them in the mirror this morning. I tensed my tummy muscles and thought that I looked OK. I turned to partner: if I do this in Spain, I told him, I think I’ll look alright. (Note, this comment was referring to a front view of myself – the rear side is a whole other story). Do I look as if I’m sucking in? I asked him. No, he said. You just look very tense and then he laughed sarcastically and went on: don’t relax on holiday, whatever you do, just spend the whole time looking like that.

He’s got a point, I thought to myself and so has lovely blog reader. Outwardly I do look ok and inwardly I just need to chill.

That was then…no jumping around on the beach for me this year!