caged liberty's Journal, 02 July 2008

For the past couple of days I have been 'observing' my body and thinking back to when I first noticed differences.

I remember in 1992, I had recently moved to Connecticut as a newlywed. My friend and I came across a weighing scale, so we weighed ourselves. The weight came back 140lbs, whilst my friends was something like 119lbs. She and I were the same height so I was a bit put off. But when I calculated that at 10 stones, I felt so heavy. I had fluctuated between 126lbs (9 stones) and 133lbs (9.5 stones) most of my life so that was a shock and embarrassment for me.

Then one day whilst sitting down watching the beguiling American cable, I discovered ESPN. There was a show called Bodies in Motion which was recorded with a Hawaiian background and the music was the beats of drums. The first day, I just tapped my feet along with the beat. Second day, just for a laugh, I got up and mimicked the motions.Eventually, I started trying to keep up. Initially, every time there was a high cardio move, I just stepped in place but eventually I began to kick ass! That went onto also doing the next show Denise Austins workout. So I ended up working out an hour every day.

The discovery came when I passed my hand across my hips and felt something protruding. I thought I had a bump from hurting myself and then I realized..IT WAS MY HIPBONE! I never knew it existed because I had never seen it before. It was such a profound discovery and impacted me deeply that I could lose weight and I had a beautiful body underneath all that blubber.

I weighed in with the doctor when I was 3 months pregnant to discover I weighed 116lbs-the lowest ever in my life!

My next discovery was in 2002. By this time, I had reached California, the land of skinny hot babes. I sweated my butt off daily just to get fit. First I got into a size 4 dress, which I could never have imagined myself to be. But more amazing to me..was the hollywood shoulders I had developed. When you see hollywood scarlets, their collarbones are very prominent around the neck and they have these collar bones popping up at the edge of their shoulders. Their breast bones are well...all breast bones. That is what I had too!!!

So now again, my hipbones are starting to protrude (when I am laying down anyway!) and my collarbone/breastbones are also becoming prominent.

I sometimes think that if we used a potato peeler and peeled away at a pear, we would be taking off equally from the upper and lower body but it would always appear that the bottom half is bigger because there is so much more mass there. I guess its the same with my figure. I am losing at the top and the bottom but there is SOOOO much at the bottom-now I know what they mean by bottomless pit..it was referring to my backside...its just bottomless because it keeps going and going and going!!!

But my dieting journey must continue and I have no desire to return to being a size 4, I just want to be the healthiest I can be.