TO a stranger I must look ordinary: a woman of indeterminate middle age, neither obese nor painfully gaunt. Average and unremarkable, although why I still cannot buy trousers that come up past my knees is a question as mystifying as the Sphinx's.
Those who do know me, however, make a fuss about my smaller size. Don't get me wrong, if I didn't want public acclaim, I wouldn't have done it. Yet these remarks are also amusing.
Usually compliments are followed by this sentence: "Not that I eve
r thought of you as overweight." As if it would be bad taste to acknowledge a judgement, even retroactively? As if it's in bad taste to acknowledge another woman's body in any but a health-related context?
This is mildly annoying. If I wasn't overweight, what does constitute fat? How many chins? If they never thought of me as fat, would they have described me as fit, well-formed, even sexy? I didn't think so.
And the inevitable backlash has begun. At every juncture someone, and I'm sorry but usually a woman, says, "I hope you're not going to lose any more." One longstanding pal cautioned that I am becoming one of those women whose heads are too big for their bodies. You mean a telly presenter, I joked, but she was too busy admonishing me to laugh.
I guess everyone thinks that having grabbed the reins of self-discipline, I'm destined to lose control again, only in the other direction, careening from compulsive overeater to anorexic. Not in a month of Sundays. What none of them realises – it's the kind of thing one keeps private – is that I'm a scarily good candidate for bulimia. I know the binge/purge cycle well, though puking was never my vice.
But no matter how often I mention my three healthy meals a day, no matter how often I remind them that I lost far more in my youth, and kept it off for two decades without ever being skinny, they show as much alarm as if I was see-through.
These comments usually come from women who want to lose weight. Meow, you say? Fine! Put my saucer of (skimmed) milk within easy reach. I've been that chubby, envious friend wanting to reinforce a pal's success while feeling intensely threatened by it. You wouldn't dare judge me too big, but you're fine with suggesting I'm too small? Sorry, but that doesn't work for me.
Next they roll off a list of reasons why they can't stick to a diet. Here, I do concede a huge point: I could not have done this if I was not alone. Not as rapidly, and not without backsliding.
If I was in a relationship, if I had children, I might not have stuck to my guns.
When married, I matched my man forkful for forkful, including late-night snacks of cheese on toast and far too much booze. But my Ex is 6'3" tall, ten years younger, with a bloke's metabolism. Even so, he also gained a lot of weight during our marriage.
The secret to my success is not eating normal meals. I hunker down over giant bowls containing my allotted foods in their prescribed quantities, and spoon the mash-up into my greedy mouth.
The repetitive action from bowl to mouth soothes disturbances in my psyche that I'm still unravelling.
I need quantity. There's something about the shape and depth of a bowl that comforts me with the illusion of abundance – which equals safety – that I don't get from a plate.
So you see, my twisted relationship with food hasn't been "solved", it's been rendered non-toxic via different, healthier choices. And solitude.
