When I was a young child I was not very heavy, not too skinny either, just about average.
Around eight or nine years old I started to gain weight, and through High School I was pretty chunky. Towards the end of school I started to slim down a bit because I was walking more, to and from school, and to get to work. After High school I got down to a pretty good weight, and I was pretty happy with how I looked.
My weight yo-yo'd going from healthy to unhealthy, working in fast food definitely didn't help. Just before I met Tariq I had slimmed down again, then after we got married and were pregnant I ballooned back up to almost 200 pounds(just over 90 kilos). I was really unhappy with the way I looked.
When we moved to Abu Dhabi, I was still pretty heavy, I out weighed all of Tariq's sisters, by a lot. I always felt heavy and unattractive. I did start to loose weight though, but it was very slowly. When we came to Pakistan I dropped a lot of weight very very quickly. Everyone else was drinking the local water(boiled) and not getting sick, so without thinking I drank it also. I did not think about the fact that the family had been drinking the water here since birth and so they were used to it, I was not. I was horribly, horribly ill(lasted about a week or 10 days), on at least four separate occasions. It was not pretty. I was so weak after each illness, but also a lot slimmer. Tariq switched us to bottled water only for all cooking and drinking, because of how sick I was.
I am now slimmer than I have been in a long long time. But even though I am happier when I look in the mirror, I still have the image in my head of myself as fat. I still think that I am heavier than I actually am, and I don't know when(or if) that will ever change. I do work harder to stay slim, proper portions and less fast food, so it will probably get easier as I go along to stay this way, because it has become a habit.
Sometimes I wonder though, when will my mental image of myself match the one I see in the mirror? My New Years Resolution- to stop having a negative view of myself, to be happy with who I am(no matter if I stay slim or gain a bit of weight).
I hope everyone has a fun, safe New Years Eve, see you all next year! ;-)
