I don’t think I have kept a diary since my early teens. Even then it wasn’t used habitually. If anything I’ve avoided consistent use of them.

Don’t get me wrong I love stationary and notebooks, the cuter the better, but the only notebook I have ever written in daily for months at a time was early days in the trenches when my kiddo was first born. It was the best and easiest way to keep track.

There is no writing ritual for journaling regularly for me. I either forget, or do it once in a moon or two. I guess that’s ok. I don’t feel great about it sometimes because of all the pressure to be a writer I must be writing, I must be creating at all hours of the day, that just isn’t the case for me. Living is important to.

So while many find real use in the journaling process, real healing, it is something I struggle with.

Make it make sense.

I love writing, I will happily write stories that work through some of the things that journaling might help with, that counselling would definitely help with. But to work on it so directly? That seems a little self indulgent for me. I know where it stems from. I know that growing up there never really felt like a safe space anywhere but inside a book or on the rare occasion inside my head.

I mean it is entirely possible that something claws at my brain, something I was told as a child. “Never put things on paper.”

Not for any good reason I assure you. I was basically told to keep anything inside good or bad so that there is no evidence, nothing in black and white that I ever thought that way it couldn’t be used against me. Who could have told me that? Mother dearest. Not a pearl of wisdom and nothing to be proud of.

Lets face it, it took years and years before I found my voice.

I’m still finding it. Still learning how to assert boundaries, learning how to deal with emotions. Learning what some emotions are. It sucks, being in your thirties and still learning something as basic as some feelings. Hell my toddler is probably more emotionally aware and intelligent than I am, I wont begrudge her that but it would be nice to have been allowed feelings, to feel safe expressing them.

I digress.

The whole point is to say if journaling works for you, that’s great, you do you. I will find some kind of way to sort through the things in my head.

Doctor recommended. That was the big scary wake up call. My health has been declining for years and now I have to do it. The weird part is there are some days where I look at myself and I don’t see the weight I put on straight away, sometimes I don’t recognise myself at all. The joys of dysmorphia. “Is that what I really look like?” my sense of self, what I expect to see in the mirror is wildly inconsistent.

Yes and no about being mad about the first go to response of the Doctor. I guess. Yes I am mad about it being the first solution and step. No because I understand why. With the flare ups in my health, pain and mental health I understand I have massively put on weight, I am ashamed to say.

But I have to do something about it, I can’t keep how I was living up, my body will crap out completely. So now I am fighting tooth and nail.

There are days where I look back at the body I had in my twenties and think “how the F did I think I was fat?” I would love to have that body now. It’s like that smaller version of me is still here trapped inside my body and it changed and altered, I had a kid, I don’t recognise my body at all now. I don’t suddenly expect to loose my mum pooch from walking a bit more and drinking more water, but it is a step in the right direction to building some stamina and energy.

The biggest motivation for loosing weight? I want to be a good mum, I want to be able to run around and play with my kid, I want her to have good memories. I want to build a better relationship with food to have a good example. I’m not asking to change the world, just maybe mine, and hers.

I want to be a good example, no longer eating to self harm. I want to not be the leading path for her to see first hand the disordered eating, I’ve never had a good relationship with food but it feels more important than ever to work on that. We both deserve that.

So, while I reconcile that I won’t have the body I had say ten years ago, I don’t even have all the organs I had, so it would be wildly unrealistic. It does feel like sometimes I can feel that shadow of myself yelling to get out.

I just have to keep reminding myself to take my time.

For myself? HAHAHAHAHA …. no.

I want to, I wish I did. It is something I am working on. I am no pro at the old self discipline.

In other words, at the start of April I started a diet. It took less than two months to fall off the wagon and hide from it. I had lost about 4 kilos, as of right now I put back on 3 of those in the 3 weeks I have been hiding from the wagon.

I realise my error now was trying to be all or nothing, but completely perfect at it and not at all nothing. Perfectionism… or is it self sabotage?

I don’t know.

So now what?

Perhaps I should be working on reframing the idea of the diet. If just being on a diet feels restrictive, low energy and depressing what else can I reframe it as? Could it be building new habits, a lifestyle change. Rather than saying “sorry I can’t I am on a diet” what would actually feel better to say? “I’m working on some lifestyle changes” or ” I am creating new habits and I want to work to support that”? They feel more positively inclined so maybe I will test those out today.

I think the next two weeks my main focus is going to fall off of dieting, still trying to move and exercise and be careful due to how much this caused flare ups of my health. Instead my focus for two weeks will be consistently hydrating. I will count coffee as 125ml as it has diuretic qualities, but otherwise my hydration is going to be the first thing to increase and maintain consistently. I think my goal might be around 2 litres a day minimum so that I can find a baseline hydration.

The second habit I think I will introduce is meeting an absolute minimum step count each day. I know they say the minimum should be 4000 steps to count as a sedentary lifestyle. I think at least hitting that a day might be a step in the right direction. Health and flare ups likely to be my biggest obstacles. Sadly medical conditions are a massive obstacle I am working with at the moment.

What other habits could I introduce? Planning meals with nutrition in mind? Consciously eat and be present? So far the baby steps are hydrating more, moving a bit more. Stamina takes time to build, Rome wasn’t built in a day, neither was this waistline.

Honestly it’s a hard question.

Of course family and friends are missed, but technology helps with the distance, in some cases, with some people it has actually brought some real positive change and brought us closer together. Others, not so much, some things became harder to ignore.

Someone asked if we feel more isolated up here, its a yes and no answer. Sure parcels and post take a bit of time, but ultimately it works for my home body self anyway. There have been a few things where I turn to hubs and we just have to remind each other “that’s island life” and we get over it. I know I feel further from friends and family and I can’t just arrange a quick catch up or cuppa.

In terms of restaurants and dining, the food up here is often so much better in quality, though I disagree with local satisfaction provided by cakes heavily laced in sugar or cream. We do ultimately miss chicken shops, who would have thought? We just need our favourite chicken shop from down south to relocate up here and we would be over the moon (and looking like one with a massive waistline).

Ok another thing, while I didn’t much take advantage the last few years I do miss having the theatre district a short train ride away, I’m missing my show tunes delivered live.

Honestly so far there is no doubts in my mind, probably speaking for both of us when I say, that this was the best move and choice for our family over all.