'tis the season to be jolly

Or not.

Last night I was at my first Christmas party of the season. It was quite a grown up do, lots of couples, with kids, wall to wall bankers and mums who got to know each other through their prenatal classes. In short, not so much that I could identify with.

Anyhow, at late o'clock, after a fun few hours, a friend and his partner turned up. We started chatting. A couple of minutes in she cut me dead with:

"So, when are you due?"

Aha. Great to see that 3 solid months of seeing a personal trainer has had that impact. And no amount of well meaning friends ("it's because you have a glow about you", "it's because you have big tits") can quite take the sting away from that comment.

The mirror crack'd from side to side

I think I might have the opposite of anorexia - my problem is that I don't realise I'm fat. I'll be carrying on happily, thinking I look fine, and then all of a sudden, out of the blue, I will see a photo of myself or glimpse myself in some sly mirror and all of a sudden the thought will hit me: is that porker really me?

It's no bad thing, of course, to be generally happy about my appearance most of the time, but I do have to confront myself head on in the mirrored lift to my office in the morning, which as I've remarked before, is broadly similar to being forced by the harpies in What Not To Wear into a 360 degree mirrored box to take full, appalled stock of the state I'm in. However, I've developed avoidance tactics as time has gone by, which basically means looking up at the ceiling.

I also maintain, although I have no scientific basis for this assertion, that digital photographs make you look fatter than you really are, just as TV cameras reportedly add pounds to your weight.

I will probably continue in blissful ignorance of how much I've let myself go until my clothes start to burst at the seams and I will be forced to take action. In the meantime my "glamorexia" problems will continue unchecked.

A refreshing honesty

But maybe it's not ironic.

One to watch

No posts in a very long time, I know - but I've been inspired by reading this article by Kira Cochrane in the Guardian. She sounds like a sensible woman.