DIET is a four-letter word!!

This is a picture of the diet I am currently on - only for another two weeks, thankfully, after which time I will eat to maintain my weight.

Since the age of 11, when I mutated overnight from skinnyish kid into chubby adolescent, I have been battling my weight. I was brought up by a mother who constantly battled her weight. I yo-yo dieted for around 30 years, losing and gaining the same 2-3 stones countless times, trying every diet on the market, plus some I created myself, in the process.
There followed a time of relative equilibrium, when I decided "NO MORE!" During this time, when nothing was forbidden, and food was not bad, not good, not reward, punishment or downright torture, my weight actually came down and settled at a level that may not have got me a career as a model, but was acceptable.
This steady ship was rocked by a series of health niggles and a major operation, which again led my weight first to drop, then to climb. This time, my previous "all things in moderation" approach did not help, and I had the choice of either accepting that my more mature self was three stone heavier than my younger self, sucking it up and getting on with it, or going back to Diet Hell!
Reluctantly I realised I was not yet ready to accept the slide towards the elasticated trousers, pinnies and horse-fleeces of the middle-aged woman, and would have to fight back! With the help of a personal trainer, a string of strict high protein diets, and an exercise regime I have come to love, albeit on my terms, I managed to shed the 3 stone.
Now, mostly, I pretty much eat healthily but not that strictly, and just throw in the occasional spell of dieting - like now- if I feel myself drifting off-track a little too far.

I do feel there is too much pressure from the media and society in general on all people - though mainly women- to comply to this idea that stick insect is a good look, and I don't buy it! Not all overweight people are lazy, unfit, unhealthy or any other of the commonly perceived stereotypes. Nor are all thin people the fit, healthy paragons of virtue they are seen as being either!