Post of pic

[lexin]

See this picture?



The lady in the pink suit is my Aunt Ursula, my mother's sister. The woman behind her in blue is my mother, the Aged P, but before she was aged. The miscreant in the Afghan coat is me. I don't know who the others are. I must be about 15 in this picture, because that's when I owned that coat.

Now, I have a persistent memory that I was a fat child, fat teenager and have always been fat. This turns out, very strangely to me, not to have been the case.

I mean, I'm not skinny by any manner of means, but I'm not fat.

The Aged P. hated that coat with a firey hatred. She made me keep it in a separate cupboard from the rest of the family coats because it smelled really strongly of dead goat.

Note: the picture is back to front. The slides I'm working from aren't marked.

Comments

[watervole]

I read an article today that suggests a strong link between weight problems and anti-biotics, especially among children.

Killing some of our gut bacteria seems to affect the way our body absorbs food. (It makes sense, because low doses of anti-biotics are known to make farm animals put on more weight)

[lexin]

That would sort of make sense - I spent my teenage years battling one outbreak of strep throat after another, and consequently being constantly on and off antibiotics. I've got better as an adult, but still have outbreaks of it.

[watervole]

I'm not sure if I dare make the suggestion, but if you know anyone who is slim and who you trust to be carrying no nasty infections (which is the risk factor), then trying to infect yourself with their gut bacteria might be something to consider.

[lexin]

I don't know if I dare ask, but how would you do that?

[watervole]

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fecal_bacteriotherapy

It's actually becomming accepted as a treatment for some conditions.

[lyorn]

I have a persistent memory that I was a fat child, fat teenager and have always been fat. This turns out, very strangely to me, not to have been the case.

When I see pictures from when I started dieting (day after my 13th birthday), "strange" is too mild a word... "WTFH was I thinking" comes closer. What I believed to be fat was onset of puberty (i.e. C-cups) and an athletic build.

I managed 30 kilos of weight gain in five years just by being stupid and dieting myself into an eating disorder. (Of course, no one tried to stop me, quite the opposite.) No antibiotics needed for me...

[lexin]

Yes, yo-yo dieting hasn't helped me, either.

[hunningham]

There's an essay somewhere by Dorothy Allison where she writes about a similar experience; believing that she was fat and always had been fat and then discovering and looking at old childhood photographs, and thinking "that little girl is not fat" I must try and find it again - can't even remember if it was library book or internet.

[lexin]

That's very much it. I was a healthy, rather busty, teenager, but I was not fat.

[hunningham]

Yes, looking at the photo you had much the same build as myself and it had never ever occurred to me to think of myself as fat (lucky me).