In my earlier post, I said I had no emotional reason for eating so much lately but I lied. Well, not so much lied, sometimes it takes a while for the things I'm thinking to float to the surface of my brain. I had a couple of things happen over the weekend - silly little things but things that caused fissures in my steely resolve.

Firstly, I went over to the Jam Factory on Friday because I wanted to get the official read-out from the weighing machine. The machine that always tells me - YOU ARE VERY MUCH OVER YOUR RECOMMENDED WEIGHT. I thought this time I'd get something else. But no. I knew I should have left it, shouldn't have weighed myself late in the day, but I did anyway and the machine said the same thing. So I went into Borders and had a coffee and a gingerbread cookie.

Then Saturday morning, I went to the gym - I did a half hour boxing technique session followed by a boxing class. One of the things we had to do in the technique class was practice throwing punches aiming at our faces in the mirror. That's when I noticed it. Hanging there like big, wobbly turkey gobblers - the flap of underarm skin. Yikes - I thought it was bad but not that bad.

Looking at yourself in the mirror is a bad, bad thing. I started picking all my faults. I am such an "apple" shape - I carry all my weight on my torso and I'm still so big in the belly area. As I watched myself, it dawned on me - even if I get to my goal, I still might not look GOOD. Sure I'll look a helluva lot better than I did at 110 kilograms, but I don't want to just look good for me, I want to look good for anyone.

Everyone knows the story - losing weight won't solve all your problems - but it's hard sometimes to accept that. I think, for me, it isn't just that I blame my weight for all my problems as that being my goal weight was always been an impossible dream. It's like when you sit at work dreaming about winning Tattslotto. It's such a huge thing that you may as well dream the whole big dream - you don't just lose the weight, you don't just win the cash - your whole life is transformed. You no longer have men problems, you no longer have work worries. Instead of cowering from confrontation, you go out fighting. Suddenly the whole world loves you, your life is all sparkle and glitter.

It's not like that at all, is it... you lose the weight but you don't transform. It's hit me like a ton of bricks this week.

So what happens now? I guess there are two choices - I can give up, stuff my face (and live with the resulant health problems - can't forget my old friend, diabetes) or I can deal with it all. So maybe it takes more than diet and exercise to make my life sparkle. Maybe I have to go the extra mile and work on some other issues: the zillion and one other issues that plague my life. So be it.

One thing that constantly comes back to me as I lose weight, is that fat isn't the problem; fat is the symptom of deeper problems. I guess I have to dig deeper and root those problems out. In the meantime I think I'll try some some of satan's own exercise - tricep dips.