Real Life Thinspiration

I stood staring at my laptop, mouth wide open in awe as I stared at the facebook photo my friend H had just posted.

When I first started at Bra Towers, I worked in the Customer Services department. The company was relocating to the midlands, and a group of around fifteen girls (myself included) had all been recruited as the company’s new Customer Service “Dream Team” based at the shiny new head office in Leamington Spa.

We all started as consultants, but before long it was obvious that we needed some team supervisors, and H was recruited as such, along with another colleague Emma. As the company expanded the management took advantage of the human resources degree that Emma had, and she moved on to head up our HR department...which essentially was just made up of her! I was promoted into Emma’s CS supervisor role alongside H, and over the course of a few years we formed a strong friendship, based around our jobs, our twenty a day fag habit, and generally just the fact that we found we shared the same daft sense of humour.

H has always been one of the most beautiful women I know. Striking even. With soft kind eyes, and calming nature, lustrous auburn hair (that could literally dazzle you it was always so glossy) and a mutley-like giggle that you couldn’t help but laugh at, she is just a genuinely beautiful person. Like myself though, H wasn’t a size zero. You didn’t notice it to be fair because despite carrying a few extra pounds, her curves always went in and out in the right places, and when she walked, it wasn’t with the clumsy heavy footedness of someone who was carrying any weight...in fact I often felt she needed to wear a bell round her neck so that you could hear her approaching, so light on her feet she was! When she left Bra Towers and started a family, naturally she gained more weight, and I know she won’t mind me saying that that extra weight finally started to take its toll.

I had seen comments on facebook about runs that she’d been doing recently. I watched as her recorded distances grew steadily longer and longer, but having not seen her for a couple of years I had no idea she’d decided to lose her weight...Until I saw the photo on facebook. What was staring back at me was my beautiful friend holding up a pair of size 22 jeans in front of her now teeny size 8 body. 7½ stone lost in under one year! Now like I say, I have always though H was stunning, but the look on her face in that photo screamed to the world “Look at me! Look what I can do!” and it literally brought a tear to my eye.

She popped into the office today to say hello, which gave me a little time to catch up properly and very gingerly hug her teeny tiny skinny-minny self (I was a little concerned if I squished too hard I may crush her), and naturally I asked her secret. “Pure and simple” she told me; it was weight watchers, not going into her additional 49 points allowance and cutting out the carbs wherever possible. That combined with exercise and being a busy mum, meant that ten months later she was 7½ stone lighter, and positively beaming as a result.

Now don’t get me wrong, a massive weight loss like that is inspirational enough, but what I found more inspirational was the way H was so meek about her achievements. She was so concerned that she’d sound like a fanatical weight watchers devotee, standing on her soap box and telling us all how she did it, that she became shy as she told us about the road she’d taken to lose the weight. It just showed me that her journey was a personal one. She knew the plan worked for her, but she also wasn’t going to pretend it had been easy.

When H was bigger, she never really complained about her weight, she wasn’t like me, moaning that I wasn’t blessed with a thin gene, or hankering for the days when I could fit my ass into a pair of size 10 jeans. Her feelings about her weight were kept under her hat. H never let her shape or size define who she was then...and in the very same way, she won’t let her weight loss define who she is now. Today she reminded me, that who we are, and what we can achieve when we put our minds to it, comes from our core. It’s not from how we look on the outside, nor is it controlled by our environment, or our peers. It’s our very essence, our core and our hearts that make us who we are, and how successful we’ll be in life. The minute we stop caring about what life, people or society expects, is the minute we’ll truly start to achieve our potential. Thank you for the reminder H (you gorgeous beautiful lady) It was exactly what I needed to help me refocus xx

False Advertising

Dear Mr Right (you know who you are),

Ref: My feelings with regards to the ridiculous distance you have put between us.

I’m writing to make you aware of my feelings with regards to the way our relationship has developed over the last year and a bit, so that you can fully understand the predicament I find myself in now.

Firstly I feel that on our first encounter, you falsely advertised yourself as a potential “Prince Charming” by being utterly gorgeous and wholly available (i.e. living just thirty minutes from me), when in fact you were in the process of packing up your castle, and riding your steed three hundred miles away, to what felt like the other side of the world.

I could have accepted that I had made an error, and that you weren’t actually supposed to be in my life, however despite the ridiculous distance, you have been able to hold my attention and I can only assume this is because of the following:

1) You speak to me and text me so regularly, that it’s kind of like having a boyfriend, but without the “sexy time”.
2) You call me at work (granted this is usually to try and embarrass me in front of my colleagues by arguing with me on the phone) but again, it then feels as though I actually have a “significant other” on the end of the line, who cares enough to call me.
3) You laugh at me when I say stupid things, but never make me feel stupid...even when I accidentally send you a text telling you about my most recent bikini wax appointment, that was clearly not meant for you!
4) You do sweet things like send me 51 (at the last count) messages one after the other, each containing a single kiss: one because it’s sweet and two, because you know that my phone will be having a dickie fit with all the “pings” and vibrate alerts that it will make me giggle.
5) When I was actually seeing a real life person (as opposed to you, who’s so far away I sometimes wonder if I’ve made you up) you were decent enough to refrain from flirting with me, but you kept our friendship strong by not losing touch with me.
6) You have a funny accent, which I adore.
7) You wear Superman pants...I mean...what girl could resist that?
8) You are one of just two people who tell me off (the other is my mother) that I struggle to argue with.
9) You’re the first man in the world that I’ve ever let get away with calling me “woman”, and I’m still not sure why I don’t mind when you do it?!
10) You don’t take my crazy ramblings too seriously, even though I do a pretty good impression of a complete lunatic at times.

Given all of the above, I have come to the conclusion that actually, I have been left no option other than to let myself become smitten with you, and this, I feel, is where you have let me down, because clearly this is not an option whilst you live a gazillion miles away. I therefore respectfully request, that as a form of compensation to me, you re-locate back up to the midlands. I don’t think this is an unreasonable request under the circumstances.

Yours sincerely

Miss (Always) Right