Mum, where did I come from?
7 days of perfect eating and I am up 0.75lb. I don't want to change my chart - I somehow feel it should only show a gain if I actually did something wrong. Anyway, it happens. Here's to a brighter week...
Inspired by raspberrycordial, I am going to post a bit about how I got here. And yes, surprise, surprise, I blame my mum 
...
I started this blog at 26, with 75lb to lose. But I had been trying to diet every single day for 15 years. The sad thing is, most of that time I wasn't overweight. It was dieting that caused my weight problem.
I began to think of myself as 'fat' at 11. Always skinny, suddenly my school clothes were tight. Already full of self-loathing, I was horrified. I spoke to my mum about it - I still remember that night vividly. She snapped, 'Well, you need to stop eating so many snacks, you are going to turn out just like me.' (My mom was a compulsive overeater who regularly ate herself up to 260 pounds).
Looking back at photos of myself from that time, I was tiny. The changes I was experiencing were just puberty. But from then on, I viewed myself as 'a fat person'.
I started trying to control what I ate. I was growing fast and no doubt needed a lot of calories - but to me, any snacking was 'bad', as were my school's huge lunches. After all, I knew how to lose weight from watching my parents' sporadic, all-or-nothing approach to dieting - it was supposed to be painful and nigh-on impossible.
The foods I had always consumed in moderation, without thinking about it, took on a forbidden appeal. Getting off the school bus, I would buy 3 chocolate bars and eat them all on the 5-minute walk home, stuffing them down so quickly I barely tasted them. My pockets were always full of shredded wrappers and chocolate crumbs.
I became vegetarian, which I was convinced would help me lose weight. But from that point on - at the age of 11 - I took on the responsibility for preparing my own meals - which meant I could eat what I liked.
I became a slightly plump teenager - but I felt huge. I looked at my friends with jealousy - why couldn't I be slim, with clear skin, and just somehow know how to dress and do my hair and act around others? I looked a mess - I mean, I can't believe my mum let me go out like that. But when she was overweight, she took no care of her personal appearance 'until she had lost weight'. I mimicked her in this.
I remember when I was 14, she took me to Miss Selfridge. I couldn't get into jeans below a size 14 (US 10), which to me seemed enormous. I can see now from photos that I was slim, the jeans must have been the wrong shape. But I got upset and Mum yelled - in the communal changing room - 'See what happens when you eat so much? You are going to be as big as me soon and you're 14, you need some self-control!'
If I ever did - accidentally - lose weight, I would be praised to high heaven - followed by the inevitable comment, 'Now you just have to keep it off'. Err...how, Mum?
By the time I reached the last two years of school, my weight worries had become a self-fulfilling prophecy - I looked plump, and very unhealthy. My eating habits were horrendous.
There were very few overweight girls at my school. I still remember sitting in an English class discussing what we had all eaten for breakfast that morning. The other girls had eaten porridge, cereal, toast...I had to admit to my standard breakfast - two chocolate Pop Tarts scoffed in the car on the way to school. In many schools, this probably wouldn't be unusual. At mine, it elicited cries of horror and 'you ate that for breakfast?' I felt mortified.
Mid morning meant a huge slice of carrot cake or a gigantic chocolate and caramel slice, a diet coke and a pack of bacon Wheat Crunchies. I wasn't the only one buying them - plenty of my friends were too. Trouble is, I would buy another cake with another set of friends during my free period an hour later. I can still taste those chocolate and caramel slices today, I ate so many that year.
Lunch was a pot noodle, an obscenely large brie baguette, a hulking jacket potato or fish and chips in the park with my friends.
My mum would collect me and my brother from school and on the way home every night we would stop at a local shop for a chocolate bar or an ice cream in the summer. Arriving home, I would ransack the cupboards. Despite the exhortations to diet, Mum kept shelves full of chocolate, crisps, ice creams and refrigerated desserts. When snacks disappeared, she silently replaced them - even when 2 packs of 7 chocolate bars were going every evening.
Dinner was 2 gigantic bowls of pasta with tomato sauce and piles of grated cheese or a whole chopped mozzarella ball and half a tub of parmesan. Afterwards I continued hoovering up food. I sat on my bed for hours, watching soaps or reading, munching mindlessly on chocolate, crisps, cheese, pittas with mayonnaise and sliced tomatoes, and leftovers from my parents' meals or a takeaway if they were eating one. Ironically, these numb hours, absorbed in made-up lives, were the happiest of my teenage years. Simple comfort and escape - except when I had to sneak downstairs to garner more supplies from the kitchen, hoping my parents wouldn't hear the rustle of the crisp packet.
I used to hide the boxes and wrappers in my bedside cupboard. Every so often, Mum would do a raid and lay out all the mouldering tubs downstairs to confront me.
I started my first 'proper diet' - ie not just an attempt to 'eat less' at the age of 17. I had already been completely obsessed with weight for six years. And the story continued...
As much as I hate blaming my mum for all this, I actually think it was less healthy when I didn't. When I still just thought my behaviour came from nowhere - that I was defective.
Now I have faced up to my anger, I can realise it wasn't all her fault. If I hadn't been such a sensitive soul, I would never have taken those comments to heart. I wouldn't have been so anxious and so unhappy.
And yet, I partly blame my parents for not understanding the kind of personality their child had.
I now realise my mother, too, is only human. She was desperate that I wouldn't be as unhappy with my weight as she was, but associated food with nurturing, and felt completely powerless in the face of weight issues.
I wasn't abused. Nothing terrible happened to me as a child. And I am doing OK. I have realised I can change. Maybe one day I can help someone else who is in a similar position, and then all of this will have been worth it.
Rach xxx 
PS. Spotted a news article on the BBC site this morning - 'Third of staff hungover at desk'. First thought was, 'Why, oh why not me?'