I have no before and after pics. Or rather, I have no real before pic, because I shied away from the camera – except for face only selfies or photos where I’m bundled up in winter gear like an eskimo – for the most part when I was overweight. A couple of on-the-way pics are available, but for the before pic, the one from September of 2020 will have to do (I don’t know exactly, but I think last autumn I even had 6-8kg more than in the autumn of 2020). So here, before – getting there – there (or so, for I’d still like to go down 1 more kilo, but it’s a very inconsequential kilo, really, just the last bit of flab to be rid of).

I have now lost gotten rid of thirty-fucking-five kilos in these past 10 months. 35kg. That’s damn near 80lbs (77,2) for you non-metric peeps on the other side of the Atlantic. And I feel good. My overall health is good. My liver values are not hovering on the border anymore, my energy levels are back to my “normal”, I feel like myself again. Sure, there’s a bunch of mental shit bundled into the equation of me, too, but getting some of that resolved was the key to getting my body back in shape too.

I’m all for body positivity. I mean, the most important thing is to be able accept yourself, to embrace your body as yours and be healthy. Needless to say, while I maintained my style (though changing things to hide the fat as well as possible), I was not positive about my obese torso, nor will I ever be, or even aspire to be, My body, my positivity. I decide when and in what shape my body is good. Isn’t that what body positivity is all about?

Sometimes it feels like it means that you shouldn’t strive to do anything about your body because you’re good as you are. But it’s not always true! However, it IS up to each person to decide. To love yourself, to love your body, is to want what’s best for it. And for me, it’s keeping my weight and my size here where I am again. Where I was for a decade, until shit hit the fan in our lives and stuff got out of hand, and for some years, I lacked the mental capacity to do anything about my weight gain. All I could do was to accept that it was happening and mourn the slim me until it was time to turn around again.

I was never a skinny kid, nor a skinny teen, nor will I ever be a skinny adult. I wasn’t overweight either, just average, with natural muscle. But when you’re not a skinny kid/teen, you’re automatically fat. Because kids are idiots. Some of them grow out of it, some don’t. So anyway, I was called fat my entire school life. I guess it was the easiest hate-word those idiots around me could come up with, for a bit strange neurodivergent not-skinny kid in their midst.

So I started to think myself fat. And became ashamed of my perfectly normal size body. At twelve, I stopped eating pasta and pancakes and white bread to lose some weight. Interestingly intuitive for a 12yo, since (fast) carbs are my worst enemy, as I came to understand as an adult. I did lose some, but not a whole lot. Not that I needed to, and I guess I had sense enough to understand that I never would be skinny like the others and didn’t need to be.

It is true, that I gain weight super-easy – I call my genes the survivor genes, because my body tries to hold on to every calory I eat. Those damned carbs are the bane of my existance, because they pretty much suffocate my ability to understand when I’m hungry, or when I’ve had enough, and so I just keep on eating too much to feel full and my portions get bigger and bigger and my sugar addiction ramps up and… It just slips. Thus, it’s better for me to keep away from medium to high glycemic index foods, which is what I really mean when I say carbs.

Just a few links for you, to understand what I’m talking about:

• What Is the Glycaemic Index (GI)?
• Glycemic Index Chart for Common Foods
• In Finnish: Hyvinvointia ruuasta eli mitä syö ihminen joka ei syö perunaa, pastaa, puuroa…

For weightloss, there’s multiple factors and it’s not so simple – medications and medical conditions included – nor is there one way that suits all. To me, it’s always been more intuition than science; I found the science behind my “system” only after I was already there.

My weight-loss system put simply: I don’t eat carbs (see above), my daily intake of calories is less than I use (I have never really counted calories, so it’s purely instinct), and I only eat once or twice a day. Because in the end, I’m really not even hungry more often than that. I don’t really force anything – though the beginning is a rather slow and decisive process to ramp down from the carbs and overeating – I simply guide myself to what I know is healthy for me, and then start listening to my body again when the carbs aren’t there to lie to me anymore. And the thing is, when I get those carbs out of my system, I really don’t crave them anymore. In fact, they don’t taste good to me anymore, even.

Upkeep? More of the same except I eat a bit more. Still not more than I need in general, but obviously not less either. Carby stuff can be eaten sometimes, just not on a regular basis. Though, that’s the case even now. I have no forbidden foods, I eat what I want. It’s just that I’ve molded my want to what my body wants in order to stay healthy. If it makes sense. Point being that weight loss or weight upkeep has never been a struggle for me. Not when I’ve been ready for it. When I wasn’t, it didn’t happen. And as much as I’d like to swear that I won’t ever gain weight again, there’s no guarantee.

Getting back to being happy with one’s body. I can easily promise I will never be happy being overweight. To me it represents the slippery slope to major obesity, to health issues that are just incredulous, to something I can never let myself slide into. So even when I do gain some, even a lot, there will always come the point of turning back before I’m too far gone. I watched my mom eat herself to death, even though in the end that’s not what she died of. To me, obesity is the ultimate form of unhappiness with one’s self and there is nothing positive – body or otherwise – to me about it.

So what’s my point? Be happy in your body. If you’re not, do something about it. If you can’t do without help, ask for it, be it medical or some other form of help. What works for me, may or may not work for you, we are all different. I’m lucky that my husband is actually similar in this weight loss/control as me (as well as tastes in food), which makes it easy for us to help each other, while also easy for us to slip and slide together.

As an end note of sorts. The one cool thing about this getting back to slim after years of weight gain is that I (well, we, both of us really) got to renew my wardrobe practically entirely. Maybe 10% (not counting shoes) of my current wardrobe is old – some dresses even from my former slim years – but everything else is new. Expensive? Sure. Rewarding? Oh, hell yeah 😂 I’m loving it! I love to be back to the size I, in my mind, should be and feel best in.

Which really has not been the case much this summer. We had a nice little heatwave in June, but the entire July has been a jacket-July. Cloudy, rainy, windy, cold. I’ve never worn jeans in the summer as much as this July. Nor have a worn my summer dresses as little as this July.

So the moments of summer as it’s supposed to be are gems to be beheld. Like yesterday. It wasn’t really hot or anything, but a gentle 23-25C, with the sun out and only some wisps of clouds in the sky. I donned my long light semi-sleeve dress with an open back and slipped my feet into some sandals, and left my jackets home, as we packed ourselves into the car for a little roadtrip.

As usual, our roadtrip took us west along the coastline. It could’ve been a day for Hanko or Tammisaari, even, but we had other plans for the late afternoon and evening. So we drove down to Inkoo. An ant’s spit of a place in size, it has a church, an S-market (grocery store) pharmacy, a couple of artisan shops 💜that were surprisingly closed yesterday, a museum house area, and a nice harbor with some restaurants and a dog-friendly coffee shop.

For reasons (of limited daylight, mostly) we have twice visited Inkoo in late autumn/early winter. Wanting to go somewhere, but not enough daylight to go too far. This was our first visit during the summer, when there’s actually some life in the town, thanks to all the boats venturing into the pictureque harbor.

With the sun high in the sky we parked next to the Café Wilhelmsdahl and selected a table with half shade, half sun – shade for H, sun for me. Cappucinos for us, water for the dogs, and a lunch of smoked salmon pie and carrot cake. Oh, right, doggos didn’t get any of the pie and cake, but they did get some meaty stick snacks.

I love the atmosphere, the ambiance, of Café Wilhemsdahl be it winter or summer, whether we sit inside or out on the terrace. There is something serene and warm about it. The personnel is friendly and kind, they like the furry four-legged visitors instead of merely tolerating them, the coffee is good, same with everything I’ve ever eaten there. It’s cosy and homey. The café alone is worth the visit, in my opinion!

Once we’d finished our lunch, we took a walk around the harbor. How different it is in the summer when boats are docked, others come and go, there’s people milling about, instead of ice and snow! The only disappointment was the closed artisan shops, well at least the Kiurunpesä curiosity shop next to Wilhelmsdahl was closed. So we just hopped back in our car and drove home.

Sun was still high and the sky still blue as we got home around three. H went to prepare the grill while I prepared a couple of chickens for the rotisserie before changing into some bikinis and settling into my terrace chair to read in the sun.

I had a good hour or so of direct sun left in my hanging egg chair before the sun disappeared behind some tall trees at the edge of our yard. Even then, the air didn’t turn cold, so I was comfortable in my chair as H tended to the grill with the chickens roasting on their skewer. “This is what summer is supposed to be like”, I noted to H.

Finally, when the chickens were done, I pulled on a short mid-sleeve dress over my bikinis and helped with the doors as H brought the grilled goodness inside. The chickens were crispy and emanating such a delicious smell that I literally started salivating and decided to leave the chair covering to a later point in time, when my belly is full of chicken.

Needless to say, I suppose, that I forgot the chair. We ate. We took dogs out. I read some more in the library. We took the dogs out again and retired to the bedroom. I read some more, until I fell asleep. So then, this morning, everything was soaked. Of all the times to forget to cover the chair, I obviously selected the time when it then proceeded to rain cats and dogs all night long or something.

Not that it matters too much that the chair pillows are wet (and drying on the heated floor in the bathroom). It’s not like today would be a day to sit outside reading anyway. It’s not raining anymore, but it’s cloudy with all of 18 degrees C. It’s back to jacket-July, for one more day anyway. Then it’s jacket-August.

While the rest of the world roasts, we here have had a cold airmass all summer long. We’re so close to the North Pole, that while the hot air has been enmassing elsewhere, it’s pulled the cold on top of us from the North. Or something. This summer makes me sing. “I was cheated by you, and I think you know when!” And yet, “just one look and I forget everything!” when the sun is out for one day.

Despite the weather, however, the summer’s been quite good. Good times with family, little sailing cruises of Schooner Kathrina in Helsinki archipelago, birthday parties, reading and resting and taking it easy. My vacation is half done, half to go still. The weather I cannot influence, but everything else in my summer I can 🌞

More photos of this summer in Flickr