My yellow dress is grey, it’s a fine knit item that shows every lump and bump – and there are a fair few of those I’m afraid. It’s a medium which equates to a size 12 and I am currently a good way from looking great in it. I bought it in a sale thinking I’d slim into it and yet there it still sits. In my wardrobe. With its tags on. Pristine. Unworn.
Dieting and I are old friends/enemies. I started dieting as a teenager when irony of ironies, I didn’t need to lose weight at all. Photos of me then show a slim girl, who didn’t realize how lovely she was. Decades of yo-yo dieting and overeating have left me much heavier, unhappy with how I look and feel. My knees ache a bit and I feel old in my body.
I don’t want to feel like that, in many ways I am happier than I have ever been. I have a good job, a nice flat, a wonderful son and the best black and white cat in the world. Friends of mine will know that two years after my marriage of 17 years ended I found love, wonderfully, unexpectedly with someone I met on Twitter. Someone who loves me unconditionally, exactly as I am. Someone who has never uttered a less than complimentary word about my appearance.
I’m in a place where I can tackle this issue now, I’ve started the5:2 diet and I’ve started exercising again. I am not doing this from a place of hatred or doing it for someone else, to make them love me, or stop them being horrible to me. It will take a while – maybe over a year but I have time and slow and steady is the way.
I look forward to sharing the ups and downs of my journey with you.
Jude
The Yellow Dress Project 
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