Yes! I did for 28 years! I half-heartedly tried to diet when my mother told me to or I got annoyed at my clothes not fitting any more. Then one day after starting a new relationship, moving interstate, abandoning my old career goal that I no longer wanted and starting a new university degree, it suddenly dawned on me: I was fat and what I used to see (nice, sexy and bigish) was not what other people saw (unhealthily fat) and what I was now seeing as well. So, I decided to become normal weight. I don't understand why it happened so I don't really have any answers for you but I did want to post to let you know that I know exactly what you're talking about! My thinking brain knew I was fat and that I needed to lose weight but my feeling brain (my personality, the real me) didn't believe it at all for all those years.

It was like being fat was inconvenient but no more than that. I felt good about myself, guys still liked me, I was sexy, there was really no problem other than judgemental people who thought I should be skinny and having to buy new clothes.

Then, after all the changes I mentioned, over the period of 3 days or so I realised that I no longer accepted my weight as 'me' so I had to get rid of it. Just like that, it changed. So now I'm losing it and I have no doubt whatsoever that I will lose everything I want to. I've set a fairly high goal weight because I would hate to be skinny or even slim. I want to be at the curvey end of normal.

Do you think maybe your current weight feels safe? I think I probably used my weight to protect me from the hurt of failure. If I didn't succeed in my chosen career I could blame it on being fat, not on not being good enough at what I was doing. And/or I could blame other people for being prejudiced against fat people.

So, that's me! I know where you're at but I don't have any good advice unfortunately. Maybe one thing ... do you look at photos of yourself much? I realise now that I avoided them like the plague because they didn't actually look like ME, like ME how I knew I really was, sexy and attractive. They showed some fat girl that wasn't me. Now I can look at pictures and go "okay yeah, that fat girl is me but not for that much longer".

Now I'm just rambling ... I think I'm excited to see someone else who feels like I felt! The big difference between you and me is that I put on a lot more weight before I even started asking the questions you have the good sense to tackle now.

Best wishes,

Em