Will My Grandchildren Know Me As A "Fatso?"

I find some of the pictures of me with the grandkids horrendous. I look even more obese than my mental image of myself. Could I really be that fat? I hate to think so, but I probably am.

A couple of my daughters dug up my dungarees (does anybody call jeans dungarees any more?), bought for the summer I was a counselor in HILI I, out of the attic. They tried them on and insisted that I must have had been very thin. Strange, because I had always considered myself fat. It didn't help that I'm not built for the "Twiggy" styles popular in my teens. I guess that my parents were happy that they never had to reprimand me for "too short " skirts. And once I had become religious, that was an even better reason to keep my skirts no higher than my knees.

Now my problem is a lot more than just "heavy legs," so I consider it siyata diShmaya that I was offered a chance to try out Start Fresh. I'm still in the first week, and I have to find solutions to how to integrate it into my usual activities. I presume that most dieters have the same dilemmas, and I need encouragement.

My kids seem in shock and don't want to get too involved. They're right, and anyway, it'll take a while to see results, and G-d willing there will be results. At this point, I don't know how far I'm going to try to take it. For the past few years, I've just been relieved not to have added weight. My weight, after a "great gain and figure change" about fifteen years ago, I got off about a size, more from exercise than diet, and I've been pretty stable ever since.

Those are the girls you hear speaking Hebrew in the background.