A bit of a downer.

It’s meant to be all up and positive and telling you all the great things about this transformative journey I’ve been on. This blog, I mean.

And it is. The message above all others is that even for someone like me – seemingly in an unbreakable pattern for decades – can adopt some new habits, keep doing it, and have a pretty transformative experience.

It has changed my life infinitely for the better. But there is at least one downer.

My skin. It has descended. Literally, a downer. Turns out that losing weight in your early fifties leaves with a loose skin. Which gathers, wrinkly and drooping, around my lower torso. My belly button has taken on a stretched, yawning look, like The Scream.

I can’t decide if I hate it, or want to value it was a reminder of where I never want to be again. Sometimes I stretch it out, smoothing it and making my belly look flat and younger. I often wonder if I could get it removed, and if I did whether I would lose a couple of extra kilos into the bargain and finally cross the rubicon into the below-25-BMI zone (which I am still attempting via a renewed hardcore keto phase). I tuck it into my boxers, embarrassed if my kids see it while I’m changing.

It has been sort of the other way around on my face. I have lost the rather substantial double chin I had before. “What’s this lump?” my daughter used to ask, and I vowed to lose weight, and I kept my vow. So my chin has ascended, unveiling a hitherto unseen jawline and leaving a mini-downer as well in the form of a premature turkey neck. I have adjusted the lighting so I don’t see it all day when staring at myself on Zoom calls.

Now my daughter doesn’t comment on either thing. She mostly doesn’t comment on my weight loss at all, which I am glad about because it won’t be many years before she becomes obsessed with her own appearance and growing up with someone constantly talks about losing weight doesn’t provide a helpful context for being body-confident and happy. She only seems to have vaguely even noticed, much more aware of the amount of exercise I do which is a much healthier precedent.

I’m not going to go under the knife for vanity. I spent enough years certain of my own ugliness to be pretty happy with the dramatic shift in my appearance.

But… have to admit… I’d love to lose the loose.