(warning: long post lol!!)

You guys have really helped me think about who I am and what I wear and it's had an unexpected knockoff...

Now to give a bit of background: we (or mainly I) home educate our 4 kids. This is my career and choice and I love it but like many jobs out there it's stressful and demanding.
Before having kids I was an average UK size 12/14. I felt I was overweight but that was bc I had always been told I was the fat one of the family when i was growing up.

I've just now come to realise that the reason why I was termed "fat" was bc I've always loved food - not eating mounds and mounds of it but the very fact that I've loved cooking and making food from scratch since childhood made me stand out from the women in my family who claim to be uninterested in food (when in fact they obsess about every calorie and constantly try fad diets).

Since having my babies, i've gone up in weight significantly (maximum was UK22 , now at UK16-18) , mainly bc was trying to be a perfect mum and inevitably this lead to stress which i didn't manage very well and comfort ate, all the while feeling guilty and being judged by my aunts/mother/cousins who would not-so-subtly suggest i try crazy-diet-of-the-week.
I tried crazy diets and not-so-crazy ones and overtime i lost weight but every time i felt i wasn't being me and I'd crash into depression (which is an illness I struggle with).
Because the person I am loves good food. Even if the eating plan (aka diet) allowed lots of food/or was "intuitive eating" I still felt I was missing out on being me.

I'm the kind of person who will and has spent years perfecting that one recipe. I've also always loved veg and real food. That's me and that's the me I like. When we were newlyweds hubby came home from work one day to find me peeling the red wax off Babybels (which I never ate - can't stand plastic cheese!) and melting them to coat some cheddar I'd made from scratch and left to cure under the stairs.That's me.
Even at university I found ways to cook veg soup from scratch in my room rather than eat at the canteen (weird I know). That's me. The joy I felt when I moved into accommodation with cooking facilities is something I'll never forget.

I don't like the diet-obsessed me who spends Mondays biting her fingernails bc it's weigh-in aka judgement time.

Given the choice - and I do have that choice, in 10 yrs' time what kind of woman do I want to be?
- a slim diet-controlled woman fearing weigh-in days?
- or a mature "fat" woman who looks confident in her outfits and who has realised that she does not want to be a slave to other peoples' demands as to what she should look like?

I'll admit I'm scared of weight gain...what if I go off the rails and gorge on cookies 24/7? I'm not actively planning to do that but what if I do? What if I escalate back up in size? Basically, dare I trust myself?

I've always loved working out and that's never going to away.
I've spoken to my doc about all this and had tests that all come back saying i'm very healthy. When I pointed out that my BMI is 32 whereas it should be under 30, he said getting it under 30 wouldn't improve my health significantly as all my other results were so good.

Sorry I'm rambling on but I really feel that just as you've taught me to select what clothes are "me" it's also empowering me to strive to live as ME, not as society says should be me.

I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has come to this point and jumped off the diet/weight control rat race and what your experiences were?

thank you for reading all this!!