Weight-less or Weight-loss

This is a story I have wanted to tell for quite some time but always chose not to. I am not sure why I want to tell it, and not really sure why I didn't. It's not like you can call me shy, I tell you most of everything, but for some reason I felt I couldn't write about this.
I usually try that every post will have a purpose, at least in my mind, and this one's purpose always seems to elude me - is it a victory story? is it a moral story? is it a bragging story? or is it a shameful story and a cautionary tale? I think that it's partially all of them, but most of all, for me, it's a shameful story, because it's more about my shortcomings than my success in overcoming them. And unlike my other shortcoming, which I find endearing (and thankfully so does Hidai), this one I am ashamed of. Why? because being fat is, in our society, something to be ashamed of.
I wasn't obese, I was just fat.
I have been in a battle with my weight for a long time, in fact for as long as I can remember. I was one of those really tall-really skinny girls while growing up, until one day I wasn't anymore. I don't remember when that happened, I guess like everyone, somewhere around the teen years, when you start getting all the body issues and such. I dabbled with an eating disorder when I was about 20 (the army was not the best years of my life), and then went from being very skinny to being fat, and kind of stayed there, except for short periods of times (like just before our wedding). My weight didn't increase so much (except for pregnancies) but neither did it decrease so much. I stayed within the same 5 kilos radius for about 10 years.
But the real thing is, it didn't really bother me. I mean obviously it did, but not in a severe nerve-wracking, can't-think-of-anything-else way. Just the normal way. I had a closet full of nice designer clothes I bought over the years, I had a husband who loved me no matter what I weighed, and I was, for the most part, content with it.
Most people who are fat talk about food as obsession, and they are right. No matter what your vice is, you eat to celebrate and to mourn, when you've had a good day or a bad day, everything is a good excuse to eat. For me it's not the food. I mean I like food, but I don't love it. I am a vegetarian, I hate cooking, and I have a family of boys who doesn't care about food. I am a dessert person. I adore baking, I am addicted to chocolate, and I can and in fact do, live almost solely on sweets. Chocolate is my comfort food, my celebratory food, my I-am-working-and-can't-think-about-what-to-write food, my I-fought-with-the-kids-and-feel-horrible food, and my I-just-need-something-right-now food.
And I always just need something now.
I have, by far, the worst eating/exercise habits of everyone I know. I eat something just about every hour, I live on snacks (in fact while writing this post I had to stop four times for a banana, 3 kiwis, 3 rice cakes and coffee), I hate exercising and anyway have so many joints/back/knees problems that there are so few things I can do.
I wish I could tell you something happened and it all changed one day. I wish I could tell you I had an epiphany, or even a rude weakening. I didn't. I think it crept over me over time, my dislike of myself, my shame. It was a time in our life with so much uncertainty, so much disorder, and I needed something that was in my control. Something I could focus on and change. Something that was mine. So one morning, August 1st, 2011 to be exact, I woke up and told Hidai that that's it. And it was.
This photo is not what drove me, but it's what I use as a bench mark, it's my "before".

I signed up with Weight Watchers online, we bought a treadmill, and that was indeed it. It took me 4 months of hard work, obeying without fault the Weight Watchers regime and exercising 5 times a week (running and Pilates), until I made it to 2 kilos below my target weight.

This is the success part of my story. I lost about 13 kilos (about 2 stones), and went from being size 14-16 to size 8-10. I am almost two years after, and I am still keeping my target weight.
Oh, how I wish I could leave it here, with the success, with what you can usually see from the outside - me, thin, baking all the time and eating all that chocolate without gaining weight.
But the truth is, I can't do that, because I've already started the story so I will finish it where it really belongs - in the embarrassing facts.
They say losing the weight is the easy half of the battle, keeping it off, that's the hard part. It not true, it's just that you expect the tough part to be over one day, that all effort you put in to it, the bad days, and the cravings, they are the worst and when you finally reach that golden-coveted target weight it will be easier. It doesn't. When I just lost the weight and became skinny I had lots of compliments (some genuine and some not so much), I was able to talk about it all the time, enjoy it and the envy looks I got, explain about it. I was the one who made it. Now I am in London, where everyone who knows me, knows the "after" me, and where everyone is fit and skinny (or so it seems). Now I am just this "new me" that isn't new at all. I already said it in a different post, and I will say it again here - people don't change. I wish I could be one of those success stories that then went on and changed their way of life completely, or one of those "yes, and the minute I started exercising I got addicted to it", or at least one of those people who has self control. But I am not. I am still just the same old me. I still battle everyday with my addiction, with my bad eating habits, my need for more sugar and my lack of exercise-motivation. I am still me, and every time I have a bad day I eat chocolate, every time I relax my control I gain 2 kilos.
I live in fear that one morning I will wake up and discovered my weight increased by 13 kilos. I go on the scale 5 times a day.
It's a journey that has no end, and you want to know the saddest truth of all? I still look at the mirror and see the same woman who weighed 13 kilos more. For me, I haven't changed at all.