What I hate:
1. Not daring to swim at the public heated pool in the winter because it would be too embarrassing. Luckily, I live on a lake, so can swim in privacy in the summer.
2. Feeling it when people avert their eyes when they see me in the same way they do with other people they cannot relate to, such as people in wheelchairs.
3. Not wanting to be intimate with my husband, for a host of reasons all having to do with my body.
4. Horrific clothes. You think things are bad in the US? I used to find pretty decent looking stuff at the specialty stores over there. Here they are still fixated on tunics and if I find a pair of pants that fit my bum, the waist is six or eight inches too big and the legs four inches too long (Swedes are TALL people and they seem to believe that if you are bigger around, you must also be taller. Have to have my sister bring me jeans from the States every year.
5. Inability to find pretty shoes in my size - I have big feet anyway and the weight has turned them into platypus feet. I have to wear men's boots in the winter.

But all that is soon going to be history. I can do this, I am doing this, and I'm not giving up.

Rosemary