skinny | Aussie in France

wedding_day_cropped — At my wedding in 1998

We all know there are two types of people in the world when it comes to weight – the natural skinnies and us. The natural skinnies, including Black Cat, appear to be able to eat enormous amounts of food, and never budge a gram, while we seem to put on weight just looking at a high calorie morsel. It doesn’t really work that way of course. The natural skinnies do have a different metabolism, but they also seem to be more attracted to less fatty foods, or so I’ve noticed over the years. Black Cat wouldn’t eat meat for the first six years of her life and when she did, she’d take off all the fatty bits. She never ate the chicken skin either.

Leonardo, like me, didn’t do anything of the sort. We both have the same sort of morphology. I have chocolate junkie friends who are natural skinnies and I couldn’t work out how they did it. Black Cat is not an example because she doesn’t like chocolate of any shape or kind. But careful observation has shown that either they exercise a lot or they don’t eat fatty foods. I like good chocolates from time to time but I don’t ever crave them, unlike Relationnel.

When natural skinnies are stressed, they lose weight, and when they’re happy, they lose it too! We obviously put on weight in both cases. So keeping my weight down when I was young was always an effort and always much easier when I had control over what I ate on an everyday basis. I also had a reasonable amount of regular exercise, playing volley ball and squash and swimming.

Then I came to France and discovered a whole new way of eating. I just loved the baguettes and pastries and wine. Once I set up house, though, I switched to Asian cooking – mainly because I didn’t want to compete with the French – and kept my weight down that way until I was pregnant with Leonardo. I suddenly started craving bread and vegemite, milk and lamb cutlets. The weight piled on of course and it wasn’t until Leonardo was 8 months old and I cut out the 2 litres of milk a day that I lost weight again.

I was fine until I became pregnant with Black Cat and the same thing happened again. But life was not easy so I kept the weight on a bit longer. By the time she was 18 months old, though, I was actually slim again but unhappy so it gradually came back on because I started binging. Then, a couple of years later, when I turned 36, I had an epiphany and decided I was going to take my life (and weight) in hand. By the next year, I had lost 17 kilos. It just seemed to fall off by itself as my divorce approached.

I maintained a weight I was very happy with until I met Relationnel. Our eating habits changed and we ate out a lot. We also started our « wine-tasting » holidays where we’d spend a week in a wine-growing area of France visiting a couple of vineyards each day. I acquired a penchant for foie gras and started eating bread with my meals, which I had never done. We’d grill large amounts of meat on the open fire or barbecue every day.

It was no surprise to discover I was putting on weight! Relationnel was too, but to a lesser extent. Although he’s not a natural skinny he still benefits from all the gymnastics he did in his youth and sporadic intensive exercise. I can remember coming home from three weeks’ holiday in Italy and not being able to fit into my clothes any more. Relationnel was amazed. Despite the fact that we had eaten virtually the same food the whole time, I was the one who had put on weight. He thought my excess weight was due to snacking between meals which I virtually never do.

So, 13 years after we first met, I was over 20 kilos heavier! Next time I’ll tell you how I lost all those kilos.