The Cake is a Lie

The woman I am sharing a lane with swims faster than I do, but takes more breaks between laps. She swims with a smooth freestyle stroke that does not send water into my face as we pass, me in my modified dog paddle that keeps my sensitive ears out of the water.

Today I did 16 laps, for a total of 800m. When I started, six weeks ago, I could only manage 500m. My goal is to be swimming a full kilometre by the end of September.

After so long living with low energy and low aerobic capacity, being healthy is a joy. Watching my fitness improve seems miraculous.

For a long time I've believed that how I feel and what I am capable of is much more important than how I look or what I weigh. Growing up tiny and slim in a family of women obsessed with weight loss exposed me to the extreme side of diet culture and I was aware of such phenomena as liposuction, 'stomach stapling' and the Israeli Army Diet from a young age. I dreaded getting to an age where I would have to start dieting.

When I started high school I weighed 26kg and was about the size of an average eight year old. Fortunately my mother has been sewing since she was a teenager. She bought me the smallest school dress in the second-hand uniform shop, took each side in by 5cm and took up the hem by 10cm to get it to fit. I wore that dress for two years before receiving some hand-me-down uniforms from a friend.

Things were tough in our house when I was a teen, and I was always hungry. In my late teens I went through a stage where I was obsessed with horse racing and had big ideas of being a jockey, and during this time I kept constant watch on my weight. A late growth spurt and my fragile confidence on horseback put an end to that idea and I didn't really think about weight loss again until after a stint on antidepressants and a fortuitous break-up in my 30s.

I lost 17kg in less than six months without really trying. Whenever anyone asked what my secret was, I would tell them that the first 130kg was the hardest, referring to said break-up. My GP at the time was incredibly pleased with my efforts, but when I reached 58kg he told me I had probably lost enough. I didn't really think about my weight again until recently, when I decided I was going to get into riding again, and do it on a 14hh pony.

During the last year before my surgery, when my heart failure was at its worst, I was terrified of losing weight. Unplanned weight loss in heart failure patients can be a sign that the disease is progressing to a dangerous point. Too sick to exercise, I sought dopamine from chips and home-made spelt flour choc chip cookies. My weight stayed pretty constant and I had the idea that after the surgery it would be simple matter of laying off the chips and cookies, getting some exercise and the weight would fly off.

I failed to consider the hard truth of perimenopause in my plan. My body is still very keen to put on muscle, but now much less willing to part with valuable fat. I spent the first couple of months of this year sorting out my diet and increasing my exercise. My weight stayed exactly the same. I started recording what I ate and counting calories, but still eating back my 'exercise' calories. And my weight stayed the same. I spoke to my GP who told me that there is no secret to weight loss beyond reducing calories. So I did.

And finally the number on the scale started dropping. Until it didn't.

I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. I stuck to the plan and increased my exercise. My weight bounced around a little but wasn't really trending down. At the rate I was going I was set to reach my goal weight at around the same time as we are projected to close the gender pay gap. I took a good hard look at my diet and lifestyle, identified a couple of likely suspects, and found the culprit in the chocolate mug cake recipe I had been relying on heavily for emotional support.

The nutrition data in the recipe was incorrect. Or more accurately, my assumption that a small cake made in a mug was designed to serve one person was incorrect. I was actually getting twice the energy from that little cake as I thought I was.

I replaced the cake with chocolate protein date balls, which are nowhere near as nice, but I'm losing weight again.

So why, after all these years and all my efforts to create a good relationship with food and ignore the scales, do I even care what I weigh, as long as I'm healthy?

I've ridden ponies my whole life (except for when I didn't ride at all) and been told many times that I should get a bigger horse. The debates around horse and rider weight in general are heated and plentiful. But as I enter my crone era I just want to ride ponies in peace and not worry that observers are secretly thinking 'get off that poor pony you fat bitch'.

More importantly, I don't want to be thinking that about myself.

In the past couple of weeks I have actually made some real progress around getting on the pony. And I want to be the best burden for her to carry that I can be.

I was prepared to start Ava on my own if necessary, and to that end I had prepared that pony to within an inch of her life. So when my instructor messaged me to bring my saddle to our next lesson and that she could put her working student on Ava for her first ride I was relieved for a few different reasons.

I had a bit of cash put aside and we had three lessons under saddle in eight days. In this time Ava's balance and confidence improved and so did mine. We worked as a team over these lessons, Ava and I variously under the guidance of my instructor, her student and her patient if somewhat grumpy Friesian gelding. We walked, we trotted, we ponied, we mounted and dismounted. We rode in a real saddle, and started learning the aids for stop, go, speed up and turn.

Ava did what she does, which is figure it out and have a go, and I began to feel at home on her back.

With a lot of wet weather coming and my cash reserves dwindling until I can sell some more pots, we are taking a break. We will focus on groundwork and bodywork and I'll be researching saddles for short backed horses and modifying my sidepull halter to function more like the one we have been using in lessons.

I definitely feel like I am learning to ride from scratch, but also that I needed to. I dream of cantering across fields and performing higher dressage movements. Every step from here is a bonus. Ava might not be fancy, but she is incredibly trainable, and when it comes to dressage, trainability and soundness can get you a long way.

65kg? That's a reachable goal, right? It's at least as reachable as going on a trail ride, or going to a riding club rally or doing a dressage test.

The number on the scale doesn't matter unless you're putting that weight on someone else's back and asking them to dance with you.

I'm doing it all for her. It's the least I can do.

Trotting in our first ridden lesson. Ava learning to 'wear' a rider, me learning to go with her.