Yes, tis me! I hope you didn't think I'd deserted you; after all, so many people have left blogging recently, but fear not, I'm not one of them! I do owe you guys an explanation though - as you know, I was in Hong Kong in the first week of April, and ever since I've been back, I've been ill with vile respiratory tract infections. It's been a horrid two weeks, and probably the most ill I've been in years, but am starting to come out of the daze of painkillers and antibiotics. I can breathe, talk, laugh without coughing, and eat again (hurray!), and the dizziness has abated enough for me to see the words I'm typing - woohoo!

Hong Kong was fun - it seems so long ago that I hardly remember it now. Actually, the weirdest thing was seeing my lab partner from uni when I landed at HK airport, getting on the same bus as me, and again at the airport on my way back - she was on the flight after mine. Small world, huh..? Anyway, I ate loads, and put on a few pounds, as I usually do when I go over there. I actually wanted to talk about weight - I just finished watching the Channel 4 documentary, SuperSkinny Me: The Race to Size Double Zero. It focused on two journalists trying to slim down from a UK size 12 to a size 2 (US size 00) in just five weeks. I watched with horror but not without fascination, as I'm sure most women watching did. Because, lets face it, who doesn't think that they could stand to lose a few lbs or an inch off the spare tyre?

During the program, I found, worryingly, that I shared a lot of the feelings and symptoms the women had during the experiment. You see, before I went to Hong Kong, I had been trying to lose some weight. I'd put on a few lbs, and it was becoming noticeable. I've pretty much been the same weight since I was 17 (aside from losing and regaining 10lbs when I was ill in 2002), but since I've had ME/CFS, I've been a lot less active, and although it didn't really show hugely on the scales, it's started to show on my body shape. As I'm not really able to do any cardiac exercise because of CFS 'flare-ups', the only thing I can control is what I eat. Just by eating slightly smaller portions and cutting out unhealthy snacks, I lost half a stone in 3 weeks (which shows you how much I snacked!), but strangely, I don't look any skinnier at all! Anyway, the women in the experiment reported constantly thinking about and becoming obsessed with food, which is exactly how I felt during weeks two and three of my 'diet'. Week one was fine - I didn't change what I ate, just chewed slowly and savoured flavours and textures, stopping when my stomach started to become full. I was thinking, 'Gosh, this isn't so hard'. But after mid week 2, every day just got harder and harder. I craved EVERYTHING, and was constantly talking and thinking about food pretty much every moment I wasn't eating, as well as evaluating how full/empty my stomach felt every other second. Food was my every thought. It wasn't very nice for me or the people around me, just as in the experiment.

Of course, being ill these two weeks and not being able to eat, I lost the holiday weight from HK and a little bit more. In the words of Emily from The Devil Wears Prada, 'I'm one stomach flu away from my goal weight' Just kidding :) Now that I've regained my appetite, I'm finding that I'm constantly starving to the point of dizziness, and consequently eating like a heifer. I have a feeling that all my suffering will have come to nothing if I carry on like this!

The difference between me and the women in the experiment was that with me, the weight needed to be lost - I had a BMI of 26 (overweight) and now have a more respectable BMI of 25 and don't feel as bloated as before. Watching the documentary though, and seeing what the two women went through to achieve a skinny body shape, I can tell you that I would never ever go to those lengths to lose weight or look good. For one, I love eating too much; two, I don't like getting sweaty; and three, who finds a bag of bones attractive anyway? I think I'll just eat normally but a little more healthier from now on, I'm not cut out for this dieting lark! :)

I hope you've all been well, and I shall definitely spend a few hours catching up on blogs tomorrow. Be good!

Love Panda xx