I'm egg-shaped

Well, having emerged from my week off, stuffed to the gills with chocolate, as if i've been participating in a week-long contest to test the physical limits of how much a very small woman can actually eat, now that I am back in the real world this is having its inevitable consequences and I am suffering from the self-loathing, guilt, and general shock, at the size of my body bulging from my small skeleton in its unnatural way. SO, I think to myself, what can be done about this? My relatively recent struggle with my weight began in 2007, when I suddenly and dramatically piled on 2 stones in the 6 months following my beginning taking anti-depressants. At first I merely put it down to being happier which was causing me to eat more, after all, at the lowest point in my depression during 2006, I was eating fairly infrequently, often not at all at the weekend if I was with my boyfriend, and when I started to break down, in May 2006, I lost my appetite completely and was utterly unable to eat except when completely desperate. I lost lots of weight in this time, went down to a size 6-8 and to about 8 stone, so the initial piling on of weight was really not of much concern and actually, of some relief.
Unfortunately, it hasn't really stopped since...I am now a size 14, something which is of constant suprise to me!! As if it's a mistake and I can think myself back to a size 10, the size I have always been, since school, and before all the madness. A massive obstacle has been my back pain. In my last two years at Leeds I started to go to the gym about 3 or 4 times a week, which I continued for the first year or so of my degree in Cambridge, the worsening of my back completely put a stop to that. It's unimaginable to me now, the thought of a rowing machine (my old favourite of the gym machines, ARGH!!) or a running machine, often the sight of people exercising on telly, actually makes me wince with the idea of how painful I would find such an activity... there are of course TWO massive buts, which are 1) gentle exercise is very likely to help my pain in the long-term, 2) I'm scared. which is really the bottom line.
The irony of the gym being, that now that i have put on weight, now that I need to go to the gym, I am too embarrassed to because I am flabby. I HATE the gym environment, I always have, it is perhaps the environment where I feel the least comfortable, I can not go there now. I am paralysed by fear of people looking at me and judging me!! arghhhhhh!! It's ridiculous really, I don't respect people who spend ungodly amounts of time in a gym, or who prize peak physical fitness above all else as a reflection of character and worth, and yet i am scared of them judging me?! or even just looking at me! Maybe I am just feeling too vulnerable I think.
SO, today I went to H&M on my lunchbreak and had an epiphany, (I Hope) whilst catching sight of my chubby little self in the mirrors, despite having averted my eyes as best I could. I must do something, cause I am not happy. here is what I shall do, I suddenly realised, I must SWIM!!
Swim myself thin. I love swimming, I am a slow, steady swimmer, like an old lady, it hurts my back, but nothing like the way that running does, or rowing (cycling is okay, I still cycle an hour a day, to and from work). I've always LOVED the feeling of satisfaction that you have when you are showered and dressed having had a swim, ever since I was little and Parkside pool used to have that cafe bit overlooking the pool that you'd all congregate in for chocolate milk and stuff...
It was also always the only bit I liked about the gym, the amazing post-swim satisfaction factor, in fact, the desire for the post-swim factor was often what drove me to go to the gym in the first place.
So I returned to work, called the pool, asked about a monthly pass and it is £25 which I believe to be extremely excellent value, SO tomorrow the swimming plan begins. I shall keep you posted.
Anyway. It is a horrid thing to be back at work, especially now, in the holidays, when there is no one about and my head is nodding with sleep and my body is not used to sitting here all day, upright. Holidays always make me question my life, which i have been trying to prevent myself from doing too much, work has a genius ability to put you into autopilot, where your entire person is simply driven toward lunch break, then end of the day, then weekend, and you never think about other stuff, like how you always get ill on your holiday cause the autopilot shuts off and everything rushes to the fore. Anyway I'm talking arse now. I'm delirious with sleep, better get onto my horrible canteen coffee.