The camera doesn’t only lie. It hates me
There we are, eight of us, in a training room at work for a session on presentation skills. We have each been filmed giving a mini-presentation, been taught how to do it better, and are then filmed again. We see our final clip for a few minutes projected onto a screen at the front of the room. The teachers ask us to go round in turn and say what we think of our own presentation. “I could have projected my voice more,” says one colleague. “I could have given more eye contact to the audience” says another. Then they ask me what I think of myself on camera. My reply: “I need to go on a diet!”
No one in the room contradicts me. Only the lovely trainer says that the camera angle wasn’t helping. I am all Viking type, opera-singer bosom and double chin. A wedge of flesh runs from my neck to my mouth. Give me green spots and I have become a toad.
For many years I have weighed 11 stone and been a size 14-16 UK dress size. Nothing I do will shift the 10-15 pounds I need to lose. I can’t even eat many carbs as I have coeliac or celiac disease which means bread, pasta and many puddings, chocolate and cakes are off my menu.
What can I do to lose weight, get fit or stop looking like an overly stuffed sausage in my regular clothes. Am I the only Mum of teenagers feeling this way? Or is it normal to puff out as middle age progresses? Is there anything I can do? Or should I accept my middle-age spread with grace and make a special point to avoid cameras?
