The women in my family are better jumped than getting around them (apologies to my aunts, cousins and nieces), so my whole life has been a constant battle, not so much with the pounds, but mostly with the idea of putting on weight. I always had a scale in the house that I visited very often, sometimes even daily. I knew what time of the year and month I was prone to gaining weight and I knew when I could take action and when I had to let it go, because no matter what I did, I couldn’t maintain my weight during that time. My chubby girlfriends watched my “struggle” with amusement and told me: “Let it go, you’ll see after 40 years, that whatever you do, you’ll still gain weight”. And… it turns out they were right. After I turned 40 I found it increasingly difficult to maintain 50 kg in the summer and 52 in the winter. I was also reaching 54, which for my height of 1.51m is quite a lot. And exactly one year ago, in January, I started eating gluten-free. I had already been dairy free for 4 years and it had no impact on my weight. After starting the gluten-free diet and sticking to it, in 6 months I went from 54 kg to 46! Without any other changes to my eating habits. I searched the net and there are no studies that the gluten-free diet makes you lose weight. It is said that probably due to the fact that gluten-free bread and sweets are not found in Romania, or if they are, they are at exorbitant prices, you tend to give up these products and then naturally you lose weight. But I hadn’t eaten store-bought bread and sweets for many years either! I eat a shaworma twice a year and maybe a eugenia a week. That’s it. I am not clear on this aspect, please if you know more on this topic, enlighten me. And September came, when I gained 2 kg that I could not lose until March, with quite a lot of effort. This year… nothing! I’ve been at 46kg since June. Of course I don’t eat everything, no matter what and at any time! I never did. But what would be the ideal weight? It says that it is good that the weight is the height in centimeters minus 110. That is not correct. I weighed 41 kg and you had to avoid me like I was a hedgehog because I poked with bones. Doctors use BMI (Body Mass Index, which is equal to the weight divided by the square of the height) which should be somewhere between 19 and 25. According to this method, I should be between 43.5 and 57 kg. But I wouldn’t want to see what I look like at 57 kg! Doctors also say that to be safe from the risk of cardiovascular or liver/pancreas diseases, the abdominal circumference, measured near the navel, must not exceed half of the height. I think this is the best method. The centimeter, not the scale, tells us the ideal weight.