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Two years ago the internet told me to give it two years. In March, the two years were up. I'm twenty five. I do the books for my dad's plumbing firm, which is exactly as glamorous as it sounds. I was fifteen stone at twenty two. I got to a hundred and forty five in about eleven months and I've stayed there since. No injections, no surgery. Just eating properly and being very boring at parties for a year. I'd been big since primary school. I had never once in my adult life been a normal size. And it worked. Except my legs. The weight came off them and the skin stayed exactly where it was. A softness on the inside of my thighs that moves when I walk. A crease above each knee that stays creased after I stand up. At twenty three. I looked like I'd borrowed the legs off somebody's nan. So I asked the internet. And the internet was lovely about it. Loads of replies, all saying the same thing. You're young. Your skin's still elastic. Don't panic. Give it a year. One said give it two. So I gave it two years. I moisturised every single night for two years. Ask anyone who knows me how likely that sounds. Twenty four quid on a firming cream that was on my phone until I gave in. It went cold, then sticky, then nothing. Collagen in my coffee for fourteen months. Dry brushing before every shower for a year. Lifting three times a week, properly, with a programme. And that did work, which is the annoying part. My shoulders came in. My calves are honestly great now. The insides of my thighs did not get the message. Meanwhile I wore leggings under dresses. I stopped wearing shorts, which I expected. Then I stopped swimming, which I hadn't. I used to swim every week as a kid. I was properly good. But it was fine, because it was temporary. Two years and then it sorts itself out. The waiting was the plan. So when the two years came up I booked an adult swimming course as a present to myself. Six weeks, Thursday nights. I went to week one in a swimming costume with a t-shirt over the top, which I told myself was normal, and which was not normal. I didn't go to week two. I got as far as the car park and sat there with the engine off for about twenty minutes, then drove home and had beans on toast. The teacher's called Dawn. Nineteen years teaching adults there. She texted me on the Friday. Just asked if I was alright and said the group was small and she'd noticed. I told her the truth, mostly because I was typing it rather than saying it. She rang me. Which I did not want. She said, "Can I say something that's going to sound harsh." I said go on. She said, "Nothing was ever going to come along and sort them out. You've been waiting for something that wasn't on its way." Then she said, "Nobody told you that because it's a horrible thing to say to a twenty three year old." I sat down on the stairs. She said, "Nineteen years. Do you know how many of my adult beginners are women who lost a lot of weight and then stopped going in the water. It's most of them." Then she told me the thing about the flag. "You know when a flag's hanging off a pole. It flaps. No shape. Just cloth doing whatever it wants." "Now think about a sail. Exact same cloth, could be the same piece. But it holds a shape and it does a job, and the only difference is something's pulling on it from both ends." "Your skin's the same cloth it always was. There's nothing wrong with it. It's just got nothing pulling on it any more, because what used to be pulling on it was you at fifteen stone." "And no amount of waiting puts tension in a flag. That isn't a thing that happens on its own." I asked about the creams. She said, "A cream's for the surface of the cloth. Your problem isn't the surface, it's the tension." I asked what I was supposed to do then. She said, "You put the tension back from the outside, because there's no inside left to put it back from. It's not giving up. It's just where it has to come from now." I said, isn't that what my nan wears. She said, "Your nan wears beige ones with a seam up the back that she got on prescription. That is not what I'm talking about and you know it. Half my Thursday class have got something on under their clothes and a fair few are younger than you." Then, "Graduated, full leg. Not the ones that give up at the top of your thigh, because the top of your thigh isn't what's bothering you. And comfortable, or you won't wear it and it's just an expensive thing in a drawer." She said she'd ask the Thursday lot what they used. She sent me a screenshot the following week. She'd put it in the class group chat and three of them came back with the same name in about four minutes. Cellumove. I did not believe it. Two years and four hundred quid on things that did nothing, and now a swimming teacher was sending me screenshots about leggings. I ordered them on the Sunday to stop having the argument with myself. They came on the Wednesday and I'd got the size wrong, which I'll come back to. First few days, nothing I could have told you about. On under my jeans in the office and by ten I'd stopped registering them. Then on the Saturday I went to the big Tesco. Jumper, leggings, nothing over the top. The way a person wears leggings. I didn't notice I'd done it until I was putting the bags in the boot. Two years of never leaving the house without something over them, and I'd been round a supermarket for forty minutes without the thought arriving at all. I sat in that car park for a minute. Different car park, different reason. The week after is when it properly landed. Everything held. One line, hip to ankle. The bit that moves when I walk was not moving. Not smaller. I need to be exact about that. Nothing about me was smaller. Held. Like something was pulling on it again. I went back to Dawn's class in May. Week four of six. I got changed in the cubicle and stood there a while holding the t-shirt. Then I put it in the locker. I got in the water. Now the part I'd want somebody to tell me. Nothing underneath has changed. The tension comes from outside, and when they come off at night it goes with them. I've got exactly the legs I had in March. Fifteen stone doesn't come off a person and leave everything where it was. There's no pair of leggings that undoes that, and anyone telling you different wants your money. What I actually mind is the two years. Not my thighs. The two years I spent waiting for something that was never on its way, because eleven strangers who meant well told me to be patient and not one of them said there was another option. I was twenty three. I gave away twenty three and twenty four. About that size I got wrong. I ordered based on the size I think I am, which is not the size I am. Sent them back braced for a fight and it cost me nothing, which is the only reason I'm comfortable writing this where people I know can read it. I've got two pairs. They do a buy one get one free, and if you're swimming you want the second anyway, because one lives in the bag. There's a woman in Dawn's Thursday class who's about where I was. She came the first two weeks in a t-shirt. I sent her the link on the way out to the car park. Then I texted her the flag thing as well, in Dawn's words as near as I could remember, because I know what it's like to be told something useful and lose it before you get home. https://cellumove.com/products/3d-sculpting-anti-cellulite-leggings-instant-lift-smooth