do i feel good? absolutely. do i feel fantastic? not yet.
warning: for anyone struggling to lose weight, i am about to be a whiny spoiled brat.
it took about 50 pounds before many people started to notice. i realize the point of losing weight isn't for people to notice, but it sure is nice. that was a long, difficult road. every day i'd show up for work thinking, "maybe today," and nothing. of course my family would say things, but they knew what i was up to. you can't trust people who know.
but starting with the last 15 pounds, people have really started to notice. and since i can't ever be happy with anything, instead of being sad that they haven't noticed, now i am unhappy with their overzealous feedback and enthusiasm.
i don't like to hear that i'm wasting away.
i don't like to be called skinny.
of course i know it is well-intentioned. but we all know i am neither wasting away nor skinny. as of today i am still 5 pounds away from moving into the "overweight" zone from the "obese" zone on the BMI scale. if i stepped onto the wii fit board, it would make the "oomph" sound. i could still shop at lane bryant if i wanted to. which i don't, because their designers have lost their damn minds in the past 5 years. my crazy neighbor still says, "no offense" when he tells me how fat his sister is every time he sees me.
when i lose 34 more pounds, BMI will deem me "normal." like...just a decimal point inside of normal, but normal. on any given day, depending on what's in my colon, i could go from "dangerously close to fatass" to the highest end of "normal" on the BMI scale. but the day i first receive word of achieving normality, THEN maybe i will accept "skinny."
and wasting away... that sounds negative to me. it makes me hear "we are the world" in my head and picture flies in the eyes of emaciated children who are wondering how these people got a camera crew into africa but couldn't manage to bring a lunchable and a damn juice box.
i realize that most people can't identify with what it's like to set out to lose 100 pounds. and what it's like to get more than halfway there and realize you'll probably need to lose 120. or what it's like to be so fat that you can lose 50 pounds and people who see you every day won't notice. or what it's like to lose 64 pounds and still be obese. and to realize that your oddly-shaped stomach is getting smaller, but isn't changing shape, and you may be thin eventually, but your stomach will still be shaped like a capital "B" from the side. so i know that they don't really know what to say. but i know this:
i'm not skinny.
i'm not wasting away.
i'm less obese than i once was, i'm working very hard, and i look pretty good. from certain angles, in certain clothes, on certain days.
geez, i can't even take a compliment from myself.
i'd love to hear from other people who have lost a significant amount of weight. did it bother you to be called skinny before you were skinny? did you think "what you mean is, 'not as fat,'" or did you enjoy "skinny?" once you've been obese, do you ever get to a point where you can see yourself as skinny?
my fear is that i'm so psychologically damaged by being fat my whole life that i will never be able to think of myself as skinny, but only as "not fat anymore."
what i'm learning is that it's much easier to control the physical aspects of weight loss than the mental. dieting and exercising requires lots of willpower, but little thought. you either work out or you don't. you either eat it or you don't. it's not easy, but it is simple.
but overcoming the emotions involved, that is going to take some real effort. making my brain skinny is going to take a lot longer than it takes my butt and gut. i hope all three can get there eventually.
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