I’ve been on a cleaning jag, lately, partly because of the holidays and partly because I tend to throw things in boxes with the intention of going through them, later, and never do. “Later” finally arrived and I’ve been working on thinning things out.

A few days ago, I went through the bookcase in a spare bedroom. Some are books I will always keep; others were gifts but aren’t my reading taste, so I set some aside for donating. One I came across was a paperback that I know I bought, but I’m not sure I ever actually sat down and read it.

The book is Passing for Thin: Losing Half My Weight and Finding My Self by Frances Kuffel, an author who lost a great deal of weight and recounts the experiences she had before, during, and after loss. I’m still in the early chapters of the book, so I don’t know everything she went through just yet, but the simple phrase passing for thin has stuck with me.

I’m far from thin; I have a bit to go and quite honestly, even at my lowest weight, I was never thin in the classic definition of the term. In my mind, thin includes a slight build, and thanks to a fairly large bone structure, that’s never been me. I’ve always had wide hips and thick legs, even as a child. That’s my body’s tendency.

That aside, I understand the term. When I lost a lot of weight in my 40’s, I think I passed for thin in that I never felt like my weight loss was legitimate; I felt like an imposter in my own body. An actor playing a role that wasn’t at all like me. It never felt permanent or complete, really; in my mind, “passing for” something means you’re not really that thing. I never managed to get past that mindset, and in many ways, my inability to cope with my own issues with weight loss — as well as fear of how differently people saw me — undid all the hard work I had done.

I had the weird and sudden realization the other day while I was out driving somewhere; I was just sitting at a stoplight and it hit me — this is my life, now. While I am well aware I will always have to be diligent and realistic with myself, the changes I’ve made feel permanent. I don’t feel like I’m pretending to be something I’m not. While I continue to push forward with my efforts to be healthy, there’s no sense that it’s precarious and will slip out of my grasp.

I also don’t feel the need to make excuses or tell people that I’ve been morbidly obese. I meet people all the time, especially the course of volunteer work, that have no idea what my journey has been — and it doesn’t matter. While I certainly will never hide it if someone asks me, I no longer feel as if it defines me in the ways it once did. And very much unlike those days when I lost 140 pounds fast enough that I was able to surprise people that didn’t recognize me, I now choose not to be defined by weight loss, either.

It’s living life by a different standard: it used to be that people didn’t expect much of me because I was incapable of doing much, especially physically. Now, the expectations are far different and I like the challenges they present. There’s no looking back now!