Update: I’ve now lost a total of 128.2 pounds.

This past Tuesday, my dental hygienist tilted her head at me, her eyebrows drawn together as she looked me in the eye.

“You’re losing weight, aren’t you? I can really see it in your face!”

I thanked her. I didn’t mention that I’d been actively losing for three years and I had seen her just six months ago. A compliment is a compliment, and I’ll take them when they come.

And then… that inevitable question arrives.

“So how are you doing it?”

So… look. I get it. I’ve been the one to ask other people that question — until I became someone who was asked on a regular basis. These days, if I notice someone has lost weight, I compliment them, wish them continued success, and then I stop there.

To be very honest about it, I can just about name every other statement that comes afterward, too — from I bet you feel a lot better! To your family must be happy for you! To have you ever thought about taking that new supplement?

I understand that people feel obligated to say something in response, whether it’s one of these statements, their own confession that they need to lose weight themselves, or mention of a tv program on weight loss, a relative that lost a lot of weight, and the hope that I’m losing weight in a healthy way. I know that people are just trying to make conversation about a sometimes awkward subject.

I admit that the first time I lost a huge amount of weight, these questions really got under my skin. To me, back then, being asked if I just feel so much better infers that there was something wrong with me, to begin with. To tell me you look great meant that I must not have looked great, previously. In my mind, there had to be a contrast to whatever people were saying, which inferred that I was somehow not worthy or less human because I weighed more. It took me a very long time to understand that change doesn’t necessarily mean value judgment. 

I started convincing myself, once I passed into the realm of just overweight instead of morbidly obese, that I was somehow different than I had been when I started that journey. That I was somehow better, improved from what I’d been, before.

And that’s a dangerous way to think. Perhaps it was karma that assisted in loading all that weight right back on my hips… and then some, just for good measure.

I have a different perspective, now. I just nod, accept the compliment in the light in which it was given, and move on.

Am I proud to have lost 128.2 pounds? Well — sure, I am, but I am also very careful to not see myself as different. I’m human. I’m fallible. I’ve lost and regained so much weight that I should always know better than to think I’m beyond backsliding. While there are certainly mental changes I’ve gone through since that first day I committed to this plan over three years ago, I’m not only still that same person… I’m probably more me than I’ve been in many years.

The difference isn’t that I’ve lost weight; it’s that I am recognizing where my issues and faults have been, and weight loss is a byproduct of that recognition.

It’s the acceptance that all the times I’ve failed, before, have been for a reason, and that reason is because I’ve been wrong. I’ve failed without accepting failure. I haven’t learned from my mistakes. I haven’t loved myself enough to accept those things and change my own behavior. And that really is the truth of it.

So when people inevitably ask me how are you losing weight?, I tell them the simplest truth: I eat fewer carbs and calories, and I move more. It’s certainly an oversimplification, but the reality is that my battles are won in my brain, not on my dinner plate. The thing is, very few want to hear, in the course of a casual conversation, that this is an intensely personal and difficult journey that requires a commitment to constantly change and adjust. That there are no magic pills, no special combination of food and exercise that works for everyone, no easy potion that melts pounds off your hips.

No — it’s more a maze of constant choices that become easier as your commitment deepens. In that light, diet and exercise are only tools; only means to an end. It’s our brains that do the real work.