I admit it — I’ve got a problem. I have a really hard time getting rid of old things, in particular, clothing that’s now far too large.
I’m a fairly pragmatic person, and somewhere in this sometimes disturbed brain of mine, I suppose there’s the inkling of an idea that creeps into my logic — if you get rid of that stuff and you gain weight, you’re going to be stuck in uncomfortable clothing, and you’ll regret getting rid of it.
Believe me, there’s no one I’d enjoy losing more than a Kardashian. 116 pounds of Kardashian.
Yep, that’s a problem. I’ve managed, over time, to thin out my archives of clothing, and I’ve got a fair amount of older clothing that is currently too small, but I now have faith I’ll be able to wear them. Although those archives stop between sizes 16 and 18 — and those sizes aren’t all that far off, now; I’ll likely be wearing them by the end of this year. After that point, I have no choice but to buy new clothes.
Unfortunately, though, while I had no issues discarding entire large garbage bags of clothes when I thinned out the too-small stuff, I did it with the thought in mind that they were things I didn’t much like. I bought many from thrift stores just to get by until I was in a lower size. So if I wasn’t crazy about them, I ditched them, especially since the vast majority have been stored in excess of ten years. Enough is enough!
But the stuff that’s too large? I’ve managed to sell or donate some of it. I have a pile of too-large clothes to take photos of, so I can post them for sale. What doesn’t sell quickly will be donated. Not that I’ve done it, yet. They’re just sitting there, waiting.
And yet… the real problem is the baggy stuff I keep wearing around, even though I have plenty of clothes that fit and no need, really, to wear things that fall off my waist or sag off my shoulders. I wear them, anyway. And because I do it, perfectly good clothing goes unworn, and that seems — well — stupid.
That’s my challenge to myself, right now; I need to stop wearing baggy clothes. They need to be tossed out, donated, or sold.
The only reason to keep them is as a mental safety net; something to wear when I gain weight, so I don’t feel uncomfortable. There’s a big fallacy in that, though, because allowing myself that margin of comfort, of what-if, just leads me back up into the larger sizes, again. No, if something used to fit and grows tight, I need to take that as a reminder to get control of my weight and do something about it.
I’ll be going through my current batch of clothes, and no matter how much the frugal part of my brain screams at me, things that are too big are going away. So long, big clothes!
I’ve figured out something painfully obvious — something I should have figured out many years ago.
The times when I’m in pain are the times I’m most likely to get frustrated with my weight loss, and usually, when I’m in pain, it’s because I’ve gained weight. It’s a vicious conundrum, and a lesson I need to get through my thick head.
Er… slightly less than stepping on a Lego, but up there.
I’ve been in pain for around a week and a half. Mind you, I have chronic issues and I live with a certain amount of pain daily; what I’m talking about is over and above those norms. It’s been like a return to the levels of pain I had when I first started this journey a couple of years ago.
I know the cause: I decided to take a few days and relax my usually strict eating. When that happens, I gain a lot of water weight — and fast. When I carry excessive water weight, my joints hurt, particularly my knees, and if they become inflamed, my right knee will lock. I had that happen while I was camping; my knee goes out of alignment and I have to use my brace to straight it out, or I can’t put weight on my leg. Believe me, there is never, ever a good time for this to happen, but particularly while camping.
After it locks and I manage to get it unlocked, it’s painful for a few days; add water weight and sore joints, and I might as well be back at square one: unable to stand for more than a minute or two without sitting, unable to walk without a pronounced limp and a great deal of pain. Because of the pain, I move less, so there’s less chance of me actually triggering all that excess water to get the heck out of my body.
I also end up limiting what I can do and where I can go; for instance, I’ve needed to grocery shop for several days, but I haven’t, because walking has been too painful. Believe me, the pain is beyond frustrating, especially because it gets in my head and I start feeling like I’ve gone backwards; that the efforts I made to lose 114 pounds have been meaningless.
That’s a dangerous place to visit, let alone live. Just the fact of gaining water weight should be a dire reminder to never return where I once was, but my brain works in the opposite direction and whispers if this isn’t going to work, why keep up the effort? Why not enjoy that burger with fries? Why not get a chocolate shake along with it?
There is one sure thing: giving up and eating anything I want has never resulted in weight loss. It’s not the answer. It’s these times when I have to work through it, get that water weight back off, and start feeling good, again. I’m happy to report that today is the first good day, thanks in part to getting a few of those temporary pounds off.
The hard lesson: while I know what I’ll inevitably gain when I take a few days off from stringent dieting, I think the only thing it really does is please my brain — and confuse it. I have a summer full of camping in front of me; I cannot allow a setback like this to hit me, every time I choose to camp. I’m going to have to change how I do things so I’m not miserable afterward, hoping I can get back where I was and back to losing weight.
This is why this blog exists; to help me work through these sorts of real issues as I fight my way toward my goals. I need to re-read these things, on occasion, and remind myself of the struggles I’ve been through to get to this point — and how I managed to work through them.
No new weight loss to report this week, since I’m nowhere near a scale, and won’t be, for a few more days.
The view from my seat
I’m writing this week’s blog from the banks of the Arkansas River, where we’ve been camping for a few days, and will finally pack up and head home on Sunday. We bought a pop-up camper roughly a month ago, and this is our second trip out, with many more trips planned.
I’ve been a tent camper for most of my life. I was raised in a scouting family; my brothers were Boy Scouts, my parents were volunteer scoutmasters. When I came of age, I became a Camp Fire Girl, and later, in high school, I joined a high adventure Explorer Post (now called Learning for Life).
I’ve always been an outdoors person; I grew up in a small town, on a lakefront, and just about every activity with my friends was outside. From ice skating to hockey to swimming to boating, our lives were on the water or around it. I walked to school with my friends. I worked on the other side of the lake, and walked to my job, roughly two miles away. I rode my bike everywhere; around the lake, to friends’ houses, to neighboring towns.
I still love the outdoors, and my soul demands a view of the water to be at peace — but I’ve let obesity rob me of the simple joys of being outside. I’m still more of an observer than a participant, but returning to things like hiking, swimming, scuba diving will come in time. For now, being able to get out and about, enjoying the glint of sunlight on the water or bursts of stars in a night sky, is another important step toward balance.
Yes, I’ve had some issues; while I’ve been fortunate over recent months to not deal with my knee locking up, it’s done so twice while camping. I’ve been prepared, though. It’s a small setback. It’s also a reminder that I have lots of work still ahead of me. I will need knee replacement soon, and the more weight I lose, the stronger I become physically, the better off I will be.
This journey started off as yet another attempt to lose weight, with hope that I wouldn’t give up in a week. Over time, though, it’s become much more about finding that balance in my life, restoring those things that are at the core of me, than simply dropping weight. Feeding an adventuresome spirit is another facet worth shining.
I’m back in weight loss mode, again, after a couple weeks’ down; 114.4 pounds lost — just in time for spring break and another camping trip. This time, I’m better prepared!
I’m at a point in my weight loss, now, that I find myself constantly taking inventory, and comparing that against my mental images of myself. It’s hard for me to keep reality and that mental image aligned, and it’s been my downfall, before. In 2012, when I lost just under 70 pounds, I truly believed I had progressed more than I had. When I saw photos of myself after vacation, I was surprised by the large difference between what I thought I looked like, and what I actually looked like.
114 pound giant Chinese salamander — who doesn’t want to lose *that*?
That’s not all that threw me off; it was just the last contributing factor that tipped me off the wagon. I’d already had disappointments, gaining back several pounds before vacation, not wanting to put in the necessary work for the desired outcome, and not having an accurate picture of my physical abilities. If my mind isn’t firmly focused, simple things can throw me off.
I didn’t want to learn from the experience, back then. I simply never went back on my diet after vacation. I am learning, now. I need to make sure that those expectations of myself are in sync with reality. It’s far too easy to simply believe praise and think I’m stronger and thinner than I am, so I’ve made the conscious analysis of my body an ongoing habit. It’s a tight balance between overshooting my current situation and selling myself short.
I didn’t really realize until the other day, though, how much unconscious inventory I take. My body is changing, and not unlike someone who’s totally drunk, I find myself staring at my own body parts as if they’re not mine. My ankles are starting to look more like the ankles of a human and less like those of an elephant. I rub my shrinking double chin a lot. At night, when I lay down, I knead my skin, feeling how much is excess, feeling the bones closer to the skin than they have been. I might actually have a noticeable collarbone, soon!
My limitations are also changing. I still have them, but I can stand and talk with someone for much longer without tiring. I can slide through smaller spaces. I can get up and down our camper steps easier than I anticipated. My endurance is growing, and this is a very good thing. I’m more active because it’s easier to get around.
Although it’s nice to see a lower number on the scale, it’s more these things that keep me going; now I can tell a difference in my physical size, and I think my brain is fairly well in sync with my reality. The longer I’m able to keep things that way, the better off I’ll be.
This is me, becoming me all over, again — and the transition is underway.
I swore, when I started this journal, that I would be transparent — and today, transparency is what you’ll get. Not everything about my weight loss journey has been easy or happy.
Sometimes, the frustration sets in, often with a little regret. I’ve struggled with keeping my head in the right place, this week; I haven’t been tempted to jump off the wagon, but I haven’t exactly been thrilled with my progress, either.
I’m pretty sure I saw Nessie in my driveway.
Which is dumb. The week before last, I had one of the biggest weeks of weight loss since starting; losing 6.4 pounds in a week, 2 1/2 years into a weight loss effort, is phenomenal. Reasonably, I knew I’d have a correction last week, especially when I was a little concerned that perhaps I’d cut my food intake too much, and purposely increased it over the weekend.
Then, we went camping; it was a triumph for me, because I was able to do just about everything I wanted to do during our brief weekend trip. I still deal with limitations, but not as many as I thought I would. I was pleased. But one of the downsides of camping is that I often restrict my fluid intake, because of the distance to the bathrooms, and I end up dehydrated. My body retains water when it’s slightly dehydrated, and the only way to get it moving is to drink water. Lots of it. So I did.
The water is taking its own sweet time leaving my body. Water retention causes joint pain; so does bad weather, and we’re currently on our fourth day in a row of heavy rains, with a couple more days to go. My pain level, this week, has been higher than it has been in some time — and nothing gets me down, quicker, than arthritis pain. I’ve skipped workouts in the pool, both because of pain and because of storms. (Large bodies of water + lightning = not the best of ideas.)
Even though, in the grand scheme of things, this is just a hiccup, I feel like I’ve gone backwards in progress. And just because I know, mentally, that I’m being unreasonably hard on myself, doesn’t mean I can fully release that, emotionally. It’s times like these when I have to be careful; when the balance is somewhat precarious and I need to remind myself that success in anything is never a straight trajectory. No, it’s more like a roller coaster. There will be down times, and keeping my wits about me is imperative.
This, too, shall pass — but it’ll take bearing down and being patient. My body will release the water eventually, the rains will stop (hopefully!), the sun will come out and the pain levels will return to normal. Feeling as sluggish as I do at the moment is like a throwback to a couple of years ago, and perhaps it’s a good reminder of where I’ve been, and where I would be, again, if I ever lose my focus. This is not where I want to be.
On a positive note, I did have a few non-scale victories, including ordering some clothing that I intended to get in a smaller size than what I currently wear, but when the clothing showed up, it all fit now, and one of the shirts might even be a tad too big. It’s things like this that keep my brain in check; my deviation in water weight is only a few pounds, not a hundred. My hard work is paying off.
Soon, the sun will come out, again, and clear the rain away.
Without a doubt, one of the biggest challenges I face in getting my head right about weight loss is fear of unknown situations.
Not fear of big or expected things; sure, there are constant changes I deal with regarding my journey, both physically and mentally. I know I’ll have to deal with living in an unfamiliar body with capabilities that are modulating from one day to the next. I’ve prepared myself for those sorts of things, because I’ve been there, before.
No weight loss this week. Just awkward discomfort!
No, my fears are tied to stepping outside my comfort zone, even if the things I fear are also things I love and look forward to. It isn’t because I have self-doubt; once again, I expect that. Everyone stumbles just a bit as they learn and adapt. I know no one is expecting me to suddenly become a superhero.
As I learn about myself, one of the things I’ve been dealing with is my introverted nature. I’m not very good at being flung into the unfamiliar, especially leadership roles; I tend to be more of a support person, happy to not be in the limelight.
A couple weeks ago, I mentioned two recent endeavors: joining an orchestra, and returning to exercise. Both have put me in unique and uncomfortable positions in the last week, over and above the difficulty of choosing to do them in the first place, but there are always lessons to be learned if you look hard enough. Sometimes, those lessons jump up and smack you right between the eyes.
In water aerobics class, I was the beginner; I never even attempted it until a few weeks ago. So, it’s with some irony that I ended up leading the class for the past week. (I’m not going to say teaching; I don’t know enough about it to teach it, other than the similarities of some moves with weight lifting, which I have done.) The first day it happened, I assisted by being a timekeeper; the next day, I ended up leading the class, and when Monday rolled around this week, I did it again.
Wednesday, I was nearly late to class because I misplaced my car keys; when I arrived, the class was actually anxiously waiting for me to show up and lead. Er, what? Mind you, it’s a small class. And I am an introvert — if I’m out of my element, I have a hard time pushing myself to assume any level of leadership. I don’t want it. I’m also not the best in group settings, especially with workouts; I have almost always worked out alone (or with just one partner). The mere idea of having a class waiting on me? Honestly, it freaks me out. I honestly hope that my days as an erstwhile volunteer water aerobics “leader” are done.
The lesson, though, was in battling that innate tendency to reject an uncomfortable leadership role and just not go at all. Believe me, I grumbled to myself every morning before going. I seriously had to make myself get in my suit and walk out the door, knowing I’d likely be leading class, again.
But on the flip side of that, I would have been hurting myself by not working out, and I need every single workout. I want to be strong. I hunger for that feeling of ability that comes with physical strength. Was I going to let the circumstances of the class stop me?
No. I didn’t. I went. I’m proud of that, even if I’m still not crazy about being the one people are looking to. I don’t want that responsibility, and will gladly return it to the regular instructor when she’s able to return. But I won’t let a difficult situation daunt me into stepping away from exercise, again.
I also have a similar situation in orchestra. It’s not a leadership role; it’s more a matter of fighting for something that means a lot to me. I had just fallen in love with the idea of making music, again, when they announced that the upcoming concert would be on the same day as another event I’ve already committed myself to attend, and dearly enjoy.
This came immediately after a local composer introduced two pieces that are great for my instrument, and also quite challenging; while I’m still pretty rusty as a player, the idea of mastering them gave me an honest-to-goodness adrenaline rush. I went from the euphoria of finding that desire to play music beyond my current capabilities, to realizing that I’d have to make a hard choice. Which event will I attend?
Well — it looks like I’ll be attending both events. I’ll be doing a mad dash between them. They both mean a lot to me, and I want to be present at both of them. I will make it work in any way I can.
I don’t know that I would have been willing to do that a year ago. It’s going to be a lot of pressure, racing from a campground in one location to a performance 30 miles away (and then back!). I’m probably deranged for even considering it, but I know I will regret it if I choose one or the other.
Crazy? Perhaps, but I’m definitely going outside what’s comfortable — and learning some lessens about my own capabilities, on top of it.
I want to take a moment and comment on the fact that this last week has been one of the most noteworthy weeks of loss I’ve had to date. That’s pretty remarkable, and proves that loss is often hard to predict — but sticking with it will pay off in the long run. If you read the blog last week, you know I was around 6 pounds away from passing my next goal, and I figured it would take around a month, give or take, to get there.
That’s 112 pounds of natural breasts — the Guinness World Record — and I’ve lost the equivalent.
Ha! I’m there! I’ve lost 112.4 pounds! That’s a 6.4 pound loss since last week!
Yesterday morning, I passed the point where I’ve lost 30% of my starting weight. Almost a third of me, gone! Now — if you’re a scientist at heart, you’re familiar with the Law of Conservation, it says that energy cannot be created or destroyed; it merely changes forms. I don’t know if this means that the 30% of fat (energy) from my body has since floated through space and glommed onto someone else’s hips, but if this is the case, I heartily apologize… but I don’t want it back, either. 😉
I keep a close watch on all matters pertaining to my journey; I suspect a hormonal fluctuation caused my weight loss, but regardless of the reasons, I’ll take it. I have another goal set; a small one. And then after that? I’m focusing the cross-hairs on surpassing 140.5 pounds down, which is the most weight I’ve ever lost.
Now, back to today’s topic: a major JUMP! I’ve been meaning to share a victory, but I keep forgetting to do it — and in a way, that’s a good thing! When I first started back in the fall of 2013, I needed assistance to walk. My balance was off and my knee pain was extreme enough that I needed a cane anytime I left the house. If I had a long distance to walk, I had to use a wheelchair. I spent much of two Mexican vacations in a wheelchair because of it.
The improvements have been gradual. I haven’t used the wheelchair in many months. I’ve decreased using the cane to a point where I have only used it on rare occasions — usually on very bad arthritis days, and I can’t honestly remember when the last day was that I needed it. I would tuck it in the car if we went somewhere, in case I needed it, but I decided a few weeks ago to leave it completely at home.
The fact that I keep forgetting about it means I’ve also made the mental jump from thinking I need it, too, which is significant.
Sure, I’ll hang onto it. Realistically, I still have the same mechanical issues with my knees. But that cane will be a last-resort sort of thing; along on long trips, or challenges in which I might turn a knee, like camping trips. But otherwise? It’s no longer a part of my day. I’m getting around without it, these days, fairly easily.
I really do like feeling stronger than I have been, and now that exercise is part of my regimen again, I’m looking forward to the day when needing that wheelchair assistance on long walks is no longer necessary; I’m confident that day will come.
I’m 106 pounds down; a mere 6 pounds to my next goal.
It’s finally happened. It seems I went straight from a couple people close to me, keeping up with my weight loss, to crossing that invisible line where I’ve changed to a point that people don’t recognize me immediately if they haven’t seen me in several months. It’s happened three times in the last couple of weeks — a little difficult to ignore when it happens multiple times!
106 Pounds of Great Pyrenees
I admit; it’s kind of cool, in a way. It’s nice to get a little attention and recognition for hard work put in.
I know it’s awkward for some folks; they may not be able to put their finger on what’s changed, or may feel it’s inappropriate to say anything about weight loss. To be clear, I do not expect *any* recognition at all for weight loss. While I’m transparent here about my efforts, that doesn’t mean that I am with everyone, and not all reasons for weight loss are good ones. Some approach me somewhat cautiously about it; this happened just last night.
Inevitably, people say “I bet you feel better!” Well, absolutely! I’ve lost 106 pounds. I’m no longer carrying Miley Cyrus around on my hips. 😉 My chronic pain level has gone done immeasurably. While I still can’t walk long distances, my endurance is much higher, these days. By necessity, I stand, carry, sit, and walk differently than I did, before. These are all big changes; they may be as much a factor as a change in physical size to those who haven’t seen me in a while.
It’s nice, for now, and I’m enjoying it while it lasts, although I know there’s necessary head work ahead. My weight loss is slowing somewhat; I may need to shift gears, soon, and adapt in order to keep losing. At this point, though, I feel strong and optimistic. I’m confident that I’ll keep losing, that I’ll meet my upcoming weight loss goal in a month or so.
It’s also a point of no return; even if people aren’t saying anything to me, they’re noticing. They have the expectation that I’ll keep going. It’s peer pressure, in a way; it’s a whole new level of transparency when people you only know as acquaintances are suddenly interested in your personal story. Things have shifted; I’ve been on my feet, but now others expect me to get on my feet and take action.
I’ve said this many times before: my weight loss is, first and foremost, for me. It has to remain that way. But I admit that the extra layer of attention is both a level of support and yet another method that keeps me honest. For instance, if I have a meal in public, I suddenly feel as if people are watching what I eat. Would they care what anyone else had for dinner? Probably not — but people become oddly fascinated when they know you’ve lost a lot of weight. It’s simply something extra I have to deal with that others don’t.
There is a downside that I know to expect over the months to come. There’s a loss of privacy, in a way, when people suddenly take an interest and want you to tell them what’s been working. I don’t necessarily mind those sorts of inquiries, but realistically, I’m only an expert in what works for me personally, so answering questions about diet can become somewhat tedious. Everyone has to find their own path; that’s one of the reasons why those of you who read this blog don’t see a lot of references to my methods, only the mental effects.
I know, though, the lay of the land. That’s an advantage as I move forward. Exciting times are ahead!
I’m pleased to report a new low this morning: I’m now 105.4 pounds down!
This past week, I’ve had the joy of returning to two things I’ve needed back in my life for a very long time — and both, though they seem distant from each other, required the same processes of stepping out of my comfort zone.
‘The Biggest Loser’ crowns Rachel Frederickson winner after she weighs-in at only at 105 pounds .
The first was last Sunday; I joined a community orchestra. Roughly two years ago, a friend gave me the gift of music in my life, again, by sending me her french horn; something I played for many years, and had meant, at one point, to be a crucial part of my career. That’s not what I ended up doing, and truthfully, when I sold my horn not long after college, I thought I’d likely never get the chance to play with a musical group again.
Last Sunday, that changed. I’d played enough in my own house, occasionally playing to recorded accompaniment on the sound system, but no matter how you cut it, that’s rather lonely. Music is an experience is meant to be shared. I had looked for a community group to join, but didn’t find one until a few weeks ago; and last Sunday afternoon, I walked into the first rehearsal of the year.
Skipping forward to Monday, I took another step outside my comfort zone: I returned to exercise, after having left it several years ago. I had never been much of a workout maven; not until I started my first big weight loss journey in 2003. That journey truly was a physical one: I started by walking around my yard, and that was all I could manage. I kept walking until I’d created trails through the grass in my yard, and people would honk and wave at me as they drove by on the road in front of my house, because they saw me trudging along at the same time every morning.
From there, I joined the gym with my husband; it was totally alien to me. I swam laps in the gym pool, learned how to walk on a treadmill, and finally moved to the weight room and machines for strength training. What started as a simple lap around the yard graduated to daily 4 mile walks/jogs and strength training every morning before 5 am. Yeah, I was a workout badass for a while; when my daughter and I worked out in the weight room, there were men we out-lifted.
For a while, anyway. Until I injured myself; first by falling on one knee, breaking off a bone spur which lodged under my kneecap, requiring surgery. I came back after that, but I kept injuring myself. I pushed myself beyond the abilities of my body; I broke my own rules about adapting when hitting a wall. I left the gym for a couple years, only to return in 2011-2012. I water walked and jogged; my knees were in horrible condition and I’d regained most of my weight. If you read last week’s blog, you know I gave up on that effort. I left the gym, again.
A friend who works at the gym invited me to come give water aerobics a try — something that, quite honestly, I didn’t think was for me — but I needed to start somewhere. I needed to exercise, again. The time had arrived. So, on Monday morning, I started water aerobics class; it’s my first step back to building muscle and endurance. I’m back at the gym, once again.
Yes, playing french horn in an orchestra and going to water aerobics class have more in common than you may think. These tasks will build on each other. Being a musician requires physical control; lungs, diaphragm, lip muscles (in my case), posture, endurance. (Not to mention, carrying a horn case across a parking lot!) Just sitting in proper posture to play, for two hours on Sunday afternoon, made the muscles in my back hurt.
Likewise, water aerobics — or any cardio exercise — requires a lot of the same things, including endurance and lung capacity. I fully expect that as I progress with both, I’ll likely improve at both faster than I would at either one, taken separately.
But that’s not the biggest common denominator. No, that’s reserved for taking the step to be willing to step outside my comfort zone, and risk being uncomfortable. Believe me, walking into a room of musicians that I’ve never met before, with over 30 years of rust to knock off, took an act of bravery. The reward, for me, was the pure and deep joy of making sound with other musicians; it didn’t matter if I was good or not. I was doing what I set out to do, and welcomed by others who have been in the same place. I left there feeling absolutely exhilarated and challenged.
Returning to the gym, where I have previously given up several times, meant I needed not only to swallow my pride, and once again endure walking into a situation where I didn’t know the people involved, and had never been in a water aerobics class, feeling as if I might be judged for my size just by the act of walking through the doors. I did know the instructor; and once I got going, I felt a lot more comfortable with the situation. Now, I don’t care so much if someone happens to see me there and judge me; after all, I’m there for a reason. All of us are. Judging me for exercising would be stupid, considering everyone who walks through the door has the same goal.
So I leave this week, a better person than I started it, already feeling stronger; perhaps not physically, just yet, but certainly mentally. I’ve come to the conclusion that while I might refer to this weight loss journey as one journey, it’s not, really; it’s a series of new starts. Hurdles that must be met and jumped over, vantage points where it’s okay to rest a while and appreciate where I’ve been before tackling the next set of hurdles along the road.
Last week was quite the week for me, dealing with the mental changes necessary to keep strong on my journey.
No sooner had I rejoiced in passing a major weight goal, than I got cut down at the knees. This was one of those unforeseen circumstances I hadn’t mentally prepared myself for; you can’t possibly be prepared for everything life throws at you.
Mind you, most of the photos people see of me, online at least, are ones I took myself. I take great pains at every weight to make myself look as good as possible, especially with head shots that I use for profile pics in social media. Like most people, I have a little bit of vanity, and if I feel like I look my best at every weight, there’s a little more lift to my step. Mind you, I don’t do any magic to the photos; I just want to look and feel the best I can be at every stage of the way.
103 pound weight class champ! It’s kind of cool that I’m losing entire humans, these days.
Last week, though, someone took a pic of me and posted it online — and it was a horrible pic. A group of us were out together, and one of our friends said that since it had been a long time since we’d been out like that, she wanted a group photo. She asked someone to take it, and he took it down the length of our long table; I was closest to the camera. Consequently, it made me look disproportionately huge.
My immediate response, when I saw it online, was anger — not at the one who took the photo, but at myself. All those self-critical comments took up arms in my brain; I lost 100 pounds to end up looking like THAT? I look horrible! I look as big as I did when I started! Disgusting!
Those were my first responses… not gee, what a lousy photo angle; no one ends up looking good at that angle! No, I couldn’t consider for a moment that it was just a bad photo. Bad photos happen all the time. No, my brain jumped on beating myself up and making me feel like I hadn’t accomplished a thing, for all the work I’ve put in these last couple of years.
This is a dangerous thing. Back in 2012, we went on vacation to Mexico with friends; before vacation, I worked hard on losing weight and regaining some of my ability to walk. I took very short walks around the neighborhood; I worked out at the gym in the pool, in hopes of being able to walk better once on vacation. I lost a bit over 60 pounds in that effort — my low weight, then, was slightly above what I weigh right now. I felt like I was in a great frame of mind when we left for that vacation, ready for fun and sunshine.
I learned, quickly, that I wasn’t as prepared as I’d hoped. I couldn’t get around as well as I thought I would, and felt like I was holding other people back, because of my inability to walk any sort of distance. I felt defeated and disappointed that the hard work I’d put in hadn’t created the intended result. When we returned home and I went through all our travel photos, I saw the photos of me… and wanted to crawl into a hole, never to come out. I was absolutely mortified how horrible I looked in the majority of the photos. I was physically sick over looking at them; all I could see was my own ugliness, and not the beauty around me or the memorable times we created.
I let those things tip the balance toward defeat. I’d already been off my diet for vacation, and I never went back on it. Over the next 14 or so months, I gained 100 pounds; yes, there was the occasional shove-food-in-my-face-fest, but I was not binging. I gained that weight simply by eating fairly normally, with no restrictions on what I could eat; if I wanted pizza or cake, I had it. If you’re envisioning a sad girl scarfing down an entire bag of Oreos in the closet, that wasn’t me; despite the common misconceptions about why people become morbidly obese, I wasn’t having a free-for-all of food.
It has taken me over two years to take off what I put on when I went into decline after that vacation, triggered by photos, and by inability to produce the result I wanted, with the work I put in. I was already on the bubble, anyway; my low weight was a couple months before I went on vacation, and I was already on a slippery slope. I had put back on about ten pounds or so. The mental sucker punch sealed the deal, and I didn’t go back on my weight loss plan.
That’s the power of emotional triggers when you’re in a bad mental place to begin with. That’s why I must be careful about how I choose to react to triggers when they unexpectedly pounce. The good news is that when I saw the photo last week, my response, after berating myself, wasn’t to give up.
No, I got pissed off. I was, and am, angry. It’s a very different response, and I’m glad for it. I’m a fighter. I’m not giving up.
First of all, it’s a bad pic. All of us have had a bad photo taken of us.
Second, I am still very overweight. I know this. I am nowhere near my stopping point. I’m fat, but I’m in the process of changing; this is a fact. I will stumble mentally on occasion, but when I do, it’s important that I pick myself up, brush myself off, and be realistic about the matter. I’ve let unexpected external information defeat me before, because a part of me was looking for a reason to give up. I cannot and will not do that, again.
Third, and perhaps most important: when choosing a response to a stressful situation, especially if that situation involves my weight, the worst possible reaction is to give up. What does that solve? Seeing myself in a photo as fat, regardless of whether it’s deadly accurate or simply a bad angle, will not be solved by giving up. The proper reaction is to keep up the good fight, no matter what. I vowed to change when I took the first step; every once in a while, situations will force me to recommit myself to that change.
I’ve since taken progress pics. Before I did, I accepted that the trigger wasn’t valid; I didn’t take the progress pics to disprove it, but that was the end result. One look tells me the truth; I’ve come an amazingly long way, and even if the progress pics didn’t tell that story, how I feel, these days, certainly does.
