Seeing myself

Wenda wrote a great entry about her first week on the Weight Watchers program. In it, she says, "... I was surprised by how easy it was to imagine myself in a lighter stronger body and how much less difficult it was to eat less and move more."

This is something I still struggle with every day. You wouldn't think I would by now. I've lost close to eighty pounds, nearly a quarter of my starting weight. I've dropped five, almost six clothing sizes. If I felt like getting up from the computer, I could find the record of how many inches I've lost off different parts of my body. This is all great.

Here's the catch; I still don't really see it. When I look in the mirror, I'm surprised. Those cheekbones couldn't belong to me. I know I used to have cheekbones like that, but I was a different person back then. That young woman, almost a girl, had the whole world in front of her. Same with those collarbones. I'm supposed to have a huge double chin that basically obscures my neck, not just a little one. Wait a minute, that can't be a waistline. There's no way in hell I have a waistline. OK, big, fat, round, scarred and sagging belly and breasts, that's me all right. Whew, I thought I'd gone nuts.

Don't get me wrong. I know it's me. I haven't lost my grip on reality. It just doesn't seem like me. It's almost more like a distorted memory of me. These wrinkles and scars weren't there the last time I looked like this. I haven't been this size since before my daughter, the high school junior, was born.

My mental perception of myself is how I looked before I began losing weight, and I haven't caught up to the reality of what my body is now. I also can't really picture myself anywhere in the weight range recommended for my height. I'm having to rely on external measurements and feedback to reassure myself that my body really is changing, because I don't trust my own perception of my appearance.

This has pretty much always been a problem for me. My body always appeared grotesque to me. There was almost no difference between how I saw myself when as a teenager I was told I was 20 pounds overweight or last year when I weighed over 300 pounds. I can see the difference in pictures. I'm not totally blind to the changes, except when it comes to my mirror.

I'm quick to recognize the flaws as belonging to myself. Scars, sags, folds all fit in with my image of who I am. Accepting myself as beautiful, well, that's taking some work. I've still got a whole lot of unlearning to do. I know that it won't matter how much weight I lose or how toned I become if I can't learn to see and accept myself the way I am. I won't be truly healthy until my mind and body both agree that this is me, and that is good.

I also have to accept that I still have possibilities in my life. I've felt like I had no choices for so long now. For years, it has been what I had to do to handle ____________. Fill in the blank. It could have been the responsibilities of care giving for an elderly parent, a sick child or husband, or doing whatever it took to have any sort of gainful employment in an economically challenged rural area. My responsibilities outweighed my freedoms, and I'm relearning that I can decide for myself what will be in my life. Having that freedom is linked mentally to being a more acceptable size, and that's pretty fucked up thinking. It's a complete buy in to the prejudice many hold against fat people, and I've got to lose that as well as the pounds.

I want to see myself as I am, and I want to love myself as I am. I get glimpses every now and then of that woman, and during those glimpses, I adore myself. I'm one heck of a woman. This is going to become a more constant thing.

body image