I'm not here to tell you how I did it. Or why. If you're a friend you already know. And you're probably tired of hearing about it. If not, one of the biggest things I've learned from the whole experience is that each body is unique and the real secret of health is learning what does and doesn't work for YOU, not what did and didn't work for me.
I'm here to talk about the fact that the woman on the right won't get out of my brain. First and foremost, fat. It doesn't help that my body is almost 50 years old and the skin I grew to fit around 300 lbs of me isn't going anywhere. In the mirror, all I see is flabby, wrinkled, very generous curves. In the picture of me with my love, all I see is that huge thigh and the saggy jawline and dangling bossom. Even as I buy smaller and smaller sizes, my belly bulges and my legs look like something you'd order at KFC. Every, "Wow, you look great!" sounds a little like, "You would not believe how hideous you looked last year."
Thin people tend to view fat as a discipline problem or a health problem. They aren't wrong exactly, but the biggest part of it, for many of us, is the mind problem. It's the part of every woman that looks in the mirror and sees only the flaws. The pain of the teenager who was probably at the ideal weight for her 95th percentile bone structure trying to process 150 appearing on the scale when a chart said she should weigh between 120 and 140. The misery of failing to diet those ten pounds away. The pounds that followed because, "what does it matter, I'm fat anyway." The voice of the national guard recruiter saying 180 and 5'7" was too fat for the military even with a perfect score on the ASFAB. A record-long run in the friend zone of men who loved to spend time with me, but just didn't see me 'that way'. Depression and chronic fatigue and ADD feeding back on me the popular idea that fat people are lazy and undisciplined creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Doctors who said such profound things as "try eating salads sometimes." Walking out of 90 minute of intense cardio and weight lifting during my gym rat period and having an instructor tell you to try water aerobics (one look - first and foremost fat).
The last vestiges of my before wardrobe hanging off my body make me feel sloppy. Shopping for new clothes is almost impossible. Every 18 I pick up seems impossibly small. Shirts that fit my waist and chest barely squeeze over my arms. Skinny cut jeans (and they're all skinny cut suddenly) that fit over my thighs are several sizes too big at the waist. I can fit into the clothes in the 'normal' section, but they don't flatter. They seem to draw attention to the parts I would rather disguise and exaggerate my disproportion.
I figured out how to get sugar out of my head (and my mouth). I figured out how to move. I can't figure out how to silence all those voices. I can't see the three stone I've dropped as pebbles on the road behind me, only the bumps and lumps of the ones that still cling to my frame. The final product is literally unimaginable to me. There is no image of me thin that's not also an image of me as a child. There is no 50-ish formerly obese body I can imagine to inspire me on my journey. The body I expect to have, with that extra twenty pounds of skin hanging off its shrunken frame isn't terribly inspiring. More importantly, she isn't ME. I'm big - both garish and invisible. I'm not sure I know how to be small. I certainly don't know how to think it.
