My Journey With Weight Loss – Losing More Than Just the Weight

I think I am actually starting to become a runner. I don’t know how that happened, just somehow during this training I stopped seeing it as an onerous chore. Instead, now I get excited on training day (as my husband says, who are you and what have you done with my wife?). Next week, following the directions provided by my awesome coach, I am kicking my intervals up from 8 to 10 and I’m already thinking about how I can’t wait to see how I do. Who knew I could ever turn into this person.

I never thought of myself as obese, well not until my health took such a bad turn. Even at my largest size I just thought I was me. I joked about being a short fat chick not realizing that somewhere I did know I was extremely overweight. Maybe never really looking at myself as obese is the reason I seem to still be carrying a lot of extra baggage.

Now that I have lost all this weight I seem to have the opposite problem, I can’t see myself as being thin. I know what the scale says, I know I have become quite muscular, I know I am probably the most fit that I have ever been but now I still think of myself as that short fat chick I used to joke about. I just can’t seem to get my head wrapped around the fact that I am small, not the 1X I was for so long.

My sister has been telling me for the past couple months that I have to start recognizing who I am today. She tells me the clothing I buy is too big and that I need to start trying on smaller sizes. I balk at that because I am a size 8 (medium) and I am terrified to try on anything smaller in case it doesn’t fit. I did start buying blouses in a small as I acknowledge the upper half of my body (in my mind) has shrunk far more that the lower part. Besides, it wasn’t that long ago that I got into those size 8 jeans and I haven’t really lost weight since then.

Today I went shopping for some summer clothing as what I had left in my closet from last summer was all in a size 14 which I know I can’t pull off. I bought several nice blouses and thought a couple pairs of capri pants and walking shorts and I would be good to go. I selected what I wanted and in a size small all the blouses fit nicely. But then I tried on the pants and shorts and I literally stopped breathing for several seconds, size 8 no longer fits, everything was simply too big. I stood in the fitting room for a while talking myself into getting all of the items in a size 6 but that annoying voice in my head told me not to do it because that small a size may not fit. After a number of deep breaths I advised the sales clerk I needed to try on a smaller size and she quickly replaced all the items for me. I tried them on and was shocked, I have gone from a size 18 down to a size 6 for a total of 12 dress sizes.

When I take a step away and look at things I realize that while I have done awesome at weight loss, I haven’t quite done enough to lose that excess mental baggage. I know that while I have improved my physical health I still have a ways to go to improve my mental health. I really want to do some work on my self-esteem though it is difficult when you really don’t see anyone outside of your immediate family. Still, today taught me that I do need to work on that self-esteem so that when I say I am healthy I mean totally healthy.