Metamorphosis

When you start a diet with around 90 pounds to lose, the first 30 pounds can feel like just a drop in the bucket. It's a number that would be very significant for most people looking to lose some weight, but for me, 30 pounds isn't even enough to make people start noticing (except for Jim, who has been great about noticing and commenting).

And yet, it also seems to be the magic number that makes everything seem brighter, makes the total goal seem possible and makes me start to feel like I don't hate my body anymore.

For more than a decade now, since I started putting my weight back on way back in 1996 or 1997, mirrors have been my enemy. I avoided looking in them whenever possible, because I didn't like what they reflected back at me. I averted my eyes when walking into a public bathroom and finding a full length mirror. I averted my eyes when walking into a store, facing doors that were walls of reflective glass. I grimaced when I glanced out the passenger door of a car and saw my reflection in the side mirror. I avoided looking at pictures of myself at all costs, even to the point of covering my image up and just looking at whoever else was shown on the screen or the printed picture.

It was exhausting, avoiding all images and reflections of myself, but I did it for over a decade.

But now things are starting to change. As of yesterday, I have lost 30.25 pounds. I'm sliding slowly back down the scale, and I feel like I'm finding myself along the way. Here is the woman who can wear the Bob Seger shirt from the concert I went to see, that was way too small when I bought it. Here is the woman who can glance in the side mirror of Jim's car, see herself, and not grimace at how fat she looks - in fact, here is the woman who can look at herself in that side mirror and think she's actually looking physically small. Here is the woman who is happy to try on clothes that have been too small for a decade, to find that one by one, they're starting to fit.

I keep thinking about how different my feelings are on the way down the scale than they were on the way up. When I was gaining weight, 197 was a hated number, a number putting me so close to that dreaded 200. It was a sign of how badly I had done, of what a horrible place I was in, emotionally and physically. I was eating out of grief, hoping the food would ease the pain of losing my mother. Of course, it didn't - all it did was make me feel even worse as the scale climbed higher and my image became something to avoid at all costs. But now 197 is a victory! I've been under 200 pounds for weeks, and instead of climbing back over 200, I'm slowly climbing further under it. My image is slimming down, my old self is coming back a tiny bit at a time. With every pound that falls off the scale, I return even more fully back to the body I used to love, that I used to enjoy dressing.

Of course, I have a long way to go yet. Thirty pounds have fallen, but there are still 57 to go before I get to goal. But I know, now, that it is possible. I know, now, that it doesn't matter how long it takes to get there - I will see 140 pounds on the scale again, if not this year than next. And with every pound that falls, I'll feel stronger, happier, and more able to face what life hands me. It's just 30 pounds, but it's so much more than that. It's my life, made better and happier. My body is changing, but so is my mind. And it feels fucking great!