Poking fun at your "former self"

mjutan

Hi MFP friends!

I've been doing something a tad unusual now that my weight loss is progressing so well. I've made up a couple of internet-meme style images called "Fat former self" where I find a truly horrific picture of myself when I was chubbier and make up some silly "before" and "after" phrase. Perhaps I am just a strange fellow, but I find this pretty motivating. If your self-esteem can handle a little bit of self-deprecation, I think it's kinda fun actually.

What this is doing is a few things:
1) Letting me immediately compare how I look now to what I used to look like - but in a multiplicative way because I'm intentionally comparing myself now to an intentionally bad photo. Not only do I feel better about how I look now, but I'm sort of poking fun at how I used to look (light-heartedly). This is reminding me of how much better I look, but more importantly *FEEL* now.

2) It's allowing me to show off my progress to my friends in less of a cheesy before and after photo way, and in a more personal and fun way. A lot of people have laughed but also given me encouraging "keep at it!" messages, which is great.

3) It's adding fuel to the fire so I build up social pressure against myself for ever returning to my previous weight. We all know that losing weight gets harder as you get closer and closer to your goal, and maintenance can be really tough - maybe even harder than losing the weight in the first place. Making these images now as I am losing the weight I hope will help me keep it off when I get to my goal.

4) Finally, I think it's important to celebrate the "little wins". So every time I get past a certain goal, I make another one of these pics and remind myself of how far I've come and how proud I am of my hard work so far.

It might be a bit unusual, but for me, it's working well.

Check out out here:
http://jutanclan.blogspot.com/2012/03/fat-former-self-says-photo-2.html

My goals and plans:
http://jutanclan.blogspot.com/2012/02/weight-loss-to-max.html