Self Perception gets in the way to shedding 150+

This is a very interesting topic Judy.

I guess that most of what I have read indicates that I am in the minority here.
My self perception was that I knew I did not look good. My biggest feeling having lost over 150# was, relief. I could blend in. No longer having people stare at the morbidly obese woman. People not noticing because I was fat and not making snap judgments or remarks.
It kind of surprises me that I was in a very small minority of people whose self image was awful as a morbidly obese person. I felt so much shame for not having the self control to do something about it.

Relieved by the anonymity, for being a normal weight. That is how I feel about my weight loss.

I have a screwed up self image, always have and probably always will. I see myself as the fattest person in the room. I know that is no longer true but that hasn't changed the image in my head so I focus on being healthy and staying that way.

I started this journey over 2 years ago not to lose weight but get healthy. I was beginning to have some health problems that would in time go from very minor to serious and I didn't want to live like that. So I made changes, one small change at a time, that would lead me to being healthier. The weight is really just a side product of getting healthy for me. I am doing it slow making sure each change works for me and making it part of my life.

I will admit that I do like fashionable clothing which is funny since I see myself as fat but I can life with it as long as I am healthy because I would rather be healthy than skinny.

The mental stuff has been a big hurdle for me. I gained most of my weight when I was around 8 years old, already 200 pounds in 5th grade. So I suppose you can imagine that children were not nice to me. I spent most those years completely and utterly miserable. I would try to exercise and it would be physically difficult for me, so then kids would make fun of me, and I felt like a spectacle- an easy target. So I would quit and be told I'm lazy, and then I started to believe it. I'm fat, I'm lazy, I'm a horrible person who doesn't deserve to exist. I was 10 at this point when I seriously started considering killing myself.

Anyway, my perception of myself was always what people told me- I'm worthless, I'm lazy, I'm not worth knowing. I spent a lot of time alone, ate my pain, and waited to die. By the time I hit high school and my family moved to a tiny town where I thought maybe I would get a fresh start and could escape some of the cruelty, but people were even meaner there with the added bonus of there being so few kids that I stuck out even more. I don't think I was in denial of how big I was, I was very much aware of it but the reality of it and what it had done to my life was so crushing, and had started so young that it felt completely insurmountable. I still thought of myself as bookish but not athletic, not willing to work hard, a quitter. All those things people told me I am.

I was socially outcast and desperate to feel any sort of validation as a person. By the time I got to college I hit 350+ pounds and still was treated cruelly and mocked, still depressed, but at least now there were enough people around that I was able to make any sort of social attempts. I found things I felt like I was good at. For the first time in my life I thought- well, I'm fat and I'm lazy but at least there might be something I'm actually good at. I stopped believing all the time that everyone was right about me. When I was a fat kid I was in a world where adults are always right, what people think is the way things are, disagreement was frowned upon. Finally I was in a place where I could stick up for myself and, frankly, tell people to shove it. Of course, I still thought the weight was insurmountable- by this point I had cycled so many times around starving myself and then binging and purging that even when I ate "right" my body was broken.

Through this journey I've been amazing by myself and just how different I really am from what I was told I was. I am not lazy, far from it. And now I look back and I'm able to see all the things I did as a kid- when I really did at the age of 10 get up early in the morning to exercise and stuck to diets and showed real determination, but they failed because of things out of my control. Because I was 10 and not in charge of my own life. Now I get up at 5 AM every day to go to the gym for 2 hours, I preplan all my meals and say no to things that aren't worth eating to me, and my husband is like "I am amazed by how hard you work." I finished Tough Mudder, I've done multiple obstacle courses and other events, I can deadlift my own weight and I still battle the voice in my head that says "you're lazy, you're worthless, you're fat and no one needs you." Therapy has been crucial to me through all this, because I've had to revisit a lot of stuff that I hid from.

Sorry this turned into a novel. We can be our own worst enemies. I guess I'm still learning that people can be cruel enough without you helping them tear you down, and just because someone else thinks something about you doesn't mean it's true.

I don't think I ever truly saw myself as large as I was, and I'm working on seeing myself as I am now. I always felt "fat" as a teen but in reality I was just maybe 10 lbs above a healthy weight. When I had babies I gained big time and was above 200 lbs for 30 years. I had struggled for years trying to lose weight and not being successful, even when sticking to a particular program like Weight Watchers and doing it by the book. I finally gave up and decided that I couldn't change. But getting older I developed health issues and then watched my mom die with complications of what I was developing. It was scary and I didn't want to end that way, too. So I started looking for health answers and found a way to lose weight. Working with an endocrinologist and a registered dietitian/diabetes educator (for type II diabetes) to control my diabetes kicked me into gear and began the weight loss. But even at that time it was more about getting blood sugars under control that losing weight.

I lost so slowly (since Sept. 2012) that I didn't really notice the change so much in my body. But I never really noticed the changes when I was obese and gained either. The only thing I noticed was my clothes size going down. I still had/have belly fat and fat on my thighs and upper arms (bat wings) that I would like to lose but I try to not focus on what is still to be done. My focus has been on my health and it has improved greatly - so has my energy!

Maybe I'm not a deep thinker, but I never considered that I was hiding behind my body size. I was who I was on the inside and the outside didn't matter that much. I did feel a little intimidated by the parents of my kids' friends who were healthy-sized (or so I thought) but it didn't limit me - many things used to intimidate me, including people with money. But that was more a function of my perception of others. I realize that those I thought were normal sized have their own issues. The ladies I thought were really great looking - I LOOK LIKE THEM NOW!!! And some of them are not as small as me! It now seems so irrelevant.

One last thing, I'm still shocked when I pass a mirror and see myself at a normal size. I am surprised at how small the clothes are that I can wear. My husband tells me I look hot and calls me bony. And honestly, in clothes I do look good! Don't let your self perception get in the way of success - however you want that success to look and feel. Because your self perception will change with the success, as well as with time and situation.