I touched on something a little bit yesterday, but I think I need to go in to full detail and explain myself further. I'm talking about the fear of losing weight.
It isn't so much the change that I'm worried about. It's other people.
I've taken great strides to be more than "something nice to look at". Being larger, you HAVE to take the time to get to know me... To see how beautiful I am. And, if you can't see past the outside, you just aren't worth it. Being married makes this easier. It's still not that easy though.
My weight is a part of who I am. It always has been. I think that in the back of my mind, I consider myself "the fat girl". Even when I was thinner, I was still the "fat girl". I'm referring now to high school.... When most of my friends were smaller than me. In my adult life, I've tried to keep friends who were closer to me body-wise... Had a little to lose. There are a few exceptions, of course! It's just in my past experiences, the thin girls were the "mean girls". The ones who made my life miserable. The ones who kicked me when I was down, and just ripped me apart for absolutely no reason.
These stereotypes and negative thoughts that are in my mind just need to go! There are a lot of nice, thin people. I can be thin, and still be me... Right?! It's just hard to wrap my mind around.
There's also the issue of not seeing yourself the way that others see you. What I see in the mirror is different from what my husband sees when he looks at me, different from my son, from my family, my friends... I notice every single flaw. Everything that is WRONG with me I see. This goes beyond the physical outward appearance; I see what's wrong with me emotionally even... Things that I just can't quite get over.
My weight is my armor, my shield... It protects the "real me" from getting hurt, and taken advantage of. Losing weight is letting my guard down. It's me trusting people before I know them. It's me having enough confidence in myself to walk around "naked".
I'm sort of crying as I write this right now. I don't understand how something so relatively simple can be so incredibly hard at the same time.
But here is what I DO know:
I have to tackle all of this "stuff". I have to fix it and mend it. In order for me to make this critical change in my life, I have to come at it from all sides. Dieting and exercise alone aren't going to be enough. I have to completely change myself... My way of thinking. I have to "let go" and move on from my past experiences. I can't go forward while allowing myself to be weighed down in negativity.
If I don't "fix" my inside, I will relapse on the outside. Failure IS NOT an option.
