Visualization

One problem I really have is being able to visualize myself at a "normal" weight. It's hard to imagine that my body can look like anything except what it looks like now. Even though I've been every weight between 120 and 370 pounds at this height, I just can't imagine it anymore. I've weighed at least 250 pounds for about 15 years, and at least 300 pounds for 10. It just seems like I'll never be anything other than morbidly obese, even though I've experienced every other state on the BMI chart since age 16.

It's also funny to me that when I was a teenager, that 120 pound self couldn't see anything but a big whale in the mirror, or when she took a bath (I've always been a bath person!). Unfortunately my teen self also did really bad things like starve herself, take laxatives, and exercise obsessively. I still don't remember how I could make it through a day at school like that, but I guess I did.

Nowadays, I definitely know I am fat, but I am still startled when I see full-length photographs that show big I have really become. Hey, I am not laying judgement down on that as bad or good – I'm just saying. In my head, I see myself as looking much different, but unlike my younger self, it falls down on a more positive view. I guess that is progress?

I don't really know what's going on with my body. I am hoping my new doctor will help me find out more about it and how I can feel better. I feel achey and tired a lot, for example. Many days begin with a dose of ibuprofen so that I don't feel so creaky. My boyfriend of 14 years thinks that it's the extra weight that's doing it, but I always brush it off. However, since I've been back reading other weight loss blogs (a tidy label, maybe not totally accurate in all case – health and fitness blogs, maybe?), I see that many people who've been writing about the differences they experience in the after part of their journey say that those aches and pains are gone, or at least greatly diminished.

My body might be saying, "Hey! ~370 pounds is a LOT of weight to carry around! It hurts!"

Arthritis runs in my family, though – I have family members who are not fat who feel similarly. So I don't know.

So back to the visualization thing. Because it is so hard for me to imagine my body looking any different, I think it makes the idea of doing what I am doing harder, as in, what's the point? It's hard for me to explain. And there's the point of me knowing that how I am trying to live now is the best way to live whether I am big or small, whether I lost any weight at all  – the exercise, the eating, the water, the vitamins, etc. etc. is something that I should always, always be doing not just as a means to an end but a means to survival and a means to a good quality of life.

But still, I wonder: What will I look like next month, next year, in ten years? This is me a couple months ago, and I look just about the same now.

Tipping the scales at my heaviest weight ever. I'm cool, and I'm big. And yes, it's almost always art school black.