An Update and Being the Same Me

The experiment is going pretty well. The first week I gained a pound and a half, the second week I stayed the same, and the third week I lost two pounds. More importantly, I'm entirely angst free. It's really nice not to be even a tiny bit stressed about my food choices. I would bet that I'm eating pretty close to the same stuff in the same amounts as I was when I was tracking. Go figure.

Saturday I'm going to visit friends and family in California. Most of them I haven't seen in over a year, which means they haven't seen me in over a year. As it is commonly spoken and written, most people would be really excited and happy anticipating the unveiling of a body 73 pounds thinner. I hear I am supposed to relish the compliments and attention and be proud of what I've achieved and whatnot. I'm actually pretty anxious about it. I haven't told anyone I'm losing weight. It's not a secret, exactly, but I feel weird about it. I have such conflicted feelings about the concept of dieting and about involving myself in the diet industry, so I don't love talking about that. I also hate how the whole world seems to be having a constant conversation about having lost weight, wanting to lose weight, regretting cookies, wanting donuts, wishing they had time to exercise, hating exercise, being virtuous for eating salad and bad for skipping the gym. I don't want to engage in that conversation and I don't know how to casually tell my father or my childhood friends that I've been losing weight for the last 13 months and that they should expect me to look pretty different. So then when they see me they'll be shocked, which just draws more attention that I don't want. I don't want to talk to everyone I see about how I lost weight or even to accept compliments if they're giving them. Each of them will only have that conversation once, but I'm having it all the time with strangers as well as friends. It makes me tired.

A few weeks ago I had lunch with an old, dear friend who is local, but whom I don't see often. I'm sure she noticed that I've lost weight -- I am aware that I look pretty wildly different, though it makes me uncomfortable -- but she managed to show no sign of it. She treated me exactly as she always has. We ate together, we took a walk, we had a conversation about our gym memberships and she just treated me like me. It was deeply comforting. That's what I want from everyone, really. I don't think my weight loss should be interesting to anyone but me. I care about losing weight. I think about what I'm eating. I want to be thinner, to look better, to buy cuter clothes. All of that is a big deal to me, but I don't want it to be a big deal to anyone else. I just want them to be with me exactly as they've always been. I wish I could send a memo ahead of me explaining that...

Not Recognizing Myself

I was looking through the pictures on my sister's camera last weekend during her birthday party. I wanted to see one she had taken one of me holding my baby nephew -- he was playing with my glasses and we were both laughing. As I clicked through all the photos, I passed the one I was looking for twice because I didn't immediately recognize myself. It's true that the viewer on her camera is pretty small and also that I wasn't wearing my glasses in the photo, which changed my appearance. But mostly, I just look different. I don't look as I expect myself to look. Sometimes when I catch my reflection in a mirror by accident, I don't immediately know it's me I'm seeing. It's a pretty disconcerting experience.

There's this whole mythology of transformation connected to weight loss in our culture. The ugly duckling becoming the swan. The ubiquitous Before and After photos. We are supposed to look like a whole new person after losing a lot of weight and that's supposed to be a good thing. And I'm not saying I'm immune to that -- vanity is certainly part of the reason I want to lose weight. I'm happy with how I'm looking these days and I was less than happy with how I looked a year ago. But I don't think it's a healthy part of this process to look at pictures of myself from a year ago and marvel at how huge I was, how horrible I looked, how grateful I am not to look like that anymore, not to be that person anymore. That attitude is so prevalent in our society -- in the weight loss industry, in fashion and fitness and celebrity magazines. Part of the story of successful weight loss is: I used to be fat and disgusting and now I'm a whole new, thin and beautiful person. We are supposed to be motivated to lose weight by how much we hate our fat selves, how much we want to get rid of that part of ourselves.

I look at pictures of myself at my very heaviest and I take comfort in still being exactly the same person. If I couldn't do that -- if I needed self-hate to be part of my motivation, I would fail. If I hated my fattest self, I would have to hate my current self and my thinnest self, too, because I know they are all Me. The truth is, I think I look better, but it freaks me out a little to look different. It's disturbing to look at my reflection or my photo and not recognize myself, even if it's just for an instant. I visit a pre-school class twice a month to read stories. Some of the same kids I saw last spring are there again now. This week one little girl said to me, "Miss Jamie, you look different," and it made me kind of sad. I'm not someone else and I don't plan on being someone else when I'm done losing weight.

I'm sure I'm not the only person to lose a significant amount of weight and feel uncomfortable about looking different -- to find it creepy not to be recognized. But I never hear anyone talk about it. I wish someone would.