Self Image

Date: 09-21-2009
Starting Weight: 219.6
Current Weight: 199.9
Goal Weight: 175
Loss Since Last Weigh In: 3.2
Total Weight loss: 19.7
Pounds left to lose: 24.9

Weigh in number three. I am so close to my twenty pound mark it’s driving me crazy. I am so happy to finally be under two hundred. I can’t tell you the last time my weight started with a one. I know that it’s incredibly unhealthy and I am vowing to myself never to let it get back into the two hundreds again. With the exception of if I have kids someday.

I am thinking about my body two years ago and how I let myself get to 265. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I didn’t feel THAT overweight. Sure there were things I wanted to change, but I didn’t feel that I looked that out of shape. I was up to wearing a size 20 dress and jeans. It had a lot to do with living with my ex. He was incredibly thin and ate enough food for an entire football team in one sitting. I guess I got used to over eating. The only problem is he wouldn’t put a pound on and I was gaining for both of us without knowing it. The first 45 pounds I dropped weren’t any huge changes. I simply ate less. I stopped eating when I felt full and it fell off. Small changes can make a big difference. If you aren’t ready to take the full leap, take baby steps. Somewhere down the road you will thank yourself.

Sometime when I feel a little more comfortable in my own skin I will post some pictures of myself from those times and compare to how I am now. Friends that weren’t around for that time in my life say that I look like a completely different person. I have to agree. It’s nice to laugh and be able to smile and know that I have come a long ways even before I started my new diet. The main reason I started in August was because I noticed my patterns were starting to be like they used to be and slowly but surely I was putting weight back on pound by pound. I refused to wake up one morning and be back in that place.

My current diet is chugging along great. I haven’t really put in that much exercise. In the next coming weeks I am hoping for my leg pain to be less and then I can add a little walk up some of the steeper hills by my house. Probably three times a week to start. Along with dropping the pounds I need to start getting back into shape too! My goal for this week, is to start eatting my meals a little slower. As this diet turns into habit, I notice myself just keeping with the schedule but I missing an important peice. A main componet of this diet is learning to pace yourself while eating and knowing proportions. I am going to work on those goals, to help better my success after I am done with Medifast.

This weekend when I finally dropped below the 200 mark, was the first time I looked in the mirror and thought to myself “you look beautiful today.” As women I really feel that we should feel and tell ourselves that every day. No matter how bloated, chubby, or grumpy we feel. If we don’t appreciate our bodies, how can we expect a man or anyone else for that matter to appreciate us? I am finally feeling like I don’t need a husband or a date to validate my self worth.
Keep up the good work everyone! A quote for the deeply poetic:

“A better self-image doesn't pay the rent or cook supper or prevent nuclear war. Feeling better about ourselves doesn't change the world by itself, but it can give us energy to do what we want and to work for change.”
-Our Bodies, Ourselves for the New Century