The Video

I did an unofficial weigh in today on my scales at home, and was thrilled to see I was below 200. I was 198.6. Then I saw a video of my of myself, made today. I was devastated. I looked fat, very fat. I was pretty upset by it for most of the day. I've lost almost 40 pounds for God's sake, shouldn't I at least start to look a little bit human? I was shocked by my pudgy face and even pudgier body, my arms, my shoulders, everything looked distorted by fat.

How can this be possible? I mistakenly thought I was looking sort of cute lately. Not skinny, but more normal. Was I ever wrong! Do I have that reverse anorexia nervosa that people talk about? Carlos mentioned it a few weeks ago on his blog, Jennette Fulda talked about it in her book, Half-Assed. It's where a fat person has a distorted perception of themself and think they're actually a lot thinner than they are in reality. Yes, that's definitely me, or at least it WAS me. I don't have a distorted perception of my body anymore. I saw it in a video, and it was frightening!

My immediate reaction was to eat, and I wanted to eat comfort food and a lot of it. After viewing bits and pieces of the video on my computer because I couldn't bear to watch the entire thing, I wandered into the kitchen. I was hungry, no, actually, I was starving is more like it. I grabbed two low-fat mozarella cheese sticks, and ripped off the plastic. I ate them in about one minute. Two Points. Yes, that's it folks, that was my binge. Sanity returned and I decided to wash my car, hit Costco for the weekly healthy food supply and then go to the gym for an hour. I tried to stand up straight and pretend I looked good. But in my heart, I knew that I was far from looking good.

A friend told me today I should love myself. I do love myself, at least my inside self, but I'm angry at myself for letting my body get into the mess it's in. Why did I do this to myself? How could I have let it go so far? When I saw myself in the video I thought there's a woman who doesn't take care of herself, who has let herself go to pot. I know I'm trying to change all of that, but that's what I thought when I saw the video. If I didn't know me, I'd think 'gross woman, get a grip, stay out of the fridge and get thee to a gym!'.

Tomorrow is my official weigh in and marks the end of fourteen weeks of Weight Watchers and lots of exercise. I'm pretty sure I've lost the 1.6 pounds to make my 40 pounds lost and put me under 200. I should be thrilled with this, but I can't stop focusing on how far I have to go. It's a long, long road ahead of me...the rest of my life I will have to fight this battle. Can I do it? Damn right I can!