How do we measure this history of fat?
I have been thinking a lot about how I should be measuring this weight loss and what my goal should be. If I were truly honest about where I have been in the past two years, my weight loss ticker would be far more impressive:
I weighed 305 pounds the day I gave birth. I dropped the first 30 pounds or so in the first month afterwards. Does this count? I didn't work too hard for it. The doctors gave me shots to make me pee out all of the fluids that I had built up.
So, if my ticker changes to this... then I think that my goal should also change. So, I am thinking of this:
I want to be true to where I am right now and the other ticker was since the beginning of the year, but this ticker is really where I have been in the past two years. And I think it is more encouraging to view it this way. What do you think?
I need to remember how far I have really come, not just since re-commiting myself, but since the day I gave birth nearly two years ago. The day that this great smallening began. I keep beating myself up for only having lost 25 pounds in the past 6 months, but the truth is that I could have gone the other direction so easily after I gave birth. I could have gained weight!!!
So, I want my ticker to express what I am thinking in my head when I weigh in. I used to weigh 305 pounds. I used to be as fat as Hurley on Lost. I am kicking ass, here. I am half way there. I am going to lose the weight of an entire person! I think that a goal of 175 was this sort of hope to still be fat without being fat somehow. Do you do this in your head? Wonder how you can lose weight, but still be a fat girl? I do this all the time. I feel my boobs hollowing out and think, my god, I am going to have smaller boobs. That sucks. I feel my thighs getting smaller and think, my god, who is this girl under here? So, I think my new goal is the acceptance that one must must must leave the fat girl behind. Throw her away and stop wearing her as some sort of crazy sad mask.
How do we measure the history of our fat? In pounds and sizes and feelings and photos of smaller or bigger yous. I don't know where to begin to measure this. Or what that even means. I am documenting it, though. And I am confused by it and I am completely entrenched in it. And I am working through it and this is all so rad.
Comments
Well, yesterday, I told myself "I am going to make 175 my goal because that is Tina's goal and she is a way smart, strong woman that I think I love in a cyber-space sort of sisterly way."
And now, dammit, I am declaring 150 my goal.
thanks. :o)
I am going to go to one of the folklife concerts tomorrow evening. Maybe we could get together and warm up a weight watchers meal together.
Posted by: Ginny | June 28, 2007 10:06 PM
tina, i've been keeping up with your weight loss since before the girls, and you've been a motivation for me. it's funny, sometimes you'll say something about health and fat people and i'll get angry and stay away from your blog. but then i realize that you're right and i have trained myself to be defensive my whole live. so i come back and am motivated again by your journey.
i had a moment today when i read what you said about your 175 goal weight. i too had made 175 a goal weight and felt mostly ok about it. after reading this post i actually cried and realized that i was trying to be fat without being fat. what you said makes total sense to me!
i find myself frightened of not being fat anymore. the last week i have sabotaged myself because i started getting more attention about my body. people at work won't stop commenting because they think it's a compliment. i'm getting hollered at more on the street- it's easier being a big fat girl.
the point? you reminded me that i need to stop being scared of not being fat anymore. i'll still be me, right?
Posted by: laura | July 9, 2007 10:45 AM
ginny, that is amazing. it took me a month to do that well. slow down, eat your flex points and have fun smallening!
laura,
thank you so much for letting me know you feel the same way. this really helps. and i am sorry if i make you angry sometimes. i make me angry, too. this is really the point. i think that along the way, we all have to be angry with how we have treated ourselves and angry with the people in our lives who have enabled us, ya know? and i think that getting angry is part of this.
i think that our goal weights will come to us when we come to them. but for now, i know for a fact that i was hopeing to be thin and fat all at once. beautiful, yet invisible somehow. and this just can't happen. we need to own these changes and these new yous. and from someone who has already lost 80 pounds, i have to say that yes you will be the same, but yes, you will also be different. and this is what life is about. changing and growing.
dude, i am totally here for you. thank you for reading and writing and following along with me.
Posted by: tina | July 9, 2007 6:05 PM