As most of you know, I lost about 120 lbs a couple years back and successfully maintained that weight loss. But today I find myself struggling to get off the last of the weight I gained during my recent pregnancy. I’m just not doing so well at it, and while I’ve got a lot of things going on in my life now with the baby and the physical changes that accompany that, I’m having a hard time committing to myself.

This week, I’ve had some new insights, and I thought I’d share since so many of you have shared thoughts that have been helpful to me.

It seems the basic problem is that I have lost track of who I am. I’ve come to take my new life for granted, and have forgotten what it is like to be morbidly obese. When I first lost the weight, the stranger was the person staring back in the mirror and I was literally startled every time I saw myself for the longest time. Now the stranger is the large woman in the pictures. I feel entitled to the smaller body, and the “It’s not fair” attitudes are coming back. The attitudes I held and the choices I made in the past have the power to undo me, and that cannot happen. So it is time to reopen old wounds, tell old stories, and remember just how bad it was and could be again.

Now, I am worried that I’m about a size and a half larger than my maintenance weight. Before I was worried that I was about to grow out of the plus sizes and then what the **** was I going to do.

Now, I’m worried that I won’t impress my doctor on the next visit. Before I worried that I was going to die soon.

Now I hope that the fat person will not sit next to me on the airplane. Before I hoped that the people on the airplane didn’t mind too much if I sat next to them.

Now I worry that my running pace and mile time is way off, and that my endurance is low. Before I worried that I wouldn’t be able to walk around the block and words like mobility had entered my vocabulary.

Now I wonder if my husband likes what I’m wearing. Before I wondered why my husband liked me.

Now I think it stinks that I have 15 pounds to lose. Before I thought it stunk that I had 120 pounds to lose.

The list is longer, but some of it is private, and some of it is boring, but those are the highlights.

I forgot the befores. No, I suppressed the befores. But they are still there, just waiting. The embarrassment, the dread of everyday life. I’m not entitled to this body, I have to work for it. And if I want the last pounds off I have to work for those too. I CANNOT take it for granted. For whatever reason, my brain, my body are just not set up that way. And it doesn’t matter if it is fair or not, and it doesn’t matter if it is hard or not, it just is.

I made a list of 25 reasons to lose the weight when I started. They are still all true, and today I could add about 10 more reasons that I’ve found as I’ve lead this new life. The stakes are much higher now, since my daughter needs me both as a mother and a role model.

So who do I see now when I look in the mirror? Who am I? Who am I going to be? Still the thin woman. Still me. But the woman in the mirror is familiar and strange all at the same time. This is about who I want to be. I do not want to be morbidly obese again. But the fat woman in the pictures knows why I did all this, and the consequences of failure, and so she must remain a part of me. If I forget her, I risk becoming her again. This is all about remaking that commitment to myself. And making myself and my health a priority in all those little decisions that make up a day. Not so hard, when a person makes a point to remember.

How far I’ve come! How easy to go forward, how easy to go back. So I choose to go forward.

Thank you all for helping me get my thoughts together.

Anne,

I came across your posting and what an eye opener it is. I'm morbidly obese I weigh right now at 315 lbs.

So, it is true that this road I am going on will be a rough one but, I must keep going no matter how hard it may be.

There seems to be alot of talking to yourself and to keep remembering always the reasons why you must keep going on towards a better healthier life.

Thank you for your insights and providing a guide on what I am to do to accomplish my life change.

Best Regards, Elaine

Hi Anne,

Thanks for an insightfull post again. I think the main thing is that you have to adapt again to a new phase in life, to a new role. yes, you are Anne te formerly obese, bus also yes, you are Anne who lost all that weight and was very atletic. And yes, you are now also your daughters mother, who has to lose some weight again and care for her as well.
In all this adapting to new roles you have new choices to make. Like Meg said in her anniversary post: it is about making that not the easiest choice, but the choice that is more benificial in the long run. And that is hard.

In a year your daughter will be walking, running. In a couple of years she can bike while you run. Keep that in mind.

Rabbit

Anne -- Your words should be very helpful to you, but they are also very helpful to ME! Thanks for posting that, and good luck!

Anne,
This line popped out at me:
You are in a different phase of your life and the way that you lost the weight the first time around may not work now - OK, the basic physics are the same, but you have a new role that you can't ignore. I know when I was initially losing weight, it was the most important thing in my life for a while. As a new mother, you can't possibly assume that attitude.

So maybe you aren't committing 100% to yourself because at this point in your life that's just not possible. Your old ways may not work- so try something different. I know you love long distance running and biking, but shorter bouts of intense exercise may serve you just as well for weight loss now. It's hard to find the time to train for tri's even with a supportive spouse, but you can eat right and spend one hour with your bike on a training stand.

Be flexible...and patient!

Mel

Thanks so much Mel. It seems pretty obvious now that you point it out; why are we always blind when we are in the middle of these things? I still need to figure out how to strike the right balance between cutting myself a legitimate break because things are different and really hard right now, and just using it as an excuse to let it go and work myself back to my old bad ways. I'm never quite sure where to do that. But when I can rationalize a 3000 calorie day without some major athletic event, or read a Maintenance and Complacency thread and not realize that is exactly what I'm doing, it's time to take off the blinders.

I always need a lot of help on the eating right front, but since I've had this epiphany I'm doing really well. I reconnected with something inside myself that I was letting slip away. It is a new honeymoon with that right now! Won't last long--never does--but I'm taking advantage of that while it's here, building some momentum. The exercise has been going extremely well though--it usually does since I enjoy it so much, and I seem to know when I'm really tired and need the nap, when to squeeze in that hour on the trainer or do some other creative little thing (got 2 of those on my training plan this week with DH out of town!), and when to assert my turn at independence and leave DD with DH for a couple hours. I hope one day my eating patterns will be as intuitive.

When I lost the weight initially and kept it off for about 6 months, I bought myself a nice ring that I wear on my right hand as a symbol of where I came from, and my promise to myself. I'm not wearing it mindlessly anymore and it has the same level of symbolism to me as my wedding ring.

Anne

What a beautiful way to express your committment to yourself.

Thanks for the post Anne, it was insightful and helped me tremendously.

Hey, you! Yeah you! Lady over there with the good advice...

Happy Birthday!