I do a lot of public speaking in a relatively small industry, so many of the same people have been coming to my presentations for the past 10 years or so. They've seen me slowly get bigger and then, in the past nine months, get quite a bit smaller (at this point I weigh less than when I started in this industry--I've gone from a size 14 to a size 6). It's interesting how people respond to it. Some people don't say anything at all. Some people will come right out and ask if I've lost weight. And some people will just sort of hint around about it (say things like "gosh, you look different, have you changed your hair?") until I 'fess up.
And while all the attention and compliments are a great confidence boost now, they are also a little scary. I was recently at a yearly conference that I've spoken at since 1996. Lots of people told me how great I look
and wanted to talk about what I'd done to lose weight. One woman told me she was watching everything I ate and trying to eat the same things (which was sadly misguided on her part, because I wasn't even trying to stick with my calorie plan
).
But here's the thing--I've only been at this for nine months and I haven't even gotten to maintenance and now I feel like I have all of these people watching me. I keep thinking, gosh, if I don't succeed at keeping this weight off, all of these people are going to know I've failed. And while some of them are good friends that I'm sure would think only generous thoughts, that's not the case for all of them. In fact, some are people who I know already don't think charitably of me. And many are people that I just don't know that well and normally wouldn't share intimate details of my life with. I mostly try not to think about it, but there are moments of sheer panic.
Well, this turned out to not be such a funny story...
- Barbara