Em Is the Measure Of All Things

[darkemeralds]

It's as if my eyes--that is, my visual perception of bodies and body-shaped things--changes with my weight.

Clothes from three months ago, which I used to hold up (hang on the clothesline, fold, whatever) and perceive as "my size" now look visually huge to me. Similarly, clothes that looked tiny now seem bigger.

During the years when I was gaining-gaining-gaining weight, I once asked a significantly heavy acquaintance whether she'd lost weight, because my eyes perceived her as much slimmer than before. (In fact, her weight was stable and mine was increasing--apparently my eyes got bigger, as it were, along with my ass.) (Also: one of several experiences that taught me never to ask that question or wish it to be asked of me.)

I almost never look in a full-length mirror--haven't for years (and photographs? OMG never!)--so I don't have an external view of myself to account for it. It seems to be a phenomenon of some internal, how-far-is-my-skin-from-my-core type of perception, projected outward.

Em Is the Measure Of All Things.

And I've lost almost 35 pounds - 16 kilos - about two and a half stone.

Comments

[karen_jk]

That is amazing. You really could write a book about this experience, you know.

I was sorting out clothes and found a party dress I used to wear for dances...electric blue with rhinestones, fun and silly. It looks so tiny, I can't believe I ever could fit in it.

[darkemeralds]

Weight loss is the most over-represented subject on the entire non-fiction shelf, I'm afraid, but self-motivation via blogging has been useful to me.

Your party dress is exactly the kind of experience I'm talking about. Isn't it weird??

[karen_jk]

...but are the other writers as talented and insightful as you?

[darkemeralds]

LOL! You're so nice.

I don't know, but where the entire message is "Eat less than you burn," wit and insight may be surplus to requirements.

[karen_jk]

You are welcome! I would not say it if I didn't believe it. There are tons of dieting books and, at the same time, tons of people wanting to read them, I imagine. You could write about your life experiences with gaining weight and being at a certain weight, your struggle with that, your thoughts.

Kinda philosophical and about body image, as well as about what gets in the way of people, including really smart people, losing weight.

What's getting in the way of me doing it? A fear of actually biting the bullet. Committing myself to a regime. Maybe failing.

[ravurian]

Sorry to butt in, but I was particularly struck by the 'biting the bullet' and 'regime' and 'failure' in your comment, and I tend to find that thinking in those terms automatically makes things harder than they need to be for me. They're all common phrases associated with dieting and exercising, but they're psychologically negative, too - they indicate that this is something undesirable, an imposition, something externally imposed, requiring a brute force no-prisoners approach, and frankly, that sounds too tiring to be sustainable. No wonder people get fed up or dispirited and give up. The battle's over before it's begun, and it's because of the confrontational language.

Like darkemeralds, I just felt that the time was right, and I lost 56lbs in just over four months, I think, and it was easy*. When people asked what I was doing, whether I was on a diet, my reply was always, honestly, no. I just told people I'd given up being fat, and there was some truth to that. I told people I was just being more conscious of my body, and there was truth in that, too. I don't know if either of those approaches might be of use to you, but sometimes these things can be fun, and silly, and you can feel great while losing weight. You literally get lighter.

I'm... going to shut up now.

* By which I mean, in comparison to previous attempts at 'diets'.

[darkemeralds]

I agree that attitude and language make a huge difference, and that when weight loss is happening, it becomes a very easy and fun thing to do.

Dearly though I love the idea that a change in attitude or beliefs will engender a change in a physical condition, I could never really get my beliefs in alignment enough to make it work.

For me, the actual numbers--counting calories, the science of it--have turned out to be the bridge by which I can manifest the belief that I've changed. I'm finding that it clears the fog created by exposure to too many diet books and articles over too many years--including some "The Secret" type byways down which I wandered lost and bewildered for many years.

All that said, if anyone asked me whether I'm on a diet, I'd probably say no, not really. Because after all, this is essentially how I'll be eating for the rest of my life, and no good can come of ever thinking that it's temporary.

[darkemeralds]

I saw ravurian's comment and he makes a good point. The words are important.

At the same time, starting is hard. Dieting is a form of starvation--especially in the first few weeks--and starvation is a form of suffering. It's natural to fear that suffering and want to avoid it.

From everything I've read, and now confirmed with personal experience, the body's conversion from living off recently-eaten food to getting part of its energy needs from stored fat takes a few days. During those days, you experience serious hunger.

Then, when the body has figured out how to meet its energy deficit from stored fat, the hunger goes away. Most serious diets fail in those first few days. (For me it was a full week--possibly because I didn't initially make a big enough cutback.)

The approach ravurian mentions dovetails with what I've done in one important way: when the time was right, the decision to lose all my excess weight, once and for all, became a kind of game or hobby. It absorbs me every day. I'm deeply engaged in it and it's a form of creative expression for me.

There are evenings where it's a bit of a slog, but so far not many. I feel satisfied eating my diminished calories because my body really is making up the difference from the fat of the land. If I'm going mad white-knuckling it to stay under the caloric bar I've set, I eat something. Last night I ate 600 calories' worth of chocolate. It was an extreme case, and put me over my limit, but didn't do any serious damage.

The running two-week average is everything in my plan. It's not natural to eat exactly X-number of calories every day. Some days I eat X, some days X-minus-several-hundred, and some days X-plus. But the average is where I want it to be, and I watch that VERY closely. That's kind of part of the game.

Starting is hard. From what I hear, maintaining is hard. But losing weight? Easy. And fun.

[ravurian]

FWIW, I'm so proud of you. I hope that doesn't sound patronising or entitled - my approval is entirely immaterial, LOL, but I'm full of admiration. I've been holding steady at 75/76 kgs for the last few weeks, which I'm pleased with given how uncertain and disrupted my routines have been. 9/10kgs lost and maintained since the 20th December is heartening to me. It's an unstable weight for me, though, so as I start to feel better I will try your man's trick of seeing where my next stability point down is.

Re: the actual point of your post - absolutely. One's perceptions are always relative, I think. I feel bigger now than I did when I was enormous, which is objectively stupid, but subjectively quite explicable. Somewhere in my brain I reached a new definition of what's normal for me - 11 stone or thereabouts, which I maintained for a long while - and I'm about a stone heavier than that now. Odd.

[darkemeralds]

Not patronizing at all, and I appreciate the support. Thank you.

What you say about feeling bigger than when you were enormous interests me. I know for myself that at my top weight, from which I am only now descending into previously-charted territory, I was so miserable and locked up that a perfectly valid image would have been a hibernating bear: some great mammalian creature curled in on herself and hiding in a cave.

I was doing my best to be less enormous, and in an odd way it worked. I became invisible, which is almost the equivalent of being very, very small.

I just came in from shoe-shopping (first time in five years) and I feel like Xena, Warrior Princess--huge and mighty with size 11 feet. It's a whole different thing.

Curious...

[verilyvexed]

It's as if my eyes--that is, my visual perception of bodies and body-shaped things--changes with my weight

I've observed this in my own life. Glad to have it confirmed as an experience of others. Well, not glad - just, you know, it's interesting, and I'm on cold meds, so I'll shut up now.

Do you find you've experienced something similar with age? I'm not even 30 yet and teenagers might as well be itty bitty zygotes, wtf.

[darkemeralds]

It took me from age 40 to at least age 52 or so to gradually grasp that I myself am no longer young: that though I identify with this or that character on TV (for instance), I'm actually many, many years older.

As most anyone over 50 will tell you, it's astonishing how not-old I feel in my head.

That said, yes, teenagers look very, very young. My identity as a full human being seemed to begin when I was about 30, so it's people around that age I look at feel connected to. It's slowly going up as I get older.