Do you fee skinny?

My therapist asked me to write about my TT feelings and I thought I would share. Do you FEEL skinny? My sister began a recent conversation with this question. I suppose after someone has lost 185 pounds in 14 months and just had a lower body lift, this seemed like a reasonable question. My answer was a resounding "NO". When I thought about it more I began to wonder what skinny feels like. Does skinny feel like anything? Skinny isn't really a feeling so how could I feel skinny? That said I certainly have felt fat. Ok let's examine that a little. Did I feel fat? No fat isn't a feeling. When I was fat I often felt unloveable, worthless and fearful of social situations so when I say I felt fat that is what I really meant. In my minds eye skinny would feel the opposite of fat - so I'd feel loveable, worthy and confident. To be honest I do feel those things often but I don't think that it has to do with loosing weight. It has to do with working to love and respect myself. When I was morbidly obese (I started at 358) I didn't have a relationship with my body. Really, I didn't hate it. I didn't love it. It just was... I had spent so much time and energy developing my unhealthy relationship with food that I didn't have time for trivial things like relationships with people, a relationship with my Creator or a relationship with myself. I was so entrenched in my love affair with food that I didn't even realize the wonderful relationships being ignored by me. As I have gone through the process of dealing with my food addiction I have developed new relationships. Strengthened ones with family and with God. Even improved my relationship with me but I really hadn't thought much about my body. My mother is a large woman and I can remember when I developed a gut that stuck out - I wasn't flat any more. Instead of being disgusted I was excited - - this to me was a passage into womanhood. I am older and wiser now and realize that the flat tummy is what is more desirable. When my doctor started talking about a lower body lift it seemed like a pipe dream to me. Too good to really happen. I was happy I had lost the weight and I was living healthy. That is good. But heck ...I can chase a pipe dream a little so I went with what my doctor recommended. Low and behold -rather quickly things fell into place. I have that flat tummy but...now I can see all the other things on my body that are not what they should be. I find I have to focus on how far I've come. How much better I look and feel now than before. If I loose that focus I can get back to the place where I feel unloveable, worthless and fearful...in my size 12 jeans.

thank you for sharing this!