Mirror Victory

Hello,

Am I the only one that never ever looked at my whole body while overweight, or when obese, and then morbidly obese, and then super morbidly obese? When I did catch myself in a reflection, I actively blocked the picture. I mean I KNEW I was big (and bigger, then biggest) but part of my active denial was to simply not "see."

In August, I was hovering between obese and overweight and actually sought out a mirror. I had started yoga and I wanted to view my alignment. I was pretty psyched about my weight loss and feeling great. And then I looked at my myself in the mirror and oh my gosh I felt like I had driven off a bridge. That is me? I do NOT look good! What was I thinking?! I must be delusional.

All the while I was filled in sadness and grief, there was a resilient part of me that clung to my recent scale victories and NSVs. This IS an improved me. But, perhaps for the first time in decades, I allowed myself to simply look and feel the pain and accept the pain without judgement. If I was ever going to accept my body without profound sadness, I was going to have to see what is there.

Eventually I bought a large mirror for home and started occasionally looking at myself during yoga. Oh the humanity! My legs swell up at night like tree trunks, the left more so than right. I can see varicose veins thru my yoga pants. My extra thigh skin pools around me when I sit. But, eventually, it wasn't so painful (and some of it amusing) and I could focus more on alignment.

Ok, fast forward to last week when I went to a yoga studio that was fully mirrored. As I looked at the entire class, I simply looked like I thought I should: overweight below my waistline which matches my just-above-healthy-BMI weight. I have broad shoulders and broad hips. I was curious but not defeated. I marveled at other's yoga abilities but didn't (much) compare my body parts to theirs. I didn't look to see if I was the biggest person in the room. (When did I stop doing that? It can't have been all that long ago.)

We all know we have to fix our brains on this journey. But the path to head health is even less defined than it is for our food macros. For me, this mirror thing was a bit of a break thru so I wanted to share.

Best wishes for you on your journey!

You're absolutely right -- when we're morbidly obese, we tend to shun mirrors. Now that I'm almost into normal clothing sizes again, it's almost (not quite) fun to check out the difference.

Looking into the mirror is like stepping on the scale or keeping a food log -- something we need make a habit of in order to stay accountable. As you said, it takes a while to get accustomed to the actual image and not what our minds think we're seeing.

psychoticparrot