A Whole Bunch Of Cheese But Luckily No Whine

I don’t know how to describe it or which cliché fits best to the feeling that I’m feeling lately. I guess I could say “I’m on a roll” or “There’s a fire in the furnace” or “I’ve had a light bulb moment” or something to this effect. Yet none of them quite capture the surge of confidence and hope that I’ve lately and suddenly found. There’s something different in my attitude towards this whole weight loss caper that has slowly emerged. It started about two weeks ago but I think it cemented itself last Monday night after my all-you-can-emotional-eat almond buffet. My husband came home with some old pictures that my sister-in-law had sent over because she had duplicates of them and she thought I would like to have them. Pictures that I had never seen before. Now I’ve had the shock of seeing pictures of myself and thinking, “Am I that fat?” but this time I had the shocked thought of, “Was I ever that skinny?” Evidently skinny pictures are just as hard to look at as fat pictures. I have a few pictures of myself from when I was thinner (the ones you all have seen) but in true Lynne fashion, I’m always blocked by something or someone. Well the photos from my sister-in-law are full body pictures of me taken around the time when I was hovering below 120 pounds. I look awesome in those photos! It’s strange to know that I was that teeny tiny and toned and then proceeded to gain 60 pounds back! I think I just needed a shock. I needed an image to remind me of what I can and have done before. Like I said, I’ve been examining my attitude towards weight loss. I’ve been telling myself positive things and now I have a powerful mental image of that girl in the picture to go along with all my good positive self-thoughts. I guess my point is that lately I’ve been looking at lard busting in a different way. I think that until now, without even realizing it, I viewed losing weight as something that I had to do and I was grudgingly going through the motions of what it takes to do it. As silly as it sounds I just had to look at things from another angle. The last two weeks I’ve been seeing it as something that I deserve and a way to be good to myself. Instead of getting down on myself about those pictures and thinking, “I can never do this again. I couldn’t even maintain that change.” I looked at those pictures and thought to myself, “Hey! I did it once, I can do it again and this time will be better because I’ll be able to appreciate myself and be proud of my accomplishment.” At the risk of sounding cheesy, I have to tell you that lately I’ve been really finding out who I am, examining where I’ve been, and thinking about where I’m going. I know you’re probably getting bored with me repeating that theme over and over in my posts but I’ve never viewed weight loss in that way before so it’s still a huge epiphany that I’m still constantly amazed at. I’m sorry if this post is just kind of all over the place but I feel like there are big changes going on with me both mentally and physically and I’m still trying to wrap my mind around them. Again at the risk of being cheesy, I feel like this is it. This time I feel that magic that I felt the first time. Maybe it’s not magic? Maybe it’s self-confidence? But I think that this is the way it’s supposed to be. Magical yes, but not like some self-esteem fairy came along and bestowed it on me. No, instead it’s something that’s being forged inside me. It’s magic from within.