Internal Dialogue

Yesterday during our break in class a few of the girls and I walked over to another building to raid the vending machine. Well, they went to raid the machine; I was actually interested in just getting up and going for the walk. After they had made their purchases one of the girls, who I haven’t seen since last summer, said, “You always manage to maintain your weight. It’s probably because you never eat junk like this.” She said it in a complimentary, good for you sort of way because as far as she knows I have been the same weight since she saw me last year. In typical me fashion I never know what to say to this. First I wanted to say no, “I’ve lost over twenty pounds since Christmas” because I’ve been working hard and I’m proud of how much I’ve lost. Then I didn’t want to say that because I hate discussing my weight loss attempts with other people. (I’m really only comfortable with this topic with you guys!) I didn’t want to tell this group of girls that I’ve been losing weight and then have to answer questions about what I’m doing and how much I want to lose; I don’t feel like drawing that kind of attention to myself. Plus it makes me feel weird to admit that since she last saw me I had managed to put on those twenty-something pounds and was only now back to my starting point. I feel the same way about telling people that at one time I had lost seventy pounds. I never mention it but some little piece of me feels like saying “Hey, I have willpower! I’ve been successful before and I can do it again!” But you can’t be proud of something that you turned around and completely undid. People will just think, “My goodness, you had that much to lose in the first place? Then you turned around and gained almost all of it back?” I think I struggle with what to say because there is some part of me that wants to be like, “Yes, I know I’m fat but I’m trying to do something about it.” Why in the world I want people to know this, I haven’t quite figured out yet. It’s not that I feel like my friends will criticize me, it’s that I feel like they can’t understand. There are just some things that people can’t know about, can’t understand if they haven’t lived through it themselves.