Déjà Vu

Lately it seems that I’m experiencing déjà vu of my first big weight loss experience. For instance, today at work my co-workers were discussing weight loss. One of the girls said that while she understands how easy it is to gain a little weight, she couldn’t understand how people can be to the point where they are 100 pounds or more overweight. The other girls nodded their heads in that “I couldn’t imagine that either” sort of way. I didn’t know what to say. Because I can totally understand how that happens! This co-worker has really only seen me at the weight I am right now or less. I don’t know if she realizes that in the past I lost 68 pounds, gained some back, lost 30, gained it back plus more, and now am once again making my way down the scales. I figure that when I’m done with this latest weight loss adventure I’ll have probably lost nearly 50 this time around. It was kind of like this, “Hey! I am one of those people that you’re talking about!” Here’s what I’ve realized, on a good day in a great outfit, I don’t look like a big fat girl. I look slightly chubby to downright normal depending on the observer’s standards. Also, I don’t ever talk about fat or dieting in my “real” life (only with you lovely people do I feel comfortable) so people don’t know my long history with fat and fatness and therefore feel free to say whatever they really feel in front of me. But underneath, I’m still heavy. I have cellulite and fat rolls and many other little indicators of fighting the fat war. Let’s not even talk about the psychological fat because I still have a ton of that poundage to move! The whole conversation made me feel so weird. It made me feel like a fraud; like a fat girl who has somehow managed to listen in on the skinny world’s conversations. Like I’ve had the chance to hear what they really say about people like me when we’re not around. And here’s something else that I think about: I realize that there have been so many times where I’ve tried to lose weight and then failed miserably. Then there happened to be this one magical time where everything clicked and I lost a lot. But what if that one time hadn’t been successful? Wonder if I had continued on the same path that I was on? I know I would have continued to gain and gain and gain. 100 pounds or more? Oh yes, that could have easily been me, in a heartbeat. It’s just weird to think how easily I could be the very person they’re having difficulty imagining. I mean I pretty much was, 68 is not that much less than 100 and at the time the scales were quickly sliding that way. I know that weight loss takes a lot of hard work but I’ve always thought that it could have easily worked out a totally different way for me. I sometimes feel like it was by a stroke of luck that my weight loss efforts went the way of success. Imagine that same conversation if I hadn’t lost weight, they would have had the same opinions but would have never said them in front of me. I don’t know, every once in awhile I realize how there are only certain people who can understand what this is really like. Being part of Fatblogland is fantastic; you connect with people who understand something that you thought nobody could relate to. Then you realize what the outside world can be like and even though you know how things are, they still kind of catch you off guard.