Tiny Tummy Dispatch Day 118: Alignment

Photo credit: Flickr | quinnanya

The surgeon asked me last week if anyone is starting to notice my weight loss and I had to giggle. When you lose 60+ pounds – and talk about it incessantly – everyone notices. The next day I was recounting the conversation for Jillian, therapist to the stars, and she asked me if I noticed the difference.

Physically, I feel the difference. My body is so much limber than it was before, bending and moving in ways it hasn’t bent or moved in years. Aand it definitely takes up less space than it used to. My clothes fit different – as in not at all. I’m down four pant sizes in the past three months. And when I look at before and after pictures, I see the difference.

It just is that it isn’t that much different.

I have almost always liked what I saw when I looked in the mirror… from the neck up, at least. I never really saw double chins or puffy cheeks or fat, I just saw me. But, honestly, I was always shocked as hell when I would catch a full-body glimpse of myself in a store window. Like, “Who the hell is that fat chick?” My body image and my actual body size never really jived.

In fact, I have two decades of bruised hips to prove it. I was continually astonished when my body didn’t physically fit through spaces that my mind thought they should be able to fit through.

The physical pictures and the mental images are starting to more closely align. And the woman smiling back in the mirror does look somewhat different – she looks more awake, glowing… bright. But this body? It’s the body I always had as far as my mind’s eye is concerned. I don’t know how much that will change as the pounds and inches continue to drop, but I’m fascinated to find out.