Caterwauling

You know what victory is? It’s wearing a vest that used to fit you perfectly — maybe even snugly, if you’re being honest with yourself — and putting it on to find that not only does it button, but once it’s buttoned, you can look down and see the FLOOR between you and the fabric.

In other words, w00t!

Am a half-pound away from being down 40 pounds. It was a good week, at least in the de-pudgification world. Maybe it was all the STRESS that did it to me — and it certainly wasn’t my proximity to the office Candy Corner, where last night’s dinner was a peppermint patty, five peanut M&Ms and three organic animal crackers. *sigh*

I’m going to have to miss the next two Weight Watchers meetings, although I may try to pick one up on an off-day to keep myself motivated.

Tonight we talked about Anchoring as a weight-loss tool. In other words, what is the thing that keeps you motivated, whether positive or negative?

Molly showed us a ring her parents bought her when she was halfway to her goal. And the ring is now too big, since she reached her goal.

(As for me, I’ve started wearing jewelry again — I have no fewer than 100 necklaces that I’d been ignoring that I suddenly can’t get enough of. And I’m wearing all my former-ring-finger-sized rings on my index and middle fingers and they’re STILL too loose. Yay!)

Our leader showed us a photo of himself at his biggest when he was in Italy two years ago. Not pretty.

As for me, I have two anchors, a positive and a negative. The negative is my corporate headshot. It’s awful. I can’t stand it. I hated it when I saw it but when someone offered to take another photo of me, I said, “What’s the point? I still look the same.”

And being down nearly 40 pounds, I’m ready to take another one, should opportunity arise. I mean, that I agreed to speak in front of a live audience AND a virtual one without even thinking to hesitate because of how I look, dude. Seriously. Wow. It didn’t even occur to me to think I wasn’t cute enough to be on camera.

And in that, maybe is the greater anchor — I am starting to see the person I was meant to be. I see what I want to look like, how I will look in a great pair of jeans, how small I will be when standing next to others, how I won’t automatically search for someone bigger in the room than me so that I feel a little bit better.

I was hugging a friend the other day, of the male variety. Someone who looked at me a couple of weeks ago, surprised, and mused, “You’re disappearing before our eyes.” I thought it was some existential reference to me being more scarce than usual, but it was a compliment.

And when I last saw him and hugged him, for the first time I realized I was smaller than him. (We were roughly the same size, maybe if only in my head but I think my perception wasn’t too far off.) And I LOVED it. I had that feeling of being small and protected and engulfed in a bear hug.

I mean, I hug my friends all the time, but to actually feel their arms going all the way around me? Wow. Just, wow.

OMG, that was a feeling that had been missing from my life for too damn long.

This is why I’ll be good when I’m nowhere near a meeting these coming two Tuesdays. I can’t explain it any better than that.

And just think, it’s only the beginning.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 at 9:12 PM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.