Thin Fantasy vs. Reality

March 30, 2013

40.5 pounds to go

I’ve been avoiding writing this blog for about a month now.   When I first started dieting and even before, I would say to myself “I would give anything to be 60 pounds lighter.”  Not my goal, not skinny, but just more comfortable.  It’s another one of those weird self-negotiations.  “God / Universe / Powers that be please don’t help me lose 100 pounds but I’d give anything to get halfway.”

I’m guilty of having a number in my head that is the trigger for this in-between self-negotiation.   I’ve thought about this number since the beginning:  this is when I would begin to look and feel normal.  When I would no longer be fat.  I wouldn’t be skinny either, just fit-in-with-everyone-else weight.  And it’s only .5 pounds away.  I saw it for a brief glimpse last weekend but I think it frightened me so I wasn’t so great with my food this week.  Not terrible, just not that great.  I don’t think I was quite ready to become friends yet.

In short, my thin fantasy isn’t really a ‘thin’ fantasy, it is a ‘normal’ fantasy.

So what happens when you begin to fantasize about weight loss?  The same delusions for other fantasies still apply.  But I find these are the top 5 things I think will magically happen when I become thin:

1) I will become popular.

2) People will see me for I really am, not the fat.

3) All my problems will go away.

4) People wont judge me negatively for my appearance.

5) I’ll get my way all the time / people will be nicer to me.

The thing is, these notions weren’t kicking in for when I get to the ultimate goal number, they were kicking in with the ‘now’ number.  And where am I now?  I threw out 4 bags of clothes a few weeks ago because they were hopelessly baggy on me.   I’m comfortably in a size 10.  I’m trying not to buy too many clothes because they only fit me well for about a month.  My gut has gone away and turned into a belly.   I get at least one person a day noticing that I’ve lost weight.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard “you just keep shrinking, soon there won’t be anything left!”

I see myself as still on a path, but others seem to see me at the finish line.  When I look in the mirror I feel good, and almost revel in disbelief that I’ve made it this far.  I put on shirts and remember when I couldn’t even button them up and now they’re too big on me.  I’ve had to buy new bras because the band size has shrunk from a 38 to 34.  Many of my rings are now too big on me.  My pantyhose are too big on me, which I didn’t even think was possible.  When I do go shopping I find myself reaching for the size 12’s, 14’s and XL’s still because there’s no way I’m going to fit into anything else.   And then they’re too big!  When I went to try on wedding dresses back in January I was wearing a skirt, suit jacket and pantyhose and when she put me in the first dress she was like “holy shit, you are hiding some curves under there.”   And I think to myself, ‘I was hiding? Really? I didn’t even realize.”

So, I’ve been fantasizing about getting to this weight and how normal I would feel and gain “fit-in-ness” but everyone’s noticing, and I’m not necessarily blending in, I’m standing out.  Even though I still often subconsciously wear clothes that are too big so I wont.

It’s almost as if I play down the attention because I don’t want to get thrown off track.  The more I think about what others think of me, the more I go running to the fridge for more string cheese.  Calm my nerves oh sweet nutella!

It goes back to, thank god I’m doing this slowly because it gives me time to get used to all the change.

Getting back to the standard fantasies that come along with weight loss, when I think back to the beginning of this journey and my goal weight the biggest thought that stood out was all the fat bias would go away.  People wouldn’t refer to me as overweight / obese, they wouldn’t associate my capabilities with my weight,  (i.e. I must be lazy because I was fat) and things would just be a little bit easier for me.  The good old “skinny people don’t have any problems” line stuck in my head.  Which of course, is total bullshit.  There are all sorts of biases associated with skinny people (bitches) which are also totally untrue.  And they have problems just like everyone else.  They’re just doing it in a different package.

Even at my stage now, only a half a pound away from my ‘normal’ fantasy my job and workload hasn’t gotten any easier with my weight loss.  The way people treat me hasn’t really changed.  That’s one bucket.  In the other bucket is the compliments and the noticing.  They’re mutually exclusive which is also a hard concept to grasp.  I think I wasn’t ready to cope with meeting the reality of what the number I’ve thought about for so long.  So instead I went cake tasting and ate a lot of salad with too much dressing on it this week.  It’s why I was avoiding this blog because I’m not quite sure how to interpret my new reality.  Am I thin?  Am I normal?  Am I ready to embark on the next leg of this journey?  It’s like getting on the scale after a food fest.  It’s really scary and I don’t want to look at the number, but then when it shows up it’s not so bad.  I know what I’m dealing with and stop worrying about the ‘what if’s.’  Facing it is, by far, the hardest part.

As humans, I think we're still programmed to fantasize about 'how things might be."  Now that I'm ready to get over this hump I'm sure these fantasies will make a comeback, just with a new number in mind.  I know deep down the reality will probably be different and that's ok.  I've been thinking for the last month that I wasn't thin enough to write this blog with courage and reality, but it turns out I am.  And even if I'm not, goddamnit I wrote this anyway.  It's done.  I've faced it.  I'm ready to keep going.