One Year Later

One year ago today, weighing in at a whopping 273 pounds, I started the Medifast program and lost a lot of weight and inches.  Here is a look at where I started and where I am today:

• Weight:  273 lbs. to 147 lbs. (-126 lbs.)
• Upper Arms:  16″ to 10.5″ (-5.5″)
• Chest:  50″ to 36.5″ (-13.5″)
• Waist:  54″ to 34″ (-20″)
• Hips:  50″ to 35″ (-15″)
• Thighs:  25″ to 18″ (-7″)

I won’t lie, the numbers are staggering and amazing.  I am amazed that I was able to accomplish something that I have always dreamed of.  However, this morning, my friend Scott Carden asked me a series of difficult questions on Twitter:  “How do you feel about yourself today vs. a year ago?  How much of a different person are you?  Inside and Out?”

These are great questions that have really caused me to reflect upon my internal and external appearances.  I have always been overweight which led me to constantly dream about being thin.  I would often visualize myself residing in a fat suit that at anytime I could unzip, step out of and instantly gain favor, love and acceptance from those around me.

For 20 years I fostered that belief and it created an expectation that if I was skinny, my life would be better.  That I would feel better about myself.  That I would do what I wanted to do with my life, because I wouldn’t have to deal with how I looked anymore.

How do I feel about myself now?  I am now dealing with those false expectations.  My life didn’t change when I weighed in at 147.  My insecurities still exist.  I am still me on the inside.  At times, I look in the mirror and still see the old me.  Sometimes I don’t even recognize myself.

I did notice that how people treated me changed.  When I was heavy, my worth was determined by others based on what I could do for them creatively (website design and development, graphic design, video production and photography).  But as I lost weight, people started to value me because of my physical appearance.  That was really hard for me to accept at first, because I still wanted to be valued based on what I could do.

I can honestly say that I have been successful because in addition to learning how to eat healthy foods, I was also seeing a counselor in order to deal with the emotional issues of why I was eating.  I have always been an emotional eater.  I eat to numb my pain.  I remember as a kid, eating bags of Chips Ahoy cookies in one sitting or downing a whole container of frozen cool whip, just because I was bored and hurting deep inside.  Emotions are a powerful force and food is my addiction.  My drug.  That is the biggest thing I have learned about myself in this whole process and I accept full responsibility for my actions in the past, present and future.

I feel like I am rambling a bit, but the honest truth is that while the exterior has changed tremendously, my interior needs a lot of work.  The exterior was easy compared to the journey that I am now on.

At the end of the day, I am grateful for losing the weight, because it has led me to a place of acceptance and desire to be emotionally healthy, even though the work is a million times harder when dealing with the interior of my life.

Thank you Scott for asking these tough questions.