The Top 3
January 16th, 2007 at 8:49 pm (Metaphysical)
I’m all for visualization and affirmations. I do live in L.A., after all. But part of the difficulty of losing weight is that I’ve never been thin. I have no point of reference or distant memory with which to feed my fantasies. I can’t remember, in fact, weighing less than 300 pounds in my entire adult life. Losing weight will not be a return to some “glory days” of the past. It will be an entirely new experience, and new is always nerve-wracking.
Like it or not, my overweight has always been in the top 3 descriptors that I would use to describe myself:
- Smart
- Fat
- Funny
When I first typed that, I had Fat at number 3, but I went back and edited it to be more honest with myself.1 What will move up to take spot number 2 when I approach my goal? What will fill the void left at number 3 if Funny is promoted? Rich? Famous? Insipid? Insidious?
Perhaps it doesn’t matter since that date is, realistically, at least 3 years in the future. I’m sure in those 36 months, something will step up to take Fat’s place as my identifying characteristic. I hope it’s something like Doctor or Artist and not the more likely Obsessive, Egotistical, or Paranoid.
- In fact, it might be most honest to have Fat at spot number 1, but I just can’t bring myself to do that, yet. [↩]
Marla said,
January 18, 2007 at 12:22 pm
I think it’s remarkably perceptive of you to foresee this question of identity. I think we all just can’t wait to be not-fat anymore and don’t always realize how much of our lives it is. For good or bad, it’s formed our characters, or large parts of our characters. You hear a lot of people say that being fat was a way of hiding, or a way of disqualifying themselves from the competition, and there’s a lot to that. As rough as it is for us to be fat, it may take much more courage to be thin. Not only is the physical crutch of food as a coping tool gone, but the emotional crutch of being fat disappears too - and weirdly it can be a crutch. Once we lose weight, it’s like there’s no excuses anymore: we can’t think “I didn’t get that job because I’m fat.” It might be something horrible like “I didn’t get that job because I’m an asshole.” That’s some serious introspection to face up to, and I can see why people don’t want to do it!
On the bright side, I’m pretty sure neither of us is going to add “asshole” as our third place spot. I do like “insidious” though.
Hilly said,
January 19, 2007 at 1:43 pm
This is an interesting post; I just realized that I tend to describe myself as the cute chubby funky redheaded woman…..it would be nice if I could take out the negative thoughts.
Rachel said,
January 19, 2007 at 8:27 pm
“It might be something horrible like ‘I didn’t get that job because I’m an asshole.’”
Haha! That’s awesome!