2 Baby Steps Forward, 1 Giant Leap Back

Having lost 16 pounds so far on my journey is the two steps forward. Seeing my image in an enormous mirror at a lecture and its impact was the giant step back.

For reasons I cannot yet fathom, my mental image of myself is in a different universe than my physical reality. The video/snapshots/images in my mind are those of a slender well-dressed woman who radiates self-confidence, health and fitness. For years I have been the master of self-delusion given the delta between my mind's eye image and the plus-size clothes in the closet.

So, combine the powers of self-delusion and a 16 pound weight loss and what do you get? A mental image of increased loveliness!

Now, toss in the reality of a nasty yoga study mirror (no, I wasn't doing yoga, just attending a lecture being held in a yoga studio space) and what do you get? A race for gumdrops and pretzels!

The woman in the yoga studio mirror was well-dressed and well-groomed (had a really nice handbag, too!) but she was plus-size. OMG! Her face was round, so was her root beer belly, even her fingers were pudgy. Thank goodness, sort of, that the mirror was directly behind the speaker. Given my intense scrutiny focused unwaveringly at the front of the room, she certainly had to believe that I was hanging on her every word! There was no escape from that mirror, that image, for almost two hours.

I would love to report that I've progressed far enough on my journey to say that I processed the image of that plus-sized woman gracefully and meaningfully. But I didn't...at first. My initial reaction was to eat. (Had a friend not accompanied me to the lecture, I'm pretty sure that I would have stopped at the nearest grocery store to stock up on "food medicine" to self-mediate on the drive home.)

After kissing hubby, I raced to the pantry. Grabbed the candy jar that's purposefully filled with candies that only hubby likes and frantically rooted through its contents, looking for sweet release from that image in the mirror. Praise be! I found two gumdrops at the very bottom of the jar and quickly snarfed them down. But they weren't enough, so I grabbed the bag of pretzels and ate several handfuls until the svelte mental image returned. Ah, what relief.

In retrospect, I HAVE made progress. Before I started this journey, I would have dropped my friend off at her home, returned to the grocery for gumdrops and chocolate and then soothed myself with sugar garbage, all curled up in the corner of my big, comfy couch. OK, my first reaction was to reach for food so there's still work to be done there. But the progress is in what food I did go for, three handfuls of nonfat pretzels. Sure, they were extra calories that looked really bad on my food log for the day. But imagine how awful bags of gumdrops and York peppermint patties would have looked on the food log. They would have looked even worse as added bulk on my root beer belly.

So maybe that giant step back wasn't quite so giant after all...or am I deluding myself again???