How It Feels To Have Lost over 150 Pounds

It's weird to be me inside this body
I was over 300 lbs.
and now I'm a size 12.

I was born over 10 lbs. and was NEVER a normal size.
MY WHOLE LIFE WAS SPENT OVERWEIGHT.

I never expected to get here...to "normal."
I did it the hard way, the way I thought I couldn't
because it was too hard, I'd be too hungry
I could never stick to it
and for 43 years that was true - I couldn't
Was I not ready? Was it not my time?
What factors were present (or removed) in my 43rd year
that were different that those preceding it?

My body has changed but my mind hasn't completely caught up.
I'm on the jetway boarding a plane and I'm still rehearsing my request for a seatbelt extender
I'm getting on the ferris wheel and I'm worried about exceeding weight limits
I still feel like the biggest person in the room
I browse racks of mens sweats with sizes in the X's and think they will fit me
I begin to worry in a crowded aisle that I won't be able to pass
I'm approaching the amphitheater and still fret when I see narrow turnstiles
I imagine the thin girls are judging me
but now I imagine the heavy ones are too

The changes are most noticable from the outside

inside I still feel mostly like me
except when I'm going up stairs
or moving through this world whose gravity seems to have lessened
when I feel my collarbones standing out sharply at attention
when I cross my arms around me and can pat myself on the back
When I catch a glance of the stranger in the mirror
or when I put on clothes that look impossibly small, and they fit
or are already too big

I used to scoff at people who wanted to lose 5 or 10 pounds
"I could do that in one day," I'd think
but 5 pounds means a lot to me now - at this size it's half a dress size!

On the downside, I'm so cold now
Icily, bitterly cold and missing my layers of protection
Some days not just physically but mentally as well

I miss having someone to commisserate with
without sounding like I'm bragging.
I miss being able to complain about saddle bags without someone reminding me how small they are compared to what they were.


I miss the physical space I took up. I feel somewhat diminished.
People I know well have trouble getting used to the more diminutive me
and are more likely to pat me on the head than the back now...
weird but true!

I miss being able to make fat jokes.
My self-deprecating humor comes across strangely now.
I miss being able to eat anything I wanted
and not constantly counting-journalling-worrying-banking-burning-repaying calories.

I don't miss these things enough to go back to being 300 pounds - ever!
But it's important enough to mention...

Life doesn't get perfect when you lose the weight.
It just gets easier to climb over the hills and up out of the valleys :)

I Ate the World

I ate the World today.
Not really a binge - I justify -
because I didn’t eat a lot of any one continent.
But I surrendered to an anonymous fickle hunger;
blind-folded and willing taste-tester of planets.

I ate like an empty person
trying to fill up
not sure exactly where the leak was
but certain I could stuff it up with pistachios
if I ate them quickly enough to bind.

I ate like a person trying to cover up a tattoo
smearing on denial like makeup
pretending no one could see how deeply my skin is scored
by years of shell-building
and other ill-considered cheese grater decisions.

I ate like the act could change reality -
like each bite could be basted into my cloak of invisibility
over the atrophied limbs of my creativity
wasted from spending too many years strapped in a chair
where the main challenge given me
is juggling seventy-two-thousand dusty details
without letting anyone see my arms move.

I ate the Whole World today
(and drank some of it too.)
I didn’t do it in a cloud of self-doubt and reproach,
but in a probing, searching, grasping way.
In a hungry-for-something-if-only-I-could-identify-it way.
In a way I thought was behind me and evidently isn't.
I still can’t regret, it even so.

Yes, I ate it all.
But as I recall each vacant crunchy sweet salty mouthful,
I see how far I’ve come from the unexamined appetites of my past
that blindly accepted calories over real nourishment
and concealment over bravery
and I find I’m a step further than I was yesterday
from the World eating Me.

Haiku 2 - Plateau

The stubborn scale mocks:
Time for thin is after death.
I hunger in vain.

Melting

“You’re melting” someone said.
It was intended as a compliment
and I dutifully thanked her but in reality I have felt my presence diminish.
I take up less space in the world with this body.
What will be left in its’ place?
As I whittle down the outer shell, literally,
I get figuratively closer
to the crystallized center of me
I soften
become quieter
truer to my nature
I don’t have to be loud funny boisterous cheerful entertaining.
I don't have to show how insanely happy with myself I am
to keep them from feeling sorry for me.
I can be diminished and go into the west, I guess.
And remain Ronda.