When will I be able to look in the mirror and notice a major change in my appearance as a result of the weight I’ve lost? I wonder.

I’ve lost almost 50 pounds so far, just 2.4 pounds from it, and people tell me I look different. They can see the change.

On some levels I can see it myself too, but not so much. In some ways, I feel like I look the same.

It makes me wonder when the dramatic differences will come. If I lose another 50 pounds, will it look dramatically different, or will it look only slightly different the way it does now?

I don’t know.

I’m determined to find out of course, but I guess I was hoping for more of a noticeable difference sooner.

What I have noticed is that I am wearing clothes I haven’t been able to wear in a while because I am smaller, but still, I’m the same size as I was before number wise. Only now I can wear clothes that are moderately more closely fitted than before.

So it’s all going in stages.

Not having been through this before, at least purposely so, and from such a high weight, I have a theory. I wonder if the most dramatic visual changes comes as a person gets closer to their goal weight. For me right now, I’m still 184.6 pounds away from my goal of 150 pounds. That’s a lot of weight yet to lose.

Of course, once again, the moral of the story is patience. A character trait I seem to lack.

In the meantime, maybe I ought to shop for a new mirror, one that maybe says, “Hey beautiful, have you lost some weight?” every time I look into it.

I could then reply, “ Why yes, you noticed?” and be on my way, hopefully with a smile on my face.

It seems that a magic mirror might be just the thing to turn my sad topic around and temper it with more patience, because that’s what I need.



A GLIMPSE INTO THE PAST …

It was many years ago now, in fact almost 20 years, that I came back from Germany after having spent a year there as a foreign exchange student.

While I was there I lost about 50 pounds without even trying.

I had no idea how lucky I was then to have lost all that weight with no effort, while now I’ve done it again, but with great effort.

Then I don’t know that I really noticed a change in appearance. I saw myself the same almost from the day I arrived to the day I left. The only difference I recall besides the fact that my jeans had to be altered to fit me again was that I had a new haircut.

I went from having long hair to short hair. It was a first for me, but I loved it.

I wonder if that experience might shine some light on what’s going on now. I have lost about the same amount of weight, but just I don’t see it.

My clothes fit differently, but I see the same person in the mirror.

When I went to Germany I was a size 22/24, but when I came home, I could wear clothes as small as a 14/16.

Putting on smaller clothes when I came home did little to change how I saw myself.

I was still the fat girl I felt like on the inside.

The thing is, the fat girl faded into the background when I was in Germany because I was too busy enjoying myself to feel fat most of the time and I was too happy to think about it much.

Those thoughts came back to me when I came home.

So did the weight, and then a bunch more.

Maybe I needed a magic mirror then, one to whistle at me and tell me I was “hot stuff.”

Maybe that would have caught my attention and got me on the path of keeping the weight off.

I don’t know. But it is weird how my perspective of myself didn’t change the way it should have.

I knew I was more fit. I could feel it. I was in kick-butt shape for that matter, even if I wasn’t as small as I should be.

That’s what happens when you walk a kilometer to the train station in the morning to catch a train to school, another kilometer from the train to get to the school, and about a kilometer walking during lunch time, and a kilometer to the train again and another kilometer from the train station to the house.

That’s not all, sometimes I went somewhere before I went home. Add another 1-2 kilometers, depending on how adventurous I was that day.

That’s a lot of walking. Of course the distances are estimated, and I’m not really good at math, but still, it was a lot of walking.

On weekends I’d walk a lot as I would go places with my friends and explore the area I was in. I loved it.

While that was the routine at one of the places I lived, I lived elsewhere in the country too, but still found ample time to walk to my heart’s content.

I didn’t drive. I didn’t need to. I could get anywhere by train or bus, or even bike. Oh, the bike. Yikes.

I discovered that if you use an old bike and you are overweight like I was when I first arrived in Germany, biking is not so easy. The bike didn’t like it, and frankly it wore me out.

I got used to it though. I found it fascinating that there was a bike trail along the Autobahn. That’s how I got to the school where I had my crash course in German after arriving in the country.

The trail was pleasant and very well kept. Actually everything was for that matter.

Frankly, I don’t know how to duplicate the life I had there, it was so weight-loss friendly. I live in a rural area, I have to drive almost every where I go, although I suppose I could walk to the Post Office, that isn't too far away. The thing is, I have no reason to go to the Post Office most of the time and there really isn’t much reason for me to walk anywhere else in the place that I live.

For me, it would be more about the scenery, and this time of year, the scenery is just a little too cold for my taste.

But that aside, it seems I’ve wandered off topic a little bit.



PUTTING EVERYTHING INTO PERSPECTIVE …

Given that I’m aware of what seems to be a perspective problem on my part, I am going to have to combat what could become a demoralizing issue.

If I can’t see the visual changes that are going on in my body, I’m just going to have to make it all the more obvious to myself.

I already measure myself approximately every month now. I haven’t yet taken February’s measurements because I don’t feel any different from January, but I’ll get on that on Thursday, my official weigh in day at TOPS (Taking Off Pounds Sensibly), and the day I hope I meet one of my short-term goals of losing a total of 50 pounds.

So since I measure myself regularly already, another course of action is in order.

I think maybe something along the lines of what scientists do to show the scale of an object in a photo would be good. If a scientist photographs a rock for instance, they put a pen, a quarter or a ruler in the picture.

I will have to probably do something similar, only a pen and a quarter won’t quite do! If only!

So this is what I am going to do: I am going to take a photo once a month in the same spot with the same objects around me. Or maybe I’ll use a yard stick or something for scale, but however I do it, scale is important.

That’s because I don’t want to view myself the same at a size 14/16 as I do a size 30/32. It just doesn’t seem right.

I’ll do what I can to make sure my view of myself changes along the way as I lose the weight, and if all else fails, I’ll look to buy a magic mirror! Maybe that will change my perspective!

***
The photo on top is a picture of me today. The middle photo is me shortly before I came back from Germany in 1993. I attended an outdoor art exhibit in Saarlouis. The photo on the bottom was taken of me about a week or so ago.