"What I Miss About 135lbs. Ago"

 I ran across this website, Can You Stay For Dinner and this article really hit home.  She writes incredibly well.  She could've been describing me.  Highly recommended reading.  The first part (linked above) is what she misses.  What do you miss/not miss from "before?"  

From her website (go to the link for pics!!):

I miss the volume of food, the horizon of eats that lay before me on a table, knowing full well that the only thing stopping me was my fist-sized stomach. And even then there was always stretch.

I miss the way the fourth slice of pizza tastes. The fifth even more.

I miss bricks of brownie + ice cream + caramel + whipped cream + the crumblies of a Reese’s twosome. For a snack after lunch.

I miss when menus at restaurants were just lists of delicious dinners. And nothing more nutritionally threatening.

I miss not thinking for more than four seconds before deciding that, why yes, I’d absolutely adore donuts for breakfast.

I miss plunging my forearm into a bucket of thrice buttered pop corn at the movie theater. Shoveling mouthfuls of salted and soggy kernels into my gullet. Then Snow Caps. Then Sprite.

I miss brunching with sausage, egg, and cheese on greased and griddled everything bagels in the dining hall at college. With hash browns and a mind on lunch.

I miss all ten inches of that buffalo chicken pizza I called for when the party music stopped playing. And Kelis’ Milkshake.

I miss not caring when or how my next meal came, only that it came. And stayed. And never left.

I miss the way Cap’n Crunch-ed so loudly I couldn’t hear my dad hollering.

I miss that feeling I had when every fiber of my anatomy believed food to be the kindest, most loving spirit a girl could know.

I don’t miss the way heat felt suffocating. The way temperatures teasing 70 threatened me. And my hair.

I don’t miss the caramel creams I bit into when I realized my dad was never going to get, or be, better. I don’t miss dropping them at the sound of his scream. Picking each one up before we rushed to the hospital.

I don’t miss the Lucky Charms and the Corn Pops and the Honeycomb that helped me with my homework. They never filled in the answers like I’d begged them to.

I don’t miss wondering if invisibility would be a more comfortable state. There are no places to live there.

I don’t miss the way my legs chafed, the way shorts rode up until I discreetly tugged them down.

I don’t miss the way my legs fell asleep if I dared sit cross-legged on the floor.

I don’t miss feeling like a wallflower.

I don’t miss watching people move, and act, and sing, and dance and wishing, oh wishing, I felt that free.

 

I don’t miss sealing my hopes and dreams into an envelope and mailing it to the future. I never knew how to get there. Or why it never came.

I don’t miss thinking, “Someday they’ll see. I’m better than they know. One day…"

I don’t miss my stomach calling my brain to tell her I’d eaten enough and I just couldn’t (couldn’t!) eat another bite. She never answered.

I don’t miss the staring.

I don’t miss loading a gun with ‘fat’ and ‘pig’ and ‘whale’ and handing it to others to pull the trigger. They never heard mercy.

I don’t miss the excuses and the regrets and the feeling like I’d wasted precious years.

I don’t miss the tears.

I don’t miss dreading, oh dreading, any occasion with dresses, or dressing up, or dressing, really. Certainly not the prom gowns. Not the girdles. Not the high heels that made my feet appear four sizes smaller than my frame. The panty hose.

I don’t miss thinking that size 16, 18, and 20 would fit differently, more acceptingly, in different stores.

I don’t miss waiting.

And waiting.

And waiting.

Then waiting some more.

For life to begin.

Because she was hanging out all along.

And when I found her sitting quietly, off to the side, just waiting on me to begin her

I had missed her.

What’s the moral here?

What’s the matter with missing 135lbs? With letting every one of them go completely and asking, gently, that they never come back? It’s not you, it’s me.

The matter is that, fat or thin, big or bitty, I’ll always be both. No, I won’t look in the mirror and see the other. No, I won’t praise one too highly. Because they’re all I know.

Each is valuable.

When you’re big for twenty years, the only twenty you’ve ever known, you’ll kindly not frown upon two decades. You’ll know that who you are was formed in there, and that’s beautiful.

Hear me.

Beautiful.

I hear accounts of those who’ve lost a tremendous amount of weight. Maybe they were on the Biggest Loser; maybe the cover of People. Most often, they speak about their former selves, the bigger ones, in a very detached way. As if the here and now is infinitely better and more lovely than the past. And maybe it is in lots of ways. But here’s the thing: it was you all along.

I don’t think back on my past and want to redo it. I don’t flip pages of my baby book and think, ‘dear, what cankles you had.’ I don’t see my adolescent self, my teenage self, and wish those pictures, scrapbooked and framed, would disappear.Mom, really, with the Glamour Shots? Really? My life, big, was always all I knew. And that is perfect in its own right.

Yes, I know now that with 135 extra pounds, something more was wrong than my weight. The scales I tipped should have tipped me off to emotional suffering. But not all of it was sad, or scared.

Some of the weight was happy and as well rounded as it came across.

Some of it meant that I developed a personality first.

A sense of humor before a sense of entitlement.

Empathy before ego.

Some of the weight meant that I didn’t care about myself. But in turn, maybe I cared deeply about a number of meaningful external parts of life. I poured my heart into relationships, molded to fit friends and cir****tances. A big ball, I rolled with the changes. I doubt I’d be able to do that now, so much more rigid and spindly. I had a protective layer. Something to pull over my eyes when my dad, and the world, threatened to break me.

I found spirit.

I cared deeply about the way people perceived me. But maybe that made me more in tune and intuitive. Maybe that’s why, now and always, I could and would like to sit for hours and days on end, just listening to someone else. What’s your story? Where are you from? And, are you content?

What are your Misses and Not misses???!!

 What I miss/Don't miss from 127lbs. ago:

Misses:

I miss the comfort of dreaming about being thin.  It was this wonderful, elusive, magical world (now I'm here it's darn good, but not this dreamland)

I miss getting really hungry and then eating and stuffing myself until I was hungry no more.  (never thought I'd say I miss getting really hungry and eating a lot!)

I miss the satisfaction of a clean plate

I miss pizzas on Friday nights, Chinese food on Saturdays.

Cereal!!!  And Ice cream!!  (The two things I can under no cir****tances eat)

I miss believing that I would change the world and someday my weight would not matter

I miss being a little less caught up in my physical appearance.

I miss being able to shave my armpits easily.  Now they are hollow and difficult!



DON'T MISS:

sweating all over (and we have HOT summers here)

not being able to wear shorts (ever!) or sleeveless

worrying whether I was the weight limit--on ladders, rides, exercise machinery, rafts, etc.

navigating my way around narrow furniture or in crowded stores

not being able to cross my legs or sit indian-style

not doing fun things because my weight might hold me back or make me look like a bigger fool if I fell, etc.

Legs chafing and getting bumps

{{sniff}}  I love this line:

I don’t miss sealing my hopes and dreams into an envelope and mailing it to the future. I never knew how to get there. Or why it never came.

What I miss/don't miss from 101 pounds ago:

I miss:
Being able to test, test, test my food when I am cooking for a holiday feast and still be able to sit and eat it all with the family.

Blizzards from Dairy Queen - My fav was Reeses Peanut Butter Cup

My son sitting in my lap while we watch TV.  He says I am not comfortable anymore.

I don't miss:
Men not looking me in the eyes as I pass by

The aching of my feet in the morning

Dreading to have to pick out clothes knowing none of them will look any good anyway

Not wanting my picture taken

Not being able to ride bikes or ski with my children

Thank you for this post....I loved it!

Ann

OMG how amazing!  I am not thin yet, but I have a lot of ambivalence about being "normal" sized, because so much of my identity is being a fat person.  When I have been thin before, I missed the freedom of diminished expectations, and of always being able to exceed them.  I called that "pretty good for a fat girl."  Part of that I lost just by growing older, because being overweight is so much more common as we age. There are a lot more fat 50-yr-olds than 25-yr-olds.  At least when I was 25.

You know, there is that saying I quote sometimes about "avoid dwelling on any real or imagined pleasure you had from excess food."  I think that is really true for me, that the pleasure was not exactly imagined, but infinitesimally short.  Much more pain.  Like, the first piece of pizza was always fantastic, but not being able to stop was excrutiating and the 4th or 5th piece was furtive, compulsive, demoralizing.  So I guess it's not like I *miss* how I used to be able to eat, it's more that I wish I could be *normal* and be able to enjoy all those yummy foods in a controlled manner.  That isn't going to happen with or without surgery.

And I am lucky in that I can still tolerate anything I've chosen to eat, so I didn't have to give up something yummy and non-triggery, like eggs.

I do have a long list of what I don't miss, starting with being constantly, crazily hungry every time I tried to limit my food to a normal amount.  I don't miss worrying that the biggest size in the store wouldn't fit.  I don't miss having sore knees or chaffed thighs and worrying that I won't fit in the plane seat.  I miss fitting in with my OA friends, because surgery has set me apart from them and because I know it doesn't mean I still don't think the program is really helpful. 

I think I'm trying to say I don't miss much about the tyranny of food, and love how I feel physically.  But it's a weird life change and sometimes unsettling.  You are very inspiring and I love how much thought you put in to these same issues!!

Editted to fix typos.

Thanks for this post.  It's wonderful.  I'm pre-op (24 days to go but who's counting).  This is just what I needed to read tonight. 

 
Great post BB.....

I'm gonna have to read and digest it later....I'm tryin to get out the door right now !

I'm thinkin Okla Onion Burger !

frisco

 Bb, 
That was absolutely beautiful!  Thank you for the gentle reminders -the good and bad. 

Wow.... what a wonderful post. Just sliding into my year aniversary at the end of the month, and what a great reminder of why. I know I've lost over 125, but no idea how much since it's been November since I got weighed. Maybe it's 135..... Good stuff. Thanks for sharing!

As I read this post, I think of my daughter. It so does sound like her. I am her mother, I know her and see her.
It makes me sad to know she has felt these things and yet with post, I see that she also has acquired some positive things in the last 25 years as well.
She is scheduled for March 5th for the Sleeve.

donna

 That's what I loved about this young woman's post.  I can so relate, especially having been overweight my entire life and being in my twenties.  It takes you through that strange full circle swing of emotions.  Sometimes I feel like I betrayed my "old self" and I want her back.  I never thought she was loved, adored, or admired by anyone...and then I went and sold her out myself!  And then I think about my new self and how happy I am to experience life as I always dreamed of and promised myself.  But then I'm sad about the ways in which things aren't like they were.  And then finally I'm beginning to reach that point where I recognize the two aren't separate.  I am the girl I dreamed of, realized!  I had the vision to dream it before, had lots of good "practice" in life as a heavy person, and I am who I am today because of BOTH!