losing the chip

This picture has nothing to do with this blog post.  I just like it.  No one told me that she was going to grow up and stop being my baby.  No one.

Thankfully, a few of the pounds I have lost have come from the huge chip on my shoulder.  It's one I'm sure many overweight people share.  There are just so many out there who judge you based on your weight that pretty soon you come to the conclusion that everyone is judging you.

Haterz gonna hate.

You start to become defensive and paranoid and obsess over who your true allies are and who stared at you a little too long when you ate that piece of cake at the party.  Eventually, most people you encounter are labeled as "fat phobic" or, at the very least, "suspicious" and the whole thing turns into a game of friendship chicken as you begin to hold everyone you meet at arm's length.

And then comes the acceptance phase.  You tell yourself, "I am who I am and people can just accept me for who I am and if they don't then they just don't get to know who I am and that's too bad because I am a pretty good person."  This is the point at which you accept the fact that you need to buy plus sized clothes and you just try to find the ones that don't have Tweety Bird printed on them and hope for the best.

But accepting it allows you to appreciate some of the finer qualities of your personality.  You realize that you are nice or intelligent or have a skill for naming the countries of Africa or whatever.  You kind of come to peace with your weight without becoming so totally complacent that you don't care anymore.

You always care, I think.

But then some thin pretty woman gives you the once over glance from head to toe to head again.  You know what I'm talking about.  If she were a guy (and you weren't so self conscious) it would be perceived as checking you out.  But she's not attracted to you and it's pretty obvious it's not a good thing.

Anyway, I've spent so many years convincing myself that I am worthwhile despite the weight problem and deflecting negative comments and what I perceived to be rude stares from other people, that I now have a big giant chip on my shoulder.  It started to feel like losing weight would be admitting that I was not a very good person.  I felt like if I lost weight all the haterz would look at me and think, "Finally!  Fat Megan has snapped out of it and pulled it together.  She was being so lazy and she really just let herself go."

And that is NOT what happened!  And Fat Megan is still a good person!  And leave me alone!

I hate to admit it but sometimes it actually kept me from losing weight.  I would cut off my nose to spite my face and say, "I'll show you.  I'll show you how I eat this entire cake!"

I was really only hurting myself.

When I had finally had enough, I stopped caring about what other people were thinking about me.  In fact, I cared so little that I posted my weight on the internet and said, "Here I am.  Here is what I weigh.  I'm not perfect but I'm trying my best."

What I found is that most people really didn't care.  Or they did care but only to say how much they wanted to support me. (And not in a "wow, I can't believe you finally realized you're fat" sort of way.) I'm not saying that the haterz aren't still out there.  There will always be people who judge me for my weight like there are people who judge me for my religion, my background, or the fact that I don't have any money.

Like I said, haterz gonna hate.

But the great thing is, people are good.  People are great.  And people care and want to help in a way that is far less judgmental and mean than I thought.  One of the best things about writing this blog has been the ability to let go of the notion that I can't make a mistake.  I've spent the last several years trying to hide the fact that I'm overweight.  It's like trying to hide the fact that you've eaten all the cookies from the cookie jar with the chocolate brown evidence smeared all over your face.

It is exhausting.  It is painful.  It is futile.

Being able to admit that I struggle has been so freeing and liberating.  I have admitted than I'm human and so many people have told me that they are human too.  So I guess we're all human and not dancer.

The experience has been so positive for me that I'm beginning to wonder what other aspects of my life can I apply it to.  Where else can I admit I was wrong, commit to retrying, and just work on it.  It's not easy but the results are so sweet.