Life in the Extremes and between....

Having spent the majority of my adult life morbidly obese, I became very used to being the largest person in the room, sometimes even the largest in the building. I was self-conscious, and acutely aware of my size in relation to everyone else. I would scan a room, looking for someone else on the larger size. Was there even anyone slightly overweight besides me? This was not a comfortable place to live, but it was a place I became comfortable in. It was familiar. I had a unique, albeit not desireable, identity. I was sure of my place and where I fit in, or rather stuck out.

At 106 lbs less, I am no longer the largest person in the room. I struggle to figure out what my current size even accurately is. I now scan the room, looking at people of different sizes and wonder, "do I look like that?", and "is she my size?". No longer sure where I fit in. Do I still look overweight? Am I average? Thin? I sometimes feel like I'm floating without an anchor, or struggling to see clearly through the fog.

I have far surpassed all my original goals, set when I started this journey. I wanted to be healthier. I wanted to be able to have energy to play with my kids. I didn't want my kids to be embarrassed by my size. I wanted to end up under 200 lbs. I wanted to fit into "normal", non-plus-sized clothing. I wanted to be free of my emotional attachment to food and no longer enslaved to eating in excess. Check, check, triple check. I've gone farther than I ever imagined I could. I've run more miles than I ever thought possible, I've conquered every distance challenge I reached for. And yet, this restlessness remains. I do not feel like I'm at my goal weight, I don't feel like I've arrived. I feel this need to keep pushing. To keep setting goals. To lose 25 more pounds. To run faster, further, to build muscles and tone up. I'm not yet satisfied, and I begin to wonder, when will I be? I'm wearing a size small, when I started in a size 3xL. I have a hard time accepting this as factual. Surely it's just vanity sizing, or just this one or two or twenty brands of clothing, I tell myself.

It's as if, after losing my fat-girl identity, I'm a ship without a sail. As though I'm chasing the other extreme, to be extremely thin, extraordinarily toned, so that I find myself the opposite extreme of where I started. Why do I sometimes feel the need to cling to life in the extreme? Is it a safe place to hide? A way to get out of having to figure out who I really am?

Working through this crisis in identity is the unexpected collateral (and benefit) of extreme weight loss. Not one I expected. You always see depressed "before" shots and glowing "afters". No one talks about the mental challenges that are deeply rooted in this dramatic life change. It's a growing process, and I find that as a person I have grown more mentally than I have shrunk physically. Every day I learn to love who I am deep inside, aside from my weight. To find my identity in my heart and soul, in who I am, not what my weight is. I have had my outer physical layers peel away, so there is no more hiding behind my weight. Growth often comes through pruning, and pruning is often painful, but becoming more fully who God created me to be each and every day is a priceless gift of this journey.

No matter where you are in your life story, I hope you can learn to love who you are right now, today. Love yourself enough to want to become the best version of yourself. Enjoy the journey, expect to experience growing (and shrinking) pains. Life is complicated and messy, and so is weight loss, or any attempt to improve yourself. But it's so definitely worth it. Let's grow along this journey together.