Everybody lies

posted on Friday, September, 25th, 2009 in default

Losing weight is easy, but feeling the change in my body seems to be harder than I thought.

As I mentioned in my last post I have dropped 6 kg (12 pounds) in the last 2 months.

For somebody who is already reasonably slim this would be a huge weight loss. For somebody like me, who isn’t, it turns out to be just a hardly visible drop in a very big ocean.

Not that I am morbidly obese or anything. Nothing of that sort. I wear a US-size 18, which as far as I know is still quite a way from the upper end of the scale for really fat people.

Nevertheless it is hard to find really nice clothes in my size. Or, if I do find them, they just don’t look good in my size. Or they are much more expensive than in smaller sizes. No wonder clothes-shopping is one of the things I hate the most.

But since I am not really interested in fashion anyway the clothes aren’t the issue. Being overweight, apart from being a health-risk, is just a complete hassle in every aspect of life. I know fat people often say they feel good just the way they are and it’s the thin ones that have a problem. But that’s just a big, fat lie. It is something we try to convince ourselves of so that we don’t feel too bad. Being fat is just not fun – and nobody will ever be able to convince me otherwise.

So, I do want to lose weight. Quite a lot of it (about 60 pounds in all). Preferably without having to deprive myself of too much in the way of food etc. So dieting is out, obviously. Since it has been proven that most diets don’t work long-term, that’s just as well.

As I wrote in my last post I decided to use running as my weight loss tool (no, that’s unfortunately not me in the picture – I wish it was). And so far it seems to be working. 12 pounds in 2 months is more than I had hoped for, actually. If it goes on at this rate I will reach my goal weight in a couple of months, even though I gave myself 2 years to do it. After all, it took me 25 years to gain all this weight so I can’t reasonably expect to lose it all in a short time.

In the last weeks I have also started to read up on healthy eating. I know I have a lot of work to do on that front, but I wanted to make the running a habit before I started in on the whole food topic. Besides, I just like eating too much to think about cutting out some stuff altogether. I guess in the end it will all come down to gradual changes at some point.

But you know what surprised me when I found out I had lost 12 pounds? That I didn’t feel it at all.

I had put the scales away about 2 weeks after I started running again, because I felt it just depressed me when I checked my weight every day and didn’t see more than the usual random fluctuations.

Not until I returned from my week in London did it occur to me to check even once again. Of course I had in the intervening weeks noticed that some of my pants had started to sit rather loosely and for one I actually need a belt now. But it’s not like I can’t wear any of them anymore, because they are too big now.

So imagine my surprise when I step on the scales one morning and see that a whole 12 pounds have magically vanished. I must have looked on that number for 5 minutes or so, because it just didn’t make sense.

6 kg are the equivalent of 6 one litre milk cartons. Stack them on a table and contemplate the picture. And then lift up the whole stack. Pretty heavy, don’t you think?

And all that weight was until very recently distributed over my body somewhere. And now it’s not anymore. Shouldn’t I feel some kind of difference? Shouldn’t my legs look thinner, or my belly smaller? Or my boobs, for that matter? Everybody had promised me that would be the first place were weight loss was noticable. Yeah, right. Empty promises.

But really, I am a little bit disappointed in not being able to discern any noticable difference at all in my figure so far. I guess I will just have to be patient until I lost the next 15 pounds or so. Or until my pants really start to fall down if I don’t use a belt (hopefully not in public).