Something I have become more and more aware of lately is the difference in what others see when they look at my body and what I see when I look at my body. It began when my friend was loading up the prowler in Performance Training, which at my level requires you to push half of your body weight. She looked at me and asked how much weight to put on. I just answered, "half my body weight," thinking she'd get started and I'd finish up the precise specifications. But she wasn't sure and asked me what I weighed, guessing around 160lbs. I genuinely laughed and told her she was too kind, but I was 210lbs. She looked at me in disbelief. She thought I was lying. Now if you ask me to make a guess just looking at myself in the mirror, what any person my size might weigh, or what someone else might truly think I weigh, I'd say 250lbs. Honestly. And I'd say to myself that people are just too nice, deep down they know the truth, or deep down they truly guess much higher than my number.
After a few more encounters similar to this experience, I began to think. Is everyone just blowing sunshine and rainbows at me to make me feel nice? Or, possibly, is there something off with me? How do I not see what they see?
As a therapist and continual student of the mind, I of course have studied things like Body Distortion, an unrealistic, or distorted, view of one's own body. Typically, this is seen with cases of Eating Disorders. I have definitely had a journey to have a healthy relationship with food, but I wouldn't be classified within the realm of eating disorders. I also have had a drastic change in what my body physically looks like. You look one way for many years, and within a year you look incredibly different, perhaps the brain is still catching up.
At the same time, I know how our society looks and drives. I know that there is very real pressure to look a certain way, and you'd have to be a fool to shrug it off and say that only happens as a teenager and young adult. I mean, research has shown that the most important characteristics to being feminine were 1. Nice, 2. Thin, 3. Modest, 4. Use all available resources for appearance.
I've never had a certain number I wanted to get to. All I ever wanted was for my weight not to be an identifier. I no longer wanted someone to say, "Have you met my friend, MacKenzie? You know, she's tall, blondish/reddish hair, kind of a bigger girl..." I guess the problem comes now. I don't know if there's a way I can ever know if I have that identifier, because when I look in the mirror, that is the first thing I see. Every. Single. Time.
I did my best in photoshop to portray what I see when I look at myself in comparison to the real picture:
Original What I see:
I was at the gym the other day and a guy I know asked if I'd lost more weight because I looked really good, like I'd lost more weight. And I hadn't, that I knew of at least. I had been feeling particularly fat that day. There are mirrors everywhere in that gym and every time I went to do an exercise I saw it. His statement started to bug me because I wanted to know why I couldn't see it.
I think I have come to the reality that maybe we all (especially women) have a little bit of body distortion. I don't think I'll ever really see myself the way others do. And you know what? This is the harder battle. Not working against 20 years of unhealthy living, not 150lbs of extra weight, not even my battle with sugar cravings. Those all get managed and subside after a while. The battle against my own mind, trying to convince myself of truth when I can't see it with my own eyes, that's what I'll work against my entire life. It's climbing the gravel rock pile, you climb and slip and climb and slip, without knowing if you'll ever actually reach the top. But at least when you're climbing, you're fighting.
Who knows if my brain will ever tell me the truth of what I look like, but luckily I am not alone. Bob Goff said, "When there's no boat to get back into, God gives us our friends." So even though it's difficult to work against you're own brain, I have you. My friends, the people who love me tell me every day who I am. And yes, I know, the important things are inside and looks don't matter. Blah blah blah. Sometimes you just want your outside to truly reflect your inside. You want people to see your hard work, see your struggle, and get it. I am grateful to the people I care about because you often tell me how proud of me you are and you see my hard work. I know now that I am going to just start believing the words you say instead of brushing it off as sunshine and rainbows.
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