On Victories and Virtue

June 21, 2007

Last Friday morning, sitting in an exam room in the doctor’s office, waiting to be seen for my aching back, I forgot something I used to think about many times before.

I don’t remember how old I was, but too young to be so heavy, when my doctor opened my file in front of me and asked me to read my weight aloud to him and my mother. I remember exactly that it was 141. He said to me, “That is too much.”

It wasn’t a great feeling (though neither was being fatter than all of my friends), but I didn’t know then that he was trying to help me–even in his poor choice of method.

In recent years I’ve become less resistant to going in to see him as needed, and especially in the last year since I’ve been losing weight. But there are still things that hurt, bother, and bring anxiety upon me. I’m okay with getting weighed. As of Friday I had lost 40 pounds just since my last visit, and truthfully, I wanted someone to know that.

But what never seems to feel good and makes me most embarrassed? Having my blood pressure read. My arm would never fit into the in-room blood pressure cuff. It wasn’t big enough for me. I was too big for it. And it was a horrible, horrible aching moment every time the nurse had to say to me in the nicest way she could come up with that she’d need to go get another one that would fit me.

So when I started this diet, and decided I wanted to change and be healthy, one of the things in the back of my mind was that feeling, that embarrassment. Even at 20, 40, 50 pounds down, all of the times I’ve visited in the last year, the cuff still didn’t fit.

But Friday? Friday, the day I was there, lying down on the exam bed, thankful they could squeeze me in for an appointment so soon, I wasn’t even thinking about that file, or weighing “too much” or the stupid cuff… until she put it on me. It fit. No second thoughts about using it on me. No measuring with her eyes and thinking about getting the bigger one from another room (like last time.) No… nothing.

No nothing.

On the way home I was thinking about all of the NSVs I encounter weekly, daily even. (Non-dieters: In the diet world, an NSV is a “non-scale victory” or, the ways my life has changed because of my weight loss other than “I am lighter.”)

So, still, I’ve been thinking about them, trying to appreciate all of them and not take them for granted now, as I would have thought a lighter person would 94 pounds ago.

These are my favorites:

- I feel less anxious (ugly and therefore anxious.)

- I am wearing a ring this morning on my right ring finger. It is a size 6–on a finger that previously required a size 9.

- My watch has no more links left in it to remove.

- I can buy clothes (and bras–oh my gosh, you have no idea how great that is!) in a regular store, off of a regular rack.

- I have collarbones.

- I no longer push the driver’s seat all the way back so I can fit when I drive.

- My back doesn’t randomly hurt from standing or sitting too long when I should otherwise be perfectly comfortable.

- I sleep better and have more energy. I woke up at 5:30 this morning completely on my own.

- I don’t (and don’t have to) worry about things like if I am going to fit in (or break! believe me it used to cross my mind) a chair, seat, park bench.

- I am treated differently (which is both gratifying and saddening.)

- I was called pretty, to my face, for the first time ever.

- I smile more.

- I am more adventurous, challenge-accepting, and open-minded.

- My Body Mass Index has dropped 14 points. (!!!)

And most importantly, I suppose, I love and respect myself so much more than all of the past years of my life put together. I am a good person–fat or not–who loves with her whole heart. Now I feel able to love, and open to love, and deserving of love (as I unknowingly always was.)

That is the real victory.

Posted in Just Life, Personal Progress