Getting to Know Your New Reflection
It's a fact: Overweight or Obese people DO NOT LIKE mirrors or
ANYTHING that reflects back to them as to how others probably
see them physically. Many heavy people go as far as removing all
full-length mirrors throughout their home in the attempt to
avoid seeing their reflection and finding more reasons for
self-loathing. They think that removing the full reflection will
ease some of the harsh self-criticism. The reflection of (say it
with me) "from here up" (your hands below the chin to signify
the bottom line) is the only thing a heavy person wants to see
reflected back.
This is what I did for years, and to my DEMISE at that! Had I
kept a closer view on my reflection, maybe I wouldn't have let
the pounds pile on as they easily did for so long. But that is
my 20/20 hindsight, as they often say, right?
The first thing I did after my surgery was buy a cheap $12
full-length mirror so I could "keep an eye" on how my body was
changing. OH, let me tell you, how I cringed at the reflection I
saw! I wiped tears away from my eyes as I knew that NOW I had
the tool through the RNY bariatric weight loss surgery to get
rid of the excess weight. But it was a hard reality to face that
reflection.
But as the pounds kept dropping, I began to learn to love my new
reflection. Sure, I saw draping skin, lack of tone, and
countless other flaws I could list to fill a New York City
phonebook; but the good news was that I was losing weight and my
body was shrinking!
And not only did I learn to appreciate the reflection in a
full-length mirror, I also learned to STOP AVOIDING reflective
glass! There used to be a day when I would walk past a huge
store window as fast as I could so I couldn't see myself in the
glass' reflection... and I certainly didn't want others seeing
it either! As I was losing my weight so rapidly, I got in the
habit of stopping and actually looking at myself in reflective
glass at the store, a restaurant, and even marble walls in
offices. My husband seemed to, one day, "had enough" of this
behavior and came right out and said to me, "You are becoming
too vane!" As shocked as I was that he didn't understand me, I
said, "I'm not vane... I have to make sure that it's really ME
in there... I don't know what the NEW ME looks like half the
time." He then slumped in semi-shame at his remark and agreed
that it's even hard for him to keep up with how the new-me
appears. Another reason why we don't recognize ourselves is
because our shrinking wardrobe changes so often, we don't' know
it's us in those clothes!
To further prove this point of not recognizing our own
reflection, I want to share the following "capsule" that
illustrates this point perfectly. This was one experience that a
friend of mine had:
She says, "I want to a restaurant for a big birthday
celebration. Across the room, I saw a woman who looked so
familiar to me. I couldn't stop staring at her, and I noticed
she stared back at me a lot too. I asked my husband if he knew
who the woman was across the way, but he couldn't locate who I
was talking about. I grew more and more intrigued with this
woman who I knew for a certainty that I knew her from somewhere.
As the night progressed, I noticed that she even had some family
members who looked familiar to me... and THEN THE LIGHT BULB
went off.... I WAS LOOKING AT MYSELF IN THE REFLECTION OF THE
MIRRORED WALL! Talk about embarrassed! I must have spent a good
half-hour wondering who that woman was, and all along it was ME!"
As you continue to lose weight, your reflection will change, and
you'll have to look at it again and again at the risk of
appearing vane to others. Like I told me husband that day he
called me "vane", I further explained that one day my image will
remain unchanged by weight loss and I won't need to look as
often since I can recognize myself.
So if you haven't yet done so, get a full-length mirror in your
home and take a look at yourself each week. Learn to recognize
every curve, bump, bulge, etc. Then as you downsize in your
body, you'll appreciate it more because you'll know the former
you better then had you not learned to look at your reflection.