Unsafe at Any Size

I discovered something VERY strange in my upper arm yesterday.  Hard… what is that?  Yes, that would be a bone.  I’ve known apocryphally that there must be a bone in my upper arm, as my elbow and shoulder must be attaching to something to work, but it’s another thing altogether to be able to feel it.

Rediscovering parts of my body has been one of the strangest parts of weight loss.  It’s neat, but also a little weird and disorienting.  I recall reading somewhere about a man who was losing weight and went to the doctor panic stricken about what he thought was a tumor, but it was actually his sternum.

Our sense of self, our identities, includes our bodies, and as our bodies change, sometimes our sense of self needs to catch up.  For some people, according to this MSNBC article, they still “see” themselves as their old selves:

Body-image experts say it’s not uncommon for people, especially women, who have lost a lot of weight to be disappointed to some extent to discover that they still aren’t “perfect.” The excess fat is gone when they reach their goal weight, but they may have sagging skin, cellulite or a body shape that they still deem undesirable. Like Hicks, some even continue to see themselves as though they are overweight.

I’m not disappointed, but I am constantly having to readjust what I think of myself.  Because my husband is losing weight, too, I’m rediscovering him, too, and watching him go through the same process (“Did you know the ribs on the bottom don’t go all the way around?”).  It’s fun, but I have to admit it’s unsettling, too.

What are you learning about yourself?

Yes!  I wore a tank top today to my kickboxing class.

This is a big breakthrough for me.  I’ve been working out for months and months, and my shoulders look great.  But my arms look terrible, and always will unless I have surgery to remove the floppy skin.  No matter how many tricep presses I do, that skin is just all streched out.

So, I can either continue to try to hide them because they are not plastic-perfect and try to deny the after effects of having weighed 300 lbs at one time, or I can be cool when I excercise and look as good as I do.  The skin on my arms is scarred, torn internally as the result of my weight.  There was nothing shameful then, and there isn’t anything shameful now.  Though I do wish it was smooth.  Sigh.

As momentous as I feel the tank top to be, nobody in my class seemed to notice it!  My new short sassy haircut got raves, though!  I’ll get a pic soon.