On No Longer Feeling Thin

An interesting thing happened recently - I realized I don't feel thin anymore. While I was actively dropping a lot of weight, I started to feel very thin; when I got down to 179 I felt positively svelte, in spite of still being officially 'overweight' according to the BMI.

I've been hovering around 179/180 for a few weeks now, and I'm starting to feel like my body is fat. For instance, I'll think to myself, "the last time I weight 180 I was upset at myself for having gained so much weight."

I also recently hauled out my old jeans from the closet - the ones I kept around in case I lost all that weight - and they fit again, but they're a little tight. So they make me aware of all this extra body fat spilling over the waist, and filling up the pant-legs. When I was just wearing my big pants, they were like a tent, and I had to use a belt to hold them up; and I'd think, "these huge pants look so ridiculous on me because I'm way to thin for them now." Now that I wear the thinner pants, it's just the reverse.

So I think I've come to an understanding of what's going on. When I was losing weight, I felt thin because I was losing weight. Now that I've plateaued, my apparently "real" self-image as a fat person has caught up with me.

This is really interesting, because I've been curious lately about whether I identify as a fat person or a thin person. Most of my adult life has been a steady process of weight-gain, slow and inexorable. I guess the result has been that my normal mental state is to conceive of myself as fat. I wonder if this could translate into anorexia, where I might continue trying to lose weight, but always consider myself fat, no matter how much I lost.

Most of my friends tell me I'm not fat anymore, and express surprise when I tell them I'm still technically overweight. And my plan has been to just allow myself to plateau at my current weight, eating normal portions and not snacking, until my body adjusts, and the new eating patterns don't feel like such a new thing anymore.

But it's just interesting that now, once again, I feel fat. Part of me wants to go back to wearing the big pants. Part of me wants to go back to pure salads until the BMI thinks I'm normal. And part of me wants to just stick it out with what I'm doing, and not make any precipitous changes based on these odd new feelings. That's the part of me I trust.