6/11/2017 0 Comments Let Me Take a SelfieMy phone is filled with selfies. These selfies are taken with self-love and self loathing, all wrapped up into thousands of pixelated components that cannot even begin to convey the differences between what I see in them and what you see in them. I take pictures of myself, not out of vanity, but because after 3+ years of trying to convince myself that she is me, and I am she, there’s still this weird part of my brain that cannot comprehend the fact, nor am I sure it ever will. I spent 26 years of my life staring at myself in the mirror, noting, begrudgingly, each unaesthetic fold or lump or sag in my body that did not match the images that I saw on tv or in the magazines. I memorized that image much like I memorized Hamlet’s “To Be or Not to Be” speech in eleventh grade. I can rattle off those lines in the play just as easily as I can tell you how large in diameter my thighs were at my heaviest weight. The headline of this blog is “A Realistic Look at Losing Weight.” Here is the reality: you aren’t going to break a habit that you’ve held for the vast majority of your life in a single moment. After snapping that selfie, you are going to experience a barrage of thoughts and feelings, both positive and negative, that you will struggle to appropriately analyze. If you are like me, and have a type A personality, that can be very difficult. The only way I know how to describe this to a person who has not actually experienced it, is by walking you through my thoughts after viewing a photo of myself. When I look at this photo, here is a running commentary of what I see... (Fun fact: my husband took this picture at least seven times before I found one that was acceptable.) “The lines around my face make me look soooo much older than I actually am...I wish my boobs didn’t sit so low... All I can see is my gut jutting out in front of me.... Do I have cankles or is that just weird lighting? How can a person have cankles and ALSO such veiny feet?...That black strap falls in a weird place on my shoulder and makes me look like a football player...I wish my biceps looked more defined to explain why my arms are so beefy...Elbow fat...knee fat...back fat...So much booty! As I was analyzing this photo at 9:16 p.m. on a Sunday night, while my lovely husband was laying in bed, patiently waiting to see if he needed to snap yet another shot, I realized something. I had to diligently search for each of the things that I identified as “unattractive” in this picture. I had to look over it multiple times, zoom in, then out, then in again, question whether the problem was actually present or due to weird lighting, etc. If it took that much effort for me to find those problems in this photograph, who the hell else is going to find them? No one! This is applicable to every moment that I have spent staring in the mirror, no less than 2 inches from the glass, fussing over the stray hair in my eyebrows, or that tiny zit that showed up on my cheek overnight. All the time and energy that all of us spend stressing over things that no one will ever notice is time that is absolutely wasted. An image is not meant to be picked apart pixel by pixel, just as a Monet is not meant to be viewed by individual brush strokes. Look at the picture as a whole. Does it reflect the goals that you've set for yourself more appropriately than those you have taken in the past? That is the only question that you need to worry about when it comes to working on making yourself a better, healthier you. Does this mean that I won't take my next selfie 7 times? No. Old habits die hard, but the next time I catch myself zooming in on my picture to see if my gut is visible, at least I'll have the perspective of this realization to stop me in my tracks. Maybe one day I'll reach a point at which I won't even bother analyzing any longer. My fingers are crossed...
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