The Best Part of Losing Weight

What’s the best part of losing more than 100 pounds?  How many of you think I am going to tell you about health benefits?  You are so wrong.  The best part of losing weight, is looking good and being normal.  The joy of being normal and shedding a lifelong label of being fat is priceless. 

The joy of liking what you see when you look in the mirror is beyond compare and words.  It is fun and delightful to see people you haven’t seen for a long time and watch them ooooh and aaaah over your looks.  In his book “This is How” Augustin Burroughs says confidence comes from the feedback you get from other people over your competence.  Want more confidence?  Either care less about what other people think or develop competence.  Ponder that. Care less about what people think when they tell you that you are fat.  That takes mental fortitude beyond the capacity of most human beings.  Fat people know they are fat.  Tell a fat person he or she is fat and you are affirming what they already know, and do not like, about themselves.  The vast majority of fat people do not want to be fat.  So why don’t they develop competence in weight loss?  It’s really hard to do, for many, many reasons.   

It has been easy for me to feel confident in my profession based upon client feedback, historic record, test scores and awards.  Until recently my confidence over my physical appearance went something like this, sometimes, “You look good in that dress.”    

I have developed confidence from recent feedback.  I greeted a client in my waiting room, “Hi, Tony, how are you?”  He did a double take and asked, “Who are you?”  An 84 year old client came in to discuss a legal problem, we got right to it.  During a break in the discussion there was a pause and he said, “I have not seen you since you got your new figure.  It’s beautiful.  I am very happy for you.”   Yet another man exclaimed.   “Oh my God, look at you.  I remember how you looked.  How do you feel?  Don’t you feel so much better?”  What he does not understand, and most people do not, is the weight came off slowly.  I did not wake up one day 100 pounds lighter.  I do not feel the weight loss like people see it.  I know I can do more at the gym than I used to, but that does not make me feel the weight loss.  Fortunately I don’t have to feel it to rejoice in it.

I recently had something happen that was better than seeing someone I had not seen in a year.  A Rastafarian, Jamaican man, who appeared to be in his 30s in the check-out line at Whole Foods told me, “Ma’am you are an exceptionally beautiful woman.”  I thanked him.  I never saw that man before.  He did not know I lost weight.  He did not say, “You look good, for you, for someone who has lost 100 pounds.”  For all you cynics out there who are saying, he wanted something.  Maybe, but I have conveyed our entire exchange in this paragraph. 

If you love a fat person or if you are a fat person, focus on personal strengths.  Everyone is competent at something.  Build on that.