Tag: ‘self image’
February 11, 2008 at 7:07 am
The dressing rooms at Target are surprisingly well lit. This is a surprisingly good thing because Target dressing rooms also feature two mirrors on opposite walls angled perfectly for me to check out my back muscles. When I used to stand in the Lane Bryant dressing rooms, I was grateful that the room seemed to be lit by the glow of an iPhone. I looked at my morbidly obese reflection in the same way I would view a car accident on the side of the road, not really wanting to look but staring anyway. Now here I was years later, in Target, trying on a sports bra, flexing my whatever-the-back-muscles-are-called for at least two minutes, thinking “Damn, I look good.”
It was a good reminder, because someone snuck into my apartment and switched my dumbbells with heavier ones. I know that eight-pounder was not that hard to lift last month. I’m sure neglecting my upper body weight routine has nothing to do with it at all. I’ve been distracted with my new YMCA classes and my [...]
September 25, 2007 at 8:21 am
There is no doubt that losing almost 200 pounds is hard. However, I recently discovered something else equally hard: smiling naturally with cute hair, flattering make-up, and uncrumpled clothing in good lighting. I think I’ll take cheese sticks and cardio over headshots and light meters any day.
I’m writing a book about my weight-loss experience (in bookstores Spring 2008!) and I know the first two things people are going to do when they pick it up is 1) read the back to see how much weight I lost and 2) flip to my author photo to see exactly how thin I look. Normally, I don’t care that much about looking thin in photos. I prefer to look thin, of course, but I focus more on standing up straight, brushing any crumbs off of my shirt and gluing my eyes open so I don’t get caught mid-blink. However, since this is a book about weight-loss, I would be naïve not to admit that I have to look thin in my author photo. No one wants to read [...]
July 19, 2007 at 9:54 am
My butt hurts. Not right now, but after I’ve been sitting in my office chair for awhile my bum becomes a bit sore. I might need to just sit up straighter, since many of you have commented that I have the posture of a silly straw. But (heh), I think my butt may just be less padded these days. My tailbone has less layers of fat to poke through, so I start to feel like I’ve been riding a bicycle though I haven’t been pedaling anywhere. I certainly expect to feel a little sore after riding to the park and back on my bike, but office work shouldn’t be this uncomfortable, right?
In other amazing body news, I’ve noticed that I can squat all the way down to the floor and then stand back up without grasping for the kitchen counter. After I’ve been sitting on the floor stretching, I can bend my knees, put my arm on the floor and fling my back up into a standing position. And when I’m sitting on the couch [...]
June 28, 2007 at 7:45 am
I’m still getting used to my new face. After my LASIK surgery I can now look in my bathroom mirror without my glasses on and see my features without my nostrils fogging up the glass. Which is good because I never liked getting that close of a look at my pores. It’s strange not having those almost-oval outlines around my eyes. I find myself staring at the reflection for 10 -20 seconds thinking, “Oh, so that’s what my face looks like beneath the frames.”
The feeling itself isn’t that new though, because it’s how I’ve felt about my body for the last couple years. After the first nine months I found myself startled whenever I put my hand on my hip and realized I could feel the edge of my pelvic bone. A couple months after I started weight-lifting I reached behind my neck to rub my shoulders and was surprised when I felt the hard mass of muscle beneath my skin. And lately when I’m standing in the kitchen stirring my oatmeal with one hand, [...]
May 15, 2007 at 12:17 pm
An itsy, bitsy, teeny, weenie, spoiler for last night’s episode of Heroes follows. Nothing of any importance really, but if you are a complete spoiler-phobe, turn your eyeballs elsewhere right now. I think there’s a bug crawling across the ceiling that you’ll find fascinating.
Heroes is a show on American television about characters with special powers. A recently introduced character, Candice, has the ability to cast illusions to make people see what she wants them to see. She frequently uses this ability to make herself look like someone else, but when she’s not tricking people she’s played by Missy Peregrym who looks like this:
Last night she was having a conversation with another character while munching on junk food. What follows is not an exact transcription of their dialogue because I can barely remember what I had for lunch yesterday, never mind the exact words of fictional characters on a TV show. He said something like, “I have a cousin who eats like you. He’s really fat.” To which she replied, between bites, “So am I.” At [...]
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"What distinguishes us one from another is our dreams and what we do to make them come about." - Joseph Epstein
