Losing My Weight

For a long stretch of my life, doctors used the words "morbidly obese" to describe me. At one point, when I was younger, the scale read 319 pounds. If you have never carried that kind of weight as a woman, it is hard to explain what it does to you, day in and day out.

Growing up, the comments trailed after me. "Hi fatty" and the usual variations on it. Nobody screamed at me or cursed me out, but you absorb how people look at you, and it settles somewhere deep. By 27 I was still unmarried, and my parents had started to worry out loud that no one would ever propose. They were not wrong to notice. Any man who met me seemed to lose interest quickly, and I knew the reason was my size.

So I tried the things people try. First came one of those ab-flexor belts you see advertised late at night, the "As Seen On TV" kind. I paid a steep price for it, strapped the electrical stimulator on, and wore it around the clock. The result? I actually gained weight, because the thing kept me from bending and moving the way I normally would. Money and time, both gone.

A friend suggested a gym next. My first day there undid me. Everyone around me looked fit and sculpted, and I was certain they were quietly laughing at the size of me. I never went back.

Desperation pushed me somewhere darker. I stopped eating altogether, which is as reckless as it sounds. My blood pressure collapsed and I landed in the hospital from what was really self-starvation.

By then I had convinced myself nothing would ever work, no matter how hard I pushed. One night I swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills to end it. It didn't take, and for that I am grateful. What it did do was put me in front of a psychiatrist.

She saw the depression right away and tied it to how I viewed myself. Then she told me something I hadn't expected: she had once been overweight too. Rather than handing me a pamphlet, she sat with me and we built an actual plan, one meant to take the weight off safely instead of violently.

The plan was ordinary at its core. Running, cycling, a balanced diet. I managed all of it except the running. I don't think I had run a single stretch in my whole life, and every attempt left me gasping, getting nowhere. When I told her, she steered me toward Yoga instead, something gentler that wouldn't leave my lungs screaming.

She gave me one piece of advice I still lean on. If I ever couldn't finish a routine, I was to picture myself as the person I was becoming, already there, already changed. That image kept pulling me back to the mat and the road. Two and a half months in, I had dropped 22.5 pounds.

That number stunned me. It also rearranged what I believed was possible, that steady, smart effort could actually move something I thought was fixed. To hold onto the pace, I made a ritual of standing in front of the mirror and telling myself plainly that I was never going back to the old weight, the old life.

Months more passed and the weight kept coming down into a range that was healthier and, yes, something I felt good about seeing. I am married now. I even opened a small weight-loss center so I can sit across from people the way my psychiatrist once sat across from me.

Picturing yourself in the shape you want is not a trick; it genuinely bends your days toward that vision. And if you make yourself a promise, the responsibility for keeping it lands on you and no one else. I kept mine. You can keep yours.