There's a reason I hide behind my children

I had hubby take some 'before' pictures of me.  I chose khaki pants and a navy shirt because those are items I can replace during my downward journey and I like the consistency of the same types of clothing in different periods of my weight loss journey.  Yeah, I'm a freak like that.  I even did a side shot.  Brave? Crazy? I looked at hubby's face after he snapped them and I asked, "I'm not going to like this am I?"

"nope," was his reply.

I think he was afraid to hand me the camera.  It's an expensive camera that he gave me a couple years ago for my birthday.  I imagine he envisioned it being hurled across the room.

The thought did cross my mind.

But it's not the camera's fault.

Most pictures of me are from the chest up and my children in front of me, or my friends in front of me and my head peering between their heads and above their shoulders -- I'm glad to be one of the taller friends because I get to be in the back.

I'm pretty sure we've all been there.

The thing is, when I saw those pictures they did not feel like they were me.  I met with my NP last week to discuss having weight loss surgery.  I kind of did it backwards because I met with the surgeon in November.  I haven't wanted to go see my PCP because I gained back a bunch of weight that I lost this time last year and didn't want to hear about it.  But, I needed to tell her about this and get a refill on my high blood pressure meds.  She was very supportive.  I was expecting the eat less and exercise more thing but she instead talked about the success of this surgery and her respect for the surgeon I picked. Side note here, her only negative comment was that some of her patients complained they didn't get to see him as much after the surgery.  My response was, "who wants to see the surgeon, I'd rather see a nurse any time" she high-fived me.  Love seeing nurse practitioners -- I may be biased though.

(and for those of you who have that complaint -- you can always ask to see the surgeon rather then the nurse, you might have to wait a bit for an appointment but you have the right to advocate for yourself!)

Anyhoo -- she cautioned me that once I start losing the weight, I may question myself because who I see in the mirror will change.  Because I've been obese most of my adult life I may have a bit of an identity crisis.  The thing is, I'm having that now, because who I see in the mirror and in pictures of myself is not who I am (in my mind's picture of myself).  I'm shocked that it's me in the mirror.

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.....

I do think that people's reaction to my losing weight will be more of a problem for me.
I don't like that kind of attention.
But I'll save that for another post.

After Jason took the pictures, he asked, "so, are we going to do this every day?"

picture me rolling my eyes and then saying, "dork".

Then he made some off-color comments about other 'types' of pictures we should really be taking (I don't really need to spell it out for you do I?) -- I love that man, no matter what I look like or how big I've gotten, he still loves me and he just wants me to be happy with where I am.

One of my goals in the coming years, not sure if it'll be 2012 or 2013, but to take one of those photos to canvas  pictures of our family all wearing coordinating outfits, like crisp white shirts and jeans (not blue and khaki) with some fall foliage in the background.  Maybe even having that shirt tucked in -- and me NOT hiding behind anybody.