It's all so tricky, isn't it? I find myself remarkably conflicted about the whole thing; how I see me, how others see me, how I want them to see me...

I was a thin child, but as soon as I hit puberty the weight started going up. Having said which, when I look at photos, I didn't actually have a problem until I was about 14 - at 13 I was curvy and looked about 18 years old, but I didn't look fat. However, I'd been told by my parents consistently to lose weight or to watch my weight or to 'stop eating' from about the age of 9, so my image of myself as fat started very early - too early, when it wasn't actually true. Also, when you hit puberty early, you are always going to be heavier than those other girls who still look like girls, even if you're not actually heavy. So since from the age of 14 or so I've been overweight, I can't visualise what I'll look like when I get to goal. I tend to see 185 pounds as my average because that's where I stayed for a long time, but as you'll see from my stats I've been up at 240, and the lowest I ever got on diets when I was 17 was 154. Yes, I liked the way I looked then, better than before, but it's still not a goal weight. I'm only 5 foot 4. I'm extremely curvy though, always have been, so I know I'll be hourglass - already am, actually. If you head over to my journal there are a couple of 'before' and 'during' photos.

As for how I want to be seen... well I've already noticed that there are some changes psychologically in how I manage the world. I don't feel like Quasimodo walking down the street anymore. I sit down on an airplane and I'm not nervous that I'll be too big for the seat and squash the person next to me. I get up on an airplane! I used to sit there and not want to get up and go to the toilet because I didn't want people looking at me. However, I still have to steel myself when I walk past a group of children on the street because I am expecting nasty comments - irrespective of the fact that that hasnt' happened to me in a while. And while I do feel more attractive now, less humiliated about what I look like, I do feel conflicted by attention I get. Are we the same people when we lose weight? Because although I have the same memories as the me who weighed 240 pounds, and am affected by those memories today, I do actually feel like a different person - this happens every time I lose weight. Maybe it's because I don't want to be that person? So in a way, I was about to say that I'm angry if someone is attracted to me now if they weren't before because I'm the same person I was then, but really - I wasn't, was I? I remember the first time I went on a diet, when I was 16 - I went from 185 to around 155, so it wasn't even so extreme - and one of my friends told me she'd been in a car with some boys we know, and they'd said something along the lines of "she's looking good now, so which one of us should go out with her?" - have you ever heard such a backwards compliment? We're only talking 30 pounds here, but to them, that's what made me potential material to go out with. It was abstract; none of them were interested in me that way, but the fact that I'd lost weight made me viable dating material...

anyway. I could ramble on for hours about this, so I'll stop now and get to work. Hope it's made some kind of sense...

Deborah