... but I actually feel "fatter" now than I did the last time I was at this weight, which was just before I started college. I am actually a bit slimmer, as I'm now a definite size 10 instead of a small 12, and the clothes that I saved from that period are too big. I feel like a horrid ingrate for looking at the mirror sometimes and still seeing the fat instead of the loss, but it's the truth. Back in early high school, I had a relatively brief and non-serious bout with anorexia and bulimia, getting down to about 110 at my lowest point. Fortunately, I managed to stop the eating disorder behaviors before making myself too ill, and bounced back up to 135-140 in a year's time. I had a good bit of therapy to help deal with the body-image issues underlying the ED experience, so the last time I was this small, I was spending a lot of time trying to be content with my body as-is. Now I'm coming off of a year and a half of the exact opposite behavior, and I'm much more conscious of my remaining "imperfections".

I'm in the process of deciding how perfect I want my body to be, and sometimes I think that's harder than actually doing the physical work to get it that way. Turning down the potato chips may not be easy, but it's got nothing on the temptation to drop my goal weight another 5 or 10 lbs, especially now that I'm almost there. I don't have a problem motivating myself to work out, but it would be easy to let myself overdo it, especially the weight training. I basically let myself go on a mental holiday while I gained all the weight -- I never really looked at myself in the mirror or thought about what I was doing to myself. It wasn't good for me at all, but some days it's hard to remember that being a "workaholic" in this area isn't any better.

Atlee