So close

I have, as of Saturday, lost 38 lbs.

Whoa. I did this! I did it without starving. Without smoking! I love to exercise now. I go to sporting good stores and drool. What happened to the old Ginger?

And yes it comes to that doesn't it? This whole new identity thing. Saturday at our meeting, I was looking at the WW levels of change. At the core is identity. I kept thinking I was at that one, and that I would occasionally wander off but really it's much more complicated. I have been slowly building this identity since January and there's a long ways to go. I don't know if dwelling is the right word to use in terms of this identity.

This whole identity thing is definitely the most important and the most difficult part of WW. And it's not just because I'm used to thinking of myself as a fat girl. It has to do with the fact that most of my life has been spent and shaped by a certain weight. I created an identity for myself that was forged when I was a big girl. As I shed this weight, there is a part of me that feels like I shedding her as well. She has been slowly shed through other life changing events of course but there was a part of her still clinging on in the back closet of my head. Now as I lose the weight and I make lifestyle changes that ensure that this weight will stay lost, I find that she's putting up quite a fight. I'm not the same person, and I'm not ever going back to that person. So even while I'm so happy, I'm also scared. I don't know what life will be like with this new person that's me.

Maybe it's just me, and everyone who reads this will think I need some serious meds, but it seems that getting to identity in the levels of changes is more than just seeing ourselves as thin people. It involves a lot more work in figuring out what it means to be smaller, and what it means to have a healthy lifestyle. I'm not saying that we become drastically different people. I'm still a snarky bitch but I'm also a snarky bitch who loves to go to Dick's Sporting Goods and drool over exercise equipment.