Wanted: A New Perspective

It's been a rough couple of days for me --  not only have I been losing some of the ground I had gained on changing some of my unhelpful eating habits, but I have also gained back all the weight I lost since embarking on this project, plus half a pound.

Sigh.

And then I saw these pictures, from a recent picnic:

Yeah, let's take a closer look at that:

This takes me right back to my very first post -- this is NOT how I think I look. I am surprised and dismayed every time I am confronted with pictures of myself. I feel an intense self-loathing, which I don't normally walk around with, when I see myself through the camera's eye. Sometimes my daughter borrows my phone to take pictures of herself, and she leaves the camera on the setting where the it looks towards the user instead of outward. Then I come along and want to take a picture, and the first thing I see is myself on that screen and it always makes me jump like it's Halloween at the haunted house -- "Oh my God, what the hell is that!?!?!"

So this video from Amy Poehler showed up in my Facebook news feed this morning at exactly the right time, and even though I've heard the message before -- and I'm pretty sure you have, too -- it bears repeating:

So, here's my attempt at gratitude toward my body:

1. I have good fingernails. Seriously, even my manicurist envies them. 
2. I have good feet. They are big, but somehow don't look like boats.
3. I have pretty good hair, although I wish it would stop falling out.
4. I don't throw up a lot. I'm really grateful for that because there is nothing I hate more.
5. I don't have to shave very often. Guess I don't have much testosterone.
6. I have good skin, and I don't have to do anything special or expensive to maintain it.
7. ...

That's pretty much all I could come up with this morning. I couldn't think of a single thing between my neck and my ankles to put on the list. But that's probably because I'm very grumpy about all this stuff today. 

I'm so tired of feeling this way. I need to find a way to change my thinking about myself as well as my eating. I'm going to work on a plan, and as soon as I have one, I'll let you all know. Of course, one solution is to remove all mirrors from my house and never look at pictures of myself. Denial, as they say, is not just a river in Egypt.

But seriously, I think Amy is on to something here, and I've heard it in different words from lots of different sources: would you talk to your daughter the way you talk to yourself when it comes to her body and her beauty? Would you let someone else talk to you the way you talk to yourself when it comes to your body and your beauty? Why do so many of us have this constant negative, mean and downright hateful soundtrack running in our heads all day? 

There's a balance here, of course. When I look at pictures of myself, I don't want to feel self-hatred, but I also want to take the reality check seriously. I have to face the facts that the camera is showing me, and change what I can change if I don't like what it shows me. This is not about giving up, but about finding a way to stay focused on the positive rather than the negative when it comes to weight and body image. And I really, really need that change in perspective.

In the meantime, I'm going all the way back to the beginning with my steps. I added too many too soon, I think. So now, I'm only focusing on eating with empty hands until I can do it 100% for several days in a row.

Progress report:
Combo 1, step 1: eating with empty hands -- 80%