Looking through old photos last night - warning bells.........

I was looking at old photos last night, searching for pictures of me when I was bigger; they are few and far between because I was adept at hiding from cameras and I deleted most photos that were taken.  The photos that survived my "culling" I have included in the "before and after" section of this blog.

It was a bitter-sweet experience looking through the snaps and especially poignant after writing the post below.  As I searched through the pictures I recognised the fact that part of my ongoing difficulty with perceiving myself as a slimmer person is that part of me feels like this is a dream.  It was a dream for so long after-all.

The trouble with dreams (good dreams I mean) is that when you wake up from them everything is as it was before the dream occurred.  The photo of myself after I lost weight in 2009 is especially upsetting for me to look at.  I lost a lot of weight but, I now realise, my brain never perceived my new size and shape accurately.  I still felt fat and it is therefore no surprise that I ate my way back to meet that perception.

Anyone who has ever read anything about weight loss, listened to an "I can make you slim" type hypnotism CD, or been to a fat fighters club (and if you are reading my blog I imagine you have) knows that it is important to focus on imagery of yourself as slim and healthy if that is how you want to be.

In short, unless I get it sorted, my messed up self perception could be the undoing of me - AGAIN!!

Okay, so that is where I need to place my energy.  2013 is the year that I intend to become better at perceiving myself accurately in terms of size and shape.  Exercise will form part of that (to get me into my body and out of my head) and I need to indulge in the vanity stuff of looking in mirrors even more than I am already!!!!

Just to get me started, here is a pic I took of myself this morning in the dress I bought from Mistral yesterday.

Dobby says he likes my new dress :)