Author: Jody Piper

One woman's journey to lose weight and find herself.

273.9

~ Jody Piper ~ Leave a comment

I stared at the number longer than I expected to.

273.9.

Pretending the number doesn’t exist has never made it go away. If anything, silence is how it grew. What makes this number sting is how close it is to another one I know by heart.

My highest weight was 289.9. I have carried a lot of shame about allowing myself to get anywhere near that number again. Shame for knowing better. Shame for having done this before. Shame for letting my body change in ways I didn’t feel in control of. I told myself I should have stopped it sooner, fought harder, noticed earlier. None of that helped. It just kept me quiet. This number tells the truth: I regained weight I once fought hard to lose, weight I carried with pride when it was gone and with shame when it crept back. Posting again after more than two years feels vulnerable in a way I didn’t anticipate, but if this journal is going to mean anything, it has to start with honesty.

The last time I wrote here was June 2023. Back then, I was already tired—physically, emotionally, existentially tired—of fighting my own body. What I didn’t yet understand was how loud that fight had become inside my head.

A little over a week ago, I started a GLP-1 medication. I hesitated for a long time before making that decision. I wrestled with the stories we tell about willpower, morality, shortcuts, and what it supposedly means to do it the right way. I layered that with my own history, my own judgment, and a whole lot of internalized bullshit. What I wasn’t prepared for was how quiet my mind would become once I started.

In the first week, I lost 16.7 pounds. I know the science. I know about inflammation and water weight and early drops that don’t define the long arc. I also know what it feels like to wake up without dread humming under my skin. Both things can be true at once.

This isn’t a simple, guaranteed path. My prescription for Zepbound has already been denied by my health insurance. There is an appeal in motion, and my doctor may be able to challenge the decision based on the results of a sleep study I’m doing at the end of the month to determine whether I have obstructive sleep apnea. It’s frustrating and absurd and very on brand for American healthcare. I’m trying to hold this moment lightly, grateful for what is working right now without pretending the road ahead is fully paved.

The most profound change hasn’t been the scale. It’s the silence. The food noise is off. Not turned down. Not negotiated with. Off. For the first time in years, food isn’t running a constant background program in my brain. I’m not mentally planning meals while eating one. I’m not bargaining, resisting, rebelling, or white-knuckling my way through the day.

Instead, I’m thinking about food differently. About 95% of the time, I see it as a tool: protein, nourishment, stability, fuel. The other 5%? That’s for living. For holiday meals, shared tables, traditions, and joy—within reason, without spiraling. That balance feels… sane. Revolutionary, even.

Along with this shift, I made a decision I never thought I’d revisit. I started eating meat again. After many years as a vegetarian/vegan, I realized I couldn’t meet my doctor’s prescribed nutritional requirements without expanding my options. The protein targets are high, and the carbohydrate limits are extremely low. Trying to do both without meat felt like setting myself up to fail and then blaming myself when I did. This wasn’t an ideological failure. It was a practical choice rooted in taking care of the body I actually have right now, not the body I had at 35 or the one I keep imagining I should still have.

I’ve also joined the YMCA. Walking into that space felt strangely emotional. For the first time since I left Downtown Fitness in New Orleans, I feel at home in a gym again. Not judged. Not on display. Just present.

This matters more than it might sound, because my body is not the same body it was when I lost the weight the first time. I’ve had a hysterectomy. I’m menopausal. Hormones have shifted, muscle has changed, recovery feels different, and the old rules do not apply the way they used to. Pretending otherwise has only ever led me back to shame. Moving my body now has to be about respect and consistency, not punishment or nostalgia.

What surprises me most is the optimism. I don’t say that lightly. I feel more hopeful than I have in years. Not manic. Not naïve. Not chasing a finish line that keeps moving every time I get close. This feels steadier. Quieter. Like I’ve stopped fighting a wildfire with a squirt gun and finally been handed a hose, and for once I’m not being told it’s cheating to use it.

This post isn’t a victory lap. It’s a marker. A re-entry. A moment of naming where I am without flinching.

273.9 is not a failure.

It’s a starting point.

And for the first time in a long time, I believe that where I’m starting from might actually be sustainable. Even with a changing body. Even with menopause. Even with a history that includes 289.9 and all the shame that number still carries. I’m not erasing that story. I’m just finally done letting it run the whole damn show.

S.O.S.

~ Jody Piper ~ Leave a comment

Hopeless, helpless, hapless. Lost my way again. Lost, lost and not found. How many times have I been here and said I never wanted to be here again? To count them would only deepen the disappointment. This morning I braved the scale, this afternoon I am once again grappling with how to recapture lightning in a bottle. 

I have reached out for help, reached out over and over and over again. have reached out for help from my healthcare provider, from Noon, from Found. I have read books. I have listened to podcasts. I have talked to psychiatrists, therapists and life coaches. I have taken medication and tried supplements. I can’t say it’s entirely for lack of trying, but none of these people, organizations or businesses helped me in the way I needed help. 

I have regained thirty pounds in the last year and realized I have re-adopted some of the eating habits I hadn’t entertained in more than 13 years  – eating gigantic bowls of breakfast cereal, drinking sugary sodas and espresso drinks, going out for lunch instead of packing one).

I have to accept that no one is coming to help. No one can help. People can support me and encourage me but, ultimately, I need to do this on my own. I don’t know if this epiphany is depressing or empowering – I guess a bit of both. I did this before, 13 years ago – I counted calories, weighed my food, worked out five nights a week at the gym. My body was 13 years younger then and responded with rapid weight loss. Now the number on the scale doesn’t budge and I am incessantly nagged by hunger and cravings. Now I have commitments and responsibilities in the afterwork hours once reserved for gym time. Frustration leads to resignation; to feeling hopeless, helpless, hapless. But no one is coming to help.

A Tale of Two Dresses

~ Jody Piper ~ Leave a comment

I have been wanting to share this – a tale of two dresses – for a few days but I struggled with what I wanted to say about it. I wanted to be sure you understood this was not a comparison of two versions of my body, per say. This is not a “see how awful I used to look” post. It is, in no way, shape, or form a degradation of “the old me.” Nor is it a “I used to be bad but, look at me… now I am good” post. I fucking hate that shit as I believe it perpetuates the same harmful myths that the multi-billion dollar weight loss industry uses to sell you useless pills and shakes and diet plans. I want it to be understood that this about internal transformation, about emotional and mental healing. This is going to be a long post so buckle up or bail out now.

The photo on the left was taken in 2008. Shopping for the dress was awful, the store clerk oh-so-helpfully telling me I NEEDED to wear Spanx with the dress, after which I retreated to the privacy of my fitting room and wept. This was a painfully commonplace occurrence. From the time I was 13, my body was fair game for commentary and critique, usually well-intentioned although sometimes intentionally shaming. 

The photo on the right was taken on New Year’s Eve 2010. In my memory, shopping for this dress this plays out like a slo-mo movie sequence … zipping the back, turning to look in the mirror. When I saw this body, literally half the size as the one I saw in 2008, I broke down sobbing. My friend in the next fitting room came in and hugged me as I cried – not tears of joy but tears of deliverance.  

When I look at the photo on the left, I don’t see an ugly girl – and neither should you. I don’t see a fat girl, a morbidly obese girl. I see a sad girl. A depressed girl. A hopeless girl. I see a girl hiding a world of pain behind a fake smile. I see a girl who believed, in the marrow of her bones, that she was unlovable, that she was unworthy of love and respect. It was her core belief. It was a belief formed and cemented by years of being criticized, demeaned, and abandoned. It was a belief perpetuated by her cycle of choosing to surround herself with people who would confirm these notions. It was a belief that drove her binge eating disorder, constantly seeking alleviation, or at least distraction, from emotional pain and trauma in the warm comfort of food. The body I lived in at the time was a physical manifestation of my trauma. It was a heavy body, physically painful to inhabit, to attempt to move. It was a prison.

When I began losing weight in 2010, it wasn’t because I discovered some magical new diet that worked when the dozens of others I had tried had failed. I did not start to heal my emotional pain because I had lost weight. Just the opposite. When I began losing weight it was because I had started to believe in my own worth, my own value. It was because, for the first time in my life, I was challenging those core beliefs. When the weight fell off me, it fell off like shackles. I was liberating myself from that prison. 

If the photo on the left is of a physical manifestation of trauma, then the photo on the right is of a physical manifestation of healing, of resilience. That is what I wanted to show you. That is what I wanted to celebrate. I am not done. I still suffer setbacks in terms of my healing, still occasionally lean on my old methods of coping when those old core feelings are triggered by internal or external influences. I see healing as an ongoing endeavor, one without a finish line. This year, my focus is on finding balance in my life. It is on whole wellness, not body or mind – body AND mind. Looking at these pictures side-by-side, I am reminded of the profound effects healing can have in transforming every facet of your life: your relationships, your outlook, and, yes, even, on occasion, your dress size. 

Cruise Control in a Demolition Derby

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I was feeling great. My path felt clear, unobstructed. I was feeling liberated from my destructive behaviors. I was finding it easy and rewarding to follow my meal plan, I was enjoying my daily walks. I had shifted into cruise control.

I have only been back on this path since the start of the new year. This isn’t shifting into cruise control on an open highway – it’s cruise control in a demolition derby. 

A demolition derby isn’t a comfortable, safe, modern vehicle gliding across a freshly paved multi-lane interstate. It’s a junker with a punctured radiator plucked from a wrecking yard, grinding on three flat tires through mud, pounded on all sides from by junkers and flying debris. Just surviving it requires unwavering focus and determination. 

Over the weekend, I took a few hits to the core trauma. Rather than keeping my eye on the situation, rather than acknowledge I was on a dubious foundation and on a course full of potential hazards, I checked out by switching to auto pilot. I didn’t deal with my emotions or the behaviors resulting from them. I disregarded them, dismissed them as “water under the bridge.” Then I shifted, spending (wasting) my clarity walks on sort of irrelevant but feel-good topics. Unaddressed, the painful feelings arising from my negative core beliefs stewed beneath it all. That culminated in a nearly two-pound weight gain this week. 

Sometimes I think that eating is the only unproductive, unhealthy coping mechanism in which I engage but it isn’t. Distraction is definitely one of my coping mechanisms. By immersing myself in distracting thoughts and activities, I can conveniently ignore – and cease working on – my problems. Working on my issues is painful and my distractions, whether that be outfitting my bike with artistic decorations for the Spring or driving across the greater South Bay searching for Cotton Candy Manic Panic to dye my hair, feels like it gets me out of feeling that pain. That is an illusion, though. The pain is still very much there, still very much impacting my emotional, physical and mental health. 

It may sound strange, but I am grateful for my weight gain this week. It has jarred me awake, gotten me back in the present – back in the derby, my hands on the wheel, my eyes peeled for the hits that could be coming my way. 

Next Level Me

~ Jody Piper ~ Leave a comment

Don’t you just love a New Year? A fresh start, a new beginning, a time when it feels like the future is ripe with possibility and we have the opportunity to leave everything we don’t want behind. Intellectually, we all know that every waking minute of every day offers this – there is no reason to wait for a New Year or a birthday or a Monday or whatever arbitrary starting line we designate. But I love the magic and promise of a New Year and this year is no different. 

In mid-December I discovered a new-to-me podcast: Bad Bitches Losing Weight with Melissa Ronda. I began binge-listening, furiously taking notes, and thinking, “damn, this woman totally gets me.” I’m sure the podcast will feature in future entries, but I wanted to talk about one episode in particular today. “WWNLMD?!?” The title is a play on the WWJD? (What Would Jesus Do?) bumper sticker phenomenon and the acronym stands for “What Would Next Level Me Do?!” The episode talks about getting a clear picture of what the evolved version of yourself looks like, how she thinks and acts, how she shows up, what she will and won’t tolerate and then checking in with yourself when the need arises, asking yourself what would next level me do in this situation? For instance, maybe you want to eat something counterproductive to your goals, you ask “would next level me eat this?” 

Over the next few weeks, I did a lot of contemplation and journaling defining the next level version of myself. I was all-in. I could see her in my mind’s eye: I knew what she looked like, how she did hair, what she wore, what she listened to, how she would act in situations. I got a crystal-fucking-clear picture of wo I wanted to be. As a New Year’s Resolution, I created a list of 13 defining qualities of next level me (fully anticipating this list will grow and evolve over time). On January 1, I hung my nifty, designy “Next Level Me” sheet on the refrigerator and, at first, I was on it. Bam-bam-bam, check-check-check, checking off these qualities and focusing on being this version of myself. Of course, over the following weeks I started slowly taking my foot off the gas and emotionally detaching from wanting the things on the list. This is kind of crazy, right? Why would I not want this? These are really awesome qualities on this list. Why grow complacent about those desires? Why would they stop feeling less important than having king cake and chocolate parfaits? At first, I didn’t really realize how much I had detached from the wants on this list and when I did finally realize I had detached, I didn’t really ask myself why.

I think, intuitively, my focus had shifted. Instead of spending my afternoon “clarity walks” (I’ll touch base on what a clarity walk is another post) having these detailed conversations with myself about “next level me”, I had started deep-diving into my emotional issues. The conversations with myself were really difficult but liberating ones about core trauma and core beliefs, about my relationship with food and how it was defined by those traumas and beliefs. As I was having these conversations, the desires to partake in behaviors that didn’t serve me subsided – I stopped being tempted by things in the house like cookies or cupcakes. It wasn’t about strengthening resolve or will-power, I simply stopped needing to eat to soothe emotions. This feels like a very clear, very strong indicator that I was right to trust my intuition on shifting focus, that this work is healing my heart. As I work through all this, I think – and I am theorizing here – this is going to allow me to circle back to the “Next Level Me” list in a more sustainable way. It is as if something in me knew I wasn’t fully ready for that list until I cleared some clutter, some stumbling blocks out of the way. 

As I tackle these emotional issues, I think the best route forward is to look at the list more deeply. When I first discovered I had strayed from the list, my solution was, “well, maybe I should journal about each item on the list and define it more clearly.” I don’t think that’s what I need to do – I think I know the definition of each item on the list, I had a very clear picture of it when I put it on the list. The best path forward is to journal on why I put each item on the list. There has to be a reason, a damned good reason. I don’t have to define “clean eating” for myself, it’s not a new or confusing concept. But why is “clean eating” so important to the vision I have of the best version of my future self… so important that it’s the first item on the list? Why is leaving my comfort zone and handling my shit so important? This is something worth some seriously peeling back of the onion. That next level version of myself is not at the bottom of a list, she’s at the end of a long, arduous road of introspection, understanding, accountability and work.

Exploring My Relationship With Food

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Why do I eat things that are bad for me, things that don’t support my efforts? Why do I eat so much? So often? What triggers me to switch to a sort of auto-pilot state of frenzied consumption, in which my conscious self truly doesn’t wish to participate?

I think everyone can agree that eating can be a corporeally pleasurable experience. A bite of something that tastes good is physically gratifying. Even anticipating that bite can cause physical reactions of salivation and tummy grumbling. That is universal. It’s a given. What happens when you live a predominantly unpleasurable existence, when you live with depression and anxiety? 

Depression has been a near-constant for most of my life. I had my first thoughts of self-harm and suicide at age 12. I have experienced depression in levels varying from disinterest and disengagement to debilitating apathy and suicidal fantasies. At some point (a very early point, I imagine), I subconsciously learned that the pleasurable sensation of eating something gave me a few moments of alleviation from the constant sadness or nothingness. Sure, the enjoyment only lasted as long as the food lasted but it was relief, a brief time of feeling pleasure; a brief time of not feeling pain. 

In writing this, I caught myself wanting to label the feeling “happiness” or “comfort” but happiness and comfort are soul-deep emotions. Food doesn’t and can’t provide those. It can only provide the pleasurable sensation we are physiologically hardwired to experience when eating calorie-dense foods. It is easy to mistake that sensation for happiness or comfort when you don’t know or remember what those things actually feel like. I truly believe that’s what happened with me, that I began to associate those experiences of something tasty on my tongue with happiness, emotional satisfaction, and comfort. My life had little actual happiness in it for many years – party due to my external circumstances and the trauma I was experiencing/had experienced and partly due to my as-yet-undiagnosed and untreated bipolar depression.

I began to associate those experiences of something tasty on my tongue with happiness, emotional satisfaction, and comfort.

I liken it to taking pain medicine for an injury. Pain medicine doesn’t mend the injury, it only provides temporary relief from the pain of that injury. The injury is still there. The injury could even be exacerbated by the use of pain medicine if the injury is compounded by further activity during the alleviation of pain. Food doesn’t cure depression, it only engages the mind elsewhere for brief respites. The effects of eating, particularly overeating or eating unhealthy foods, can actually compound the depression by adding excess weight to the body, in my case leading to morbid obesity.

When I had my success in 2010 I had two things working in my favor.

1.     My healthy diet and consistent moderate-to-vigorous exercise regimen altered my brain chemistry, releasing endorphins and dopamine, physically relieving my depression symptoms.

2.     The process of losing weight was a pleasurable experience. It made me actually happy to have support, to weigh-in and see progress, to shop for new clothes and see my body transformed in an exciting and gratifying way.

The urge to relieve sadness with food was gone during this time, making it easy to adhere to healthy meal plans and remain motivated to exercise. Then my world got turned upside down. My weight loss stalled when I reached the limits of what my current efforts could achieve. I lost my job and I lost my support system, leaving me feeling alone and insecure about my future. Depression and anxiety returned and, because I never addressed the emotional or psychological issues behind my previous behavior, I had no healthy coping mechanisms and I resumed using food to provide momentary relief from my mental health disorder. 

I feel like there are now two important tasks for me to begin work on. The first is to begin to identify pleasurable activities I can use to interrupt bouts of depression and disinterest. So far, I have considered jigsaw puzzles, online games, adult coloring books, physical activity, playing piano, window shopping, spa baths and mani-pedis.  The second task is to continue to explore the evolution of my relationship with food because there is more much still to be unpacked. For instance, the subconscious process of briefly alleviating depression by eating eventually became habit, a ritualized compulsion regardless of the level of depression or anxiety I was experiencing and that is something to explore and understand. Nevertheless, I feel like this was a significant realization today. It makes sense, it rings true, and that gives me hope of overcoming it. 

A Return to Blogging

~ Jody Piper ~ Leave a comment

From the beginning of my journey, I have been focused on my weight. I talked a good game about self-care, about fitness, about motivation, about all sorts of things but every ounce of my drive was measured in pounds on a bathroom scale. Turns out, this may not be the best way to go about this. 

I took time off from blogging – about 19 months – and I made the decision to do that for a number of reasons. The first reason was that I felt obligated to generate content on a regular basis, which put me in a position of trying to write when I had nothing meaningful to say. I read some of those posts now and have to refrain from rolling my eyes as a few range from pretentious to banal. The second reason I stepped away was a nagging case of imposter syndrome. Who am I to dole out weight loss advice when I have never actually reached my weight loss goals, when I struggle as much as I do? I felt like a fraud, like I was all self-righteous talk without the results to back that up. The third reason I stopped blogging was that this blog really doesn’t have a large readership and it often felt like I was screaming into the void. Seriously, my own family didn’t even read this. 

Why on earth would I come back now? Most simply put, things have changed. 

I have started, for the first time in my journey, to really start digging deep into my emotional issues. I recognize that this is not a weight loss journey but a transformative journey of body and soul. I recognize that, until they are addressed, the issues driving my behavior will continue to reemerge and hinder my progress. It isn’t enough to want to lose weight. My weight was never my problem, it was a symptom of my problems. I wear my trauma on my body, like an anchor tethering me to my past. 

I have been doing a lot of thinking, a lot of talking to myself aloud, a lot of journaling trying to learn about the roots of my behaviors. I have been examining my core traumas, looking back in time to identify when coping mechanisms were adopted and patterns emerged. Looking inward doesn’t feel like enough. I feel the need to engage in the cathartic practice of writing my discoveries down. This is the deep dive. The peeling of the onion. The unpacking of baggage. I am the cartographer of the roadmap of my life. I write when I have something to say. I write with brutal, painful, potentially embarrassing candor without any hope or expectation of inspiring anyone. Finally, I write for an audience of one: myself. 

New Year’s Resolution

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Where to begin…

I have about a hundred thoughts swirling in my head regarding what I wanted to write about today. Do I talk about my holiday self-sabotage? Do I talk about my New Year’s resolution and my current mindset? I guess I want to talk about it all as it is all related. I guess I don’t really want to talk about any of it – I just want to get to work and DO IT.

I gave myself permission to indulge over the holidays – hopefully with moderation. Given that I regained 13.6 pounds between November 27 and yesterday, it’s safe to say moderation went the wayside. Initially, I was still meal planning and prepping and keeping within my nutritional goals during the week, indulging on the weekends. I skipped the gym for the last two weeks of November, went back for the first week of December then didn’t go again until New Year’s Eve. Eventually, I started hitting the Christmas cookies hard in the evenings and didn’t bother planning, prepping or logging anything. I knew I had regained weight but I wasn’t expecting to have gained quite so much. Given my behavior, I should have expected it. That said, I was surprisingly un-upset by it. I see it simply just a starting point, the beginning of the next part of my weight loss story (I hope).

You see, I made an official New Year’s Resolution to reach my goal weight in 2019. If you follow my Instagram account, you would know that I have been building up a head of steam for weeks, preparing to tackle this resolution on January 1. I treated myself to a new meal-prep perfect lunchbox, new gym clothes and shoes, and a fancy new pair of earbuds. I worked with my friend Karol to come up with SMART (Specific-Measurable-Ambitious-Realistic-Time Bound) Goal Worksheets for setting up all the short-term goals that will get me to my end goal.  I have been furiously pinning great fitspo images on my Pinterest board and compiling a new Spotify workout playlist. I set up the camera tripod in the kitchen, marking the kitchen floor with blue masking tape, so that I can take my progress photos and, hopefully one day, create a time-lapse video of my transformation.

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So here I am. January 1, 2019 and I weigh 211.1 pounds. My first SMART Goal of the year is to lose 11.3 pounds by Saturday, February 9 (get back to Onderland in just over five weeks). I have 56.2 total pounds to lose in order to reach my ultimate goal and I would love to do it by August 1. I plan to stay accountable, stay honest and make my health and weight loss a priority. I plan to keep the lessons learned over the holidays (all that junk food really, ultimately, wasn’t worth it) at the forefront of my mind and make healthier, more productive decisions. I plan to eat healthy, clean, unprocessed and nutritious foods as much as possible. I plan to give 100% of my effort, energy and dedication to my workouts. No more excuses, no more backslides, no more pity parties… that’s how I’ll reach my goal. Time to lace up those Nikes, tighten up my ponytail and take ownership of 2019. This will be my year.

Gearing Up for Success

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While I am enjoying the holidays (and enjoying the holiday treats a little too much), my mind has already jumped ahead to the New Year. I have big plans for next year. I have made lots of resolutions to lose weight in the past, but they’ve all been vague, ill-equipped and unsuccessful.  This year, all of that changes as 2019 will be the year I reach my goals. As January nears, I have been preparing to tackle my goals.

Mentally, I have been scouring the internet for meal planning recipe ideas and fitness inspiration, I have been building a new and ever-evolving workout playlist on Spotify, and I have been talking to my friend about setting up a goal sheet and vision boards to both chart my plan for success and motivate me. Today, I asked myself if there are any physical items I need to literally gear up for success. These would be the items that help me in the kitchen and in the gym, that help to minimize or alleviate the excuses I make for not sticking to my plans or inspire me to work harder and stay more dedicated.

I grapple quite a bit with buying gear. Sometimes I feel like I don’t want to “reward” myself before reaching goals. Sometimes I feel like I don’t really deserve it. Mostly; however, I feel like gear is superfluous – that I can make-do with things I already have, however imperfect they may be. After all, I lost over 100 pounds wearing hand-me-down gym pants and using a beat-up old iPod. Maybe some things are redundant, but I also have to acknowledge the shot-to-the-arm that new gear and a financial investment in my success can provide. I have to make my health a priority, I have to view my quest to reach my goals a worthy and important venture. I have decided that, with the help of my $250 Visa Gift Card Thanksgiving bonus (I was sitting on this bonus with the hopes of finding the perfect way to spend it) I am excited to stock up on the tools that will inspire me and make my life easier.

mealprep

From meal prep containers and a new insulated lunchbox to new wireless headphones, a progress journal, workout wear and possibly some new gym shoes, I am researching items that will make this journey easier and more streamlined while refreshing my attitude and giving me a sense of the importance and value of my success. I am so excited for this new year, so excited to put in the work, track my progress and make 2019 MY year to reach my goals. Stocking up on some great gear is going to be a fun and rewarding step in the process.

Green-Eyed Monster

~ Jody Piper ~ Leave a comment

I am jealous person and a terrible frenemy. I am not proud of myself. It has always been important to me to lift up other people, to support them in their efforts and encourage them. A friend of mine has been on an extremely successful weight loss journey this year and, as I have watched her progress and applauded her success, deep down I have been troubled. I am feeling envious and thinking spiteful thoughts. This negativity is not only uncharacteristic of me, it is shameful. Wanting to understand the root of my jealousy – I know it lies 100% within me and has absolutely nothing to do with my friend – I have been doing a good deal of soul searching. Over the last few months I have been paying attention to my thoughts and emotions, making mental notes of the things which trigger my strongest negative reactions, and believe I am understanding my own feelings of jealousy better.

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Most of the people currently in my life – my boyfriend, my coworkers, all the people I see on a regular basis – never knew me at 290 pounds. The people who did know me at that size have all adjusted to the way I look now, having not seen me at my largest in many years. I still have quite a bit of weight to lose but that change won’t be as dramatic as the changes my friend is seeing. It won’t be as dramatic as when I dropped from 290 to 180 pounds in 2010. The days of people being truly astonished by my progress are mostly over. People may still occasionally comment on my weight loss but I’m no longer going from morbidly obese to healthy. Furthermore, my nearly constant ups and downs over and my struggle to reach my goal has left me with the feeling that nobody (least of all myself) has much confidence in my ability to truly succeed. As a result, I feel like my weight loss journey is yesterday’s news.

In the early days of my weight loss, it was such a thrill to hear people comment on my transformation. My metamorphosis was remarkable, garnering a lot of positive attention. I didn’t want or want to need accolades or validation from other people but I would be lying if I didn’t admit to fantasizing about it long before I actually started losing weight. I imagine that’s common – envisioning people’s ecstatic and awestruck reactions, being showered with praise and adulation. When it happens, it feels amazing. It is almost addictive and, while I didn’t realize it until now, I grew to need it. Watching my friend get all of that positive (and well-deserved) attention, reading the comments on her social media posts expressing awe at the change and congratulations on her success, I am seething with jealousy.

I will never have that again and I have realized, through my friend’s success, just how much I will miss it. It is painful, hurting my heart in a way I never could have anticipated. In so many ways, my weight loss journey has defined me for the past eight years – it was the single greatest personal accomplishment of my life. Now it feels like no big deal. Watching my friend experience all those amazing firsts, earn the supportive praise, I have realized just how important those things were to my positive attitude and determination to keep going.

I have had my heyday. I have had my attention, my accolades, my awe and congratulations. That part of my journey is behind me. I have to make peace with that and I can not allow it to bring out the worst in me, to make me someone I never wanted to be – a bitter, envious and catty person. I have to find my positive attitude and my determination elsewhere. Deep down, I want my friend to experience the happiness she is no doubt feeling now. I know what that happiness feels like and I would want that for anyone who has had to be made to feel subhuman because they wore their pain and trauma on the outside, in the form of fat, for all the world to judge and criticize. I would be ashamed of my jealousy if I didn’t take the time to understand it. Having insight into its source; however, I realize I need to be gentle with myself and understanding. As much as I wish I didn’t feel this way, I have to own these feelings, see them for what they are and be accountable. I also realize the need to encourage myself, to recognize the changes I am making and celebrate them even if I am celebrating alone. This is another phase of my journey, possibly a quieter and more personal one, and that’s ok.