Thin is Just a Feeling

Thin is a feeling, just like fat is a feeling.

You can be legitimately at a healthy body weight according to the bathroom scale, and still wake up feeling fat. Maybe the pants that were a little loose last week are a little tight this week due to water retention, so all the sudden, even if you are at a completely healthy body weight according to a scale, you feel fat.

The same thing can happen with thin as a feeling. This is not about the definition of the word “thin,” this is about being at a healthy body weight versus being overweight. Currently, at 166.8 pounds, I am not at a healthy body weight according to my bathroom scale, however something has shifted in me in the last few weeks and I’ve been waking up feeling thin. Even with some emotional setbacks, we lost our beloved dog on August 10 which I blogged about here, and I’ve been very devastated by that loss, I have felt a shift in that I wake up feeling thin. That’s why I was recently able to look at my picture from 4 years ago and see that I looked great, whereas when that picture was taken, I couldn’t see I looked fine. I have clarity right now. I can see what I really looked like back then. And I can realize that thinking negatively about myself was just an excuse to not take care of myself.

The funny thing is the scale does not yet say I’m at a healthy body weight for my height, but because I feel thin, I’m surprised when my clothes don’t reflect my feelings. I end up asking myself things like, “Why don’t these pants fit yet?” and “Why aren’t these shorts hanging off me – why are they still a little snug?”

It’s because I feel thin, but I’m not yet technically thin, so that becomes a study in how I can continue to feel thin, so that everyday I pursue an eating plan and exercising that will eventually result in being at a healthy weight on the scale. How can I bottle how can I bottle this feeling of being thin so continue to behave like a thin person, eating healthy and exercising? Before I actually become ‘thin’ according to the bathroom scale, how can I sustain this feeling and use it, so that when something stressful occurs, I can tap into the feeling of being thin, instead of tapping into sweets and foods to make myself feel better?

Growing up there was a saying nothing tastes as good as thin feels, but I used to argue against that notion, because I didn’t know what thin felt like. But I certainly knew what good food tasted like! It has happened a few times in my life where I have felt thin, and then I have been able to reach a healthy body weight on the scale that matched that feeling. I don’t know what the secret formula was for that shift inside me to have recently happened, but it’s is helping me to continue on a better path which started four weeks ago yesterday.