Renee's Identity Dilemma

How do you see yourself? Is your mental portrayal accurate?  We all experience irrational thoughts about our personalities, abilities and appearance from time to time.

Challenging these inaccurate forms of thinking is step one. Here are Renee's thoughts with respect to the challenge I placed upon her regarding misconceptions and self-identity.

I have been trying to digest some of the notions that Drew threw at me on Monday afternoon. Having just completed 8 weeks of the program, maybe I'm still on a "honeymoon" here but the basic principals of HW have taken over my brain and I have willingly released all the diet garbage that has taken up space in my brain for about 25 years.

But Drew is now suggesting that I think of myself as "a healthy weight and appearing healthy, active and fit" rather than overweight, fat or obese.

I am extremely resistant to this idea not just from an intellectual/emotional standpoint but I am having a physiological response that feels like a tightening in abdomen, and I have been trying to work out exactly why.

Firstly I am 5'6". I weigh 179lbs and to me that is quite overweight. Yes I have come a long way from the 250lbs I once was. But how can I think of myself as average when I am convinced that the whole world sees me as fat and judges me for being so.

Furthermore, how can I like myself when, from the age of 11 I have been teased, ridiculed and taunted for being fat... like there is no worse thing a person could possibly be than fat.

Secondly being fat is my identity and I hadn't really planned to shed this identity until I actually am thin. Drew is suggesting that I start to think of myself that way now.

He might as well be trying to convince me that the earth is in fact flat, that is how firm my beliefs are about myself. So I am circling this notion of "a healthy weight and appearing healthy, active and fit" and spending a few minutes each day trying to consider it, accept it, reconcile it in my mind....