When your body moves faster than your brain

In a previous lifetime, I knew what I would see when I looked in the mirror: a big stomach, flabby arms, back fat, essentially everything we are taught not to desire. I started to eat right and exercise and bit by bit, pounds burned away. I would have thought that if I lost 60 pounds, I would look in the mirror and see a huge difference…but reality is I still see a stomach I wish was slimmer, I see arms that I wish were tighter, a back that could be more toned. The numbers don’t lie, my scale says I’ve lost weight, my tape measure shows I’ve lost inches, my jeans size says something is clearly different. I can see, however faint, two little lines that try to convince me that abs may appear eventually, my arms are more wing like than I’d prefer but I forget what they looked like before I got off the couch. I think I don’t really look different until I hold up jeans and think ‘There’s no way’ yet I can comfortably fit into. I bought a dress to wear to a wedding last summer and when I tried on the medium, the sales lady said oh that’s way too big, and I ended up with a small. A size small from a store I had stopped shopping in because I could not fit into an extra-large there. I try not to obsess over sizes but sometimes it’s actually a help. If I was once squeezing into size 16 pants and now I can slide right into a 6 without holding my breath, that’s an obvious difference. It takes time to get used seeing a fit self instead of a fat self.