Really seeing yourself

I don't know why it is that I can look at myself every single day in the mirror and not see myself, but that seems to be the case. I can only really see myself in a photograph. And, I'm proud to say, I can see the good along with the bad, but it seems the mirror, for me at least, I tend to have a set of rose tinted glasses or something. Or, my bathroom mirrors are more flattering than the reality of the digital imaged the camera takes.

I got reminded of this when I saw a picture of myself from this past Saturday. My husband and I were working in the yard on creating that stone pathway. He had our older son take a photo of us looking at our finest, showing our work. My husband is in too baggy pants (they're too baggy for me too) with ripped knees, a grubby T-shirt and his baseball style sun hat. Me in a pair of jean shorts, a t-shirt, really old tennies and my woven gardening hat. It's one of the few photos of my husband and I together side by side. The last time we had a photo of us together was at Halloween time in our Halloween costumes. Now this time in grubs. Maybe we should maybe think to have a better photo taken, huh?

Anway, here's the photo:

I see this and I see I'm all boobs. I don't feel like I'm all boobs. And my boobs have shrunk quite a bit with this weight loss (down 2 cup sizes and 3 band sizes), but if anything, they look bigger on my body as the rest of me has gotten smaller.  I also see that my hips don't look as big as I see them in the mirror. When I see myself in the mirror, I see my gut and all the loose skin and basically, I just see bigness. But, it's not out of proportion with the rest of me. Also when I see this, I realize I don't look out of scale with my husband - for like the first time ever. My husband is 6'1" and 175 pounds. While I definitely am bigger than he is in frame size, fat percentages, etc, I don't look huge next to him any more like I used to.

This isn't a great photo, but when I see it, I don't see me. I don't see my face here, so I'm looking at a silhouette. That's not my silhouette in my head. I don't remember ever looking like this, so I don't know who that person is. I wonder when I'll get used to it?

And that path - it's now done. In that photo, we had the last 5 stones (those near our feet).  Now it's just to plant, but not today. It's raining - a lot.

Stats for 6/12/12:

Highest weight: 275  Now: 170.2