Becoming Self Aware

I think that one of the funniest things about being a larger person is that we don’t necessarily see ourselves in that light. For instance, I can remember when I was 300+ pounds, if I saw another man that was bigger then me, I would say something to my wife like…”Would you look at the size of that monster.” She would typically respond, ”You should keep your mouth shut, because you’re not too much smaller then he is.” The funny thing is that she was right. Even though I could not deny my size, my self-image was completely distorted from the reality of what I looked like. The good news was that I had a good self-image; the bad news was that I was completely kidding myself. I

In fact, it wasn’t until I looked at some pictures that my wife had taken, that I realized the problem. I remember being so surprised by how I looked in the pictures that I turned to her and asked do I really look like this or is this just a bad picture?” Unfortunately, I was eating a cookie at the time and she laughed so hard that she couldn’t answer. I guess that was answer enough. As you can imagine, coming to terms with my own size was one of the keys to getting started. Probably one of the best things I could have ever done was stumble across the pictures that day. Ultimately, the reality of viewing myself in the pictures was just too big to ignore. I got the message. In hindsight, I cannot help but think I may have been subconsciously avoiding having my picture taken. Perhaps I knew that if I saw myself on film, the reality would be a shock.

-    Hamilton Erridge