Mirror, mirror on the wall...

The mirror. Never before has there been a truer "frienemy" for me. Some days we like each other. Sometimes we hate each other. Well, really I'm the one with all the emotional response. The glass just hangs there and is reflective, as always. And like the scale, it doesn't lie. The scale measures your mass, the mirror shows you what your mass looks like.

Except....that damn brain of mine. There is only so much I can do with a number on a scale. Sure I can be pleased or upset, but really there are limitations to what my mind will conjure up with that number. Not exactly accurate for what my mind can do with the reflection.

I avoided mirrors for a long, long time. For obvious reasons. Can't avoid the reality check if you look in them long enough. So I didn't. Then as I started losing weight I spent a lot of time with the mirror, to the point where I was concerned people would think I was completely narcissistic if they saw me. But I wasn't admiring myself. I wanted to see changes. I wanted the reflection to validate me. I still do, just like I want the scale to validate me.

But it's hard to get that validation when you look in the mirror and instead of seeing the good things, all the positive changes, your old self wants you to see bad things. My current obsession is that the smaller my cheeks get, the bigger my nose looks. Completely stupid, I know.

Some days I can look in the mirror and think "not bad", yet the next day I think "yuck!" The image looking back isn't that different, it's how I choose to see it.

Weight Watchers has a poster with the levels of change (or something like that). At the center, the core, is "identity". There's a reason it's at the core of all the other levels of change. It's the most important, and frankly, the hardest. And I know mine is changing (though sometimes painfully slowly), but it IS changing!