Holy Cow!!! I Just Saw Myself the Way Others See Me

I've mentioned before that I have a hard time seeing the changes in my body. I was just talking to my mom this week about how I don't feel like I look any different from 15lbs ago, which is where I got married, etc. She said that I see myself every day, so it's hard to notice a change in myself. Even though she said that and it made sense, I felt like 15lbs should really look different.

Sure enough, last night, I pretty much got the shock of a lifetime. Each year (since last year), we've made a year-end video of some of the best videos that year for ourselves and the grandparents. We had so many more videos this year than last, so I had the huge task of going through all of them last night and choosing which ones were going to end up on the DVD. I only made it to February before I was dealt this great shock. It was a clip of my son's 1st birthday and we were bringing him the cake for him to blow out the candle and smash it a bit. Since I was in the video, I got to see myself as other have and I didn't like what I saw.




This is a screen shot from that video and I paused it right here when I got a good look at myself. OMG!!! I've always known that I was bottom-heavy, but I didn't realize it was that bad! On this day, I was 170.8lb, so only a little over 20lb more than I currently weigh. I shudder to think what I looked like at 200lb right after I had Brady. How could nobody have stopped me in my tracks and told me how bad I really looked? I've always had a big butt and hips, so I'm sure if they told me, I would've said, "Yeah, I know," and would still have been ignorant to how bad I looked. I wish I had seen this video back then. It might have helped me get back on track a lot sooner than I did. I think the problem I have seeing a change now, is due to the fact that even though I'm much smaller, my butt and hips are still disproportionately large. Watching this video helped me realize how well I have done and although there is room for improvement, things could definitely be worse. I never want to go back to that place.