The more that I think about the process of losing weight the more that I realize that losing weight is a rather physical process that is deeply rooted in abstraction. I find that abstract nature of the process to be fascinating, frustrating, and merely confounding. On a cognitive level, I totally understand the physical aspects of the process – eat less (calories in), exercise more (calories out). I understand and recognize all of the very physical (and sometimes mundane) things I have to do every day – prepare my food, eat right, write down my food, drink enough water, exercise, etc. But there are a lot of very abstract things that I can’t see but that are taking place in my body. The whole idea of fat forming on your body and then being burned off is so crazy! I understand that by eating less and expending more energy, my body needs energy to keep going so it uses all of the energy reserves I already have but that is still just so abstract! How does that fat get burned off and where does it go? Are there little dump trucks of fat being hauled off throughout my body to some fat burning furnace? And when does that happen? Does it happen at night? Or is it happening all of the time?
Other than monitoring the scale, I don’t really know what’s happening in my body. I may think I’m getting smaller but couldn’t it be my mind playing tricks on me? I was just thinking today that I wish there was a more physical artifact of losing weight. I would like to wake up every morning and find little blobs of me that had been burned off overnight – little blobs just sitting there detached from me. Something like that would make the process seem far more real and I wouldn’t have to second guess myself. Did I gain/lose weight on the scale because of salt? water? muscle? None of that would matter anymore because I would have physical evidence that I did indeed shed part of myself overnight. That would be terrific . . . although I’m not sure how I’d dispose of the blobs.