This month I will celebrate my 14th-year out weight loss surgery anniversary. Yes, I've gained a few pounds back...it happens. And I still have to "rein" myself in on occasion—to take inventory of what I'm eating, and what's eating me, and get back on track. But all-in-all things are going pretty well. I've managed to keep off well over 100 pounds and that a "HUGE" success. 

But the one thing I have noticed, no matter if I gain or lose weight from time to time, the image of myself in the mirror is the true image of who I am. It hasn't always been that way. 

Weight loss or not, what we often see in the mirror is a critically distorted version of what is really there. 

Several years after loosing 164 pounds, my mind and my body were still not on the same page. The mirror told me I was thin, but I didn't "feel" that way. Even after plastic surgery, I still felt fat. It was hard for me to see the real me in the mirror. My mind still reflected the 300 pound version of me. I knew I had to lose the fat feeling or I would end up in the same place my mind told me I was. I had to find a way to change my old image. I had to learn how to see the real me. 

My transformation took more than just looking in the mirror or trying to convince myself I was thinner. It took more than repeatedly trying on clothes every time I took them out of the dryer. It took more than plastic surgery. I needed answers to why my mind still continued to live in the past.

I had to find out why my mind wanted to believe I was still overweight and start believing that the image I saw in the mirror was the real and present me. It took some re-thinking before my head and my body came into alignment.

I did some research and discovered that we can change the way we feel and the way we see ourselves by changing our mind. The way we "feel" is rooted in the way we "think" or what we "believe". It results in the way we see ourselves.

I felt "fat" because I believed I would always be that way and that my circumstances would never change. I was fat because that's the way I thought about myself so that is the way I saw myself. I needed more than stomach surgery, or massive weight loss, I needed "brain surgery"!

In order to make changes in my image, I had to change my thinking. I discovered that it is possible to hold two conflicting beliefs at the time. My mind had a conflicting report about the new me. I believed that I had lost weight but I also held to a belief that I would never change and that I was always going to be overweight and unhealthy.

One of those beliefs was not true—I was believing a lie. The fact that I was once obese was true, but it wasn't the new and present truth. The old belief was ruling my thoughts, clouding my thinking, and choking out the new truth. My two beliefs had to come into agreement.

Once I identified the conflicting belief, I had to uproot it. I had to renounce the old by telling myself I was believing a lie. I had to begin to agree fully with my present truth. Immediately I was free. Free to see the new me. Free of the "fat" feeling. 

I encourage you to find the new you. But you won't find it in the mirror or in a clothing store. You must first find the new you inside your mind. In order to take the next step in your recovery from the old you to the new you, you must first take a good look at how you see yourself.

Do you see yourself as you really are? If the real image of yourself is a lot different than what you are, I encourage you to seek the truth about what you believe—identify the lie—dispel it and begin to agree with your present truth.

If you would like to read the whole story of how I changed my life as well as other life-changing thinking patterns that helped me walk out of obesity into a new place, my book Out of Obesity and into the Promised Land  is available online.