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Jim has always given me compliments. To this day he tells me I'm pretty at least once a day. He tells G every day too. (I know, I'm very lucky.) When he first started paying me compliments (when I was 18 and we started dating) I would brush them off, tell him he was wrong, tell him to stop. Finally, he got frustrated with my reaction and told me he wouldn't tell me these things if he didn't mean them. Something clicked for me and I saw he was being honest and so from that point on I've always been appreciative of his compliments and have thanked him for them.
Sometimes I still slip up, like this morning when we were driving home in the Jeep with the windows down and he looked over at me and said I looked pretty and I said "Jim, my hair is wet, tied up in a bun and I don't have any makeup on," He said back to me "take the compliment."
Jim and I went to my co-workers wedding yesterday. She was stunning, it was a beautiful ceremony and we had a great time at the reception. I've been really looking forward to her wedding and it was one of my weight loss goals to wear a cute dress to her wedding.
Jim and me at the wedding.
I started shopping about a month ago. I found a floral dress at Nordstroms that I bought. I tried it on for Jim and he liked it, but said it was too big and didn't show off the weight I lost. I thought about getting it taken in, but decided to look some more before spending the money on alterations. I spent a few hours at the mall trying on dresses at three different stores. I didn't care what it looked like, if it was my size I tried it and NONE of them looked good. I probably tried on 50 dresses. I was so frustrated. I was supposed to pick up the kids from the sitter and I called Jim to see if he could pick them up instead and I just burst into tears. I had worked so hard and I was so frustrated that I couldn't find anything that looked good.
I ended up taking a break from looking and a week later I bought a dress at TJ Maxx but didn't love it. My last hope was at Marshalls. I tried on three dresses. I almost didn't take the black one to the dressing room because I knew it wouldn't look good, but that's the one I ended up with.
Late into the reception my co-workers and I were tearing up the dance floor and one of them grabbed me by the shoulders and told me she thought I looked great. She was literally shaking me by my shoulders and saying, "no really Stephanie; you look great" I had said thank you but as she kept complimenting me it was almost too much for me and I was close to tears.
Weight loss is so much more than just the diet and exercise. It's a totally physical and emotional transformation. My instinct for me when my co-worker was complimenting me was to tell her she was wrong, to tell her to stop. But I thanked her and I believed her and I appreciated her words. She even said "you make me want to Zumba!"
